idle / inaktiv

[ENG]
This blog was used as a rather wild documentation of my work for several years. It was really good practice and, above all, lots of fun. However, since a couple of years, I'm showcasing my work in a more adult way on www.leefje.de. As my technolical world expands, I'm sharing some of my more rough and personal work on the big platform: https://www.instagram.com/leefje.roy/

I'll keep this blog for sentimental reasons and who knows... maybe I'll bring it back to life again one day.

[DE]
Ein paar Jahre lang habe ich diesen Blog in mehr oder weniger regelmäßigen Abständen mit Bild und Text gefüttert. Das war eine gute Übung und hat vor allem Spaß gemacht! Seit einigen Jahren findet Ihr meine Arbeiten in etwas aufgeräumterer Form auf www.leefje.de. Der technische Fortschritt und das Drängen einiger Menschen in meinem Umfeld haben mich außerdem dazu gebracht, meine skizzenhaften und freien Arbeiten auf der großen Plattform zu teilen: https://www.instagram.com/leefje.roy/

Diesen Blog wird es aus sentimentalen Gründen noch ein bisschen geben – und wer weiß, vielleicht belebe ich ihn irgendwann wieder. 

xo,

Leefje

Rathausplatz Hamburg (reminiscing)

As I promised, here are some more drawings I made during the Pentiment summer academy. The class met up at Hamburg's town hall to draw people and city "furniture". I didn't succeed in doing the latter because I was well occupied drawing the most interesting types of tourists (and non-tourists, I guess)! I loved their different postures and clothing and their massive backpacks. My favourite one is the drawing of the little boy pulling his scooter. He was a real cutie.

By the way, the girl with flowing hair actually gave me that ice cold look when she passed by! Why, oh why?

Found new friends both real and on paper

I was asked to be Jutta Bauer's assistant during International Summer Academy Pentiment in Hamburg. It was two weeks of extremely intense working. I learnt a lot about the (my) creative process, combining different techniques and about social group dynamics! I met a lot of inspiring people from different places with completely different backgrounds and life concepts. What's most important, I made new friends! 

I'm going post most of the drawings I created during these two weeks in chronological order. Even the rubbish  rough sketches are included!
The course's topic was just to work on questions. General questions that we ask ourselves. One of my favourite questions in the beginning was "would I be into it?" ("Wäre das was für mich?"). Initially, I asked myself this question when I saw these cool Rollerderby girls at a festival in my city. (They are so MEGA cool, wearing Spandex, listening to Disco music!)

Anyway, I made up this little plot about me standing at the bus stop, looking stoically at posters advertising different things like yoga, motorcycles, boat cruises,... The only thing that would change are the weather and my clothes. I completely dumped the idea during week two, though. I just wasn't able to find the flow within the drawing process. It all ended in a mega unproductive Monday with some frustration on top.
The idea of Pentiment is to provide a "temporary field for experimental working without necessarily creating a final result". That's why I decided to liberate myself from this not 100% working idea. So I just started making stuff that was fun and came out of my hand easily with the flow I had been searching for. Turns out this was the right way to go! But here starts another post.
So for now check out my process of the first couple of days of Pentiment.

Munchies

I've got the munchies! The first thing I thought about when moving to Brussels: FRIES! It turned out there is one of the best (might be THE BEST) friterie just around the corner of where we live. 

A good friend who is from Belgium told me about this flamish tradition. It's having fries every Wednesday! We call it Fritten-Mittwoch. It's a great custom so I adapted it immediately. Still, it's not enough and usually I eat one or two more fries during weekends. Also, I don't know whether it's a proper Belgian tradition or just a thing within her family. Either way I don't mind! 

Here's some little drawings I made earlier today. There's no fries but the overall topic fits I guess.

Never-Ending Grrrls

As always, when I want to get started or sit down for the last good night doodle, I either draw weird faces or grumpy girls' faces. It relaxes me and comes out of my hand with a certain routine. 

I like them although you could say the drawings are nothing more than decorative. I think it's important to share these, anyway! It's kind of democratic. Keeping back your "shit" or less important work all the time is like using one of these beauty filters on Instagram. By the way, I'm on Instagram now. Haha!

This one's bananas!

I'm currently working on a children's book commission about the general topic of justice. How would you share a bunch of bananas if you were tiny and the person to share with was extremely tall? I KNOW! The book will be about bananas (among others). Perfect! I'm really glad I was asked to draw what I love anyway. So here's some little bits and pieces from the process so far. No spoiler, though; I want to keep the tension alive...

Sketchbook pages

Yoga

Some weeks ago I did some real quick sketches of my good friend Lena doing her Yoga routine. It's amazing how elegant and flexible she was! I feel like a giraffe when doing Yoga. It's fun though!