7 Days of Inspiration

Let me tell you about a beautiful dutch initiative. In 2009 Martijn Aslander felt inspired by the clean up project in Estland and decided to found the 7 Days of Inspiration. His idea: to give the Netherlands an upgrade by spreading inspiration on social goodwill, culminating in 7 Days of Inspiration.

 

7 Days of inspiration has grown to be a week full of positivity.

 

This year the 7 Days took place in the first week of march. 14 Dutch cities were involved! All kinds of people came together to start all kinds of inspirational sustainable initiatives.

I contributed to the magazine that was launched that week. The magazine found it’s inspiration in a dutch part of the twitter community called “dare to ask”. You can use the hashtag #daretoask if you have some burning question, and with which you can make an appeal to other tweeps to help you out. The magazine thought this was characteristic of social goodwill.

41 Professionals collaborated in this magazine. Illustrators and photographers were asked to use a tweet as inspiration for their art. The one I used said: who wants to make a dance of joy with me?

My illustration:

 

ellen vesters vreugdedans dance twitter

 

ellen vesters vreugdedans dance twitter

 

Very happy when I opened the magazine (and the paper smelled sooo good!):

 

ellen vesters vreugdedans dance twitter

 

Here’s a link to the complete magazine, I am on page 31:

http://www.7dimag.nl/

 

Inspiring artists

My sources of inspiration…
First up are Rich Stow and his gingerbeards. Rich Stow is an artist with a huge portfolio full of fun. Apart from being a beard lover myself, I love his sharp sense of humor. The looseness of his drawings and the non-perfection of it all (of course!), the rough hand lettering, the coloring outside the lines bring a smile to my face every time.

 

 

Next up in the beard department is Kelly Lasserre, whose bearded print I actually have hanging on my wall. Next to graphic images like the one shown here, and her pen and ink drawings, she also manages to compile powerful images out of strong combinations of planes of color, sometimes also adding different textures. There’s also some more detailed work out there, but to me she’s most impressive in this rough kind of work.

 

 

Another person that can be considered an expert at coloring is Sophie Alda. This woman manages to not put in any line in her illustrations! The forms and colors in her work completely come together and are able to bring alive the most playful, sometimes edgy, characters.

If you visit the website of David Fullarton you already are surprised by the creativity and the dynamic nature of his opening page. It’s so much fun seeing this explosion of lines, colors and words instead of all the plain structured black and white that is out there. This page completely reflects his work. He seems to be strong in every kind of media that is out there. He can throw around words as easily as pen and ink and pencils and is incredibly amusing doing it.

 

 

Last but absolutely not least, the world of Jenni Saarenkyla manages to touch me everytime that I enter. Her work is so delicate, her coloring amazing. No words, just let it fill you up…