New website and blog

Hello all,

I have a new website and blog:

http://www.kittyvdheuvel.com/blog/

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