When my American bestie Danielle landed in Barcelona for work, there was no way a two-hour flight was going to keep me from our 22-year intercontinental friendship. So off I went, and what followed were the most incredible 113 hours!
I spent some time sketching on location in a dreamy little courtyard (Antic Teatre), but most of the artwork came together afterward. Adventures like these fuel my joy and creativity for months to come.
Music is 'Blue Night' by Magnus Ringblom via Epidemic Sounds
Another sketchbook tour! This one is from January to July 2024. I drew less than I had planned, but as you'll see, I took lots of trips (mostly for work), and I do try to put less pressure on myself to 'create content' versus actually enjoying a place and being inspired by it. So while there's not a lot of drawings, I do like most of the ones I did do.
Sketchbook: Odd Orange
Materials: Watercolors and colored pencils, lil' bit of crayon here and there.
Music via Epidemic Sounds! This one is called 'I'm a Dawg' by Curly Loxx, which is sort of hilarious when you listen to how chill this tune is.
Short video about last weekend, when we spent some time in my mother's cabin in the woods. I made use of the gorgeous fall weather to do some outside drawing among the trees, and was even joined by one of the little artists for a bit.
Sketchbook is a Clairefontaine A4(ish?) sketchbook, I'm using watercolors, and an assortment of pencils (mostly Caran d'Ache). Music is 'In Place' by King Peaks through Epidemic Sounds.
Work took me to Paris, and I took myself on a little Louvre date, followed by new books and a beverage on a terrace. Only reason I came home l was because I love my children and I wanted to spoil them with overpriced macarons. And maybe because my French is terrible.
All jokes aside, a day like this - but to be honest also the very stunning and fun ‘work’ (is it work when you’re having the best time with some of the best people) I got to do the days prior to this day - just feeds my soul. For weeks. Months. And I cannot believe how lucky I am to live this life of mine. Ok soppy story mode off. Go and have fun, kids. It matters.
I keep planning to do a proper sketchbook tour of our summer holiday in the Provence, France, but we’re now nearly a month into the school year and I think I’ll have to accept it’ll be late no matter what. So here’s some of the more successful sketches.
While I’m happy with the sketches here, it took me a while to get into it. I brought ‘the wrong’ sketchbooks, and only after our trip to Aix-en-Provence where I appropriately bought a new sketchbook, did I really start enjoying it.
We were staying in Cotignac, about an hour drive east from Aix-en-Provence, and one of the cutest little villages in the region. We stayed here a few years ago (different house), and loved it so much, we came back. An unintended consequence of this was that we had the most relaxing vacation ever, as we had zero FOMO about seeing any of the touristic attractions - we’d seen them all last time!
And perhaps as a result of the true relaxation, I didn’t take much video, and I didn’t put any pressure on myself to create. Meaning there’s no real vlog, no video now, but just a few happy snaps and sketches. And maybe that’s the best outcome I could have hoped for.
For my 40th birthday this year, Jochem organized a trip to London with the boys. Although the kids were both born in London, neither have been back since we moved to The Netherlands five years ago and I have really wanted them to see the old neighbourhood and get to know the city they will forever be tied to.
Jochem found a bnb right across from our old house, which was just lovely.
But first. The journey. We had wanted to go by train, but the prices were so exorbitant that we decided against our better judgement to go by plane this time. And boy, did our karma catch up to us.
I needed many wines to recover from that day.
The next day we walked around our old neighborhood towards Stoke Newington where we hit the playground and did a nice lunch. Then, off to Islington Green for some serious bookshop action. In the evening we ordered Indian food, which, even if it’s “just” a takeout is still better than any Indian food we’d be able to get in NL. Yummmm
The next day was Easter and aside from the Easter egg hunt, we didn’t plan our day very well. But the museum was worth the wait and so was the sushi.
For our final day we hit another playground, and hung around cafes all day eating cake, drinking coffee, and reading the books we got this weekend. In the evening we flew back home and got home incredibly late (hoping we wouldn’t get told off by the kids’ teachers the next day for them falling asleep in class, but they managed)!
We miss you already, London!
