There was obviously no blogpost last week but I will try to combine the last two weeks in this blogpost. Due to a bereavement I just had no inspiration and drive to write something.

In the meantime I started to join a drawing challenge on instagram that is still ongoing until the end of february. The challenge by Karoline Pietrowski is about drawing facial expressions for a character every day. I really like doing challenges on instagram because there is so much to discover and it’s much more easy to get in contact or conversation with others. Also there is this topic for a whole month that you can discover and you can practice your drawing abilities and improve – not just with drawing your own works but looking at all the other artists works and how they translate a certain word or topic. So far I’m doing really well although I sometimes struggle with some expressions because I feel some are very similar and I guess I sometimes don’t get the right essence on the paper. My personal challenge was not to use gesture to support the expressions so sometimes, the faces just look sad when the are supposed to look offended, ashamed or touched. But that’s also what it’s about – working on your skills and realising in which areas you have to put in more work and effort. I guess when you also use some gesture with hands and arms you can convert a more accurate interpretation of feelings and expressions. I’m also very happy that I already made it this far. I made 19 Illustrations of my character yet, and there are still a few to come but I am really really confident that I can pull through until the end. I’m already thinking of doing another challenge in March. Are there any interesting challenges you know about? Do you think I should start my own challenge? Can you think of a topic?

I also Illustrated a few artworks for my newest project that I call “Take Care Of Yourself”. This is more a working title than an actual project title. It’s a series of illustrations about what you can do if you feel stressed or uncomfortable or just to feel better in general. I get stressed very easily and a lot. When I’m stressed I turn into a monster. I cry a lot and have bad moods. So it’s very important to reduce the stress by doing things I like and make room for nice things. With a relaxed mind I can be more creative and have more fun in general. A bit of “Me Time” is important for everyone. Take your time to calm down a bit and find things to do that are good for you. This is also a great chance to get to know yourself a bit better. Listening to your inner voice. Mabye becoming friends with youself. All that leads to new strength and confidence. And maybe everything will seem easier.
The first few illustrations I made are already available as prints in my etsy shop. You can use them as reminder or just as nice small poster to hang on yor wall beside your workplace or living room or even in the bathroom to see it every morning. I am very curious: what is something you do, to do something good for yourself, to calm down and relax and take time for yourself or even get to know yourself better?

At the beginning of the last week we went to ikea to get some new shelves because I desperately needed some storage space. Because we already have severals Kallax shelves at home we got a 2×4 and a 2×2 one to fit the “Style”. I also bought some more Dröna where I store all my paper, pencils and other stuff I need more regularly. It’s not perfect yet but it doesn’t look that messy anymore. The best solution would be a third room which I could use as an working room/ studio / atelier by itself, but thats just not possible yet. So I try to make more room by creating more storage space. The next project will be to make my desk a bit bigger. It always is loaded with stuff and it’s hard to clean everything up every time to have enough space to draw and put the laptop somewhere. Also it always looks messy because it is loaded with a lot of stuff that I need regularly, and well, who doesn’t like some decorations as well? I couldnt imagine my workspace without my stones and crystals anymore. If I can manage to expand the table plate I will also have the window right in front of me and that would give me some extra daylight for myself and for drawing and that would be awesome. And new plants. I just cant have enough of them. I want to have a Jungle at my workspace!

At the end of the last week I worked on a portrait commision. It was quite a challenge because I haven’t worked with a ballpoint pen in quite a while. I still love drawing with ballpoint pens and I guess I will do that more often again. For me it’s really relaxing and I get to see fast results. For this drawing with the size of Din A2 I needed about 7 to 8 hours to draw and I split the time up (because i had enough until I had to finish it) in three days. I also posted the process on my instagram stories by small videos. Of course I asked my client if he was okay with that. I am very happy how the finished artwork turned out and I also got a lot of compliments by my client and the family. If you are also interested in me drawing you or a family member or a friend, a loved one or just someone, let me know, you can write me a message or an email with your idea and we will figure out the rest together. I already drew portraits for birthdays, confirmations, anniversarys, weddings and that one was sadly for a funeral.

