Art Advice & Patterns

So I recently stumbled upon these great pieces of art related advice, which I wanted to share with you <3
It's been quite a stressful very productive few weeks, I've been kind of finishing my portfolio so here's a piece from there you might enjoy :)

xoxo Alex

Pocket Watch

Hi my dearest, loyal readers. Don't worry, I've not been in a car crash, I've not ditched everything and moved to Jamaica, I'm still here. I've been terribly busy and I know that sounds like a stupid excuse but sometimes you get so pissed off because you only have half  an hour freetime that you could use for drawing every day that you just don't. But that has changed lately and I'm happy to report that I've actually been quite productive! I really missed the hours of listening to good music, being in your own world, alone and now I have them back and they make me happy.
I spent the last two days basically drawing the clockwork mechanism of 4 English pocket watches from the 19th century. I found them in this book with all kinds of other beautiful clocks and watches which are really fascinating because the book also explains how they work :O Here's my favorite one of the four :)

I promise I will carry on posting work here, just be patient with me from time to time <3

xoxo Alex

Timbered Houses on a Hill

Hi everyone! Wow, this small corner of the internet has really been neglected lately. I'm very sorry! I've had a little creative block these last two weeks, I'm working to get back on track though :) Here's a piece I already finished a while a go but somehow missed to post on here. Thank you to my lovely friend Moritz for supplying the wonderful reference photos, timbered houses are amazing subjects and I look forward to exploring them more in future drawings! (some studies are in order though, it's is quite hard to get them right :O)

Lots of love,

xoxo Alex

A Bedhead

Here's another reason why you shouldn't clean: all the precious beautiful calculations you did to determine the exact place for each leaf because you wanted to practise exact life drawing will be for nought. Believe me, this happened. I'm not cleaning ever again.
On that note I might point out that plants are rather fogiving subjects and you should choose something else if you want to brag with your exactness.
Anyway, I love how scrappy and rough this plant looks. Kind of like it just got out of bed don't you think?

I wish you all a good night, until the next post! :)
xoxo Alex

The New Year

2015 is upon us. While I'll try to keep this post from getting too sentimental, I feel that a little looking back and reflecting is in order. So much has happened in 2014. I can't get over how much has changed in my life since January 2014 and sometimes I'm a little amazed that I even made it to this point ;) I look forward to maybe getting a little bit more continuity but I mean, life would be boring if everything always stayed the same right?

Some of you might have already caught on the fact that I want to make some changes to this blog. I've realized, that it's not possible for me to provide quality content every single day. I draw a lot and most of the stuff I draw I'm not satisfied with. Once in a while it happens that I produce something, I like, that I'm proud of. Only then it I think it is worth sharing with other people and only then I'm comfortable doing so. I believe this lies in the nature of creative work.
Originally, this wasn't a problem. The reason I started the blog wasn't because I wanted to publish my work and promote myself in that way. It might seem weird that I used this very public medium to do so and looking back I find it increasingly weird myself but you have to understand that the social pressure of an audience is quite powerful. I tried to find a way to motivate myself to draw every day and knowing that basically anyone out there can check whether I did so is surprisingly motivating.
What has been happening during the last few months is that I increasingly realized that people I know, people I respect and people whose opinion I value actually read this thing. When you sit in your own little room, drawing weird things and then putting them up on the blog you don't think about the people who look at it. When I scrolled through here a few weeks ago I tried to look at the page through the eyes of a stranger and what honestly has always dawned upon me, now became very apparent-most of the stuff on here is really bad. As I explained earlier this not some kind of weird creative block I'm having right now which makes me hate all my work, it is just that the ratio of work I'm satisfied and would like to share vs the work that I would rather not doesn't add up with daily posts. I'm becoming more self concious about what I publish as my awarness for my audience increases.

I see no other way of resolving this difficult situation than to give up daily posts. Yes I am scared that without them I won't be able to motivate myself to draw every day and if that happens I'll hate myself for it, but always drawing under pressure because you have to produce something for the blog really isn't healthy either.
 So anyway, here's to improving this blog :)
Lots of love and thank you for all your support, 

xoxo Alex