3000 likes - give away time :-)

Unbelieveable! More than 3000 people like Red Cheels Factory on Facebook!
Time for a little party. Time for a give - away:

You can win a party postcard set; including 5 Red Cheeks Factory party postcards:

How can you win this set?

Simple! Go to my facebookpage and give a comment on my facebookpost
Then I know, you are in for this party. I will pick the winner on Tuesday, the 1st of July
Good luck!

Gallery Oker online auction

Remember the exhibition 'Like' in Gallery Oker?

The exhibition is still going on, but I have some exiting news to share:

There will be an online auction, You can make a bid on some of the works.
That work will go to the highest bidder. And what makes it even more unique.
I offer two original works.

Aboves painting is titled: 'ín de gloria',  mixed media on paper, 50 x 50 cm.
This is an unique work! There's only one available in the whiole world.

If you are interested, you can make a bid on the works on the online auction here.

Below  'drie koningen' ('three kings'), mixed media on paper. 25 x 32 cm.

The online auction offers 8 works in total:

Besides my works, also nice Art Prints of Kordula Röckenhaus and Helen van Vliet and two original illustrations of Jacqueline van Leeuwenstein.

So if you like to purchase  a real 'Nelleke Verhoeff', go to the online auction and make a bid. Good luck! The auction will last from now till the 6th of July!

Make Monotypes 2

I'm a bit behind with blogging about the Make Monotypes class, which I wrote before. Below one of the prints I made last week: 'wooden shoes', a combination of Monotype and Photoshop.

I'm experimenting a lot and most of the results are not for the viewers eye. 
A whole pile of experiments and lots of learning.

In week 2 we had to look for found object, things from nature, threads, feathers, etc. I like these objects much when they are inkted. I think I like them more than the prints I make ;-)

Second assignment was to make our own stencils and play with them. I liked the thread with it's curls and was inspired to make the print below: the parade. I make other things from what I normal make and I love the textures of this technique.

At the end of the week we made some two color prints with your own stencils. I have the feeling I can work on these more, they are only a beginning of something. I'm not that happy with the colors, mixing them is yet another thing...

The next week was about making your own stamps, first with found stamps. Now I almost can't throw anything away anymore. You can use so many things to make textures. My home is a mess and I need to find space where I can put all these props.

Again I made many prints. I played with abstract figures, a mixture of yoga and acrobatics. I liked the experiment wit negative and positive space. The most easy was to use one color.

There's a learning point to balance my shapes, while using more colors, in a way they will work well  together and interact, without distracting each other.

These prints are sa bit simple. I have the feeling I could do more with it, but at the moment this is where I am. I love the lines you'll get after lifting your stencil of cardboard and make a print of what's left on your plate: the detail print.

And ofcourse I couldn't resist to make a face. The collar of the lady I made with an orange juice press. .(don't know if this is the right english word, but it gives a nice effect)

And for those who are interested:  here is an example of the wooden shoes print you see at top of this post. Before and after I edit it in Photoshop. Before it's nothing, but after playing and experimenting on the computer, I make a whole new image. But I hadn't been able to make this without the basic print. I feel a bit like a magician this way. I surprise myself ;-)

We are halfway the course now. I'm curious what I will make the coming weeks.
Will be continued...

go with the flow

It has been a while since I posted something here. I'm busy with all kind off things and I don't take the time to blog about it. But today I do.! I want to show you my nautical wall art piece I made for Bootcamp, inspired by the drawings I made earlier.

The assignment was to make Wall Art. This is the market I'm most familiar with. So I was quite happy.And the nautical theme is very inspiring. 

It is already available in my Etsy shop. Brand new and fresh, waiting for a new owner ;-)

some nautical illustrations

For Bootcamp we have a new suject for the June month. Drawing nautical things. It's a very inspiring theme, There are so many possibilities: the sea, ships, boats, sea- animals, mermaids, sailors, waves... I love it! It triggers my imagination. :-)

I made these singing mermaid twins.

You can find them singing in my etsy shop to brighten up your wall :-)

But I made more drawings this week!
I also made this sailor man, John, with his the loooong beard, secretly wanting to be a mermaid...

And Otto Octopus. I can't help it, but when I think of sea animals, I have to think of dancing creatures, maybe it's because of the waves of the sea...

And here's another sailorman, named Sven, with his huuuuuuge moustache, dreaming of being a captain of a huuuuge ship once....

Tomorrow we will get the next assignment based on this nautical theme. I'm very curious!
Will be continued

Make Monotypes 1

This is the first week of the Make Monotypes class with Linda Germain. Till now I like it very much. It brings nice surprises. Here is my latest experiment: 'hello, dear moon'.

The first day we had to make a gel plate with glycerine and gelatine. Products I only know by name, but have never worked with. It was quite an experiment to make it. At first I thought: maybe I can skip that part of the lesson, but now I know it's an essential part of the course.

The second day we were asked to gather all kind of 'stamp' materials. With textures on it like stripes,  bubbles, smooth and rough surfaces etc. And make shapes. To keep it simple we only chose one shape. I chose the half circle and made many (way to much ;-)) shapes.