The last important thing I began to make last weekend was a video for my kickstarter project. I really was nervous in front of the camera and I really hate talking while I am recorded. I can’t stand to hear my own voice and I even cringe when I have to hear me talking. So my boyfriend came up with this idea for the video and I felt comfortable with it until I had to sit in front of the camera and see myself on the monitor. I just had some flashbacks from the time I made some youtube videos and remembered all the bad and negative comments I received back then. But this project is too important for me to not give my best and stepping out of my comfort zone and make a video. Although you obviously see that I read all my texts from a piece of paper I guess it is important to show a bit of myself and I hope I don’t seem too unappealing because I just dont know how and when to make the right face expressions or even talk in the right flow to make it interesting what I have to say. I really have some deficits in talking to people that i don’t know. And I also know that people notice this. There are -as always- too much thoughts in my head which will result in fear and anxiety. But I already made it through the video recording and I think that’s already a small success by itself because normaly that’s a thing I would try to pass by somehow and not work through.

So far for this time.
All my best,
Anja

The post Week #06 & #07 2018 first appeared on Miau Smiles.

I guess I’m already in the state where I think I don’t have much left to tell and there isn#t happening that much to tell and i hate it to begin a blogpost with excuses.

Last week i still worked a lot on my kickstarter project and i hopefully can publish it by the end of next week. I also made some researches and looked at a lot of other projects to feel more prepared, confident and secure for my own project. I found a lot of interesting kickstarter projects and also came up with some more very vague ideas for other projects i might start in the future but that would be to much to talk about yet. The booklet itself is nearly finished and we can start to make mockups and also do some graphics for the rewards. Most of the preparations are done for my illustration collection booklet and we have to bring everything together. My boyfriend also came up with some video ideas but i don’t feel that confident aout talking in videos at all so we will see how this ideas will turn out. I know videos are important to visualize the idea and give a insight about me and what I do so I guess I will just try and give my best. Although I know I can only benefit from showing myself and be more present and open I still have negative thoughts about it and I always feel I will fail. And I absolutely have to fight this irrational fear. Let’s randomly quote the infamous Shia Labeouf and Nike “JUST DO IT”. I am still very excited about this project and hope it will end up successfully. Since the booklet contains all of my favourite illustrations I made in 2017 it’s also exciting to see if you are interested in having a booklet collection of my art. Please keep your fingers crossed for me!

Contemporaneous I started to work on a new illustration series. In the beginning of this project i thought of doing some illustrations for valentines day. Due to the circumstances that there was not much time left to prepare something bigger for valentines day and release the prints in the beginning of january I decided to maybe put the prints online on valentines day (or after valentines day). I am a bit undecided about valentines day anyway. On one hand I think it’s really cute to show the special persons that day that they are special to you and on the other hand I think I can show the speacial people in my life that they are special to me every day of the year and there is no need for a valentines day. So I made my valentines idea about taking care of yourself and make yourself a valentine and doing youself something good. And not only on one day in the year! I want these Illustrations to be a little reminder for you and me. It’s very important to take care of yourself more often. I already finished some illustrations but not with all of the ideas I came up with yet. There are still a lot of images I want to illustrate and there are a lot of sketches that want to become real artworks. I hope you can at least find some of the illustrations as prints for valentines day in my etsy shop.

I know this doesn’t sound like i did do a lot at all last week but i think there can’t always be action in life and as i said before: it’s important to take care of yourself and i also spent time watching netflix, taking long baths and working out.
So far for now,
All the BEST,
Anja

The post Week #05 2018 first appeared on Miau Smiles.

