2019 recap

I know, I don’t post much on here anymore. But last year I made a recap of 2018 and I thought I could make it a “tradition”. Mostly for me, so I can look back on them in a few years because photos get lost and memories forgotten.

I didn’t realize how much had happened this year until I searched for some photos to put on here. For example, visiting Berlin in the beginning of 2019 feels like it was ages ago. And when I saw the pictures of my vacation in Italy and France, I thought that was last year, but it wasn’t.

It was a good year, full of making memories.

I had many trips, I went to Berlin, several times to the Netherlands, to Italy, France and Monaco. I went to a festival with friends, which was great. I participated in inktober, hit 10.000 followers on Instagram, started to make YouTube videos, started to make a little money from my etsy shop and created a looot of art. I lost some weight, began to enjoy cooking, redecorated my apartment, so it feels more like home, bought a lot of plants, began to read more again, expanded my Harry Potter obsession to The Lord Of The Rings and had my first “car accident”. You can’t really call it an “accident” though, nobody was hurt, just drove into a garage door.

Summarized, this was an amazing year! These are memories that will stay forever. Next year will be full of changes because my studies are coming to an end and I don’t know what will happen after I get my degree. I will figure it out, though.

Hope you all had an amazing 2019. On to the next chapter!

Love, Jana

I’m back!

Hello, guys! I’m finally back with a new painting! My exams are over and one of the first things I did was start a new piece in my art journal.

This semester was sooo stressful! The summer semester is always way shorter than the winter semester, so less time to work on projects and study for exams. But the biggest problem was that I had like five different group projects which was also very stressful. But in the end, I managed to take three out of four exams. I still have one in October, but I don’t want to think about that now.

But back to art: Since some of you asked me to and I’ve also been thinking of it for a while, I filmed the process of this piece. It’s not a long video, I feel like if I don’t speed it up by 20x it would be kinda boring.

This is a completely new thing for me to do, so I would appreciate any comments, suggestions or critics in general. And let me know if you’d like to see more videos!

Little Update – 21/04/19

Hey, I know I’ve been quite inactive for the last few weeks and that’s why I decided to give you a little update on what’s happening and why I haven’t been posting.

Today I finally managed to finish an art journal spread that I started like two weeks ago. It feels good to be drawing again. Since uni started in the beginning of April, I didn’t really have the time to sit down and draw. In the beginning of the semester, especially the summer semester, I’m always busy meeting friends since the weather is so good and we haven’t seen each other for two months.

But I’m trying to make more time for art, because I miss it and there’s also only one page left in my journal! Maybe I’m gonna make an Artjournal Tour? Don’t know if anyone would be interested in seeing something like this..

On the weekends I’m working as much as I haven’t worked in a while, sometimes even two shifts in one day, which I kind of don’t mind because I need the money to buy more plaaaants! Haha, it’s getting a little out of hand, don’t even know how many I have by now. 50? 60? Or even more? I don’t even wanna know.

Okay enough for the little update. Have a nice day and see you soon!

Hugs, Jana

• 

My Etsy Shop

Since I started taking art more seriously, I dreamed of growing my following to sell my art, someday. It always seemed so far away because I often feel like my art is not good enough or that there’s no one out there who would like to hang my art up on their wall. My mom always told me that if you want to do it, you just have to start a somewhere, because if you don’t have a shop, you’ll never sell anything.

So back in December I opened up my own Etsy shop! I am selling a few different postcards for an affordable price. These are drawings of mine, that I, myself, like to hang on my walls.

Today I am launching another postcard of the piece “Do Plants Have Feelings Too?”. It is one that has been getting a lot of love from you guys and I also really love it, since it kind of represents me as a “houseplant lover”.

Visit my shop here:

https://www.etsy.com/de/shop/somebodysart?ref=shop_sugg

2018 recap

What a year!

I know you haven’t heard from me over here in a long while. But I thought I could make a little “2018 recap” for everyone who actually reads this blog.

2018 was such a looong year. I can’t say it was a good year for me but I can’t say that it was a bad year neither. It had ups and downs, a really big down but a lot of ups.

I went to the Netherlands for vacation 3 times, to Paris and had a trip along the coast of Portugal. So in total I visited 3 countries! I had a lot of amazing moments with my friends, went to concerts, made a lot of art, loved my art, stressed out about finals, passed finals, picked up my puppy, participated in Inktober and completed it, created a calendar and sold it, bought a lot of plants, opened my own Etsy shop to sell my first postcards and had a wonderful Christmas.

Visit my shop: https://www.etsy.com/de/shop/somebodysart?ref=shop_sugg

CALENDAR 2019 – get yours now!

The calendars have finally arrived!

I am sooo happy to announce that they are NOW available through my mom’s website!

https://www.ateliertantetrulla.de/shop/shop-papeterie/shop-kalender/

Exciting News! – CALENDAR 2019

Together with my mom (@conni_altmann), I created a calendar for 2019, which will be available for purchase on her website by September. The calendar will be in German!

