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!