Last week I was preparing a lot for my newest project. I wrote about it in the last blog post, but that idea is getting clearer every day. I plan on making a collection of illustrations and drawings i created in 2017 as a booklet/zine. I already picked the artworks i like the most and put them in the right order to make it look coherent and nice. For now it already has 48 pages including the front and back cover. The Booklet will definitely also be my first kickstarter project because of the obvious reasons. I still have to do a bit of layout for the cover and also have to write a text about “the artist” which i think is always a very difficult part. Who likes to write about themselves anyways? What would you like to know about me or read about me, what is the most interesting thing for you to read? maybe i can include a little FAQ as well? We (my boyfriend, who helps me a lot, and me) also had many ideas for possible rewards we want to offer and i think they are really great and fair. This may not sound like a lot to do but i spent almost the whole week with preparing this idea, layouting and organizing the order of the Artworks, thinking of rewards, looking for a printer/print shop, calculating and so on.
Between all of this i didn’t find much time to draw a lot of new stuff but just a little bit at the end of the days to calm down and do at least something productive i can hold in my hands. Last week I told you about some sketches i made and i started to draw the first artworks which will end in another project i guess. One lettering Illustration is done and i started another drawing which isn’t coloured yet. Since i don’t know if i can finish this project right in time i dont’t want to tell too much about it, and also the kickstarter project is more important right now.
Yes, these few sentences basically already tell you almost everything about my week.

On Friday we went for a coffee to a bar. We usually don’t go out that often but i thought it would be nice to go out and see something different than always stay at home and stare at our screens. I actually planned to draw in public and make some quick studies of people and things. The Coffee shop we first wanted to go was closed because of vacation and then we decided to go to another bar we knew. But there were quite a lot of people and i began to feel a bit uncomfortable and we chose to sit on the lower floor where no other tables were taken. Until we decided to leave again 2 hours later there weren’t many people, so there simply wasn’t a lot to watch and draw. But we had a nice time anyways with ginger ale and some fries and i think we should make this a regular thing. Back when i was preparing my portfolios for university 10 or more years ago i always went outside to draw stills, plants, landscapes and i even went to the zoo to draw animals in action. Practising, drawing, and sketching outside is anyways really important and a thing i should do more often. I really can’t wait for the weather to be nice again.

Also on friday I tried to make a cake for a friends Birthday on saturday. “tried” because i already bought all the ingredients for the cake but i couldnt find my cake tin anywhere because i forgot it at another friends. I decided to make the reciepe anyways and put the dough in a cupcake tin. Lesson learned. A caked recipe is not really suitable for cupcake tins. At least the crumbs tasted very good. The dough stuck to the tin very well and there was no way to get it out in one piece although i put some margarine in the tin before adding the dough. But it was also really depressing bringing the whole cupcake tin to the party and giving the guests not a perfectly formed cupcake but just some sad looking crumbs because you destroy everything by getting the thing out of the tin. What’s the best way to deal with this stuation anyways? Bring the crumbs or bring nothing at all?
My excersising was great this week. Everyday I spent 1,5 hous running on the spot with my wii fit program. At first the scale was pretty generous with me and went down a few numbers, but at the end of the week I saw the same nummers again that i saw a few weeks ago which was very depressing and unmotivating because a wasn’t eating out of my plan or even too much. I will have to figure out what was wrong that week and maybe i will have to start to write down again what i eat and also the amount of what i eat to get it right again and not to lose the rest of my motivation to lose more weight. My app says i burned 4125 calories by walking with a total of 101761 steps and a distance of 73,26 kilometres. Compared to the week before i definitely burned more calories, sadly i didn’t track what i ate to compare. But there is no difference on the scale.

All the best,
Anja

The post Week #04 2018 first appeared on Miau Smiles.

Yesterday, right before i fell i asleep i had the perfect idea how to start this new blog post. Sadly i didn’t make any notes and of course i can’t remember anything i was thinking of. Also i think this is going to be a really short update because i have a huge lack of inspiration to write. Theres just not much happening in my mind when i think about the last week.
That week i am still stuck to drawing on paper with coloured pencils combined with regular pencils. I almost forgot how i actually like drawing on paper and also the results are still much more faster than drawing digital. I still try some experiments, work on my techniques and want to lern more and also most important i want to become even better. I also bought a few more coloured pencils with the name polychromos by Faber-Castell to vary with colours and trying something new, you know, stepping out of the comfort zone is important and colours are definately not my comfort zone. I am really excited where that leads. I Made some quick drawings and limited myself to only draw with the new colours which made the characters very colourful. What do you think about me using more colours?

