Meetup with JKPP members in Oxford

Last saturday I was together with my daughter at a meetup of Julia Kay’s Portrait Party in Oxford. We drew, ate and socialized from 11 in a community centre. Julia Kay’s Portrait Party is a virtual Portrait Party in which artists draw each other from photos posted on Flickr for that purpose. All members of the group are therefore both subjects of portraits and creators of portraits. Members of JKPP sometimes organise meetups IRL (in real life). Martin Beek, Jane Sherwood and Margarita Perez Garcia organised a third (or fourth?) IRL meetup in Oxford. It was again great to meet the JKPP members I already met in Oxford and Brussels in 2011.

Do you sell your drawings?

Waiting for the ferry

On the ferry

Somebody on Facebook asked me whether I sell my drawings. I haven’t had that question before, and the question resulted in two things. I printed the digital drawings I made on my iPad with the Paper53 app at a photoshop close to my home. I made prints and I was surprised at the high quality result.

I also opened an ‘online’ shop at Society6. Society6 makes my drawings available for sale. They print it, package it, and ship it. So if you want to buy a print of my digital drawings you can go to my Society6 shop. Through this link you will get free shipping till April 14th 2013.

What can I draw from this place?

Sleeping toddler in the train near Roosendaal.

Housan at her home in London.

We visited London last Easter weekend. Besides buying books at Judd Books, visiting the marvelous Wellcome Collection and drinking coffee, I drew. Mainly people. If I look at my drawings I see medium shots of people in cafés, at home, on the train or bus. I almost never sit down to draw something. It is the other way around: I find myself sitting somewhere (train, bus, café, a home) and I think: what can I draw from this place.

(These drawings were made on the iPad with the Paper app by Fiftythree)

Do you mind me watching you while you draw?

Passenger on the ferry: “Do you mind me watching you while you draw?”
Me: “No, I don’t. I don’t have time to talk to you though, it’s only a short time till the boat arrives at the other side.”
…
Passenger (seeing the ‘rewind / undo’ function on my iPad in the paper53 app): “Ssss, that’s incredible.”
…
Passenger: “You should draw the hair…yes, that’s better now.”
…
Passenger: “wow, you are really talented.”

Is it allowed to trace?

Since I started to draw I noticed I have a lot of unwritten rules about drawing. For example: drawing from a photograph is not so good, tracing a drawing is unacceptable. I let go of the first rule rather quickly, when I joined Julia Kay’s Portrait Party I started to draw from photographs and I had a lot of fun. The last part of the rule is harder to break.

A few weeks ago I saw a beautiful view from the ferry when I crossed the river to the North of Amsterdam, I photographed it with the intention to draw it. Then I imported the photo in the Brushes app and I traced the photo on another layer. I was rather inhibited tracing the photo, I can’t help feeling ashamed about it. I’m not the only who has these strong emotions about tracing. Illustrator J.E. wrote about tracing: “I was born into a social and family environment with a certain artistic pretentiousness about it, and in this context it was considered quite unacceptable to copy or trace an image. Credit was only given to the ability to create interesting and original images using real life as inspiration as little as possible.”

Well…I traced this image and I’m showing this ‘lesser art’ to you anyway.

I found in the Flickr group Julia Kay’s Portrait Party an interesting discussion about tracing.

On the ferry.

The next months I have to cross the river to Amsterdam North three days a week. That makes six trips on the ferry, every time a few minutes to draw.

Paper 53 drawing app

I found on Flickr the funny drawings of Ellis Nadler the Paper53 drawing app. This app doesn’t have endless possibilities like the apps Brushes, Procreate and Inspire Pro. Though Paper53 does have limited possibilites (no layers, no image import, fiveand pencils, it does give very beautiful results.

Layers tutorial

I did use layers, but didn’t understand it really and couldn’t control them. I found this YouTube video with a good explanation, which helped me a lot. I used layers extensively in this drawing with the Brushes app.

Exploring the online iPad drawing resources

If I go to the app-store I can find a lot of drawing apps. Which ones are interesting enough to explore? Julia Kay is my first source to go to. She leaves wonderful iPad information on the net. On YouTube there is a 2010 video in which she explains together with Valerie Beeby 20 apps in 50 minutes. On Julia’s Flickr account she wrote also about her favorite apps.

I also signed up to the iPad Painters Facebook-group, led by friendly Kate Barber. All kinds of interesting info is posted there, like an article about the 5 favorite apps of Sumit Vishwakarma.

This drawing is made for Julia Kay’s Portrait Party (JKPP), my first drawing made with the use of layers.

Paint a fish to safe the fish

Me, my daughter and her friend painted a fish to support the Paint a Fish campaign. This campaign aims to restore EU fish stocks for future generations. You can add your picture to their gallery and help build a big virtual stock to tell EU leaders to take action to refill our seas.



We made the drawings with the Brushes app and then uploaded it to Paint a Fish site, you can also make the drawing online, with the paint-a-fish online tool.

I found this through the Facebook-page of the Dutch Campaign for Drawing.