Guess what I found in my inbox this morning? The newest issue of Janine Vangool's "all about YOU" Newsletter (Yes, THE Janine from Uppercase Magazine!), and guess who made an appearance in it?! My thoughts about wonky shapes & low pressure art-making! 🤯😱 I am still in a bit of disbelief, but also so, so grateful... I just had to share this little bit of happy news with my favorite bunch of creative humans because you’ve been cheering me on every step of the way. 💛 You can read the entire issue here

Alright, here‘s my contribution to this weeks prompts. Besides the shelf I‘ve included all of them, sunglasses, friendly (the world looks more friendly with pink glasses on of course and when they‘re even heart-shaped, nothing can go wrong. ✨) and pastel (at least in the background.) 😇

Hello lovely artists, how are you all doing? Is it also hot where you are? Today we had 42°C / 108°F, nice & toasty… I actually wanted to host a little shading live session this week but, believe it or not, I managed to catch a cold. Because what’s more fun than 42°? Yes, 42° with a sore throat and earache 🤪 So I will postpone that to next week. How about you share your family recipes instead? What are you doing against a cold and/or what do you do to keep yourself nice and cool? Let’s have some fun sharing what our grandmothers taught us! Ok, me first: To fight a sore throat you can slowly enjoy a spoonful of honey every hour or so. It’s anti-inflammatory and helps calm irritated mucous membranes. And to keep you cool, you should drink warm water, not ice-cold. Your body has to spend energy warming up ice-cold water, which can make you sweat even more. Who’s next? 😇

Hey everyone and happy Monday! It's time to announce the new prompt for this week, and guess what? My wonderful intern @Peter Schneider (aka husband) has made something for me! He has developed a Drawing Prompt Generator iOS app for me, how cool is that?! From now on we will be using the app to generate our weekly prompts, so even I don't have to sweat and think of something we could draw. 😇 And the best part, you can even choose the challenge level! Relaxed: 1 prompt (a simple "what" --> green) Easy: 2 prompts (a "what" and a "where" --> pink) Medium: 3 prompts (a "what", a "where", and a "mood"! --> yellow) Full wonky chaos: 4 prompts ("what", "where", "mood", AND color suggestion! 😇 --> red) You can interpret them however you like. Digital, traditional, quick sketch, finished illustration, tiny doodle, dramatic masterpiece, suspicious little blob with personality — all welcome. The goal is not to make something perfect. The goal is to show up, play a little and see where the prompts take you. Feel free to share your sketch or finished piece in the community whenever you’re ready. I can’t wait to see what you make! Jutta <3 PS: As we progress with our app I might need a few of you who would like to test the app on their iPhones/iPads. Let me know if you're interested! ✨

since so many of you asked for it, here comes my updated chocolates pattern! This is what I did: - I duplicated the original canvas to keep the old version and work freely on a duplicate, just in case! 😁 - I removed the checkerboard pattern and went with a plain yellow. I tried green and purple, but yellow was my favorite. - I added a different upscaled checkerboard pattern in the same yellow, but set the blend mode to screen to create a brighter hue. Then turned down the opacity until I liked the contrast. - I changed the color of 2 of the pralinés to white, to have more variety - I kept the chocolate in one layer apart from the background so I could still make adjustments to both background (i.e. different colors!) but also to slightly move & rotate some of the chocolates, just to get rid of too much order In general, this is once more a great example for me that less is definitely more, especially when it‘s about the background. Now I am pretty content with the result, although it is lacking a bit of contrast, green or purple would probably look better. I just love the yellow… 😇 What do you think about the before and after?