I oscillate between my love for drawing and writing: one day I like writing, the other day I need to paint. When I paint, my love for using colours or using graphite (monochromatic artwork) also swings back and forth with a regular rhythm. It is this versatility, this fight between my pen, pencils and palette, that keeps me ambitious and eager to learn new skills, better grammar, and new styles.
My website statistics list almost 190.000 visitors. This prompts me to offer you an index, slightly categorized, so that -perhaps- you will appreciate an article that hasn’t brought you here via search terms.
This website consists of a variety of seemingly unrelated subjects. However, there is one thing that does bind all these different subjects and that is Jane Austin’s advice: ‘Write what you know’. All that I have written or painted starts with inspiration that comes to me, my thoughts, feelings, and take on life. Hopefully my articles offer you great reading pleasure and hopefully my art will enrich your feelings.
Creative Writing
Writing is fun, therapeutic, a good exercise for the brain, and it feels like painting; you start with a draft and over the days you add more layers of thoughts and quotes, more polished vocabulary, more interesting sources, and refinement. Not a day passes in my life without reading and annotating what I read. I love to pen down quotes, sources, thoughts in my dairy which later will enrich my essays or articles. Here are a few of my most visited articles:
Prehistory
During my youth the Middle Ages was my favourite time in history. As I grew older, I found myself drawn to even older times, to Ancient, Neolithic, and Prehistory. At Oxford Department for Continuing Education I followed two courses on The Celts and Prehistory with great pleasure and I haven’t stopped reading books in prehistory ever since. Here are my essays and articles that have our deep past as subjects:
Mandarin Ducks
Picture my website to be a duck pond, surrounded by lush lotus plants. Which water birds will you spot regularly? Mandarin ducks, or Aix galericulata in Latin. This is because I draw and paint mandarin duck commissions. I opened an Etsy shop in 2011 and mandarin ducks stole the show. It is certainly not that I draw and paint mandarin ducks exclusively, I do other artwork too. However, to make my art-making self supporting, I keep on drawing and painting these lovely birds which always fill me with happiness. It is said that by having mandarin duck art in your home, works wonders.
Art Musings
There are many artists who find inspiration in nature, and so do I. But I find inspiration in art perhaps even more. Art inspires art. Culture inspires culture. Love inspires love. I can spend a whole essay on these cliché quotes, explaining in detail how this works (and I have), but sauntering about in art galleries or museums, or leafing through an art-book instantly fills me with inspiration and musings. Enjoy!
Monochromatic Artwork
Although working with colour is soul nourishing, making monochromatic artwork feels remarkably more soulful. It is as if you lay bare the matter of the soul after taking away its colours. Monochromatic artwork often reveals and uncovers the essence of things. I have a great love for my coloured pencils, but I love equally designing monochromatic bookplates. Bookplates are traditionally monochromatic but nowadays they are more and more in three primary or in full colour because colour printing has become affordable.
ART PROJECTS
For miscellaneous posts, scroll down and down each article and see all categories (subjects) that -with one click- offer you more subjects to explore. Another method to find more inspirational posts is looking at ‘Related Posts’ under each posts you have just found.
Paula Kuitenbrouwer
Paula’s portfolio at Instagram
Paula’s art store is at Etsy.
Paula Kuitenbrouwer 