Okay, maybe I need to explain this a little. So my mom is an artist as well, as I may have mentioned sometime already. She used to sell calendars for her Travelers Notebooks, that she makes herself, for the past few years. This year she has been struggling to find time and motivation to design the calendars. So she asked me if  I would like to do that and I did!

The theme I chose for the calendar is plants, because me and my mom have been obsessed with them for a while now.

Since we can only order them in a week or two, because we’re on vacation, I can only show you some screenshots of the pages I’ve created.

These are the Travelers Notebooks the calendars are made for. I will also be working on these when we are back from vacation.

Furthermore, I created some cute little notebooks to put in the Travelers Notebook, but I will keep them a secret for now and share them with you when they have arrived.

You can now purchase them here:

https://www.ateliertantetrulla.de/shop/shop-papeterie/shop-kalender/

ART JOURNAL

For the new year I decided to start an Art Journal. Since I got a polaroid camera for Christmas, I needed something to stick the photos in, where I won’t forget about them.

I got this beautiful mixed media journal from “Ranger”. It’s called “dylusions creative journal”. So far I’m pretty happy with it because I love the look of the book. I haven’t worked with watercolors in it, yet, but I’ve used gouache and acrylics and it works perfectly! The pages warp a little bit but as the paint dries they flatten out again.

What I want to do in this journal is write journal entries, write poems  or stories or whatever I feel like, paint or sketch. It’s basically a place for things that I don’t want to put in my sketchbooks. When I was little, I used to write a lot and maybe I’m going to start again in this journal.

I also won’t share every single page of this journal like I do with my sketchbook. It’s a private place where I can put down my thoughts.

But here are some pages that I couldn’t resist showing you.

 

Moving

I think moving out of your parents house is a big step. I’m starting to go to university now, and since the uni is not in my hometown, I have to move out. Fortunately the school is near enough that I can come home on weekends.

I really like living with my parents and my dog but I am also excited to get more independent and live alone. I think the most exciting part of moving out is buying new furniture and decorations and plants for the apartment. That’s so much fun!

my little plant family

At first, I thought it would take some time until I feel comfortable. But now, that I have lived here for almost two weeks, I can say it was not as hard as I thought it would be. I feel comfortable and I really like my apartment but it doesn’t really feel like home yet.

I think that’s rather because of the new city than because of the apartment. I haven’t seen that much of the city yet, except for the university and the area where I am living. Today I walked a little around in the city. It a small, old city but kind of cute.

“I hope that a fresh start into a new part of my life will give me new inspiration for art and things like that. A new, clean workspace can do wonders, I hope.” – That was what I first thought and what I hoped for. But I totally hate the first drawing I did in here. Maybe I’ll have to get used to the new surroundings and then my drawings will get better again?

In this post I just wanted to show you what my apartment and my new workspace look like right now, even though it is not quite finished yet. I really like how simple it is.

A carpet is still missing and obviously a lot of books in my bookshelf. But why should I bring all my books? Now I have more motivation to fill that empty space!

And if you’ve made it until here, you’ll also get to see my newest painting, the first one I did in my apartment, even though I am not completely satisfied with it. If I’m honest, I gave up on this painting when it was only halfway finished. Some paintings won’t come out as good as other ones, but that’s life and hopefully I will love the next one or the one after that, again.

I also did some gold embellishment on the eyes.

Welcome to my blog!

Hello!

As you can see, I decided to start a blog. This is something I’ve always wanted to do but I never knew what to write about. Now that I am painting and I’m kind of satisfied with my artworks, I feel like that is a thing to write about.

So I started painting almost a year ago, in October 2016, and since then I have filled almost 3 sketchbooks! I’ve improved quite a bit. If you’d like to follow my development as an artist, feel free to check out my Instagram, which is also somebodysart.

So how did I come up with this name and what does it mean? To be completely honest, this name does not have a big meaning. I really wanted to start an Instagram account about my art and I didn’t know which name to use. I didn’t want to use my real name because I thought it would be awkward if my friends and other people I know, knew about my art. They should think, if they’d see my account, it’s just somebodys art. And still, only my parents know about somebodysart.

Here, on my first post, I want to show you my first sketches and drawings, which I was super proud of, but now that I look back at it, I can see all the mistakes that I’ve made. My first sketchbook was a Moleskine and the second one was from the brand Stillman & Born from the zeta series, I think, which is mixed media paper.

 

My first ever sketches using a reference photo.

More sketches from reference.

This was the first time I tried to use watercolor in my Moleskine sketchbook. Didn’t work out because it wasn’t watercolor paper. Second page shows some watercolor swatches and doodles.

Here’s my first painting done with watercolor on watercolor paper.

The first two pages of my second sketchbook – I was super proud of them!

My first landscape painting from reference.

My first figure studies from a book, my mom gave to me. This was also the first time painting with gouache on a black background.

More landscapes and figure studies.

This was my first portrait that turned out really well. I’m still proud of this and I also still like the hand on the right side.

This painting here, was my first portrait done with gouache. I still really like it!

These are the last two pages of my second sketchbook.

I hope you’ve been able to see some of my progress through my first two sketchbooks. Maybe, some day if you’d like, I’ll make a whole video about my sketchbooks, so you can see everything I did.