Dear cherished folks,

My Illustration for Alice Dea‘s Article in Elephant Journal is online, along with her touching article!
I love her style and authenticity – and her Self, she is a truly inspiring woman/soul/starseed/Being.

The illustration will soon be available as artprint, so stay tuned. I only finished it a couple of days back and now take a weekends break doing the bare minimum. In a matter of days the illustration will be available as artprint in my shop

When Alice asked me if I wanted to create the artwork for her article I was excited, as I decided to trust my intuition and the result. Though I work with many different techniques THIS style you see here is the one coming to me from my gut, not my mind. I tried to capture the essence of her article by feeling into her words, and we are both really happy with the result!

Thank you, Alice!

 

So how do I go about creating?

I read the text a couple of times so I get the feeling of it. Sometimes during reading images come up, but most often I just start drawing after the spirit of the content sank in.

I follow my intuition and trust the result. I do not make sketches beforehand, though admittedly that makes sense in some cases, and I do that too. But in this case, as it is most often with my ballpoint drawings, I just go with the inner flow and trust my gut.

This is what I love about ballpoint. I cannot erase the line, not matter what. I have to trust the process and learn to find the beauty in what I might otherwise be tempted to regard as mistake.

Those so called mistakes in terms of unshapely lines, inkdrops, or sudden and inexplicable lack of space on paper … the in-erasable ballpoint teaches me to make the best of it. Like in life, there is always a solution once we give up rigid expectations and surrender to the flow.
More then once I find myself surprised by how well my adaptation to ‘mistakes’ works out. They force me (though rather gently guide me) to find a solution that I would have never thought about to begin with. Though it might not sound like it, it is a painless process. Even though I can write a hymne about the benefits of ballpoint drawings I will leave it at this and recommend you head over to elephant journal, one of my favourit magazines, and check out the article.