Another sketchbook tour! This one spanning from June 2023, until January 2024. Not the most creative couple of months for me as I was dealing with some health issues, but there's a couple of drawings I'm quite happy with nonetheless.
I also talk a bit about staying in your comfort zone vs pushing through, and how in some situations I am ok with sitting in my comfort zone as a part time artists (and especially when life happens). What is your view? Eager to hear!
Sketchbook: Seawhite of Brighton A5 sketchbook Materials: Tombow markers, watercolors, Luminance colored pencils, inks and gouache!
Music via Epidemic Sounds!
This year has been a slow year for painting. During the pandemic I felt like I was hanging onto my brushes for dear life, but ever since then life has sped up again, and creative work slowed down. It’s not always what I want, but at the same time it means more of the work has moved from my hands to my head, thinking through concepts before finding the time to put them onto canvas. I feel like this has helped me find a voice that’s deeper and more considered in my work.
Spring & Summer: Pebbles
The dark winter months produced very little, but as the trees finally started to sprout some new leaves, the paints also came back to life for me. We had a wet summer, and pebbles, streams, and rain were on my mind as I explored loose shapes and adding depth and reflections to my abstract works.
Late Summer: Lush Greens & a Commission
With some warmer weather coming in late August and early September, darker greens and pinks came into my work. I’m always amazed at how much the seasons influence my colors, but I don’t mind it. Even though we live in a city, it’s nice to be connected to nature. This piece, with many many layers, was done as a commission for a dear friend of mine living across the globe. It’s on its way to her home now and hope it’ll be a good fit.
At the same time I have decided not to do as many commissions anymore - I love doing them, but they’re also a little stressful (Will they like it? Will I want to make what they want?) and with work being insane at the moment, I think it may be healthier to take a step back.
On my Easel now
This piece on the left I absolutely adore and is a work I’ve been working on for ages. It’s had about six iterations, which are all layered somewhere underneath there, but finally is finding its ‘soul’. I couldn’t tell you what inspired me, but it feels like a culmination of the work I’ve done this year so far, and it feels very satisfying. On the right is a piece I made as a gift for another dear friend. She’s got such a caring and vibrant personality, and I wanted to see if I could capture that in a painting.
What’s next? I’ve bought two large square canvases. They’re primed and ready to go, but I feel with fall coming in for real (?) now, I need a bit of time to settle on the color palette. Stay tuned, I suppose.
I don’t know which is more unbelievable: the fact that we booked our summer holiday for 2023 before 2022 had ended, or that it wasn’t to a warm country. We had initially planned to go to Italy with the boys, but when my mom and stepdad asked to plan a joint vacation, we changed tack. My mom doesn’t do hot weather, and we missed the UK - always having felt bummed out that we’d never visited Cornwall while we still lived there.
And yes, it rained. A lot. But boy, did it not disappoint.
Cornwall is rough, wild, gloomy, magical, and some days we felt like the water was swallowing us whole from all directions.
I didn’t film every single thing we did, chasing instead to stay in the moment, but I filmed some. And I drew in my sketchbooks, mostly at night in the dimly lit dining room of the 17th century cottage we were staying in (which sounds romantic and kind of was but also was very damp and covered in moths, but that kind of give and take is expected after 370+ years). Here’s a video, including gloomy music and no talking, because after two weeks on vacation with two loud little boys, I think the whole world needs some quiet.
Some more scans below for your enjoyment. Click to enlarge.
Sketchbook: Seawhite of Brighton A4 eco sketchbook
Materials: Crayons, watercolors and colored pencils
Music: by Hannah Lindgren via Epidemic Sounds!
Another sketchbook filled. Big fan of the paper quality of this Odd Orange sketchbook, and it really invited me to experiment with materials and layouts. All in all super happy with this sketchbook and the work in here.
Sketchbook: Odd Orange A5 Landscape Sketchbook
Materials: Tombow markers, watercolors, Luminance colored pencils, inks and acrylic paints
Music: 'Das Hotel' and 'Claypots St.Kilda' by Sugoi via Epidemic Sounds!
I had forgotten to film a tour of two sketchbooks and it’s been keeping me up at night, y’all. Or perhaps I chose to forget as it’s not my best work in here. It does give an interesting snapshot of the vida lockdown!