Most of my drawings and illustrations i made through that week you can find on my Instagram account @anja.sturm. it’s really up to date and i post there very regularly. The Motives aren’t too exciting yet, but i made some sketches for a series i want to draw for some Prints and i really like the ideas so far. Another task for this year is to strengthen my confidence. There are different approaches i want to try and find out what works best for me. So i thought “why not include this topic to my illustration work?”The first few things i started with in the new year was writing down my good and also my bad characteristics. I have to see that written down from time to time, to not forget about the good sides of myself, because as you know i mostly think of the bad and negative sides. Another thing is to remind me of things that make me happy or are good for me. Some motivations and being reminded from time to time. This will the series of illustrations be about. Taking care of yourself and beeing your own best friend. I think a lot of you can also relate to that. I hope i can start with that project as soon as I can because I’m really excited about the sketches.
I’m still working on the idea of my collection booklet and collected all the drawings i liked the most of 2017. Still there is no structure or layout made, but thats the task for the new Week and I’m also thinking about to make this personal project a Kickstarter project. Printing booklets or Zines is not really in my budget these days and furthermore i can check out if you are interested in such a thing before i print it at all.
Talking about prints: I added some new Prints of my drawings and illustrations to my Etsy shop . I chose those motives because they were liked a lot on instagram so i thought you would maybe like to have them as art prints.

I also finished my “Yes this is Bear” illustration i talked about last week. I basically like the end result but i think of redoing it because i am not super excited about the format and how the lettering doesnt fit in at all. Seems like it falls apart and i don’t have the feeling that it all connects too well. Also made a new drawing with the girl calling bear nothing too special as well but it’s just part of the whole project, All in all this will maybe make another zine or just some simple Artworks. I can’t quite decide yet and don’t want to limit myself by saying i only do drawings for x or y, maybe it will someday be a cool band shirt design, who knows.

I also spent some time updating several Portfolios. I think it’s really neccesary to do that kind of work regularly to make you and your work visible and even maybe reach some new clients. First of all i updated my own personal portfolio and also i am very proud to say that i got a new url for it. It is simple : www.anjasturm.com without any extras. Just simply my name. Isn’t that great? I also started to upload my new projects to behance and added some of my artworks to my Portfolio at “Illustratoren Organisation”. I am still not finished yet but its all on its way. Bit by bit i will also try and connect my illustrations to Pinterest and i’m thinking about to add my work on deviantart again and i also want to check out if my works fit to Artstation? Are you familiar with Artstation? Can you recommend any other online Portfolios?

My workout was doing great last week, i increased the time of workout and also didn’t make any excuses and worked out every day. At least i did my “running on the spot” thing for 1,5 hours. My app tells me that i burned 3369 calories in total by “walking” 43 kilometres. Also the scale finally shows up some new numbers. I think im going in the right direction again i JUST have to keep up that routine. I also challenged myself on wednesday and did an extra round and “walked” 2 hours what really made me proud. While running on the spot i keep myself busy watching tv shows and series on Netflix. It keeps me motivated to watch documentaries about health, food and diets. Cant tell you how often i watched “What the health” Last week i started and finished watching “dark”. It wasn’t really my first choice because i don’t like german produtions in general, but i was really surprised and instantly fell in love with the title song. Also the story was super interesting to follow and i was busy thinking about what could happen next and what is connected and how. I really enjoyed watching the series and also i want to watch it again to understand every detail. The thing i didn’t like was the end because i couldn’t see the connection to the start and the whole theme. I think it would have made more sense if SPOILER: someone hung himself to start the story all over again. Or did i just miss anything? Will there be another season? Did you watch “Dark” and what are your thoughts?

That were the interesting parts of last week.
Best,
Anja

The post Week #03 2018 first appeared on Miau Smiles.

