Isabella’s Art - Weblog- blog

Your grandmother always told you not to venture near this dark, ruined house on the edge of the forest. At first she wasn’t too particular why you shouldn’t but when you asked her some years later she told you this tale of legend and superstition. I am interested in these stories and I know others will be as well.

About the “Tell me a Story”Project:

The project’s goal is to collect enough fascinating, known and unknown folk tales from all over the world to fill an illustrated book. Instead of taking stories from books the project aims to ‘collect’ these stories directly from the source: the people, you. On a regular basis Isabella will illustrate a submitted story. He or she who submitted this story will receive a free print of the illustration. Eventually all these illustrations combined, of course accompanied by the original stories, will be published in a book.
Isabella will update her blog regularly on the progress of the “Tell me a Story” project.

How to participate in the project:

Participating in the project is rather simple: Send your story! Multiple submission allowed. As not all stories will be illustrated sending in more then one story will enlarge the chance of one of them being illustrated.
If your story is chosen you will receive a free print. Next to this, both story and illustration will be published in the book. Please state beforehand if you want your name and hometown to be mentioned or rather wish to remain anonymous.

What am I looking for:

Every story connected with folklore is welcome. This can be anything: maybe there is a haunted cemetery or mansion in your home-town, or you remember this fantastic story your grandmother told you when you were young. Is Bloody Mary haunting your mirror as well or do you know another urban myth which circulates at your school. Personal encounters, rituals or superstitions are very interesting as well. This story can be traditional or modern as well. I am looking forward to every story you will surprise me with, and not only me, the readers of the blog as well.

A few ‘rules’ and notes:

• When you are ready to submit the story send me an email.
• There is no word limit or anything but don’t be too comprehensive, I intend to reserve a single page for each story.
• Please keep in mind this is no writing-contest, I am looking for folk tales, not stories made up.
• Everyone who submits will receive an answer, it might take a few days as I can be fairly busy now and then, but you will get a note in return from me for sure!
• Once I have picked a story to illustrate, you will receive a small ‘contract’, nothing fancy, nothing scary just to have everything sure for the both of us.

About Isabella:
Isabella is a Dutch artist/illustrator who is hugely interested in…., no passionately about, portraying folklore, myths and legends. The “Tell me a story” project is thus something very close to her heart.

For more folklore and art, please visit my blog at:

http://isabellasart.blogspot.com/

It’s finally there….. my new blog! A blog devoted to my art and love for folklore.

As some of you might have noticed I have been absent for quite some time as I have been working on setting up this new blog. It was my greatest desire to create a place where I could talk about all things related to folklore and now it’s finally there, although in an embryonic phase….

Here I will write about my adventures as an illustrator of myths, legends, superstition, folk songs and all other things related to folklore. You will also follow my work as a writer and film maker. But most importantly you will find here the most beautiful collection of folk stories and folk songs.

As I have just started this blog there is not much to see yet, but in the upcoming weeks you will be able to read articles such as: ‘The Shadow as a manifestation of the soul; and it’s association with life and death.’
(An article I have written about superstition concerning shadows.)

I will show my latest drawings and tell you all about the legends behind the illustrations.

Besides this you can see my first try outs as a film maker. For the short films I make I use really old techniques, so that should be really neat. And yes, my film production are related to myths and legends as well.

I hope I will be able to make beautiful things and to preserve these old stories, which I love so much and want to share with others.

As I can use all the support I can get, I hope many of you will follow my blog.
It’s really hard working in this branch as there is a minor interest in folklore, especially in the Netherlands, where I live. So every support would be more then welcome!

Thank you!
Isabella

Ps: This blog will still remain as well and I will keep everyone updated about all my new projects and products. But for detailed information, please visit my new blog.

This weekend a whole new product has been added to my Etsy shop. Five one of a kind, handmade brooches from which four are still available.

Like my other products , I have tried to make them completely out of environment friendly materials.
The brooches are made of organic cotton, stuffed with sawdust. Every brooche has it’s own original, tiny drawing (no print this time!) made with indian ink on 100% recycled and acid-free paper. To prevent damage on the surface, I plastified each drawing.

The bags I made from pages out of an old fairy-tale book and are hand sewn.

I hope you all like them!

First of all I would like to wish you all the very best for the new year. And also, thank you for all the support and purchases!  I have received so many lovely comments and I cherish them all. So thank you and I hope I can count on your support for the next year as well!

I very much regret I have not been able to keep you all updated as much as I wanted to. It has been a very bussy month for me but I guess that counts for most of us. Many things have happend and new plans were made for the new year. But I will start with the things that happend in the last month of 2008…..

About a month ago a new e-zine  has arrived, named: ‘The Clockwork Chatelaine’ and made by the very talented Carolina González.  Her e-zine is focused on Neo-Victorian/ Gothic/ steampunk/ altered art and is full of crafty projects, reviews and interviews.  I am very proud to say that I was one of the persons who got interviewed for her first issue. So for those who are interested in the interview, wonderful crafty projects and more just click on the image below!

