Meow!

As you know, cats are cool. Stroking a cat or looking at one online is a sure cure when dwelling in heartaches, feeling ill or stressed out. Cats - natural antidote to pretty much anything!

Back in 2010 when I was interning at SUPERSWEET, the greatest indie magazine online, I was introduced to an office cat called Princess Michael. (There had been some confusion about her gender, hence the gender neutral name). Making fun of her, chasing after her and playing with her was a daily part of the life in the office - she was SUPERSWEET's sweetheart.

Although it's been only 3,5 years since my internship finished, it feels like ages since our small editorial team was sitting in the office, taking breaks to holahoop or and fighting about whose turn it was to go and queue in the post office during lunch hour (lucky for the others, my status as the intern who never said no to anything put an end to those fights). When my internship came close to its end, my boss and SUPERSWEET's creative director, Choltida, decided to move and take the company's HQ with her to Thailand. Sadly, this meant that SUPERSWEET had to part ways with Princess Michael as well; she couldn't handle all the traveling and stayed in London instead.

However, despite the new location and all other changes the company has gone through since the good ol' times in London, a few things have remained the same: SUPERSWEET's web shop is still up and running, and the corporate love for cats and silly things hasn't gone anywhere either! A while back, I got the honour to be reunited with SUPERSWEET when Choltida asked if I would like to illustrate an animated shopwindow for the web shop. The new shopwindow was to celebrate the launch of a brand new collection "Haberdashery" from the in-house brand called SUPERSWEET x moumi. The collection is supervised by Choltida and designed by indiepreneurs Moumi and her design team Kikilala and Myogi, all of whom happen to be cats. Yes, you read that right.

The illustration I drew for the collection stars the head designer Moumi juggling her designs. This is an illustration in progress, stolen from Moumi's Instragram and served with fitting sound effects.

And here's the finished shopwindow:

Although I'm not hundred years old, I think I am entitled to say that my memories from the SUPERSWEET times are pure gold! I was so happy to make this illustration and be part of a SUPERSWEET project again. Poor Princess Michael, though. She really missed out on a great career opportunity, when she decided to resign and stay in London. Who knows, she might have been promoted from an office cat to a designer by now!

A perfect picnic and some dental details

Click to enlarge

I've been doing quite some food related work recently. First, I gave a go at making (not baking) a cupcake. Then I collaborated with a client creating visuals to go with a children's story about eggs. Whilst doing that, I continued making personal foodie illustrations on my "waiting for feedback" breaks, and since picnicking is one of my all time favourite things to do, I decided to illustrate my personal recipe for a perfect picnic.

On a side note, apparently drawing all these sweet things has had an unwanted side effect on my teeth: today, I have a date with a dentist to check up and fix what I suppose is quite a large hole on one of my back tooth. "Quite large", because it was actually my boyfriend who noticed it from one meter away whilst I was yawning. Now, picture that!

Edit after the dentist's diagnose: Turned out the dark spot wasn't a hole - it was just what the dentist called "a tooth's beauty spot". Now the question is: does that make me a dental Marilyn Monroe...?

Hello baby, welcome to the world!

At the moment, I have dark circles decorating my eyes and the very unoriginal phrase "What a week!" seems to be the most original thing my brain is able to come up with to start this post. So here it goes: what a week! To avoid any misunderstandings, I should clarify that I have not been in a fight - I just launched a book.

The past nine months, my agenda has been filled with notes saying DFD this and DFD that. DFD in this case stands for Dear Fashion Diary, the book I've been working on together with my friend and colleague Laura de Jong. (Earlier, I have written about it here) Now our book is finally out, in stores and on the shelves in the Netherlands and within everybody's reach online.

To celebrate our baby, me and Laura wanted to organize a book launch. We ended up getting in touch with a sustainable fashion designer Nathalie de Koning, who next to making her own timeless fashion collection gives sewing classes and DIY workshops under the name I Am Nold, encouraging people to make something new from something old. Her fashion philosophy was a perfect fit with Dear Fashion Diary that aims to help people discover their own styles and fall in love with fashion again and more sustainably than before. We couldn't have been happier to collaborate with Nathalie by organizing our book launch in her whimsical workspace in an old, abandoned school building!