While scanning some illustrations that I want to insert in this blogpost I wrote in my calendar what I did today and looked back at what I achieved this past week. On monday an important appoitment was short term cancelled which turned my whole planning for that day upside down. I then answered some business emails and felt a bit lost because I hadn’t planned anything else for that day except this appointment. I really can’t handle spontanious changes very well because I prepare the situations and what will happen in my day in my mind a lot. I just have to know what is going on in my day to feel I am under control and not feeling lost or that I waste too much time doing nothing (what i actually do most of the time and it makes me feel bad because i know better). In general I need to change a lot in my daily routine. I need to get up earlier. Although I am a freelance Clip art illustratror and I actually work better at night when it is quiet outside and everyone else is sleeping. On the other hand I know that I get even more stuff done when I also get up earlier than I currently get up. Time management is so important when you are self employed and there are a million ideas in your head and another thounsand ideas on your to do lists. I still have to learn to manage my time better to be more efficient and productive. That’s one thing i started my calendar and started blogging again just to see that i’m not doing nothing all day. My mind tricks me a lot and at the end of the day the negative things weigh heavier than the rest.

We also visited my boyfriends mom and made a litte sleepover. One of the reasons for that visit is because we are thinking about adopting a cat and my boyfriends mom has some furry friends at home and we wanted to check out how much my body still reacts to cats. As far as i can think back my family always had cats and even when i lived with my mom we had a cat at home but in the last few years my body reacted bad to cat hair. My eyes, ears and nose all went itchy and once even my eyes were totally swollen. When i knew i visited someone with cats i took allergy pills for prevention. The symptoms didn’t get worse with the pills but they also knocked me out and made me very very tired and sluggish. The last visits went really well, because i avoided to touch a cat or go near them and i nearly had no itchy eyes or a running nose or even worse even without allergy pills which felt really positive. The last visit i tried to cuddle a lot with the cats to see if i still have allergy reactions or if it was just something temporary. All i got was a bit of any itchy nose, no other reactions. Once a doctor told me if an animal gets sick/ill you can develope allergic reactions towards those animals. Sadly “my” cat that lived with my mom died this year and since then i didn’t notice any reactions towards other cats. I suggest “my” cat was sick/ill way before we even noticed it and my body just reacted to this or maybe it was just something else, i guess i will never know exactly what happened and why. For now we are pretty positive and i can’t wait to have a cat around me again.

Since a while my boyfriend, his friends and me regularly play gta 5 online together which perse is a lot of fun but i also like just to drive around alone and look at the landscapes. I am very enthusiastic about one special radio station which i ALWAYS listen to. It’s just called “Los Santos Rock Radio” and i’m actually following that playlist on spotify. To those who are familiar with the game: I love the Faggio. Almost daily i listen to this playlist and never get tired. I can recommend it a lot. I never thought i would once listen to those bands my dad always talked about. I especially enjoy Kansas, Boston and Chicago a LOT. I also added most of their albums to my favourits and listen to them regularly. Thats just a very new experience for me because i never really liked to listen to “old” music. I just don’t hope thats part of getting older or growing up ; )

For the plan of adopting a cat I started to felt a little cat cave. I don’t felt with water a lot anymore so I’m a bit out of practise. When I started that projecti had exactly in mind what I wanted it to look like. Nothing complex, in fact pretty easy to make and with no extras. Imagine a biiig egg in black with a little hole to enter. Well it turned out like a black shapeless UFO that just crashed the earth. I am really unhappy how it turned out and although I already placed it on the couch I want to work on it once more and hopefully it will turn out as a wonderful black dragon egg. I worked on that thing really hard and I even had aching legs after I felted for at least five or six hours on that unsatisfying thing. I had to work on the floor because we don’t own or have a place for a table that would be big enouth for such a project. All in all when you are wet felting you have to work bigger in the beginning. While felting the wool will shrink a several percentage of it’s actual size. My UFO was really big at the beginning and also the texture turned out really nice and even. Just the shape is not twhat I had in mind. I will report about this thing again when it hopefully will look beautiful one day.

Of course i made some Illustrations and drew almost daily. Randomly I made a really tiny comic strip because from time to time i lose my motivation and can’t get excited about any idea that comes to my mind. Nothing seems good enough. So tha’s the simply story of this one. Also i made a little private Illustration for myself. I made a little handdrawn self portrait which i want to send to send to a few illustration websites. All in all i just worked on personal projects which is a lot of fun. Sadly for now i have no new commissions. Lucky for you if you have something in mind that you want me to draw for you. Maybe as a gift (valentines day is coming for couple portraits) or for your blog/business? Maybe you need a new mascott or a new individual handdrawn logo or lettering? Let me know and write an email!

