The things I learnt about watercolour

 Dear friends,

I hope you are well, happy and warm.

It has been a while since I wrote here ! So, here is to my first 2019 post - and I hope I will be able to keep the rythm and post (kind of) regularly around here. It always makes me happy to read and answer your comments, and it is so much easier to have a small talk here than on Instagram (or maybe it is just me who has big fingers and kind of struggle sometimes to type long messages on the phone ?)

Anyway, let's get to the point ! (I can be so talkative sometimes)

I don't know if you follow me on Instagram, but you might have seen there already that one of my wish for this new year is to share more about my process and all the "behind the scenes" of the illustrations I post there.

While I was in Spain last month, a little sentence came to my mind as we were walking in the street. " One day, I traveled to a little planet, and you were there, waiting for me". I knew I had to illustrate this and make something with it, because I liked this sentence very much. And then I thought that maybe it would be nice to record the process behind it and share it with you.

Nothing useful (& Copic Marker doodles)

Dear friends,

First of all, I just want to thank all of you who took the time to post a comment and tell me a bit more about yourselves on the last article ! This made me so happy ♥

Social medias can be quite "self-centered" sometimes, and this is not a side of it I love. So being able to share a bit more here is wonderful. It is like having a conversation rather than just posting my own things ! So, thank you, with all my heart 😊

As I am starting to write, little Marcel just came onto the desk and sat between my arms, in front of the computer. It is not that convenient to write properly, but it is so cute I cannot tell him to leave ! I will write slowly today, and this is okay.

To write here again

Dear friends,

I am so happy to write here again ! 
I am sitting right next to the window ; I always push a small table next to the window in this winter-y period, so I can get more light (and be closed to the heater which makes it even better) ! Let me show you : 

So, here, warm and happy, looking at all the yellow leaves in the garden outside, I wanted to write a few words for you who take the time to visit this blog. Yesterday, I realised that some of my illustrations on Instagram did not have as much interactions as they used to a few weeks/months earlier. So I posted a poll in one of my stories, asking people if they still saw my illustrations in their timeline. Most of them did (about 70% of them), but some did not. And some people even took the time to send me messages (thank you ! I am always happy to read your words ♥), saying that Instagram might be slowly dying, and that blogs are also very convenient to interact with people. I have no idea, I thought for a really long time that blogs were kind of "dead" now ! Is that true ? Please give me a sign, something, if you think the contrary :-)

Where the magic happens

 7th, August 2018

Dear friends,

Hello, hi, how are you ?

I am writing to you while I should actually finishing my painting (I really need to finish it today and it is already more than 6pm - and I will not be able to draw much after 7pm... please wish me luck ♥).

That kind of friends to me

Dear friends,

How are you today ? This is such a beautiful Friday and I am very excited for the weekend to come. I still have some things to work on today but I think today will be much more quiet than the rest of the week.

Look at this gorgeous light !

And at this gorgeous view from the window :-)

It has been ages since I last posted something here (I mean, I did post the link to my video some months ago, but apart from this it has been a really long time !). To be honest, I am not so good at writing. It is funny because I used to write A LOT when I was younger, in high school. I think I was actually spending more time writing than drawing by that time. I was writing ton of little stories, short stories, even started a novel (and only wrote 20 pages haha, but I really had the whole thing planned in my head - and it is still there, I must say I still like the idea !). But I don't know, I lost the habit of writing somewhere in between the pass of the day.

Just wanted to show you my cat sleeping on the floor because she is really cute and she melts my heart

A flower a day - Une fleur par jour

Bonjour les amis,

J'espère que vous allez bien ! La semaine dernière (ou celle d'avant, je ne sais plus trop, j'ai mis un peu de temps à monter tout ce que j'avais filmé !), comme le soleil s'était caché (bon, d'ailleurs, il n'est pas encore vraiment revenu), j'ai décidé de contrer le ciel tout gris en couvrant une page de mon sketchbook de croquis de fleurs !

