100 Vogue hands

Colored pencil and colored ballpoint on sketch paper.

I've drawn 100 hands for practise, because I think that hands are the most complicated part of the human body. I think I'm going to draw 100 feet too and make a collection of 100 bodies and 100 heads. Hope that helps.

Naturalis

Together with my little sister I went to Naturalis. It's a National Nature Historical museum with 5.250.000 insects, 1.160.000 fossils, 440.000 stones and minerals, and lots of big and small skelletons  and stuffed animals. A great oppurtunity to expand my reference pictures. The shame crab is very funny, the animals in bottles, the textures of the plants, special stuffed animals.


They will have circus animals since october so I will come back for that.

Painting Mask I

Mask I. Close-up face. Oilpaint on woodpanel.
Still in process, I'm working on this painting in very thin layers. They are dry within one day.

Mask I. Close-up ring. Oilpaint on woodpanel. (in progress)
The woodpanel is sand down first so the surface is very smooth now. I prepared it with Polyvine to make it smoother, but I'm going to try an acrylic medium next time.

Mask I. Close-up bird. Graphite and oilpaint on woodpanel.
Here you can see how the sketch look like without the paint. To get thin lines of paint I paint a stroke with a small pencil and blend it with another dry brush. This is a nice method.

 Mask I. Close-up of the flowerheels. The heels are inspired by Prada. I saw some Prada heels with flowers on the back but from hard material. These look soft and I think it fits my painting because of all the floral details.

Oilpaint and on the left my favorite medium. I use this to make the paint smoother and it makes your paint dry quicker. It's looks like a gel.

I joined Shop Around

Recently I joined Shop Around. It's an Agency for Illustrators, graphic designers, animators.  They work on all kind of cool projects, so I'm glad I joined this agency. Here you can see my profile with images the artdirector chose. I think it's interesting to see how an artdirector looks at all your work and makes a selection.
http://www.shop-around.nl/print/illustration/project/marjolein-caljouw#top

Sanding & Sketching

Sketches in my sketchbook.

 Pencil and colored pencil on paper. Close-up.

 Pencil and colored pencil on paper. Close-up.

 Pencil and orange pencil on paper.
Pencil and collage on paper.

Pencil and collage on paper. Close-up.

Pencil on wood.

I bought a sanding machine for my big woodpanels that I have left from my last project. I painted on wood before but I didn't sand it down, so now the surface is really smooth and that's much better.  I used to paint on canvas a lot and although it's a light material it also bounces back and forth if you paint. Wood is stabile and much smoother which will speed up the process.

The bad thing is that it's quite heavy.

Pencil on wood.

New painting: "Birdcages"

Birdcages from Marjolein Caljouw on Vimeo.

Here's a little video about my new painting: "Birdcages".
If I'm looking at a painting I always want to see close-ups, to view all the details, so that's why I made this video. Also, to show a little process of my painting.

Acrylics and oilpaint on canvas.
100 x 120 cm / 47,2 " x 39,4 "


I painted the skelletonkings a long time ago (I think 2 years ago)  I didn't know what to do with the background, but one time it hit me. They are walking through a forrest and release some little birds from birdcages. I wanted to make the birdcages to look a little bit unnatural/spooky.

Ludwig Zwei Wallpainting Amsterdam -Final Pictures-

Photo by: Roland Pupupin

Me in Ludwig Zwei. 

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Photo by: Roland Pupupin

Here is a part of the wallpainting in the back of the room. On the left side there's a smoking room and on the right there's a little wall that seperates the 2 walls. The couch is made of dark green suede leather wich match wonderful with the wall.
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Photo by: Roland Pupupin

Here's the right side of the wall, this is also in the back of the cafe/lounge club. The bathtop has little golden parts in the wallpainting. I like the designer chairs because it's inspired by a vintage nightclub from Paris.

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Photo by: Roland Pupupin

Here you can see how the 2 walls in the back look like.

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Photo by: Roland Pupupin

This is the longest part of the wallpainting. On the right there's a DJ booth.  Look at the lamp, isn't that cool?

Photo by: Roland Pupupin

Here's a little close-up of the wall. The little twinowls are also the logo of Ludwig Zwei now. As you can see in my last post. 

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Photo by: Roland Pupupin

I think this is my favorite part, because I like the deers. On the right are the snails where the moths come from.
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Photo by Roland Pupupin.

The lights give everything a nice sphere. I coated the whole wall with Polyvine varnish. It's very mat and it's very transparent, so you don't see that it's varnished.

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Photo by: Roland Pupupin

The lights change by color if you put them on. They are all handmade by Els de Jong. I think she did an amazing job. Her site www.apart-ontwerp.nl

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Opening Ludwig II, Amsterdam

As you can see in my last posts I was very busy with painting wallpapers. It was for a wall in Ludwig Zwei, a new gaybar in Amsterdam.  It took me one month to paint 9 pieces of paper so it was very intense but I'm glad I finished it before the opening.

