oh my...

creative, creative, creative... this is all I was the last week, and the one before and that one before o.Ô
This all started with my portfolio, but now it is something different, bigger somehow.
I used to draw since I could hold a pencil long enough to make a mark. We all did at that age. Bute I never took the pencil out off my hands. It was natural for me to draw... not to express myself or to record my surroundings, just something I liked to do.
But I think, without noticing, I kind of lost it. I don't know why but it took me much more effort every time to motivate myself to draw. I still drew...occassionally, but never with the same freedom. Maybe I felt caged, because I now wanted to draw to prepare for design school (a goal I set myself quite early). so for years (at least 2 or 3) I didn't drew for myself, but for others.
The closer the date for finishing my portfolio came, the less I wanted to draw. Until only one week was left.
In this one week it all came back.
I did things I had never done before (sewing on paper for example, spraypaint) and it was fun. I saw all the colors again and was enchanted once more.
funny, that the idea of my portfolio led me astray and the actual making of it drove me back and further forward than I would have ever imangined.

After all this melodramatic babble, I'll show you what I found over the last three weeks, that threw my motivation back into gear.

I've read "The creative license" by Danny Gregory, great book, love it and I recommend it for every one. Whether you only drew when you were little or even if you are a accomplished artist as an adult, it is great!

Then I plunged through iHanna's blog. She is such an inspiration, every post is a new world full of fantasy and color! (I bought the book above because of one of her reviews ^^)

through iHanna I found suziblu and her youtube channel. this woman is freakin' crazy and adorable and her little petite dolls are charming. I discovered a whole new world: Mixed Media! and did you ever hear about illustration friday?

again thanks to iHanna, I saw that one could easily sew paper, and found intsructions to do it

creativity unleashed by traci bautista is also worth a look. She is great with colors!

as you might have noticed, I dived into art journaling, scrapbooking and mixed media without even noticing!
and I already posted this, but I have to do it again, it is soooo great! make yourself a cup of tea, go to the john before you click the link, and than....enjoy ^^

what all this inspiraton led to I showed you in my portfolio, but since then, I made some more stuff, I'll show you soon, promise =)

xoxo

Portfolio and new ideas

Yayh, I got to my pilates lesson today... haven't been there in ages!
And since I have a little time, I can show you my finished portfolio =).
The design school I was applying to, didn't take me, but there are many many others I haven't tried out yet, so it didn't bother me this much. And I wasn't really suprised since I'm not totally satisfied with how my portfolio turned out. I had to put in some old and blah drawings just because I hadn't enough time, but, oh well...

here you can see it: my Flickr account

And since I was so creative the whole last week, it seems I can't bring my head to shut up shouting new ideas at me o.Ô

This for example came to me last night:

I decided to make my own stamps and bought some material like lino(? not sure it is the same in english... Linolschnitt is a method to cut a rubber-like surface (the brown stuff on the picture) to carve in your design and paste it on paper in putting it through a roller) and a magnet board you can cut with scissors (see the black stripe).

With the tools and cutters coming with the lino, I carved out my design, glued a magnet piece to the back and one to an old log of wood I used to play with, when I was little.

this way, I can make as many stamps as I like and mount and anmount them from my log as I use them

I also considered using velcro for this, but decided against, cause I want to be able to throw my used stamps in the water, when finished, and I'm not sure the velcro would like this very much...

 

I thought that was a pretty cool idea and wanted to share it with you =)

So, what do you think? 

I, for my part, am going to make a whole set of letter stamps. The alphabet stamps you can buy in the shops are pricy and not the font I fancy, sooo... ^^

And there is something I wanted to share with you, too. I found those cool videos the other day and I'm not finished yet watching them.

 http://www.youtube.com/user/suziblutube#p/u/51/aRF4bsTToyk

I think suziblu is super cool and love her style <3

xoxo

Julia

ArtWork

so, as I have very little time (last time I went to the gym is 3 weeks ago o.Ô...my poor cousin has to workout without me -.-) I just throw in some new pictures from my progress in  making a portfolio for design school.
the easiest way was to upload them to Flickr


enjoy!
xoxo

drawn from drawing

So, as promised I took some pictures.
First, my workspace:

 

and the great book, I'm drawing all my inspiration from, "The creative license" by Danny Gregory (iHanna recommended his books recently and I had to buy it ^^) 

Through his book, I started journaling and sketching again.

and here are some examples of what I did the last days

this is supposed to be a kind f self portrait, printed on a paste-on label from the mail office ;-) (see the bar code?)

Danny Gregory also says in his books, one should make a series of things, possibly through a viewfinder. So I took an old matchbox and drew parts of my wokspace through it. And then I  thought it would be fun drawing self portraits making a face in this kind of photo box style.

one task from the design school is to imagine a fairy-tale figure visiting berlin in 2010 and designing three outfits for it. I'm still not sure which I'll take. This is a first sketch of Gretel, from "Hänsel und Gretel". I also thought about taking Disneys princess Jasmin from "Aladdin" or a male fairy-tale figure such as Zwerg Nase (if you're not german, you probably don't know that one...a translation of the name would be "the dwarf called nose"< because of his huge beak)

After all this I got bored and listened to my Harry Potter Audiobooks ^^

sitting on my bed, I drew two more pictures, again self portraits but in a different style:

first, a normal version watching me, sketching myself...

and then, much more fantasy like inspired by a great artist, I can't yet link here, because I'm waiting for her permission ;-)

I was thinking of coloring it later, but that will be kind of time consuming I guess...

That's it for now, what do you think? what do you reckon I should draw next? Are there any books that inspire you, you could recommend?

xoxo

oh, well...

I went to my audition on thursday and it was all highly exciting and everything, great people, lots of talent and of course lots of stage fright ;-)
anyhow, as so often in this business, in the end, I and many others weren't picked for the next term...
But to look at it from a positive angle, the two examiners were very friendly and gave everyone a personal interview in which they explained their decision. I was surprisingly motivated afterwards, even if I got a rejection =)
So for now I've kinda locked myself in my room, drawing and endlessly drawing to finish (or at least start ;-) ) my portfolio for fashion school, where my deadline is next monday (the 8th of february). I'll soon post pictures, but for now I'm just too damned tired. It is quarter past 1 am and I wanna sleep -.-

sleep tight folks
xoxo julia