As jobs seem to not be on the horizon for me, I decided to focus on a personal project of mine I’ve been thinking about for a few months now. I am making a series of ink illustrations and I am aiming to create a book collection out of it. Here is the most recent one I completed and scanned yesterday: it is a beautiful oak tree, one of my favourite plants <3
A few seasons have passed since my last post. I feel sometimes I am still unsure of how to tackle this new blog and what to share. Online presence feels unsafe, probably because of all this ai theft and it’s unpredictability. I found myself removing and reposting some of my old articles, doubting whether to share images of my work again or not.
Anyway, real life, physical life, keeps its rhythm here up North: my family in Italy is already experiencing summer heat while I am writing looking out of the window of my studio, fresh breeze coming in, the leaves of the trees wet from the rain.
Summer approaches as a forever lasting Spring. I love it.
I am preparing some prints and stickers for an upcoming artist alley in town, with music in my ears as always and a mug of tea.
I take it slow as in only a few months I will be a mum of a baby girl and my body needs more and more rest. I am full of joy and strong emotions come and go. There are so many things I want to do and imagine to do together as a family, from exploring nature and create things together to simply let our child grow in a home full of colours, books, music, plants and yummy recipes.
Now in my 5th month, I feel my energies coming back to me and a burst of creativity is flowing again. I want to immerse myself completely in this feeling, get creative, crafty and savour Nordic Summer, its beautiful light and energy as much as I can.
Until the next post, bye for now. Sabina
I just rediscovered this footage I took 5 years ago. Time flies, I was living in Northern Spain back then. I still very much love to draw with ink pens.
The air is crunchy cold, October is here and so it is my favourite season, when I can wear soft and cosy sweaters and scarves. Also Mr. Wolf seems to agree with me here.
Sabina
Do you know that feeling of not knowing how to answer the question: “what is your favourite colour?”
I never know how to explain and usually I end up answering one of the many colours I like, but the real answer for me is: my brain works in colour palettes.
Yes, because colours can be perceived differently depending on how they are matched together and once the match is perfect, it is pure visual asmr.
I like to paint using specific combinations of colours and sometimes I discover new ones, like for this painting test here: I was craving warm tones (yes, my craving for Autumn is very real) and I wanted specifically to use “butter yellow”.
I’ve been seen that colour everywhere, in cottagy kitchens on Pinterest, on cozy sweaters… I wanted to use it without necessarily pair it with blue or cool green, so I picked up another favourite of mine: “terra di Siena bruciata”, (or “burnt Sienna” in the misspelled English translation of my town’s name).
Warm toned down green followed up and now I have this 3 colours test that just makes me happy when I look at it. 🙂
Sabina
It’s there! It’s done! Hurray!
And now… I am so precious about it that I don’t dare using it.
I have also been doing some lino-printing. I wanted to prepare a present for a friend, so I took out my tools and started inking an old linocut I made of a fox.
I used oil painting for this one and printed on rough watercolor paper… not a smart way to approach it but I have a reason for it:
I tried to replicate a print I had made 2 years ago that turned out too rough and washed out; it was a bad experiment for me but it became surprisingly loved by my friend. Reproducing that print for her was really hard, with the thick oil paint not sticking to the paper.
I’m not going to use this combination again but my friend is happy and that’s what matters. 🙂
Finding lino-print proper ink is tricky: a couple of days ago I found some in a local hobby shop and decided to try it out:
As you can see the result with this ink (on the same paper) is very different and highly satisfying.
There is a sad part tho: once the prints are dry the ink comes off at the first smush of water. -_-
It isn’t waterproof as it should be. I’m disappointed and once again I am in the hunt for the perfect affordable ink for lino-printing, a real one. I like how the prints came out so I’ll keep them, safe from splashes and sweaty fingers.
Sabi
Hello hello!
It is 2025 and I am starting a blog, how crazy is that?! I figured: if I’m not posting pictures of my on-going crafts on social media, then… I can maybe use my good ol’ website?
So here we are, week one! Currently Friday 11th 2025, on a warm sunny day in Denmark. I am writing from my cubicle office, my little cozy nest, where I love to spend time even when I’m not working on storyboards, just painting and crafting away.
Today I picked up an old project I had started more than 2 years ago and discarded (I still do not comprehend why) immediately after just a few brush strokes.
It is a totebag where I am hand-painting green lush trees.
I am in my green phase after all: last week I dyed for the first time some clothes at home, turning them into forest green beauties I am now wearing all the time.
So here it is, the totebag, back on the desk, starting to take shape.
And I love it!
I am going to continue painting it next week and see how it turns out. I only have one colour, specific for fabric, but I don’t mind.
Bye for now, have a lovely weekend!
Sabina
This is how my art on IG looked like, in chronological order, from my first art post in 2015 until now, 2025. AI training by META makes posting on Instagram and Facebook very scary. I decided to protect my art and, once and for all, delete it all from those platforms, saving my old pictures here in this article.
Instagram was for me a way of making a visual journal, depicting my life month after month, after year. I can still recognize every moment of the past 10 years:
My post-uni days in Firenze in 2015, preparing a portfolio for an illustration course I was then admitted in September 2016. Getting myself the proper cotton paper to paint on, the scary expensive one, for the first time. Falling in love with the combination of watercolour and soft pencils.
Moving abroad in December 2017, trying to decide what to bring with me.
In the bag only the essentials: a watercolour kit, a few Derwent crayons (colorsoft and graphite) and some cheap Stabilo ink pens.
Moving first to Lille for a month, then to Cardiff in February 2018 and Galway in 2019. I started taking long walks observing Nature around me, so different from the Mediterranean one I was used to. I drew local birds and plants, trying to catch the different light with my colour palette: that pale bright Nordic light that struck me more than anything else. 2020 came and changed a lot of things: it put the World on hold for a while and in December, after months of confinement, I moved to Pamplona. I stayed there for a year, until I eventually moved to Viborg, Denmark, in December 2021.
Once I arrived in Denmark I slowly got settled. For the first time in years I could finally paint on big scale again and try other techniques, like lino-cut. I also printed some of my art and made stickers to sell in the local artist alley. I settled in my first real office 2 years ago: a dedicated tiny space to work and paint in, outside of my home for the first time, with colleagues, friends.
I can see all these life changes into each drawing and remember the feelings I had back then. I remember the forced minimalism in my few drawing tools I brought around with me, the joy of finding the perfect compact folder to store my drawings into, fitting just right for my suitcase. I remember all the Inktobers, drawing with my Stabilo pens or that one Edding pen I found in Galway, with a beautiful terracotta colour.
Memory after memory, I started taking down all those pictures from IG, to keep them safe, to keep them mine. Most of them are here now, to remind me of my 10 years of travels and brush strokes.
Sabina, April 2025