After the location for the launch was settled a few weeks ago, the time seemed to fly by. There was a lot of planning, calling, emailing, meeting, stressing out and running around, but sooner than I even realized, I found myself holding a microphone and raising a glass to our book! Despite all the exhaustion and grey hair, there we were: me and Laura, two very happy author-illustrators who had just launched their book!

The glamour continued 8:30 AM the morning after, when we started our day by doing the dishes from the night before. But let me tell you, the launch and all the dishes left from it were the best possible start for what we hope to become Dear Fashion Diary's long and prosperous life in the world of books!

So, forth we go as published author-illustrators, recovering from the birth of our first book. I'm sure that the leftovers of the heavenly gazpacho that was served at the party will also work well as a refreshening face mask.
 

And because speeches at launches tend to end with thank yous, I would like to end this post the same way by thanking Nicole Huisman, the talented stylist and one of the editors of the Dutch Elle, who joined the launch and gave a great speech about her personal style, my friends and fellow illustrators Suzanna and Sarah and Lilian from BIS Publishers for helping to make everything run smoothly, Laura's husband Jeroen, who was The Man and slave of the launch, driving cars and carrying all the heavy stuff, Carli from I Am Nold for sewing packages for the books and - of course -  all the guests who joined the party! Thank you!

Happy summer greetings from the dark side!

Last week, a me and a small group of my friends, including the sweet illustrator lady Suzanna Knight, who also worked as the copy-editor for my magazine Dear Fashion Journal, and Sarah Meers, my BFF (yes, I did just say that and yes, I'm almost 25 years old and YES, I do find it amusing) and partner in crime, decided to start a monthly drawing group! This week, we had our first meeting, and somehow strangely we ended up watching Star Wars and drawing Darth Vaders.

Drawing him was so much fun, and today whilst I was waiting for feedback from a client, my Darth Vader sketch transformed into a greeting card. Drawing him was quite a challenge not only because of the very detailed mask he has, but also because he is not a very colourful dresser. His personal style is awfully black and he could definitely do with some variety in his outfits, so instead of dressing him to defend the dark side, I decided to put him in some more summery and beach appropriate clothing. He became quite a hipster in his striped shirt, didn't he? Surely, he is wearing a pair of Converse, too, holding a laser sword in one hand and a Panama hat in the other.

Photo above stolen from Suzanna :)

Everything at once

It is not a secret that I run on tea, and just to fit the stereotype of a crazy teabag lady, I also happen to love cakes, scones and biscuits. Sitting in cafés is one of my favourite hobbies and I am always on the lookout for cute tea rooms. Many cafés that I run into have also adopted a cute doodle style for their facades and menus, which just makes me love them even more. I would die of happiness (or at least burst into tears of joy) if I could one day illustrate a menu for such a place! Whilst waiting for a sweet opportunity like that, I decided to make a sugarcoated illustration inspired by the lyrics of Everything at Once by Lenka.

To conclude, here's a nice little trivia: the Dutchies like their caffeine with a little something to nibble, so it is almost a rule that when ordering tea or coffee, you will also get a cookie next to it. If you ask me, those small treats add a considerable amount of joy to the generally grey and rainy life in the Netherlands, and the one who originally came up with the concept of "koffie en koekje" should therefore be awarded somehow.

To all the moms in the world:

Storks Delivery Inc. wishes a happy mother's day to all the ladies who once received a package!

Twinkle, twinkle little star on shirts and bags and so on

This is a hello from a happy freelancer! The reasons for my happiness are...

1. better weather
2. all sorts of summer activities such as hanging out in parks and walking around Amsterdam in the midnight with a scoop of ice cream - even if my winter coat still has to accompany me to all of these.
3. work - the nice and creative kind!

Since Facebook tends to be the right media for all the "oh hey, the sun is shining"-kind of updates, this post is going to be about what's been happening in the working field. Last week, I got in touch with Starfreak, an online design store selling casual yet feminine shirts, bracelets and fun tote bags made with ecological materials. Anoek, the lady behind the brand, who designs and makes the clothing with her very own hands and is crazy about star prints, was looking for cheerful fashion illustrations to accompany the web shop, and needless to say, I was over the moon to be asked to make fashion drawings!

 

And there they are, fresh from the oven! It was surprisingly difficult to include the brand's signature star-theme in the illustrations without making them look too childish, and I spent quite some time experimenting with different kinds of backgrounds before coming up with this style. During the process, I had a few of those moments when you look at your work and feel everything but impressed, but as usual, it was the good kind of frustration - the kind that in the end lead to something much more rewarding, a happy client and an even happier illustrator! That said, I raise my scoop of ice cream to the arriving summer, the good weather and nice jobs! Hear hear!

