MATS A course - Home Decor

The next assignment of the MATS (Make Art Thats Sells) course is to design 2 or more plates. The inspiration for the pieces is Staffordshire pottery. If you haven't seen Staffordshire pottery before.... like I did :-)...Google some images. The figurines were a bit too much for me, so I used 2 colorful ceramic birds I once bought in Mexico as my inspiration.

I started with a sketch of one of the birds, and created a mixed media collage from it. You know I love collage and handpainted papers.

 

I combined the 2 collaged birds with a design I did earlier. One of lush green leaves.

This is the final submittion for this weeks assignment. Wouldn't it be great if you could buy these for a summer's picnic?

Make Art That Sells course

I have enrolled myself into a MATS course, Make Art That Sells. I started with MATS A, talking about designing for 5 different markets. I just finished the first market, Bold Fabric. The great thing about the course is that you are guided step-by-step thru the process, with sooooo much information on the market, on what customers are looking for, about technical terms, about colors, and so much other stuff.

This weeks assignment was to create a Bold Fabric Design with pasta and casserole dishes. Here is my submittion. I started with sketching the dry pasta shapes, and while looking at images of vintage casserole dishes on the internet, I thought about the stack of handpainted papers I made. I selected a few papers to cut out the casserole dishes. Then I scanned everthing and combined all of the items to this piece in Photoshop. I am really happy with it!

Sketching in the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam

Yesterday I went to the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam, with the Rotterdam Urban Sketchers. We visited the PowerMask exhibition, I visited for the second time. Too much too see!

Here are my sketches from yesterday, all done with a black fineliner.

 

 

And this is the sketch I did last time, with watersoluble oil pastel (on a pre-colored watercolor background).

Featured artist of the day on Redbubble!!

I am soooo happy and proud, last week one of my designs on Redbubble was shown in the found page, on Redbubble's homepage!

And I also show up as one of the featured artists of the day.

So happy! Please visit my shop on Redbubble.


I have uploaded some lovely puffin Christmas designs, great for greeting cards and gifts for Christmas. The greeting and postcards have a discount; if you buy 8, you get 20% off and if you buy 16, you get 30% off. Get ready for Christmas!

New patterned design of orchids

I have been working on some new designs, to be used for products in my RedBubble shop.

This week I have been painting orchids. This orchid is one that I already have for a long time in my windowsill. I used old sketches from one of my old journals, and added new watercolor sketches in my Moleskine watercolor journal.

I made these sketches a few months ago

And a few new sketches in my Moleskine watercolor journal

I scanned the orchid paintings into the computer and created a lovely patterned design using Photoshop. I uploaded the design to my RedBubble shop and it creates this lovely products. Products are for sale, there are many more products with this design and other. Take a look!

RedBubble orchids pillow

RedBubble tanktop with my orchids design

RedBubble dress with the orchids design with a grey background

Sketches from Utrecht and the zoo

Last Saturday the Utrecht Urban Sketchers organized a sketchcrawl in the St. Willibrordkerk in Utrecht. I am actually one of the coordinators of the Utrecht Urban Sketchers group :-). https://www.facebook.com/groups/UtrechtUrbanSketchers/

The church is a challenge to sketch, the inside is completely covered with paintings, painted designs etc.. And another challenge was that we were not allowed to work with 'wet' materials. No watercolors, no ink, only dry materials like pencil, colored pencils....

The first sketch is done with colored pencils, I borrowed some from my sister.

The second sketch is done on a yellow painted background with regular pencil. I would love to show you, but some reason my scanner does not want to scan the sketch...

Yesterday I went to the zoo in Rotterdam, with 5 sketching friends. We stayed all day and had a great time. You have to sketch quick, as the animals do not keep still. Before you know they are gone, sometimes even before you put your pen to paper LOL.

A few gorilla sketches in pencil

An okapi in pencil and watercolors

Funny penguins in ink

Seahorses in pen and watercolors

A wandero posing for the sketch in pencil

Sketching in Rotterdam

Yesterday I met up with a few Urban Sketchers friends. They had visited the Powermask exposition in The Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam last week and wanted to return to do some more sketching this week. I decided to join them.

I met up with one of the sketchers earlier and because of the beautiful weather, we decided to stay outside and sketch the Veerhaven in Rotterdam. I sketch with oil pastel, you cannot work very precise with oil pastel, but I like how you need to sketch loosely, and only focus on the big lines and shapes.

After a nice coffee, the rest of the group joined us for a trip to the museum. I sketched 10 masks as a kind of collage, all on 2 pages. I painted the pages with ochre and sketched with a black and red oil pastel.

And one sketch in black and brown fine-liner.

It was a great day and too much to see, I need to come back another day!

