She lives in the forest in a house between the roots of a big old tree. She likes feathers and playing.

Her father likes fishing and cooking, her mother builds things. Mostly furniture.

Today turned out pretty good. My new (2010) moleskine daily planner arrived. With around 1/3 of the year still ahead of us, I decided to purchase it (with discount, haha) to try out daily or semi-daily sketching / drawing about my day.

I drew a little cartoon me on the first page and filled august 15th — my birthday — with a happy drawing.

For today I grabbed both pages, as I couldn’t really remember what I did yesterday (not much, I suspect). We went out and bought me a new jacket, much needed since my other jackets have magically grown to large. I also bought a teapot at IKEA where we also returned some unneeded stuff from the kitchen-rebuild. Finally have a proper tea-pot now!

I chose the stainless steel with thermos properties because I like to keep my tea hot. And I don’t always drink it fast enough.

I also bought a 5 way opener. I recently found one at a cooking shop and bought it for myself, since it would replace 4 items in my drawer (yes, I did get rid of those other items). I really love it, it helps a lot with opening jars and cans and such. I got one for my mother too, because she’s had some trouble opening cans and such. I hope she’ll like it.

Inspired by AnnaDenise and Kathrin J-M I wanted to try some drawing in my moleskine planner.

At first my brain objected: I couldn’t possible draw through pre-existing lines!

Que ‘Eye of the tiger’ and I did it anyway.

Sometimes you just have to do what your brain objects to.

I recently purchased a new rucksack.

Yes, another one.

Some people buy shoes, or clothes, or purses, or gadgets, or games. I buy rucksacks.

Because of my RA I can’t carry regular bags easily and shoulder-bags pretty much kill me. No joke, I seriously ended up at the ER once (with Christmas) because I carried one and it gave me horrible tendinitis that left me in so much pain someone had to drive me to the hospital. I easily get tendinitis in shoulders and neck, and a rucksack seems to work best in preventing it.

This one weighs less than a kilogram on its own, has its own rain-cover and it came with a separate pouch you can either hang on that loop on the inside, or attach to the waist-belt.

Bonus-points if you guess who I have hanging on it.

Last week my new worm-bin arrived. Even though you can easily make them yourself, I decided to go for a prepared bin because I don’t have that much excess energy.

I set it up according to the instructions and held a few of the worms. They haven’t grown to their full size yet, I think, measuring only 5-8cm roughly (2 to 3 inches). They wriggle a lot and I fed them some cabbage and teabags.

I’ve only had them for a week so I don’t know how it will go. I do like them though, always wanted a worm-bin as a kid. I remember this time my mother and I got up really early to look for them and to dig them up. She let me do crazy things like that ;)

I made a page about the worms with some freehand drawings and the actual bin. The bin drawing ended up a bit wonky due to the tendinitis in my neck and me shifting position. Close enough though.

I recently read somewhere to get good at drawing you need to draw something you love.

Well, I love marmite — on ricecakes with cheese, in soup, in sauces — and I love maggi sauce — in soups, in sauces, with canned artichokes (yes, I have weird eating habbits) — I’ve drawn them both.

Mmm, marmite and maggi sauce. What would I do without them!

I can’t tolerate wheat completely, and they make maggi sauce from wheat. Luckily for me, I can tolerate that, woohoo!

I’ve never drawn my scar before.

It feels quite intimate.

I had to draw it from a photo because I don’t have a large mirror in my flat.

I did it quickly, hasted even.

And now, I celebrate.

The writing says:

Scars
They show our power to heal and overcome adversities.
Don’t hide them or feel ashamed.
Celebrate.

I bought some new watercolour paints and have played with them these past few days.

I came up with a few handy tips that have helped me to better understand and work with these colours:

Think CYMK (not RGB)

RGB works for light, not paint. Also forget about that red yellow blue colourwheel you got taught in school. It has its flaws.
Try making a colourwheel with cyan, yellow and magenta.

Nothing wrong with black and white

Some people claim that you should make your colours lighter or darker by mixing the correct pigments or amount of water. If you can do those, great! But no shame in using a black or white paint in your palette.
Also, do remember that shadows generally don’t look that black. You can make shadows look more natural by using a darker version of the colour you used for the rest of the object.

Paint dries up lighter

Watercolour paint will dry up lighter than you mixed it, usually by 15-30%
Experiment with this!

Try out your paints when you get new colours or paper

Make a new grid with all your colours, mix them up or just splash them around. I got into the habbit of using the last page of new sketchbook to paint little blobs of each of my paints with their name and numbers listed next to it. This gives you a good insight of how the colour will look once the paint dries. Different papers give different results.
And so do different brands of paint.

Have fun!

You should never ever forget to have fun with this. Even if things go wrong, you can learn something from it. Experiment, have fun and enjoy yourself!

I made Raah! in freestyle watercolour, without first drawing the outlines.

I did use my pen to draw the eyes and mouth though, I couldn’t get it to work with paint.

Yesterday I went to the Efteling, a Dutch amusement-park that I’ve visited often as a child. It started out with the fairy-tale forest and grew larger, with rollercoasters and fun rides. We did go into those too, and before we went I decided I wanted to draw the dragon in the fairy-tale forest. As a child, I loved and feared it.

In the afternoon, when others went into the rollercoasters I went to the forest and drew the dragon, a musical mushroom and one of the mushroom-houses. These mushroom-houses have doors through which kids can enter and look around. Some have moving parts; the one I drew had a door that opened and a little fellow looking out to see who rang the doorbell.

The dragon has a treasure chest in front of him, and if you try to take the crown, it’ll growl, move his head and flap his wings. He also has smoke coming out of his nostrils and his mouth opens while he dives at you.

It moved a lot while I sat there drawing. Some people watched me draw, an entirely new experience for me since I usually try to hide and draw.

I had a great time!