To eternity and beyond!

Here in the Netherlands we have a company called Boomerang. They distribute flyers and promotional cards around the city to cafés and different venues. In this ad-filled world, that is nothing extra special, but what makes Boomerang different is their mission to make promotional material so appealing that they don't have to push people to pay attention to it - instead, people will notice the adverts themselves and even want to take it home. The Boomerang card racks are a classic feature in all the nicest cafés, and whenever I go out for tea with some fellow creatives, we always end up browsing through the Boomerang postcards hungry for inspiration and nice things to put on our walls.

I was really curious to know how the company works and where they get all their designs. Turns out that their prints are all crowdsourced: the Boomerang website has a special section called "Create", where they share creative briefs from their clients. The briefs are open for everyone, which means that their clients get a vast amount of designs to choose from. A cherry on top of this great system is that next to being extremely handy for companies in search for promotional designs, the submitting creatives get exposure with their contributions and if their designs happen to win the assignment, there might even be a reward that you can use to pay for your rent. The website is also quite a nice source of inspiration with an interesting collection of different styles and design aesthetics.

Last week, I noticed that one of my favourite Amsterdam venues, a concert hall called Melkweg, had a briefing on the Boomerang site. They were looking for a postcard design for an event called "Helemaal Melkweg" that brings together music, photography, art and cinema. Most importantly, they wanted the design to represent Melkweg's function as an iconic music venue and active supporter of the art scene. The Dutch word Melkweg means Milky Way, so just like many other of the contributing artists, also I was inspired by that...

...and so I spent my evenings creating a fully equipped cultural space shuttle, which is now ready to take off!

PS. I have to add that next to being a big fan of Melkweg's lineups and indie rock dance nights, I am also in love with their laid-back restaurant and café called Eat At Jo's. Despite their sometimes annoyingly irregular opening times, both me and my boyfriend have named it one of our favourite restaurants. I'm telling you, if you are away from your mom's cookings and feel like a tasty, full meal with some great oven roasted potatoes and nice vegetarian options, Eat At Jo's is the right place to go!

PPS. I know the previous might have sounded like some marketing jargon, but I swear my only connection to Eat At Jo's is the relationship my taste buds have with their food. Hence, all my praise comes straight from the heart!

Training with a robot

Having been browsing through websites with freelance (illustration) jobs lately, I have noticed that many clients ask for vector based work. I have always been an old school pencil person, and despite having experimented with paint, ink, crayons, water colour and such, so far the only thing that I have really liked drawing with - next to my good 'ol pencils - has been charcoal. Although I'm capable of making digital drawings and most of my current work is made using mixed media anyhow, I have never quite enjoyed working fully digitally without basing my illustrations on hand-drawn images. That means that my illustrations are pretty much always a result of using a pencil, erasor, Illustrator and Photoshop together. Actually, I never use just Illustrator unless I'm designing a logo.

So, this week I decided to flex my so called illustration muscles and give a go at becoming best friends with vectors. My training buddy ended up being a robot. We spent the entire Monday evening and night until 4 AM on Tuesday morning together and had a blast! Got to say that after having discovered the charcoal in my parents fireplace as a teenager, I haven't really been this enthusiastic about drawing with something else than pencils.

PS. Don't worry, my dear pencils - I won't let my Wacom pen intimidate you!

Fashion drawing

In January, I got invited to the fashion show of Studio Jux at the Amsterdam Fashion Weeks. Studio Jux is a fair fashion brand that gives the makers of their clothes the credit they deserve, stating that their Nepali tailor is a rock star (which he undoubtedly is).

I really liked the show, and since I haven't done any fashion drawings in a long time, I decided to illustrate one of their looks. I ended up choosing an outfit with a huuuuge knitted cardigan that really made me smile with its pockets bouncing up and down playfully as the model wearing it strutted on the catwalk.

So, a drawing started on an afternoon in January and finished in the late-night hours in March. It's drawn 100% digitally, which is quite an unusual way for me to work: I admit it's very handy to have the Command+Z option when working, but somehow vector-based lines just don't feel the same as the ones drawn with my good ol' pencil.

Note: No, the model didn't really have blue hair, I just thought it looked cool.