The third day we did  a warm up exercise. During about 20 minutes you follow Linda's  voice on the video and print along. It's fun, but also hard work. I had big red cheeks during the process :-)

It's an exercise to learn  and understand the terms and principles of this gel plate monotype printing. Without thinking to much or judging yourself.

You get two versions of one lay out. First you ink the plate, put some stamps on it and make a 'shape impression'  After that you remove the stamps and print a detail impression. Here is one example of the prints I made:

Now I understand why you need a gel plate. You give pressure on the paper, so that the gel plate moves along under your hands, because it's flexible. So you can see ALL the textures of the stamps in detail. Really fascinating!

The two versions are totally different from each other. It needs much more practice to understand what's happening exactly, but that's one of the reasons why I took this class.

I scanned the detailed impression and edit it in Photopshop. These creatures appeared:

Here's another experiment. It's from a one color monoprint which I played with in Photoshop. I posted it on Facebook and a few people thought it was the Pope! "Bedankt fur die Blüme",  he always says with Easter in Dutch. So here's the Pope amongst his flowers :)

This was only a part of the first week. I'm looking forward to learn much more!
Will be continued!

Red Cheeks Factory on Pinterest

Hooray, hooray! Today I finally registered on Pinterest!

I doubted for a long time, because I know it can be quite addictive. But today I gave in. And it's fun! Yes, also addictive, but that will be a challenge to deal with. Click here if you want to follow me. You are welcome :-)

inspiration: Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman

Here's some work of Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman. He was an inspiring artist living from 1882 - 1945. He experimented a lot with typefaces and printers' materials, such as stenciling and stamping. I love it. He can tell a lot with just simple shapes. But why am I blogging about him today?

It's because I subscribed for the monotype class. Make Monotypes with Linda Germain, which starts tomorrow. I'm a big fan of the printing textures, but I never take much time to experiment. So when I saw this online course, I thought: "this is my chance!", to play and experiment and learn more about these techniques. I hope it's a good one!

50 shades of blue

For Bootcamp we were asked to make a grid with 50 shades of blue:

I thought it would be fun to make it into a pattern and gave this woman a 
'50 shades of blue dress'.  (to be honest it were 60 shades)
Well, what do you think: a new trend for the summer?

editorial illustration: breathe in, breathe out

Remember I drew lots of faces two weeks ago?
It was a preparation for the 'big' assignment for Bootcamp

We were asked to make an illustration for a magazine about meditation. The article was called: How to meditate, a primer for people who don't like to meditate. Find it here

It was a nice and very recognizible article,  so I had a lot of fun making this illustration. 
I would love to make more for this editorial market.

For those who are interested: you can purchase it as a high quality giclee print
in my etsy shop

In memori-mam, thinking of you...

Today it's exactly 4 years ago my mom passed away...

I made this selfportrait. In my hands I hold  the geranium I took with me after she past away.I wrote a blogpost about it last year  We now have about 30 geraniums.

My Mom lived in a village near Rotterdam, in the house where I was raised. There are living other people now, but somehow I still have the idea she's sitting there in her special chair and I can go and visit...I wish I could...

Each year I make a special blogpost to honour her.

The first year  I posted this one: to honour my mom
(including some animations my mother made)

The second year I wrote another blogpost about her: far away, but still near 

Last year I wrote about her geranium  and today I am thinking of her and give the geraniums some extra attention...

 

Blooms of Nigeria - Flower for Margret

Blooms of Nigeria  is a project set up by Rebecca Bradley and Janna Morton to draw attention to the abducted Nigerian School Girls and make the issue more visible.

I made this flower for Margret. She's one of the abducted girls.

The Blooms of Nigeria website will be filled with tribute illustrations commissioned for each of the 180 kidnapped Nigerian girls whose names are currently available to the public. Nearly 300 young women are still missing. A summary of what has happened can be found here. Let's hope to get this flower garden out into the world. 

If you wanna help, please share this post. The more people know about this issue,
the better! Thanks in advance!!

Opening exhibition 'Like' in Gallery Oker

Last Sunday I was at the opening of the exhibition in Gallery Oker in Amsterdam.
where a selection of my work is shown in a group exhibition.
Below you can see some of my works exhibited:

It was a nice surprise to see one of my paintings in the display window of the gallery: 'In de gloria',  mixed media painting on paper. I made this quite a while ago:

I also met the other exhibitants in real, which was very nice. I only knew them from Facebook: Kordula Röckenhaus, Helen van Vliet and Jacqueline van Leeuwenstein. Nice to see our work matches very well!

On the photo below a sculpture of Jacqueline on the left
and on the right some work of  Helen:

It was also good to meet some people from my illustration e-course I did recently.Very nice to see the faces behind the names and to talk about our experiences.

I didn't have the chance to make much photographs, my friend made some too, but it's always difficult  on an Opening Event. So I'm happy I can show you some...