Pour cela, je me suis aidée du livre "The concise British flora in colour" de W. Keble Martin, un joli livre que j'ai trouvé chez un bouquiniste la dernière fois que je suis allée à Edimbourg. Et puis, comme il y a quand même eu un jour ou deux de beau temps, je suis aussi allée dessiner un peu des fleurs de la vraie vie dans le jardin ! 

Il m'arrive de culpabiliser lorsque je passe du temps à gribouiller dans mes carnets au lieu de travailler sur mes différents projets ou commandes, mais je me rends toujours compte par la suite que cela vient en fait enrichir mon travail - maintenant, j'ai un peu plus de genre, formes et couleurs de fleurs qui me viennent instantanément à l'esprit lorsque je dois en intégrer dans une illustration (c'est-à-dire, très souvent, puisque je ne peux pas m'en empêcher, et qu'à moins qu'un client ne me l'interdise expressément, il est probable que je continue d'en gribouiller absolument partout jusqu'à la fin de mes jours).

Bref, trêve de blabla, j'espère que ce petit aperçu de mon carnet vous plaira !

Belle journée et à bientôt,

Cécile

Dear friends,
I hope you are well ! Last week (or the week before, I do not remember actually, it took me so much time to edit everything I filmed), as the sun was hiding behind some moody grey clouds, I decided I would cover one of my sketchbook page with colourful flowers !
So I used a very pretty book I bought in a second-hand bookshop last time I went to Edinburgh, called "The concise British flora in colour" by W. Kebble Martin. And, as the sun was coming back little by little, I also decided to go to the garden to sketch "real life flowers" !
I always feel kind of guilty when I doodle in my sketchbooks instead of working on my projects or commissions, but then I always realise that it actually helps my work quite a lot : now, I have so much more shapes, colours and type of flowers coming instantly to my mind when I need to draw some in an illustration (which means, almost all the time, because I cannot control myself when it comes to flowers - if a client does not explicitely forbidd me to add some, I will always do so !).
But enough talking, I hope you will enjoy this little insight inside my sketchbook !
Have a lovely day,
See you soon,
Cécile

Les jolies choses de Mai

Aujourd'hui, j'ai du pain sur la planche - beaucoup de pain sur la planche, mais telle que vous me voyez là, j'ai passé la matinée à regarder les photos prises ces dernières semaines et à retravailler mes favorites, pour m'entraîner. Et puis, je me suis souvenu de l'article que j'avais posté en Février 2017, avec des photos de toutes petites choses, prises autour de moi, rien d'extraordinaire, mais jolies. Et j'ai pensé comme regarder cet article régulièrement me fait sourire, il me rappelle que tout (ou presque) peut être joli autour de nous si on le regarde avec un nouvel oeil.

Alors, voilà les jolies choses que j'ai vues au mois de Mai (et un peu fin Avril aussi). J'espère qu'elles vous feront sourire, ou rêver, comme elles m'ont fait rêver lorsque je les ai moi-même regardées avant de déclencher l'appareil.

Today, I have a lot of work to do - really a lot, but as you can see, I only spent the morning looking at some pictures I took these last weeks, and working on my favourite ones with Photoship, just to practice. And then, I remembered that article I posted here in February 2017 (such a long time already), with pictures of little things, things I saw around me, nothing spectacular, but they were pretty things. And I thought how happy it makes me everytime I look back at it, reminding me that (almost) everything can be beautiful around us if we look at it in a certain way.
So, here are some pretty little things I saw around me in May (and also a bit in April). I hope they will make you smile, or dream, just like they made me dream when I was looking at them before pressing the camera button.

(Et puis, promis, je vais me remettre à travailler sur l'article qui parle de la fresque - il faut juste que je trouve le temps et la motivation, que l'alignement des planètes les fassent apparaître pour moi le même jour - mais cela devrait probablement arriver avant fin 2030 !) 

(And I promise, I will start again working on the mural article - I just need time and motivation, the planets will probably have to get aligned for me to get both on the same day, but it should happen before 2030ends !)