Ranunkel, Ranunkel, let down your hair...

One of my favorite spring flowers is Persian buttercup.

The red Persian buttercups are something between red poppies and red roses. They have the pasionate look and the velvet touch of red roses. However, their stems and buds are slightly hairy and the beautifully sharp contrast between their blood-red petals and midnight-black pistils remind me of red poppies in summer.

The German name of Persian buttercup is Ranunkel. It sound quite similar to "Rapunzel" to me. Have you ever heard of "Rapunzel", a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, telling a story of a young, beautiful woman with very long, golden hair, who is imprisoned in a tower in the middle of the woods? Since my little girl is a fairy of red Persian buttercups, she doesn't have golden, but black hair, which goes better with the color red.

Ranunkel, Ranunkel, let down your hair...

This is how the drawing was made step-by-step:

And ta-da, the final outcome! 

The magic of cherry blossom

All my exams are over. It's now time to draw again.

I made the sketch for this watercolor several days ago while learning for the last exam of this semester. What a relief hearing the sound of pencils scratching on paper! I always wonder, why some people disklike this wonderful scratching sound so much. It sounds so beautiful and promising, much nicer than the scratching sound of chalk on a blackboard or a knife on a plate. I assume, that is the sound of an idea.

I'm very sure, spring has arrived safe and sound. The sun shines again. Birds are tweeting merrily. Eagerly numerous flower buds are longing for blooming. And I feel the fragrance of love in the air. 

One of my favorite moments of spring is the blooming of cherry blossoms. The moment is just like magic.

Forest animals

One year has passed since I made my typography paper cut "Cras numquam scire". 
This is the first paper cut I made this year. It is supposed to be a birthday gift for a friend's father, who turned 75 years old this year and adores the art of cutting paper designs. I finished the paper cut one day before my trip to Strasbourg, France. 
Someone told me, the paper cut brought back his childhood memories of watching the TV series "The Animals of Farthing Wood", based on a book of the same title written by Colin Dann. What a coincidence!

Lost in a cloud of butterflies

Last summer, I purchased a book named "Gioconda " by British writer Lucille Turner, an excellent historical fiction of Leonardo da Vinci's life. I love the way the book opens inside the mind of the solitary boy Leonardo roaming the countryside, being fascinated by mechanics of butterflies, watching rivers to see exactly how water moves, collecting dead animals to dissect.

"A small boy knee deep in meadow flowers of humming violet, blazing white, is lost in a cloud of butterflies. He holds out his net,..., and waves it through the air, making eddies and currents but catching only sunlight. He flies this way and that, chasing wings that do not want to be caught, until finally he gives up, sits on a clump of moss and watches the stream instead...Time for another approach, he thinks. Let the butterfly come to you. He sits still and waits..."

Immediately after reading these sentences, I began to make a sketch of a small boy standing in the middle of a wild flower meadow and observing a lek of colorful butterflies dancing in the air. For some inexplicable reason I didn't feel like finishing the drawing and just left it undone until yesterday.

Happiness is a butterfly

Two close friends of mine wrote on their card, sent to me on my birthday, a beautiful quote of Nathaniel Hawthorne- an American short-story writer and novelist:
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you”.
The quote is just so lovely. I was very touched and inspired at the same time. It immediately made me feel like drawing again. Thank you so much, my dear friends!

 

 

Melody for a healed soul

It seems when something ends there's always something waiting to begin.
Every parting is a chance to start again. Make failure your friend and mentor, since we all know: "The only failure is the failure to learn from failure."
My new and maybe, very long journey has just begun. I'm at same time confused, disorientated but exciting and hopeful.

"Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.
 Let it not be a death but completeness.
 Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.
 Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.
 Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
 Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence.
 I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way."
                                                           - The Gardener- Rabindranath Tagore

Cras numquam scire

"Cras numquam scire" is Latin for "Tomorrow never knows". 

While learning for the exams at the university, I made this paper cutting at break just to give variety to this tiresome and boring time.That's why it was not really as well done as I expected it should be.

Like a broken butterfly

Sunny days could be a pain, if one's heart is weighted down by sorrow. 

Rainy days calm me down, since the gray color of the sky, that heavy feeling in the air before the rain and the very strong earthy wet dirt smell after it seem to correspond to my blue thoughts.

If my soul were a butterfly, it would be now a broken one. 

Dackel loves butterflies

This is a very small drawing quickly made just for fun. 

Dackel is one of my favorite German dog breeds. I'm glad that where I live is located near a Dackel club and therefore sometimes I can see a lot of Dackels at the same time crossing the street to the bus stop or have a chance to watch them performing amazing tricks in the conformation show taken place on the first day of July every year. 

