Merry Christmas (1)

Sketchbook idea. For this drawing I was inspired by my 5 year old, so now you know how our Christmas tree looks like. One of the things I try to keep in mind to make Christmas less stressful – and I guess this drawing is a way to share this thought – is that Christmas is not about perfection.

Birth announcement card autumn boy

I was asked to illustrate a birth announcement card for a sweet little boy who was born in november. His mother saw the birthcard I made for my youngest daughter (born in october 2017) and she asked me to create a boy version of the same idea. I even used the exact same autumn leave 😉

She sent me a card and this is the result. I removed the name for privacy reasons; the name is placed below on the right side of the illustration.

A family portrait (2)

Almost finished the family portrait. At the moment I’m quite busy drawing lots of flowers. The tulips are finished, and I also drew the Gloriosa, now some roses, and perhaps there will also be some flowers in the background to create the scene of a flower market.

The Vintage Swimming series! (2)

In my previous blog I already showed the drawings I made for this project. Here are the illustrations, made with glass painting technique. I think I’m going to make a set of Vintage Swimming postcards.

A family portrait

I made this sketch for a family portrait assignment. It’s located at the Janskerkhof in Utrecht, there is a weekly flowermarket on saturdays. I’m going to translate his sketch into a glass painted illustration and adding some details like birds, maybe some tree branches and more flowers ofcourse. 

The Vintage Swimming series!

Next to illustration I’m also a swimming teacher. Basically for children, because it’s a typical Dutch tradition to start learning children how to swim at the age of 5. Why? Because in the Netherlands there is water everywhere. But I also teach swimming to adults, and this work is also very inspiring for my illustrations. I thought about how we teach swimming these days and how we used to teach swimming in history. Sometimes it’s even hilarious to see how we used to teach swimming. I’m thinking of teachers with clothes on, never going into the water themselves imitating swimming movements while they stand on the side of the pool. But I also love the bathing suits of the ’50’s and ’60’s. And most of all, I think that some typical swim positions like taking a dive are the most beautiful scenes to draw.

So I looked at vintage photo’s and decided to make a serie of ‘Vintage Swimming’ illustrations. A lovely summer serie to create some nice prints and postcards.

 

Here are some ideas I am going to translate into a glass painted version: