Card picture

Haha, no, the title is not reversed. What you see here is a picture of 22 cards of all sizes. I was commissioned to make these - an order through my webshop. It was lots of fun to do!

That little white square on the left is a thank you card for the commissioner and the little moon-card on the right is a little extra. I mean, for 21 cards I'll give a card extra, lol.

Purple Lady

Behold, my purple lady.

She's only called that, because I couldn't find a name for her that suited, so yeah, purple lady it is.

Did this one with Copic markers. I finally used them again! Yay! I found that if I start with a new medium, practice it for a while and fail pretty hard, that if I take a (long) break from that medium and start using it again a while later, I suddenly know how. Which is odd, but hey, it works.

Oh, and her ruffles at the bottom disappeared, but you'll just have to imagine them then.



Her outfit I got from a little book called Kleding en mode in kleur 1550-1760 (Clothing and Fashion in Color 1550-1760) and stems from around 1678. I did change the colors, though, and adjusted the outfit just a bit.

Finally an Update + Dedication

I'm so, so sorry for my lack of posting here.

I've been working on my dissertation/MA thesis (I never know the difference between those two) and quite busy with choices and other 'my future'-related stuff. For your information, I'm going to do one more master, the educational one. I'll be teaching English and a subject that translates into Culture and Art, which is awesome. I'm really looking forward to my next, and final, year.

Anyway, I do have an image!

This one is to my friends, my RU buddies. They got me this awesome sketchbook from Disneyland Florida and I decided to dedicate its first image to you. I'm going to use this sketchbook for Disney images only; to practice them.
I know not all of you were part of the Florida crew, but all of you do support me greatly with this art business of mine, so many, many thanks go out to all and everyone of you. Seriously, I don't know where I would've been - art wise - without you.

Some info on the image: that little booklet there I got in Boston and have kept with my Prisma pencil box ever since. It's an inspiration as well as a fond memory. I used Prisma colored pencils to color the image.
I also know the image isn't perfect, but oh well, it will do. I didn't make this image up myself, but drew from an existing one - as I said, the sketchbook will be for Disney practice, and so practice it is.

Just... doing what I love most

Lol @ title.
I know my cards totally didn't sell on Queen's Day and that a webshop is a very long shot, but it's still what I love doing most, so I'll continue doing it anyway. In that light I've made some more cards and mini cards (fun things!) that I'd like to share. So enjoy!

Done in acrylics.
The minis are 5 x 5 cm and I made the mini envelopes myself as well.

WebShop!

I made a webshop for my painted cards and book markers.

www.ginahuizinga.biedmeer.nl (Or click the sun image on the left)

Just a note: the website is in Dutch. I may change that later, but for now I'll leave it like this.

Go check it out!

Just some stuffs

Well.

Lol, not much to say, actually. Here are some cards I didn't get around to uploading. And the last one is an acrylic painting (with a touch of ink) of Daniel on a horse in an awesome costume. I used reference for that one and I used it big time. I don't know the name of the original illustrator, but it came from a book about costumes during the Napoleonic wars... Yep.

Enjoy!

Queen's Day 2009

This Queen's Day will stay in our memories for a long time, for the wrong reasons.

Today around noon a tragedy happened in Apeldoorn, the Dutch city where the queen and her family came to visit, like they visit one particular city in the Netherlands every year on this day. A man in a black car tried to assault the royal family while their bus was touring through Apeldoorn. The car drove through the audience in the direction of the bus, but hit a monument instead. It has been confirmed that five people were killed in the assault and several severely wounded.

I was deeply shocked when I heard the news. I celebrated this national holiday in Egmond aan Zee and didn't hear the whole story until we went back home. My card selling went miserable, but it paled to nothingness compared to this drama.

My sincerest condolences go out to the families of the deceased and I wish everyone strenght to get through this - the wounded, their families and the royal family, as well as everyone who had to witness this drama and carry it with him or her for the rest of his or her life.

I'm so sorry.

Cards and Book Markers

Well, I got around scanning more designs. I'll just display them below in a big pile, sorry about that. They're all done with acrylics, so that's easy.

The cards:












The book markers:

Children's illustration

Gah! I've been busy! Drawing and painting mostly, but also uni stuff, and now I'm not even going to show all of my works, lol. I know, I'm a bad girl, but you'll have to make do with just this one illustration and I'll post my new card designs and bookmarkers soon (still have to scan them...).

This one is a concept I've been wanting to try for a while now - collage with newspaper. I like how it came out. Maybe I'll make a series out of it, sort of like a children's book, but then separate pages. Lol, we'll see.

Enjoy!

Collage: Acrylics, newspaper, colored paper, pencil, ecoline.

More cards

Some more designs. All done with acrylics. I love Little Red and the Get Well Soon one.

Balloon! Gotta love balloons. This could be a birthday card, but also a With Sympathy one perhaps.


Soccer! A boy's card (with thanks to some friends of mine, who suggested boy cards).


One of my favs, a Get Well Soon card.


Little Red in the forest. Lol. I don't know what kind of card this could be. An invitation perhaps.

Queen's Day cards

I'm going to sell some of my stuff. Through the internet, if people want, but I'll also be standing in Egmond Aan Zee during Queen's Day. That's a Dutch holiday, celebrating the birthday of the queen (Beatrix). Actually, the date is not quite her birthday and there's a whole story behind it. If you want to know more, check this page (Eng.).

Anyway! I'll be selling some paintings, like Joseph, The Queen of Sheba, A boy's dream and some cards. The first few cards I'll post below, but there will be more. Again, if you want one, you can also place an order by posting here or e-mailing me.

The paintings will be € 15,-
A double-sided painted card will be € 4,-
A single-sided painted card will be € 3,-
A digitally designed card will be € 1,-
A set of 10 digitally designed cards € 6,-

Painted with acrylics. Birthdayboy!


Painted with acrylics. Horsey!


Painted with acrylics. Beach!


Painted with acrylics. Lemonade!


Digital design. An invitation! (translation: "will you be joining me for honey?")


Digital design. A happy birthday card.

Please note that I ordered prints of the digital design cards. I do not know yet how they will turn out.

A boy's dream

Another painting! This one is space-related, because I'm a lover of science fiction and space and all that, but can't recall children's books about this subject, so I came with my own. It's the first and there's a lot of room for improvement, but since it's definitely not the last, I'm sure that improvement will come.

Unfortunately the scanner ate a few of the stars and took some color from the picture, but you get the picture.

Done with acrylics.

Enjoy!

Joseph - the boy in bright colors

Another biblical story.

This is Joseph, the boy in bright colors. On the left are three of his - very jealous - brothers and on his right is his father, who just gave him his new robe.

He had more brothers, but I wasn't sure how many exactly, plus for the composition three was enough. Lol.

Done with, yes, acrylics. Enjoy!

The Queen of Sheba

In the Netherlands there is a song. It's a biblical song about the queen of Sheba who went to king Solomon (I believe, but my bible knowledge is a little rusty) to see if he was really very wise. Anyway, the first line of the song goes like this:

De koningin van Sheba ging heel koninklijk op reis.

Which translates into something like:

The queen of Sheba went queenly on her way.

When I was a child and heard this song, an image popped into my head. Something like the image I painted here. Lol. Hope you like it!

I did the image with acrylics.

Acrylic love

Ha! I discovered acrylics! I love them!

This is a lion based on my other animal designs, but, obviously, done with acrylics instead of digital.


A girl in a storm, also acrylics. Not much of a story to tell, she just likes storms, like myself.


Good ol' watercolors. The scanner really messed up the picture, despite the 300 dpi. I tried to fix it up a little in photoshop, but didn't succeed all that well.


And another watercolor. This one should have been in my Volkswagon post, the one with the ice cream, but I completely forgot. I did this as a sketch to show the client. He was happy with the style and skills, thankfully.

Sketch Dump III

I'm back from the Book Fair and it was awesome! I loved the networking and all the things I saw and heard were very inspiring. Including, of course, all the drawings, paintings, illustrations. Not only those in the exhibition, but also those on and in the books that the many, many publishers had on display.

I decided to follow up on that inspiration and once home I immediately bought some art materials I thought would be useful for expanding and improving my portfolio. So in the sketch dump below you see things I made to test my new acrylics (the ponies and, frankly, all the colored stuff) and at the very bottom I made a lino print. The black acrylic I used for that print didn't work out that well, so next time (or somewhere in the future) I'll use the right type of ink, but for now this will do. It's Aladdin, by the way, a modern version. I have one more sheet of lino and am thinking about making a follow-up to this running scene.

Children's Book Fair

That would be the Children's Book Fair in Bologna, Italy. Yes. (YES!). That's where I'll be from the 22nd to the 25th of this month. It's a fair for professionals in the whole process of children's books - writing, illustrating, publishing, translating, rights, etc. I'll be going there as illustrator and translator and see what my chances are.

Maybe nothing will happen and I'll continue this passion in my spare time.
Maybe something will happen and I'll get a tiny chance to translate a children's book.
Maybe something else will happen and I'll get a tiny chance to illustrate a children's book.
Maybe, just maybe, I'll get a tiny chance to do both.

I'm not pessimistic, I'm positively realistic. I know the chances are small and that there are many, many talented artists and translators out there, but that doesn't mean I won't go at all. I will try and do my best and I will have fun and who knows? A tiny chance is all I need...

For my portfolio to bring to Bologna I have worked/am working on a couple of pieces:

This is Lyra from Northern Lights / The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Currently we are researching this novel as a class project at the university, so I thought it would be fun to illustrate it as well.



This is Sniff. His life consists of nothing but adventures. Every new smell, every exciting odor is a new adventure for him. It is a work in progress, so not quite finished yet.



This one I will not put into my portfolio. It's a failed attempt at a collage technique. I hate the composition and well, I just don't like the overall image. But the separate elements are all right. There's Sniff, a boy music maker, and Bo - a supergirl I once made up.

VW and Icecream

I finished my commission and got permission to post the results on my website, so here they are!

This is the leaflet the commissioner wanted. Trying for a rather retro/50s style and I think I succeeded quite well. The commissioner was very happy with it. Obviously, the commissioner sells icecream - from a retro Volkswagon! Yay! Since this commission I've come to appreciate retro vans and Volkswagons, lol, even though I'm more of a modern car type of person.



This is the van in color. It's a little different from the original painting, since I touched it up in photoshop (perspective, angle, some such stuff, lol). I'm happy with the way it came out. And, before anyone asks, I don't mind it being turned to black & white, I like that variant as well, plus it fits better into the whole of the leaflet.

IF expired ones

Well, I have been busy with school and things (one of which was a commission: design a leaflet with a VW van on it. I will post it as soon as my commissioner give the green light, lol). And anyway, I missed way too many IF deadlines, but I did them anyway and decided I'll still post them. So here they are!

This one was done for the topic Time and it is a fairy tale my father once told me. A princess (when isn't there one in a fairy tale?) is an impatient spoiled brat and she celebrates her birthday. From a fairy woman (or witch, I'm not sure) she receives a pirn and she tells the princess that when the thread is pulled, time will fly by very fast. As in, you'll jump into the (near) future. So the princess says 'thank you' and forgets all about it, until something bad happens (a dragon or something, undoubtedly) and she wants to speed up time to get the whole thing over with. That's when she understands the convenience of it all and starts to use the pirn for everything that sucks in life: eating vegetables, going to the dentist, doing the dishes, those annoying feminine parts of the month... to name just a few. Anyway, time flies by fast enough to have the princess wake up one day and discover she's an old lady, without having lived at all (no obvious moral in this one, eh?). So she learns her lesson, the fairy woman turns back time and all is well with the world. And here we are, the princess on her bed with her pirn and her old self as a reflection in the mirror (I just had to point that out, sorry).


And this one's topic was Celebrate. Not much to say about it. This just popped into my head. I like the result.

SGA comic no. 2

Well, this is the sequal to my previous SGA comic. I wanted to stick to the art/craft look and had a lot of fun with it, too. Plus, the whole thing is (supposed to be) funny, so I had my laughs while making this.

I know there are major stereotypes in there and I did not mean to offend anyone. I just saw Sheppard hangin' like that in my head and I had to draw it.

Did this with ink, colored ink, colored pencil, and collage. Enjoy!

SGA (c) MGM