The Royal Sampler, collaboration with Arlen Dean

 collaboration, drawings  3 Responses »
Nov 132012
 

royal sampler

This piece is another collaboration with Arlen Dean, (Alkaline Samurai on flickr). It’s called The  Royal Sampler because we used over 300 different pens to make it. The size of the drawing is 30,5 x 45,5 cm (12×18 inches), it’s done on 280 g/m (125 lbs)cotton  watercolor paper.
Some of the pens we used are: Sakura color, (gelly rolls) Kuretake co. (ZIG), Deco Color paint pens, uni ball vision, pilot g-tec gells , pilot v precise, tombo, pitt, prisma pens ect ect .. basically every brand you can think of is represented here in multiple forms….

This piece can also be found  in my Society 6 shop.

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And, here is a detail of the drawing:

royal sampler detail

Postcards from Zagreb, photo book

 book, collaboration, photos  3 Responses »
Nov 112012
 

photo book cover

When Arlen and I met and when he first visited Croatia few years ago I was very happy to show him around Zagreb. We took long walks in city downtown and I showed  him all the popular tourist sights  as well as my favorite places. In a way I felt like I was rediscovering my own city and I started taking a bunch of pictures. First I just took photos to make memories of the times we spent together  but with time I got more and more interested in documenting the city, its streets and architecture.

When Arlen came to one of his visits this Summer I was in a phase of starting to shoot film again, mostly using Minolta X-GM he brought me last Winter. I asked him if he would be interested in  being my accomplice in shooting analog and  maybe doing a photo collaboration. He agreed and we spent almost entire September and October documenting streets of Zagreb on film. He used Nikon N80 and I snapped with said Minolta and Superheadz Ultra Wide and Slim toy camera using mostly expired Kodak film.

We decided it would be fun to put our pictures into a book which we called Postcards from Zagreb. Since it was our personal project, at first I thought to make it private but we had  so much fun shooting and putting together a book that I had to share it :)

You can flip through the pages of our joint photo project here.

Also you can see more of my own  (and some of Arlen’s ) analog photos on my tumblr.

photo book

photo book

zg collage

Flower Garden, book preview

 book, drawings, illustration, publishing  5 Responses »
Mar 212012
 

flower garden

Hello Spring! I have a new series of drawings dedicated to Springtime, flowers and flower garden and I put them, all 33 of them into a little, cute book. I will dedicate another big post to this book, for now I’m leaving you with a link to a  book preview.

 

Photo diary: drawing on an apron, brooches from Macedonia and thoughts on self-publishing

 book, DIY, drawings, illustration, musings, photos, work in progress  18 Responses »
Mar 092012
 

Hello Friday! It’s that time of the week when I share my personal, daily photos with you. Last week I took you to a walk through Zagreb downtown but this week I’ll share a glimpse into some of my creative endeavors.

So, sometimes I paint and draw on aprons yet somehow I never remember to take photos of my creations. So this time, when drawing on an apron I decided to photograph the entire process (as well as finished result of course).

<>sketch on an apron
I did this apron for Maja, so I tried to come up with a drawing she might like. I decided on a little house and a home sweet home sign. First I did a sketch on fabric using my trusty uni-ball roller.

wip drawing on an apron
After that I painted the outlines using black textile paint and thin brushes. After the paint was dry I added purple details using Kuretake ZIG farbicolor pen. I got this pen from Arlen, it’s really great to draw with, it has twin brushes  and like the black paint I used it’s permanent on fabrics after ironing. Unfortunate Kuretake pens are not available in Croatia.

finished apron
This is how the apron looks finished and worn! I also made a little wooden friend to go with the apron. I hope Maja will like it.

drenka's brooches
A couple a days ago I got two lovely flower brooches from Drenka who took part in my swap! You can check out her blog here.