Quite a while ago i started this “thing” to draw and experiment with and i want it to come to life again or maybe come to life at all. i started this imaginary band thatt is called “Yes this is Bear” so make some cool band merch and album art works and everything visual around a band. I want to come up with cool storys, comics and so on. So i started drawing again and made a cool handletered typo and an Artwork with the girl and the bear. I still have to figure out a lot, especially the real music part. I think this is a great idea to tell a lot and draw a lot of stuff that i like and can relate to. I hope i can show the final artwork and some other ideas, drawings and projects within the “Yes this is Bear” project. Furthermore i am working on other personal projects and ideads that i am super excited about but i don’t want to tell too much because i don’t know how to realize the whole project exactly. Basically i want to make a kind of collection of my 2017 drawings and illustrations as maybe a zine or a booklet. Just can’t put my thoughts exactly in words yet, thats what I want to figure out in the next week.

My excercising this week didn’t go very well and I just made space two times this week to run which is not acceptable for me and my plan also my eating was a bit off and too much. I just made too many excuses with the visit and other things. Coming back to time management I need to make space every day again. No excuses. Just trying to do it better again the following week. YAY.

Best,
Anja

The post Week #02 2018 first appeared on Miau Smiles.

I dont’t want to predict too much when I say I’m back at the blogging game. This is just a little try to start again as one of my new years resoutions. In the last few years the distance between me and what I share on the internet grew and when I look back at the time when I blogged more I also had more interactions and communication with people in general. I really hid into a little hole and just watched everyone doing great things and having a nice time. I need to change that again, be more open, find myself again, finding my voice and space, communicate, be present and more social. And I think it is a great step to start blogging again and share the stuff that I do on a daily or weekly or monthly basis.

All in all I want to record more of what I do and have accomplished during the day in general like in a diary. When I tried to look back at 2017 it was really hard for me to remember all the good stuff that happend. In the last few days of 2017 I started to set up a very simple bullet journal just to track what I want to do, what I did during the days and what I accomplished or produced to see it written on paper and feel better about myself and get a better mindset about the stuff that I do and achieve. Also I made some lists for my ideas, projects, personal stuff and work that I can update from time to time which are also in my journal. On new year’s eve when I tried to look back at the year and what happened I could just remember things that hurt and didnt turn out as I wanted and it just depressed me that these unhappy things stuck in my mind more thand the good things that happened and I want to change this for the new year. Doing small steps and a step at a time and change things slowly to not make it too overwhelming.

When I look back at the first week, the page of my journal looks pretty full and that just feels very good. I started with my wii workout again which consists of running on the spot (I try to do it every day), which is called freerun, for a certain time. Ususally I do it twice successively a day what makes a total of one hour. And I also made a new personal wii freerun record with 19830 m in 30 minutes. I don’t think these are real meters that would be way too much. When I first started all I could do was about 6000 wiimeters in 30 minutes and i thought this was already my best. With this exercise and some changes in my eating habits I lost 20 kilograms from june to october 2017. Due to some sad circumstances and a sad mindset I made a weightloss break until the 1st of january. Gladly i didn’t gain any weight during the break and now i’m back on track to try and lose another 10 kilograms.

On friday I finished a private commission. I drew the client’s children as a portrait with some specific things they like and some typical characteristics all in my stle. It was so much fun to draw the illustration because I had full creative freedom, the children were so cute and the communication with the client was so easy and comfortable. Also I made it ready to print and went to my local print shop and sent it away last week. I really like the end result of the illustration a lot also because I had so much freedom in my creative process and decisions.
I also had time to do some personal drawings. In the last year I focused a lot on digital drawing so I decided to draw some small characters on paper and took some coloured pencils. I really like how the little faces turned out, but i’m not sure if there will be a project behind it. I think i was just drawing them for the sake of drawing with no big meaning or story behind them. i often think that I have to make some big meaningful projects that will change the world and that I have to say something with a big story behind it. These thoughts often keep me away from creating something just because I have fun to do them or trying something or just practicing on my style or experimenting with tools and pecils. And it’s totally okay if I can’t tell an entire novel about a picture. Sometimes it is enough if it just looks nice.

