viernes, 18 de noviembre de 2011

Mini book addiction!

I confess, I´m totally addicted to mini books. Empty of course so I can fill them with all kinds of goodies. One of my co-students in New York had these amazing passport sized books from MUJI, and filled them with these cute little drawings. This past week I visited the Muji store in Barcelona and there they were. Only 1,75 euros each. I was able to control myself and only bought four. The first one is half way done.
This weekend I signed up for a workshop with Diego Mallo in la Escosesa and I will definitely bring my mini books.  Can´t wait to see what the pages  look like on monday! I´ll keep you posted.





jueves, 3 de noviembre de 2011

Self promotion on the go!











New York has been inspiring in many ways. But the thing that kept to me most was the importance of self promotion. Even the best commissioned illustrators send off cards or mini portfolios to remind publishers they are still alive and kicking. I haven´t been very good at it. And I guess I believed the world would be able to find me without making myself visible. Well it did not happen! After some really convincing lectures about believing in yourself and how to get yourself out there, I got triggered.

Because of my obsession with miniature objects, the mini portfolio idea immediately appealed to me.

If you google on mini portfolio, the most amazing sites pup op. It felt like walking through a candy store. Moo cards is one of them. Stickerbooks, matchbook portfolio´s almost everything is possible if you have a big fat wallet(because of the shipping costs). unfortunately my wallet  is on a strict diet lately so I decided to use my creativity and produce something myself.

On my last trip to Holland I came across a shopping guide, folded into this fantastic pocket sized booklet.
There you go! My mini portfolio template was presented to me, and all for free. I personalized the sample into my A-4 sized(unfolded) mini portfolio.  It´s all done and ready to fly into the big magical world of children book publishers.

martes, 1 de noviembre de 2011

What´s going on?

What´s going on in miss Pinkelton´s life. Well first of all crisis rules. Making ends meet has always been a daily struggle but ever since crisis took over, it´s even more challenging.  Thank God I´m creative. Although creativity is not enough right now it definitely helps me getting through these rough times.  In general I´m a pretty positive person but I did discover the gloomy sight of my personality these past years.

It´s ok to be depressed about the decreasing financial sources but it shouldn´t keep us from making art. And luckily for me, it doesn´t. I´m working, I´m inspired and concerning the circumstances I´m pretty happy.

After wishing and hoping for it for years I finally made it to New York. Last summer I participated in a summer residency in School of Visual arts. Wow! what a great experience. I met the most amazing talented people. All chasing their dream of becoming a professional illustrator. Something happened over there. I can´t really put my finger on it but I guess I was ready to receive the feed back I needed to get where I´m going.

The most important message was:  just go on, never stop believing it, and if you really want it, make it happen.  That´s what I´m doing right now. I threw away my insecurity and kicked my ass!

What a great feeling. It´s good as it is and everything that comes with it will be received with wide open arms. I want to be prepared when IT(whatever it may be) knocks on my door.

viernes, 17 de diciembre de 2010

Overload!

I really thought that I would be able to maintain regular posting on my blog but it seems I overestimated myself. The digital communication overload is becoming quite overwhelming I must say.  Facebook, email, twitter, online shop, website and blog, I´m in. It´s fun to open your inbox packed with facebook comments and likes. See the daily hits on Google analytics and orders in the shop. But It´s getting heavy.  I have to start thinking about losing some digital weight.

Uncluttering my digital life that´s my goal for 2011.  I will start by closing my online shop. To be honest I didn´t really expect it would become successful. It was fun! And I enjoyed making customized jewelry  But my other activities are taking over. Just recently I caught myself thinking "I hope I don´t get any orders" That´s not good! So instead of stopping smoking(which I already did 7 years ago) january 1 I will officially close Miss Pinkelton.

Focus, trust and faith! I glued these words on my studio wall to remind me! Last year I´ve been blaming crisis and my bad financial situation for things going slow. I know now that it´s all about making a plan an following your bliss.

Be in the moment! Not wishing for things to come but just enjoy what´s already happening. And I think I finally got it.

lunes, 13 de septiembre de 2010

New on the blog!

I´m not completely new on the blog. My old blog Miss Pinkeltonblog still exists but is no longer active due to a password problem. After doing some postings on Facebook I decided to start a blog again. Also decided to write it in English, quite a challenge for a non-native speaker. 


I hope you will forgive my grammatical errors but I´m in the middle of a language-identity-crisis. Being Dutch, living in Spain, in the city of Barcelona, where people prefer to speak Catalan, still feeling more comfortable in English, I decided to share my braindumps in a universal language. So to all you international souls, welcome to PinkeltonPlace. I hope you will enjoy your stay, may it be inspiring and fun!


When I started organizing my new workspace just recently, I came across these loose, unidentified objects. Papers, not even drawings more doodle like scribbles, plastic vendingmachine toys, thingies that I don´t even remember what, or who, they belonged to. Telephonenumbers without a name (should I call to find out  who the number belongs to, or just forget about it). What a mess. Every drawer, I opened had new surprises for me.  I panicked, really I felt completely incompetend to clean out this chaos. (unclutterer, useful site)


I started making piles. "throw away" pile, "maybe keep" pile, "defenitely not throwing away" pile. Instead of throwing away I ended up keeping everything but it was classified, no longer completely unidentified I guess. Nice stacks in the middle of my room.


After I investigated every pile on it´s content, (that took me about 3 days) I kept my organized chaos in neat drawers in my new tidy workspace. It made me feel proud of myself. I managed to get some overview of the stuff that´s been moving around with me, from my studentflat to my first apartment, first house, second one, and finally got packed up to be transported to Spain where we have been living since 2000


It´s embarrassing to see what you get attached to  through the years. And what once was a valuable treasure becomes an unnecessary burden as you get older.  I made some calculations and came to the terrible discovery that if I would keep on collecting "treasures" with the same velocity I´ve been collecting these past years, I most certainly would have to move to a bigger house within 2 years.


That´s defenitely not an options concerning global economical crisis. So there I just discovered a positive side effect of this financial constraining situation.  I had to decide what´s really important to me. Open the drawers and reconsider.


It was more easy than I expected. You just have to make rules, ask some questions about the object you have to throw away.  I came up with these three questions for objects that don´t have an emotional value:
  • Does the object has a purpose,
  • Is this purpose still active,
  • When was the last time I actually used the purpose of this object.
The questions were very helpful and I  threw away lots of papers, thingies and classified, but still, "sort of" unidentified objects.


Although I had been cleaning out an impressive amount of things. There was more then enough left. This was the hard part. I had to go through stuff I´ve been collecting since childhood, with high emotional value.  They might seem stupid things, but every time I let them go through my hands I turn eight again, or twelve, even seventeen. I´m a desperate nostalgic person. And completely unable to say goodbey to my past.


To escape from my hectic and exciting present I mindtravel back to my childhood. Just to remember the feeling I got from the trees in my backyard. The comforting noise of the wind blowing through the leafs. The smell of autumn. It relaxes me, inspires me, makes me feel happy. But also sad 
because of things gone forever.


Because of my desperate need for the past I´ve seemed to forget that today is the past of tomorrow. Today is what my kids will remember and cherish in there future. It´s were they will escape to. This is a huge responsibility, and made me realise that I should be more aware of it. I´m the guardian of my childrens childhood memories now.
They don´t see the value of a first doll, or buzzlightyear, yet. They are way to busy growing up!


Thanks to this awareness I even managed to carry some of my emotional valuables to the garbage bin, and donated my empty drawers to the next generation.