A new website!

I'm very proud to present you my new website!
This artistic piece of technology has a weblog incorporated, so there's no need to visit this place anymore!
Don't forget to change your RSS feed and of course, take a look at my new website. From 4-4 until 5-5 I'm giving away al sorts of presents! JAY!

Businesscard / miniportfolio

Jester Fabric, the making of...

This week, Spoonflower has another contest that inspired me. The theme is jokers and fools. Here's how I made the design.











You can vote for your favourite design here. No need to register, just click on the designs you like and submit on the last page!

Sketchcrawl Gouda

This weekend, I attended Sketchcrawl Gouda. A very cool initiative that invites people to pick up their sketchbook and meet to sketch their surroundings. More about Sketchcrawl here.

It had been quite a while since I went outside to sketch. Not since I've finished artschool anyway. It proofed to be a very good exercise. Once again I saw how many different shapes people have, what they wear and how they move. And it's a very nice way of relaxing. I should definately do this more often.
Here's some of the things I drew.

I see your two colors

Making illustrations for the book 'De Kanjerklas' was the first time I drew in 2 colors. This may sound simple, but when you're using Photoshop coloring your linework, this is not obvious. It took me days to figure this out. The people at the press couldn't help me, they kept suggesting I would color the arkwork and then change the colormode to 'duotone'. This offcourse would reduce the amount of colors to 2, but would blend everything to a mix of the 2 available colors.
Luckily, De Kanjerklas was designed by someone who knows everything about printing processes and she suggested I'd use Illustrator. At first I didn't like the idea because I was afraid it would make my artwork look too digitally drawn. But playing around with it, I discovered this is actually a very nice way of coloring. First I made the line work in Photoshop. I made all the white transparant and changed the colormode to 'monotone'. Then I imported this in Illustrator and drew the colors in a layer underneath the line work.

I didn't expect to be using this knowledge any time soon, but just this month I had another request for illustrations in 2 colors.

Hide and Seek skirt

Recently, I've designed a fabric for a Spoonflower contest. The theme was 'woodland creatures'. Since it's obviously a fabric for children, I meant it to be a small scale print.
But then, someone asked me if she could have a yard with a very large scale print to make a skirt for her daughter. What a nice idea! Cool thing about Spoonflower, if you make the design in a high resolution (or vector based), anything is possible!
I made one for my daughter as well. Doesn't she look pretty in her 'hide and seek skirt'?