I must give Carolina González my compliments as her first issue is looking really good and I think she has managed to create something which is so uniquely her own, that it is uncomparable with anything else you can find on the internet. I hope many more issues will follow!

Next to this another great thing came on my way. A retail shop based in the mountains of Western North Carolina, beautifully named Women in the Moon, purchased a few of my shadow puppets for their shop! These are the pictures they have send me of their shop and the displayed shadow puppets.

I wish I could visit the shop myself but unfortunatly it’s a bit too far away….. For more information about their shop, please visit their website

Well that was it for the year 2008, for more news about my plans and project for 2009, please come back later this week and I will reveal more about all the exciting things which are to come!

A little while ago I came across this wonderful E-zine named ‘Les Bonnes Fees’. It is a free e-Zine publishing fiction, retellings, art, poetry, and non-fiction relating to our broad topic of fairy tales and folklore.

As some might know I have a bit of an obsession for everything folklore and fairy tale related, so these sort of discoveries make me really happy. What makes me even happier is that I was the cover artist of the month November.

Below you can see the result of the drawing I made for their current issue, which was all about Cinderella.

Because I was the cover artist of this month, they also interviewed me. So for those who are interested the drawing and interview can be found here

And make sure that you also read their current issue as it is filled with wonderful poetry, fiction and articles discussing various aspects of the Cinderella story.

If you would like to know more about Les Bonnes Fees just click here

Here you can find everything about their projects, blog and also their e-zine.

I have been extremely bussy lately. I had many custom orders to finish, so I didn’t had the time to update my blog for a while. But many things have happend in the mean-time.

One of those things I would like to share with you is that I have become one of the columnists of Dante’s Heart. (A JOURNAL OF MYTH, FAIRYTALE, FOLKLORE, AND FANTASY) When you have followed my work for a while you might know that in the past I have done some illustrations for their e-zine and have supported them from the start.

And now I am part of their team! In my column I highlight the work of emerging artists. Once a week I will write a post about art related to myth, fairy tale, folklore and fantasy. It is a real delight writing these posts as I enjoy seeking for new artists and share my love for everything mythical. So I was very, very happy the editors wanted me for the job.

If you are interested in the posts I have written so far, you can take a look here

Also there are currently moleskin, laser etched, journals available at Modofly featuring one of my drawings called ‘Visiting the Moon’  (as you can see on the picture above). So if you are interested in purchasing one, or you are just curious take a look at their website click here

I must admit I laughed a bit when I first saw my journal between those others. It’s quite obvious that my drawings are not really made for those laser-etch experiments. Not that they look really awful, it’s just my style and this specific medium do not cooperate very well for some reason, compared to the other journals. But their still cute….

I should of course promote myself and not say I actually prefer the Steam Punk journals….. My journals are a big hit, a real must have!  Their great, fabulous, buy one now! Etc. Etc. Etc.

Have a lovely weekend,

Isabella

This week was very exciting for me because I was expecting to receive my package with laser-cut shadow puppets!
Because of the huge success of my shadow puppets I was no longer able to make them all by hand. Don’t worry, I will still make and sell hand-cut shadow puppets but next to this I also have a range of  laser-cut shadow puppets, based on the most popular designs I have sold so far. Here are a few examples:

There are 6 different designs available at my shop and a nice thing about these puppets is that they cost less! Of course  originals are still available at my shop as well.

Next to this a new series of drawings will arrive at my shop tonight, based on the famous story of Peter Pan. Here is one of the drawings in which Peter Pan learns the children how to fly:

Also, I am currently selling some of my original art at my etsy shop. At this moment I am selling a very special series of original drawings called the Bird Adventures. Every drawing in this series depicts its own “bird-story”, showing the life of bird-men and bird-ladies. The drawings are made on old sheet music taken from a 1932 lessons book on how to play the violin.If you are curious please take a look at my etsy shop here: link

In the next few weeks more originals will arrive, so if you are interested keep an eye on my work. If you don’t have an Etsy account but would like to purchase one of my original works, just contact me and we will work it out!

Yours Truly,

My official website: link

Lately I receive many custom requests. Most of them are requests for reproducing or creating new shadow puppets but once in a while I also receive requests for making a drawing.
That happened to me last week. One of my customers wished a drawing in which a frog and a witch was incorporated and this is the result:

It was the customers idea to base the drawing on an older work of mine called the little Halloween witch, where a witch is riding a cat. And so I replaced the cat by a frog, created a new scene and there it was….

During the process I made a couple of pictures on which you can view how my drawings are made. Done before with one of my shadow puppets and so I thought it would be nice to show you the process of creating a drawing as well.

As you can see I don’t do rough sketches. I prefer to have the picture perfectly drawn with a pencil before I start working with ink. When the pencil drawing is finished I basicly color it with ink. I know this is not the usual way for working with Indian ink but that’s the way I like to work and I do believe that you should always do what you like best.

