Window art: Roald Dahl & Quentin Blake

Most Roald Dahl-fans will know that on September 13^th 2016 it’s 100 years ago Roald Dahl was born and that the July 2016 premiere of Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Roald Dahl's The BFG (Big Friendly Giant) is no coincidence.
To celebrate these wonderful events the American Book Center Amsterdam asked me to paint a special Roald Dahl window in style of Quentin Blake’s art. I am both a Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake fan so I immediately said YES!

At home I made a small design of some of Dahl’s characters (almost) all being after Wonka’s Golden Ticket.

When it was time to paint the design on the window itself I first started sketching the characters in white. This to position them correctly and also provide a more rough surface so the next layer of colour paint would stick better and be less see through. When all this was done I used an acrylic marker for the line work that I drew on top of the acrylic paint.

So hop on over to the American Book Center Amsterdam to buy one of Dahl’s treasures and see my window live at the same time. As far as my window goes you can do so until July 14^th.

Open Studio Grafisch Collectief Thoets

Last weekend me and my colleagues at Grafisch Collectief Thoets had our open studio Sunday.

It was fun but compared to the exhibition weekend I organized last April it was soooo quiet…

At the end of the day I started doubting myself.

Was my work not good enough? Maybe the way it was displayed on the wall wasn’t working?
Or maybe the art didn’t work well together…

Also I find it very challenging to divide time between all of my different guests: friends, family, old customers, potential new customers… Maybe I did it all wrong!

Maybe I did some of these things wrong, maybe, but then I thought I just had this big show in April, people had just seen me (and my art).

Also we started promoting the event quite late, only 2 weeks ahead of time.

Next to our event there was a lot happening that weekend, a big comic festival in Haarlem, the start of Terschellings theatre festival Oerol and probably much more…

Today there was a new episode of a podcast that I like, the Creative Pep Talk by Andy Miller and the theme of the show fitted perfectly: Breaking Through (creative) Anxiety.

Or as Miller puts it: ‘Creating from a place of anxiety is like trying to plant a garden on concrete.’

Picking up blogging again

Since last January I haven’t written at all. First I wanted a little break after posting a blog every day for 30 days. But this little break got a bit too long I’m sorry to say…

There was plenty to post about but for some reason I couldn’t move myself to do it.

After my ‘30 Paintings in 30 Days’ project I started working on finding a place to exhibit these 30 paintings and then organizing the exhibition itself. It was a lot of work but it was well worth it.

Next I did a commission of 3 savanna animals, I did some illustration work for Dutch magazine
Zone 5300, I started a newsletter to which you can subscribe here, I had my exhibition at the ABC Treehouse and sold a nice amount of art.

After a break of 2 years I started showing my art again at the art market Artplein Spui and now I’m preparing for the open studio at my shared studio Grafisch Collectief Thoets this Sunday June 12^th.

And somewhere in between I celebrated my 40^th birthday.

See, plenty to write about but somehow I just didn’t. Sorry.

My plan is to pick up my weekly blogging. Next week will be about how the open studio turned out!