Language of flowers: Phlox

Language of flowers: Phlox - "Our souls are united."

"A garden without a phlox is not only a mistake, but also a sin against summer." - Karl Foerster, gardener and garden writer

A phlox may not have a stunning beauty, but its gentle scent is just lovely. I love to receive flowers and actually receive them currently quite often. "What a lucky girl!" is what I talk about myself now. I have thought about creating a series of botanical drawings of the flowers I received. Each flower in the drawings will carry with it a common symbolic definition according to Western Culture.
Over the years I will have a great collection of drawings of flowers or plants people gave me, which is likewise a hand-made dictionary of the language of flowers, a nearly forgotten way of communication, and a treasure chest filled with warm memories of loving and being loved.

  “I must have flowers, always, and always.”- Claude Monet

Sketches from Hallstatt in Austria

I went camping with two close friends of mine in Hallstatt in Austria.
Hallstatt is a lovely, small village located in the Salzkammergut, a region in Austria. My friends told me, that Hallstatt is so beautiful, that the replica of the village was built in Guangdong province in China last year. I don't like the idea, that Hallstatt was copied. The replica is just a waste. What makes Hallstatt a fairytale-like village is not only just its charming wooden houses, but also its wonderful location, i.e. the stunning beauty of the Alpine lake landscape surrounding the village, which is uniquess and unimitable.

I stayed in Hallstatt only two days and had just enough time to do two sketches. 

 09:40 a.m., 23.06.2013, House No. 133 Oberer Berg

 06:30 a.m., 22.06.2013, at the camping site

Hallstatt on Dwellable

Moleskine Sloth Limited Edition

Sloths are cute and seem to have a permanent smile on their face.

They move rarely, only when necessary and even then very slowly. Being lazy seems to be their specialty. Undoubtedly all sloths master the way of enjoying life.

The Moleskine Plain Cahier Journals with a simple cardboard cover are my favourite. They are small, thin, light, portable and have no lines or grids. You can have them in your bag or your pocket the whole day, and everyday your abstract ideas can be realised onto paper. You can also modify the cover the way you want. Theses small journals allow all flights of imagination.

These sloth drawings were done at break between two lectures at the university, with ball pen, Pentel brush pen and Faber Castell artist pen.

Unfinished

Several weeks ago, before the trip to Bruges, I made this drawing, since I felt trapped.
It seems, not our body, but our mind is a cage. It imprisons us and keeps us from all opportunities in life.
I'm a new soul now. My mind is clear and wide open. The drawing is left UNDONE.

Wanna be a teen girl again!

I went to Heinerfest with a very good friend of mine two days ago.

Have you ever heard of this festival? It is an annual festival in Darmstadt, Germany, believed the second largest city festival in Germany, celebrated at the beginning of July and will take 5 days. On the last day of the festival, there will be a beautiful closing firework show. This time I enjoyed the show with my friend and we had lots of fun.

My friend, she brought hopes, inspiration, wise advice and lots of laughs. She and the festival made me feel like being a happy teenager again. Best friends forever! 

A Happy Summer Bride

Leafing through the lovely DIY wedding lookbook of Mollie Makes made me feel like sewing a wedding dress for myself. (I have a sewing machine at home.)

My best friend told me: "It's a good idea to keep you busy. Because of your lack of skill, it will take you years to finish the dress for sure. Until then you may have already found Mr. Right to wed."

What a clever friend she is!

Life of Bugs- A paper cutting

This paper cutting inspired by bugs is supposed to form a pair with another paper cutting of mine called Sleeps with butterflies.

Some of my favorite bugs and beetles were chosen.
From top to bottom and from left to right in the picture, they are Eupholus linnei, seven-spotted ladybugs (Coccinella septempunctata), Batocera rufomaculata, Stag beetle (Lucanus cervus), Goliath beetle (Goliathus cacicus) and Cyriopalus wallacei.

 I made this paper cutting as a birthday present for myself.

The pencil sketch:

And the end result:

Magazine Girl

I made this portrait from a picture I saw in the French magazine "marie claire idees" issued in March, 2012.
I don't know the model's name. She looks gorgeous in the fashion picture collection called "C'est vous l'artiste" inspired by some well-known artists' clothing. The picture I like most is the one in which the model has a beautiful hairstyle inspired by Frida Kahlo.
Famous names are mentioned, such as Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Camille Claudel, Salvador Dali and Yves Klein. I can't help seeing this picture collection again and again.

And this is how the hairstyle, which bewitched me, looks like.

La dame de thé- The tea lady

I call this drawing a touch of romance and a sigh for the lost beautiful old days. 

When I talk about tea, I mention neither herbal tea nor fruit tea. To me, the word "tea" means the hot aromatic beverage prepared from the leaves or leaf buds of the Camellia sinensis plants. Through different techniques with which it is produced and processed, tea is classified into white tea, yellow tea, green tea, oolong, black tea and post-fermented tea.

I got my inspiration from the antique botanical lithography illustration of the tea plant from the German medicinal guide "Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen", one of the most well-known handbooks of medical plants in the 19th century.

Big Cat

 

Miao! Big Cat had a sweet dream.

I'm gonna lock my heart

"I'm gonna lock my heart"

"I'm gonna lock my heart. And throw away the key. I'm wise to all those tricks you played on me. I'm gonna turn my back on love. Gonna snob the moon above. Seal all my windows up with tin. So the love bug can't get in. Park my romance right alone the curb. Hang a sign upon my heart "please don't disturb". And if i never fall in love again. That's soon enough for me. I'm gonna lock my heart. And throw the key..." ( sung by Greta Keller)

Dear Rabbit!

One day, after school, I went home and found my beloved gray rabbit dead in the garden. The poor little creature lied peacefully with his closed eyes on the soft grass. Tears flooded my eyes, I said to myself:"He's just dreaming of a huge carrot field somewhere over the rainbow".