On this exhibition you will find a mixture of new and older work.
These are also two of my older paintings, mixed media on paper.
On the left: 'one day I'll fly away' and on the right 'mixed feelings':

You can still visit the exhibition till the 6th of July. If you are interested, find more information here

 

Faces, people and vintage dolls

After part A of the e-course Make Art That Sells. with Lilla Rogers, 
I continued with Bootcamp I'm happy, because it's fun too :-))

Once a month we get an assignment, In the first week we get what Lilla calls the 'Mini': Draw a subject just for fun in various techniques. And guess what? The subject was faces, people and vintage dolls! Here are some watercolor faces:

I couldn't help it to make LOTS of faces After a year of drawing them in my face a day project,  I still LOVE it :-)

First I started  to search some images of vintage dolls.Also a fun subject to draw. I made these five below with a pencil and colored them in photoshop. It looks like a little gang to me: The gang of 5!

Then I began to concentrate more on faces only and made a lot of these collage faces, using vintage paper and little pieces of old paintings. I glue them together with my favorite ModPodge glue, which I recently bought.

For this one below I first I made some doodles on a piece of paper. When I scanned them, I suddenly saw the possibility of adding some stylistic bodies. So it became a group of people. The only one I have moved is the one on the left. But for the rest the story was already there.

I made some more faces with markers, also a technique I like. You can't be very subtile with these. The lines become thick and you can't really control it. Especially when they are a bit older and don't work that well anymore...

I could go on and on with this. But today we will get the big assignment.
So this will be continued...

Europe: 12 points

Yesterday there was the Annual Eurovision Song Contest.
This year we have a very special winner:

Conchita Wurst is a Singer from Austria. In normal life it's a man, but on stage he performs as the bearded lady. She wants to make a statement to the world: it doesn't matter if you are man, woman, gay or straight, just be who you are. Let's live in peace together...

I'm very happy she won with this statement. it's promising. Yay for Europe! You can listen to her song here. It gave me goose pimpels. Also fun to tell the Netherlands were second.

exhibition in gallery Oker

Sunday the 11th of May is the opening of a new exhibition in Gallery Oker in Amsterdam.
Four artists / illustrators will exhibit their work. And I am happy to be one of them!

At the moment I'm selecting work for this exhibition. Here are a few of them. 

The title of the exhibition 'like' is inspired on the fact we all 'met ' each other on Facebook. A nice way to connect..The other exhibitors are Kordula Röckenhaus, Helen van Vliet and Jacqueline van Leeuwenstein. Here are the poster and the invitation:

You are very welcome to visit the exhibition. The opening is on the 11th of May (I will be there too) The work will be shown till the 6th of July. It's in the center of Amsterdam, so if you are in the neighbourhood...

Rocking Rooster zipper pouch

I almost can't  believe it! This is the last assignment of the e-course Make Art That Sells. with Lilla Rogers. Time flies when you are having fun :-)

This week was all about the gift market. A huge market including all kinds of gifts: zipper pouches,  buttons, dolls, magnets, notebooks, puzzles, i-phone cases etc etc. So a fun market! Here is my design for a zipper pouch. Rocking Rooster.What do you think of it?

As always the week started with a mini assignment. We were asked to make photographs and /or drawings of things we collect.

I gathered some dolls and puppets I have. I wasn't aware this was a collection, but when I had put them all together it looked like one.

I posted the photo in our facebook group. And the rooster was immediately popular. I like him a lot too. He can sit on a shelf and bend his legs. After this week I love him even more :-)

Another collection I found were my musical instruments. They are still left from the time I was a  theater performer. I used to play the accordion and I had quite a few of them, but now I have only these two left.

I thought this could be a fun theme for an illustration: a rooster and music. One of my classmates said, when she saw my doll collection: "your rooster rocks!". I thought this could be  a fun title of my work: Rocking Rooster! I love alliteration :-)

I began drawing some musical instruments and roosters. Here are some drawings I made of the Rocking Rooster. Does he rock or does he rock? ;-)

In the meantime we got our assignment. It should be a hyper lush zipper pouch. Full with ornaments, icons, attributes and lots of stuff. Not so easy to get that organized.

I'm more a 'less is more' person. So this was quite a challenge. I played with various triangle shapes, different roosters and also other birds. But it was too messy.
Here you can see some work in progress:

After many hours of puzzling I came to my final design. Maybe it wasn't that 'lushy' as we were asked to do, but for me it was 'lushy' enough. This assignment helped me to work on the integration of the fore- and background. A very interesting point which I want to develop more.

After that I had to make the illustration fit onto a zipper pouch. How to present your work is also part of the assignment. I drew a zipper pouch and added a red background. Quite daring for me. I like it, but I think the product isn't very clear like this. I changed it and put it on a paper background. (see the first image of this post)

I had fun to fit the Rocking Rooster also on a i-phone case. What do you think?

Now we have come to the end of a fantastic course! Full with inspiration and information. Lilla Rogers is a great, inspiring and very positive teacherI  It was good to 'meet' so many talented and supportive people. I'm really enthusiatic and have learned a lot. But I'm also aware that I need and want to learn SO much more.

Because of that I decided to continue! I signed up for what they called 'Bootcamp'. We only get one assignment per month, so it's much more relaxed. And I'm gonna digest what I've learned so far. So I'm very happy to say again: will be continued.... :-))))