I was more active on instagram stories and posted some short videos of my drawings and some photos of my surroundings and food that dont’t fit in my regular timeline. I guess I just have to try and figure out what is interesting enough for my followers to see. I really like to interact more on that platform too.
Furthermore I updated my online portfolio and added some childrens illustrations I made for my physical portfolio I took to the bookfair in Frankfurt to introduce me to some childrensbook publishers and I added some handmade and handdrawn monster pins to my etsy shop. On sunday I took the time and watched the entire season of “The end of the f**king world” on netflix which i enjoyed a lot and afterwards I did some bookkeeping/accounting that was too long due.

That’s it for now and I hope I will write another blog post next week : )
best,
anja

The post Week #01 2018 first appeared on Miau Smiles.

As a new years resolution i wanted to improve my digital drawing skills by drawing more with my tablet and various programs. My favourite so far is Artrage4. Several times i tried my best to draw something in Photoshop but i just failed so much. It just doesn’t feel like drawing at all. I still want to try Krita though just out of curiosity since there is a free Version of it . At the beginning of the month i bought a new graphic tablet. Since then i draw every day on it even if it’s just some sketches. Although i think i improved a bit in that time i still have a long way to go to become better in shading, colouring, mood and scenery/composition. But there is always something to become better at, isn’t it? I still struggle a bit with how much longer it takes me to draw on the tablet, but i save up time scanning, correcting, touching up or even cutting out some Illustrations. Until now i drew some portraits, a few artworks, tried some handlettering and coloured some of my traditional drawings for a book project. Most of the Illustrations i created in the last few weeks you can see on my Instagram account (anja.sturm) and my facebook page Anja Sturm Illustration . I also plan on recording my drawings with OBS and make little timelapse videos in the future. And because i just finished and uploaded my first video i thought it would be a nice opportunity to write a small blog post about it. I made a really really short video just to give you an idea of how i draw digitally. The original video material is about 55 minutes and i don’t think someone would watch that without some talking. As you may have noticed i added some more details to the illustration, just didn’t record it.

All the best,
Anja

The post Artrage4 Portrait Speed Drawing Video first appeared on Miau Smiles.

A few days ago i did the #meettheartist tag on instagram (@anja.sturm) and i thought it would be nice to share it here as well. There wasn’t enough space for ALL the information i had in mind but i hope you get a vague idea of who is behind this blog. Is there something else that you’d like to know?

All the best

The post Meet The Artist first appeared on Miau Smiles.

Lately i got back into drawing some landscapes, plants and nature things. It is very calming to me and it was a great way to start the year slow and stressless. I like to combine the shapes and colours i already have in my collection and arrange them into something new. It is like meditating to me. Especially coloring them is very calming to me. And if it’s calming to me, I thought it might also have the same effect on other people. So just before i started to colour my drawing i made some shadows and scanned it for a black and white version for YOU to colour in. Just print it out! When you have an ink printer, it’s better to work with colored pencils because felt tips might smear with the print. If you have a laser printer you can actually colour it in with felt tip pens, markers and even watercolour. If you do not have a laser printer but want to use one of these it’s probably also cheap to get it printed in your local copy shop. I’d be very excited to see your colored version on twitter or instagram, let me know : )

Here is the PDF Download Link

The post Landscape /// Garden Colour Me In first appeared on Miau Smiles.

Just as Maus starts to walk towards the kitchen to bring another cup of hot chocolate, the small rabbit grabs Maus’ hand and pulls him outside to play in the snow.
END

Schnell will Maus zurück in die Küche. Gerade als er loslaufen will um noch Heiße Schokolade zu holen, nimmt der kleine Hase Maus’ Hand um ihn nach draußen in das Schneetreiben zu ziehen, um mit ihm zu spielen.
ENDE

The post Storytime Part 12 first appeared on Miau Smiles.