Sketchbook: Seawhite of Brighton travel sketchbooks
Materials: Tombow markers, watercolors, Luminance colored pencils, inks and even some acrylic paints!
Music all via Epidemic Sounds!
It’s here! I came back from a work trip to find the print proof for my London zine, which has almost become more like a book. It’s 40 pages including the cover. I just kept adding pages, and in the end this is just a small selection. It’s a testament to how personal this zine, book, zine-book thing is.
The drawings were made between 2014-2023, but most of them I started in 2019, when we knew we’d be moving away from London. While we made the decision to go and move closer to our families, I was absolutely heartbroken to leave. If I’m being honest, for a long time I had imagined never leaving, I felt so at home in London. We had even looked (loosely) at buying a house, but in the end Brexit/rent/childcare/and mostly a very sick child made us decide otherwise. We’ve not regretted the decision as much as it’s been a process of mourning for me, personally. We moved to Utrecht, Covid hit, and I grieved my old life. And, like many of you, I also mourned the time passing by in what felt like a vacuum. My kids growing older and more Dutch by the day, but us not building the life or support structures we’d moved ‘back home’ for.
So while locked down, I compiled this book of drawings from our life in London. It’s a love letter to the city, it’s people, and the nearly five years we spent calling the city home. There’s not much text, just places that meant something to me so I don’t forget.
You can pre-order the book now via my Etsy shop. Orders ship out around the second week of May.
While you’re there, feel free to add any of these other zines and prints to your cart:
Back when I first started my illustrated journal, I was very active on Flickr. Flickr, for those who are not ancient millennials, was (and still is) a photo sharing website. The platform was mainly focused on photographers, but we had a small yet active community of illustrators who would share their journal pages almost daily and we’d comment back and forth, exchange tips and tools, and sometimes even set up ‘traveling sketchbook’ projects. The connections we made resulted in many online and eventually also offline friendships. Years on, as Instagram took Flickr place, and Instagram changed, many of my journal pages are never beyond the occasional flip through or sketchbook tour.
Not sharing every drawing I make has given me a lot more freedom. I experiment more, and the pressure is lower to complete something from start to finish every day. But I also miss sharing my work. Posting a post on Instagram has become this ‘thing’ where I feel like I can only post the best of the best, and not every day IS the best. I also refuse to draw with the aim of having enough ‘content’. Drawing and painting is truly a practice for me, not a goal. So here’s a few (not all) of my recent illustrated journal pages that I liked creating and don’t hate the result. Into the silent void they go ;-)
It's been a while since I did one of these. To be honest, I tend to cramp up a bit when I film my process and end up not loving the end result, BUT I got a new camera setup for my birthday so I had to test it! Real time this was about 2 hours of drawing, including tea breaks and waiting for the watercolors to dry, but I sped it up for your convenience because there's a lot of fiddling around with the background.
Challenged myself with choosing a limited color palette, using the Odd Orange color stickers.
Sketchbook: Odd Orange A5 landscape sketchbook
Materials: Winsor & Newton watercolor pans, Caran d' Ache Luminance pencils, Ecoline markers, Tombow Fudenosuke fineline marker
Music: 'Empty Briefcase' by Victor Lundberg, followed by 'Fast Forward, Pause' by Rebecca Mardal. Both via Epidemic Sounds.
Lots of different kinds of drawings in this sketchbook! Illustrated journal pages, on location drawing, live drawing sessions I did online, and random sketches from imagination!
Sketchbook: Seawhite of Brighton A5 sketchbook
Materials: Tombow markers, watercolors, Luminance colored pencils, inks and even some acrylic paints!
Music: 'I Love You Both' by Vendla via Epidemic Sounds!
Last weekend I joined my friends and a large group of sketchers for another day of 'urban sketching' in my hometown of Utrecht. The staff of the Stadsschouwburg (aka city theater) was kind enough to let us sketch inside (as it was and still is pretty cold), and we even had some fabulous lunch!
I don't love how my sketches turned out (I wasn't tremendously inspired), but the limited color palette I picked out on a whim, made things interesting. Back home I tested my new pan pastels as a bonus!