life is beautiful
inside of the book
And yet another thing came in the mail this week, a copy of my book Life Is Beautiful. What’s  the deal with that now, you might ask. Well, I put together a booklet of some of my older illustrations using lulu.com. I wanted to test their service, quality of their printing and shipping options. I self-published my first book via blurb.com and now I wanted to try something else. I must admit I love Lulu! Prints of my illos turned out beautifully, colors are gorgeous and paper on which they print is high quality. Their site is easy to use and they offer many,many more options than blurb. However, international shipping prices are really expensive and that is the main reason (well probably the only reason ) I will publish my next book via blurb. Why do shipping prices matter to me? Well, from my experience with the first book, many people wanted to buy a signed copy of the book directly from me instead of ordering it directly from blurb (which I totally understand). So, I had to order my books (that are printed and delivered from Netherlands) to Croatia, sign them and then ship them again to their new home making the whole process much pricier than it should be.
Anyway, I really love lulu.com and I hope they find a way to make their international shipping less expensive.

i love photography canvas
I finished this little painting (5×5 inch) last week but I haven’t took photos of it until today. What to say,I love photography!

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I wish you all wonderful weekend and see you all on Monday when my SUPER SWEET PRINT SALE starts :)

Randomness

 musings, personal  6 Responses »
Dec 272011
 

last summer

As I  enjoyed reading both Deb’s and Beth Retro’s blog post on random facts about themselves I thought it would be fun to write one about myself.

So, here  are random bits about yours truly, in no particular order:

 I simply cannot understand why modern society is so obsessed with  being young (and looking young at any price). I mean youth-hood has it’s perks but from what I’ve learned growing up and growing older and wiser and having more experience is even better. There’s no way I would ever be teenager or re-live my early twenties again! The older I get, the more  I learn about myself the more confident, focused and balanced I am and I really love it.

I love setting goals. The one thing I love more than setting goals is achieving them.

I don’t vote. Never voted in my entire life. I don’t believe in electoral system, I think politicians are simply marionettes of corporate interests. I’m not religious.  I wasn’t brought up that way and I never felt  need to become a part of any religion. I’m aware that both politics and religion are pretty sensitive stuff, so I keep them away from my blog even though I’m pretty opinionated about both topics.

I’m a typical Libra. Or maybe not. Can’t really decide :)

I think that the sexiest thing on a man is his mind. I love intelligent, slightly unconventional, creative men with sense of humor.

There are two major trends in art/design I would love to see go away. First, Super Mario pop-art ( and any ironic  Super Mario designs, t-shirts, jewelry, cupcakes etc…) Second, exploitation of that carry on and keep calm poster. Haven’t that idea been used and abused too many times by now? I would like to design a “carry on and stop exploiting carry on poster ideas already” hehe.

Ever since I was fifteen I wrote  journals in English. I can’t really remember why I started writing in English, probably because I wanted to get better at it. I always enjoyed learning foreign languages mostly because it  never felt like studying but having fun. One of my few regrets in life is not taking lessons in French when I had an opportunity, but, hey , it’s never too late, right?

I always keep a notebook (or several notebooks) near me so I can write down ideas, to-do lists or anything else that comes to mind. I usually fill up to four notebooks a  month with ideas and random thoughts.

I’m pretty obsessed with anything art/creativity related. About 90% of my time and energy is in some way devoted to things art related. And that’s not an exaggeration,  I even dream about drawing and taking pictures.

I prefer cold over warm weather, I really dislike heat and sweating and humidity in Summer. I wish it snowed this Winter.

Fellow bloggers, feel like sharing a bit of randomness about yourself? I’d love to read :)

My first book!

 book  6 Responses »
May 032011
 

news
As you might noticed in lately I’ve been posting mostly drawings from my sketchbook and slightly neglecting my blog (and flickr) and the reason for that is not me losing inspiration or interest in blogging but being very busy with a super exciting project! Not so long ago I started working on my first book, a collection of my illustrations. The book will be out in Autumn 2011. but I should finish most of it by mid June so I’m spending every free moment of my time sketching, coloring and putting together fun, colorful happy illos! The working title of the book for now is Unconditional joy of living because that’s the feeling I try to express in my illustrations. The book is divided into four chapters, every chapter representing one season of the year in up to twenty drawings.
Working on this project is making me happy and absolutely thrilled and I will share more about it soon!

 

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