Photo on the left: The sticks are holding metal plates to the sealing.  Photo on the right: I painted the different pieces of paper together, because it didn't fit exactly. 

I will post photos of the total wall later, because I have to varnish everything, but here are the pictures of the opening:

Photo by: www.mrperezident.com

Popping champagne! On Tuesday, July 21,  Ludwig Zwei opened it's doors to the public. The mayor of Amsterdam re-opened also two other gaybars: Eve and Havana.

Photo by: www.mrperezident.com

Roland on the left and me in the back, coming through. There were lots of people.

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Photo by: www.mrperezident.com

I met my favorite designers Viktor and Rolf! That was just awsome.
I love their work and they are very kind.

Photo by: www.mrperezident.com

Me in NRC NEXT newspaper! Photographer: Martijn van de Griendt.
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The website: www.ludwigzwei.nl with my logo design on the left. 

Photo by: www.mrperezident.com

The front bar with nice old anatomy sketches.

The front bar with nice old anatomy sketches.

You can see a little bit of the paintig in the background, it's a wall of 21 meters (68.89 feet) long.

Total pictures coming soon!

Timelapse of a part of my wallpainting, wild swine.

Acrylic on Canson Figueras paper.
This is part of panel #7.

Stretching watercolor paper on wood panel.

I hope that this will give you an idea on how to stretch watercolor paper if it's a big piece of paper.
If you make it wet it will have all these bubbles, but don't worry. If it's dry again you will have a very nice smooth surface.

Projecting my sketches onto wallpaper -little video-

Here's a little video about my wallpainting in progress. It's a little tiny video, just how I transfer my sketches onto big paper.

Wallpainting in progress panel #5 and #6

Acrylics, goldpaint and colorpencil on Canson Figueras paper.

 Here my process on of the wallpainting which will be finished in a week from now. My last panels have more light parts, which I like. So I'm going to light up the other panels too. Give it the same values. 

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Acrylics, goldpaint and colorpencil on Canson Figueras paper.

 Preview of panel #6. I just realize, there are a lot of beetles in my painting.

Acrylics on Canson Figueras paper.

Panel #6. A lot of artwork has butterflies so I wanted to paint moths, they are beautiful too with all the brown colours and a little bit more mysterious.

Mediums

 I think will give a review on this later. What do you think? It's interesting to try new materials, so they can add something to the work.

Acrylics on Canson Figueras paper.

 This is a part of panel #6. Although I would love to add more details I have to move on to panel #7 and #8. Panel #9 is a half panel...

Painting with a deadline is like speedpainting. Every time I learn new things to speed up the process. The best way is work from the back to the front like a graffiti wall.
- Colour the background. Leave the pencilsketch parts a little bit open.
- Fill in your sketch with a middletone colour.
- Add some shadows
- Mix it with lighter colours
- Give it more outlines
- Finish up with higlights.

Wallpainting in progress 4.

Acrylics on Canson Figueras paper.

The first layers. The spraycan with water makes it easy for me to blend the colors. I like the strokes of the paint though.  

Hedgehog in progress. Acrylics on Canson Figueras paper.

I always liked albino animals, so there are a few of them in the painting. Because I only have 3 days for each painting/panel it looks kind of rough, but it's important for me that I finish the whole wall completely before I will add more details. 

Twin Owls. Acrylic on Canson Figueras paper.

I already wanted to make a painting of the owltwins (see this post) so it was fun to paint them.

Now I'm moving on to panel 5 and 6. The values of the colors need to be the same everywhere, so I'm curious about how everything will look all together. In the first painting I used a lot of green but I love the beige, brown and orange colors to give it a vintage look. Maybe I have to take away a bit of the bright orange...

Keep an eye on the blog, I will post frequently.

Wallpainting, work in progress 3.

 

Above: Panel 1 en 2 acrylic on Canson Figueras paper. 

Down: Preparing other pannels by cutting them first. As you can see one roll of paper is allready finished, there is 10 meter on one roll. 

Acrylic on Canson Figueras paper.

 Hedgehog in a weird chair with ostrich legs.

Acrylic on Canson Figueras paper.

 Machinecrow.  As you can see I'm not finished yet. The sketchlines has to be removed.

Acrylic on Canson Figueras paper.

 Red flowers.  The main colors in the wallpainting are brown, beige, nude colors combined with bright red accents.

Acrylic and goldpaint on Canson Figueras paper.

Squirl with mask.

Here you can see how the goldpaint works out, I used it on little elements like the apples. I just love it. You only can see it from a few angles.