Huge thanks for my friend Ellen Vesters for filming me!!! It made the whole ordeal a lot less cringey for me. <3
Sketchbook: Seawhite of Berighton
Materials: Tombow markers, Luminance colored pencils, Pan Pasels, Neocolor II
Music: 'Suncatcher' by Wendy Marcini via Epidemic Sounds!
I’ve been thinking about this ever since seeing this exhibit (which was the ‘Women’s Palette 1900-1950’ in De Kunsthal, Rotterdam).
Now, none of this was ‘news’ to me. Of course I know women are underrepresented in art and museums. And of course I’m well aware that so so many groups in society experience being excluded and not being represented well enough in many and more important areas of society. I know all this (and probably don’t know half of it, still).
But I guess it took tearing up at the sight of these women, professional artists, depicted in their studios, to realize that I too had fitted myself into a box I didn’t know was placed inside me. I honestly think, had I seen this exhibit as a little girl, my life may have gone differently. And I don’t even remember making this choice or ever verbalizing it.
I guess that’s the lesson I’ve learned: you can try to be aware of privilege or the patriarchal system all you want - it’s even more deeply ingrained than you think, and it’s causing us as a society to lose out on so much beauty.
Over the holidays, I took two full weeks off. A luxury, but I needed a break. 2022 was indeed a big year, with major building works, a big move, little holiday, and lots of work. With work in a good place, and a lovely + strong team (wo)manning the fort, I felt comfortable enough to take some time to truly relax.
And this, I did. I took some time to do nothing, enjoy my time with my men (big and small), and even see some art. As a result, I did lots of drawing, and by the end of the two weeks, I’m feeling more creative than I have in a while. See some of my pages below!
I’m excited for 2023. I sort of bristle at saying this, knowing the current political / social / ecological / economic realities, but I also think having hope is important. So, yes. I’m excited to make steps in my art. I’m excited to make steps at work. It won’t be ‘quiet’, but it’ll be fun, I hope. I hope you have something nice to look forward to as well!
Happy New Year <3
Almost forgot to film this one you. I think I recorded it as an Instagram reel, but a) what is instagram even and b) wanted to also share a quick flip through here.
As I mention in the video, I really enjoyed this 'cheap' (none are cheap, but their cheapest) Moleskine sketchbook. The paper is quite thin, and it inspired me to be less precious about my work and experiment a bit more. Despite how thin the paper is, I was quite pleased with how much media it can hold graciously, and am actually thinking to buy a few more of these! Sketchbook: Moleskine A5 volant sketchbook Materials: Tombow markers, watercolors, Luminance colored pencils, inks Music: 'Hopefully Just Imagination' by the Magnus Ringblom Quartet via Epidemic Sounds!
2022 was… well, it was a year. While I’m usually quite nostalgically inclined, this year I can feel myself reluctant to look back.
Looking back at these sketches, I can sort of understand why. 2022 was a massive year for us. We sold our house, the renovations of our new house properly kicked off and were finished with literal hours to spare before we moved in. Work got insanely busy and then it got even busier. Abel turned four and went off to school. Schools and daycares closed. Kids got sick and sick again. We got sick. There were lockdowns. We got covid. Life continued.
Only very few of these events made it into my sketchbook in a meaningful way. The sketches I liked best and have highlighted below were usually done during weekends or days away, or rare moments of rest. Instead of reflecting on all that was happening in life, in my sketches I focused on recording the moment I was in. Which, let’s be honest, is a good coping mechanism - mindfulness and all that.
I’m now in week 1 of 2 weeks off over the holidays, and enjoying some much needed downtime after the hectic Christmas celebrations with the family. I don’t know if I’ll do much looking back, or even looking forward. I’m enjoying not doing much of anything. I hope you have a restful couple of days off as well, and wishing you a glorious 2023. May the shit show of this world calm down a bit, inshallah.
Sketchbooks (in order of appearance): Sakura A4 sketchbook, Pith A4 sketchbook, Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook (A5 portrait).
Music from Epidemic Sound: 'Postcards from June' and 'Early Bloomer' from Magnus Ludvigsson.