When I was younger my art teachers always told me I worked the wrong way, whatever that means, and I believed them for a long time. So I tried to do as they told me too  and yes my techniques were perfect but none of the works I made had a soul, they didn’t “live”. It was quit some years later when I decided to give up everything I had ever learned about drawing and started to do what I liked best. It was in this period I realized that a work process is very personal and so is
the choice you make when you decide which materials you will use. It’s all part of that “thing”which give your work his own soul and uniqueness. I know that in the eyes of many people I work with lousy materials, a gnawed off pencil from 5 cm, a plastic point setter in the shape of a swan, a ordinary ink pen (which didn’t cost me more then 3 Euro) and a simple dishcloth I use to clean my pens with. Though their not perfect their mine and I love my materials, I even know their smell. If you would show me a thousand pencils al together I would still know which is mine.

I know I’m a bit too young to give anyone advice, there is more that I need to learn then that I know. But I know one thing when it comes to art, never follow the usual way, you will then only become one of a million. Only when you follow your own way you can become one out of a million.

I’m not sure how I came on this subject….. Oh, well…
Anyway the drawing is part of my new portfolio I am creating online. It’s not complete yet, I’m still seeking for all the right photographs and stuff, but it’s there. If you like you can view it at: Isabella’s Portfolio
Here you can see a selection of my commissioned works, publications, artworks, shadow puppets and projects . Like I said it’s not finished yet but I’m working on it….

Last week I received a message from Artemissn, a very talented jewellery designer from Belgium, which you should check out here: Artemissn website

A little while ago she gave everyone the opportunity to win one of her necklaces which was made out of Czech faceted glass beads. I really loved the necklace, especially because of it’s beautiful, intens colours, so I took part of her contest. I was very happy when I heard later that I was the winner! Here is a picture of the necklace I’ve won:

I was even happier when I noticed that she did not only send me this gorgeous necklace but also gave me all sorts of little goodies, which you can see below:

Oh, and there was also a bar of really good chocolate in the package, but I had already eaten everything before I could even make a picture of it….

It felt like my birthday when I received this lovely gift and I think we all should just give away something once in while. You can make someone really happy with it and what’s better then making another person happy with your own talents and gifts?

So keep a close eye on my blog because I might hold a contest as well in the near future….

Sirens are well known creatures in the classical mythology of Ancient Greece and Rome. Described as monsters, half bird and half woman, they look much like Harpies. Their name means something like, ‘to bind’, ‘with a rope draws’. This refers to the myth that Sirens would lure sailors with their beautiful songs, full of promisses and sweet words to their doom. Once you are in their power they will drown you, devour you or beguile you.

This is my version of the Siren as a shadow puppet (which is now available at my shop):

They were the offspring of the sea god Phorcys or the river god Acheloüs and their mother was a Muse. How many Sirens excisted is unclear, but their number must have been between two and five. Their individual names were; Aglaopheme, Leucosia, Ligia, Parthenope, Pisinöe and Thelxiepia.

It is said that the Sirens once challenged the Muses to a song-contest, which they eventually lost. The Muses plucked the feathers of the Sirens, made crowns out of them and wore them as a sign of their victory. The Sirens were so ashamed they exchanged the mainland for an island in the middle of the sea. Eversince that time the Island was called the Sirenum scopuli (the isles of the sirens).

Diverse locations were rumored to be the isle of the sirens, so we will never know for certain where the Sirens have lived.

Sirens are a returning topic in heroic myths such as ‘the Odyssey’ and ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and could be found in many a Medieval Bestiary. Though during the medieval period the Sirene became much more a symbol, the myth came second. During the middle ages the appearence of the Sirens changed as well. They were many times compared with mermaids and their attributes, such as; the ‘comb and mirror of vanity’ and the small dragon as a symbol of their affinity with the devil, also became a part of the Sirens. The Sirene was (according to Christians) from then on a symbol for everything that was evil

The Sirene also appears in Russian mythology, called Sirin. She is described as beautiful and sweet. At times she would come down from heaven to sing her sweet songs to the truly blessed. Those who heard these songs would forget everything and eventually die. But, their death was peacefull and they would be carried away to heaven. The Sirin also had a counterpart, the Alkonost, the exact opposite of the Sirin. Said to live in the ‘Land of the dead’ named Rai where she sings her fearful songs to torment the souls of damned.

The picture above, depicting the Sirin and the Alkonost, is the work of Viktor Vasnetsov, a briljant Russian artist. I once saw this beautiful painting of these two mythical birds in the Groninger Museum during a exhibition on Russian fairytales in art. It stole my heart right away and I could have cried because of it’s beauty. If you ever have the chance to see his work you must. He is one of those people who was not only inspired by mythology but also understood the subject. He knew the stories, the karacters and he knew their meaning. He was truly a great artist, like many of his fellow Russian artists of that time. May he and all the others never be forgotten….