This year was wild and exciting. In spring I illustrated Alt Summit in Palm Springs again. I moved my studio. I created a large scale portrait of Regensburg on 55qm2! It was such a challenge and a very exciting project. Many portrait commissions rolled around. I’ve been very happy to work with wonderful, curious clients.
Sitting outside sketching people passing by is one of my favorite things. You need to be a quick sketcher. I am trying to memorize everything I see in an instant but I still need some training. However I am getting closer to be able to catch the essence of someone at a glimpse!
Do you need a Corporate Identity that is quick on its feet and grows with the challenges of an ever changing world of algorithms? I offer branding, logo design, content creation, lettering as well as consulting on Webdesign, videos, I organise Giphy Channels, the tools you need to evolve your brand organically in swift environment.
There are so many new spaces where animated imagery can be used and it simply will always attract your eye more quickly than a still image. Whether you want to create content for your Instagram or send an email. If it blinks it will be seen.
Drawing Portraits is one of my favourite things to do. Even though each new commission makes me nervous. Portraits need a lot of trust and communication. The way a person sees her or himself may be very different to what I see while looking at them. It’s something I encountered often while doing portraits with a camera through many years. As the creator I have to find the common ground. A mix of how I see a person. How I might see something around them they might have never seen themselves. How they see themselves or how they want to be seen.
Sounds complicated but the idea is to be a very intuitive portrait artist plus I am moving around in a realm between avatar and portrait.
See some samples here, I do portraits for websites and instagrams or whatever comes next. For a family of 14 I did a portrait series of 11 prints that now decorate the guest room so every family member feels welcome whenever they visit.
I do doodle a lot and favourably quick. For my bags and printed products I am always collecting ideas by sketching anything around me and what I find online. My boards are full of lists covering all kind of topics, animals, nature, beach, artists, portraits, etc. Sometimes I just get started with the coffee in front of me or fruits standing around. I archive them digitally on my Ipad and analogue in sketchbooks. If I don’t forget them, they’ll become a pattern and end up on… a bag, a wallpaper or packaging concept.
Motion design is exciting. Music and motion just make any image so much more powerful and memorable. For my videos I enjoy creating unique new content in order to promote the product or concept in an unexpected new light. I shoot a lot of footage for my videos while traveling and through the years I have created an extensive personal archive of imagery I can use for my Motion graphics.
My daily family drop-offs allow me to ride my bike through the English Garden – to me, one of the biggest city parks ever – in Munich. During the warmer months I spend about an hour on my bike in this stunning park next to the Isar. I have been collecting imagery of trees , the river, small lakes and dog walkers, joggers, people on the phone, lovers. for a while and these are some of my watercolours that are waiting to get recreated as big scale watercolours.
In 2015 I created an alter Ego called Stellar van Bot. Or rather it is my sketching practice with which I explore different techniques or media I didn’t use before. All my digital sketches started with Stellar. She popped up unexpectedly in one of my sketchbooks. My husband and a very closed friend of mine liked her instantly and since then she went through many different stages and became the main character of my journaling entries.
I adore notebooks since ever and have an extensive collection of them. Many are full of not so good stuff. Many of the recents years are full of things and ideas I often do like. I love the secrecy and size. How the pages change once they are covered with sketches. I often sketch while on the road and I remember a moment even better by looking at my sketch than looking at a photograph of the same experience.
Landscapes, patterns, colours, a wild selection of watercolours and highway sketches from a recent road trip. Flowers and the mountains. Another media as counterpart to my detailed illustrations.