Sketchcrawl at Crazy Saturday in Gouda

This Saturday it was Crazy Saturday in Gouda. The town hosted a festival from the Middle Ages, complete with a market, lots of music and people dressed as from the Middle Ages. Lords and ladies in beautiful costumes and all kinds of working class and crazy people.

The festival included the Sketchcrawl, so you could see sketchers all over town! I had a great time!

I started with the beautiful town hall on the market square, this is only a small part of it.

Then we listened to some music, they danced around a lot, could not capture them well..

And later in the afternoon I sketched the gate to the Museum of Gouda.

Mixed media collage's

These Mixed Media collage's are made with vintage papers, mark making, ink, handpainted papers and a postage stamp.

Link naar Etsy

Link naar Etsy

Link naar Etsy

Link to Etsy

I made 8 of the same style mixed media collage's, all 10 x 10 cms (4"x 4"). A few are still for sale in my Etsy shop. They make a lovely holiday gift for your loved ones, or yourself :-).

Holiday sketches from Greece - part 2

As promised here are more sketches from my vacation last week in Greece.

Holiday Essentials - sparkling water with lemon, a good book, sunscreen, a hat and sunglasses. Oooohh... and a sketchbook of course...:-)!

We went to Olympia one day, a step back in history. Just a 2 hours drive away.

A quick watercolor sketch of the view from our balcony over Navarino Bay.

My sister (and I) drinking a frappé (cold coffee) on a terrace in Gialova

This was our home for the holiday. A beautiful villa. Eleonas Holiday Houses in Gialova. 

Holiday sketches from Greece - 1

Last week I was on holiday in Greece, in the Peloponnessos. Besides sight seeing, soaking up the sun, drinking frappés I also did some sketching.

This was the villa we were staying. Villa Aylaki at Eleonas Holiday Houses.

And this is the amazing view from the villa, over Navarino bay. With Pylos on the left, and Sfaktiria (the bigger island) in the middle. To the right is the view on the Golden Beach and the lagoon (not in the sketch). We can sit here for hours and watch the boats come in, watch the light change.....

The rocks at the end of the Golden Beach, I love the color of the water!

And a lazy sketch on the beach. My feet, slippers and watershoes :-).

I will post more sketches tomorrow.

Sunny day - perfect for sketching

Today was a lovely sunny day, a great day to go to Utrecht and do some sketching. First I visited the Old Hortus in Utrecht, since a few months they have the Victoria Amazonia in their collection.

From the Wikipedia:

Victoria is a genus of water-lilies, in the plant family Nymphaeaceae, with very large green leaves that lie flat on the water's surface. Victoria amazonica has a leaf that is up to 3 metres (9.8 ft) in diameter, on a stalk up to 8 metres (26 ft) in length. The genus name was given in honour of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

Victoria amazonica is native to the shallow waters of the Amazon River basin, such as oxbow lakes and bayous. It is depicted in the Guyanese coat of arms. The flowers are white the first night they are open and become pink the second night. They are up to 40 cm in diameter, and are pollinated by scarab beetles.

And on their café's terrace I started with a latte, moving on to ordering lunch. It was so lovely in the sunshine!

Then I headed back to the busstop, but decided to do another sketch on the Korte Minrebroederstraat. This is the square behind the city hall. The square and all the beautiful buildings are nicely renovated with lots and lots of terraces. Oh... and lot's of bikes of course ;-)

Tomorrow I have a meeting in Amsterdam, and then I go on vacation for a week. Greece, here I come!

RedBubble shop (kittyvdheuvel)

Since a few weeks I have a shop on RedBubble. RedBubble is a print on demand shop, where customers can buy lots of products (t-shirts, posters, prints, mugs, pillows, clocks, phonecases, etc.) with the designs that artists all over the world have created.

I have been uploading lots of my older paintings, drawings and illustrations. And I am very happy that some of my designs have been purchased by customers from all over the world. Really exciting!!

My best selling design is my dancing puffin watercolor illustration, I have a single puffin and a 3 puffins design, both sell well. This is an example of the pillow:

And another bestseller is my watercolor illustration of this sweet dog:

And I also sold 2 wall tapestries of this alcohol ink landscape painting:

I am so thrilled that people appreciate my work, and I think I might go and order some Christmas gifts myself :-). I do love how my mixed media collages show on the different products!

My shopname is kittyvdheuvel, just type it in the search box and you can take a look yourself!

National Sketchcrawl Urban Sketchers NL

Yesterday was the 3rd National Sketchcrawl of the Urban Sketchers Netherlands in 2017. We already sketched in Haarlem (March), Utrecht (May) and yesterday we were in 's-Hertogenbosch. A beautiful city with great places to sketch.

I sketched the Sint Jans cathedral twice, once from the Parade and once from the other side. And then sketched a statue outside the Noord-Brabants museum. It was a great day, luckily with good weather, nice people and lots of sketching!