A cocoon of love

While listening to Norah Jones' new album "Little Broken Hearts", I wanted to create a new postcard which could remind me of the fragileness of love and its care dependency. 

I remember that someone once told me, that love is a tree. It takes nourishment neither from the earth nor from the air, but from you. 

My stage is my garden.

This spring break was not enjoyable at all. Too many things at home were broken at the same time. Too many things happened. I was tired and couldn't create any drawings for two weeks.

Two days ago, I dug up some old sketches to look for new inspirations and found a poor sketch of a ballerina. I completely forgot, when and for which purpose I made this sketch. What a waste, if I would throw it away.
I gave the fragile ballerina a pair of purple butterfly wings and turned her into a small fairy dancing elegantly on a flower in a summer garden.

A Little Girl

This is a small drawing in size of a postcard done last night, after I had dinner with two friends of mine.

Currently, I cannot cook and wash dishes at home, since the waste water pump is broken and the stove doesn't work. (They share the same electrical safety system. As long as the pump is still not repaired, the stove will remain cold.) Eating out is now the best and the only choice.
The last two weeks seemed like the coldest time ever. It's fortunately getting warmer now and made me long for the fist plum blossom of this year, which should appear before my birthday at the end of March.

I simply call this drawing "A Little Girl", since no better ideas for a name passed through my mind.

Flora's new scarf

Although it's still cold, spring items are arranged in shopping malls. I bought a scarf with butterfly print yesterday. It inspired me to create this drawing.
Flora is a lovely name for girls. It always reminds me of the goddess of Spring in Botticelli's painting "Primavera". Although Venus stands at the center of  painting, Flora attracts me more. The dress she wears is just gorgeous.
My Flora is covered by different flowers, such as snowdrop, cosmos, camellia, rose, pansy, checkered lily, poppy, mistletoe, coneflowers, etc. Colorful butterflies are flying around her slim, young neck, as if they were a scarf of hers.

Waldgeist

This is my first drawing of the year 2012, made with ink and watercolor.

A Waldgeist in German is a woodland spirit, which is believed to live in the forest and protect living things with a pure soul. 

I hope, next time when I take a walk in the forest near my place, I could encounter a waldgeist. It might bring me good luck for the whole year. :)

The magic hat

One day, Boy A found a magic hat. Where did the hat come from? No one knows. 

(Although I am the creator of this drawing, I don't know either. The only thing I know is that, the hat will change Boy A's life forever.) ^^
Inspired by the wizard's hat from Tove Jansson's Moomin books

Speedpost Service

A brand-new speed post service offer for lovers of culture of writing and vintage style or eco-warriors...

Be bored with Airmail etiquettes and troubled by greenhouse effect?

Let's GO GREEN by the use of our new Snail Mail stickers! 

(Caution: This is just a work of fiction.)

I wonder whether Mr. Postman could feel offended due to delivering this postcard. :P

Front side:

 Back side:

Sleeps with butterflies

I thought of Tori Amos' song "Sleeps with butterflies" and how much I loved it six years ago while making this paper cutting.
This is my second try at paper cutting. I chose three of my favorite butterlies: the Common Green Birdwing (Ornithoptera priamus); the Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and the Common Yellow Swallowtail (Papilio machaon). The fourth butterfly is supposed to be a Glasswing butterfly. The magnet butterfly placed beside the paper cutting is an imitation of a Rice Paper butterfly (Idea leuconoe).
Monarch butterflies may not be the butterflies I love most. However, the story of their very long journey (about 4000 km) from the USA to Mexico every year has always bewitched me.
Have you ever heard of this annual migration ? What a fascinating picture in which there are hundred thousand Monarchs floating in the air!

Alice and the smoking Caterpillar

On 3rd August, I visited a Vietnamese family having lived in Vienna, Austria for years. When the people there were chatting and making dinner, I-who are bad at small talk and not really fond of preparing a meal for a big family- asked for paper and pens to make some doodles of the mushroom garden decors. While drawing these ceramic things, I remembered the smoking Caterpillar in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
I finished the raw sketch in Vienna and started to color it, after I went back home in Germany. Ink and colored pencils were used to create this drawing.

Moomintroll, I love U!

I was very happy in Moomintroll's land. It's fun learning a bit Finnish to flirt around. :P
Thao: "Sinulla on kauniit siniset silmät!" (What beautiful blue eyes you have!)

Moomin: "Kiitos!" (Thank you!)
Snork Maiden (Moomin's girlfriend): Hmmm...

For info about the Moomins: http://www.moomin.com/

Daydreamer

This is the picture I drew for the daughter of the family I lived with in Finland. This fourteen-year-old cute girl loves pink and purple. Paljon kiitoksia! It was very nice staying with you and your parents :)