Introducing Caia Koopman

I was surfing around Juxtapoz.com the other day and saw an interview with Californian artist Caia Koopman. Her art is mainly influenced by Skateboard/Snowboard culture which she feels strongly connected to since lots of years. Graduating at the UC Santa Cruz in fine art she now works as a freelance illustrator and painter. I personally love her female characters, since they seem to be kinda gently. And they also make her style pretty unique.


The interview I was talking about can be found here, more pictures and the biography are on her hompage.

The story behind my new artwork...

As usual, during summer holidays I find enough time and inspiration do draw. This time, something else happened to me... It has something to do with Linkin Park and Fort Minor songs. When we arrived at our cottage in Canada I found out, that my mp3-player had messed up and so I had to do without 6 GB of all my fav music... But thank God I put some of it on my mobile phone; Linkin Park, Fort Minor, Deftones and some others. My 'emergency reserve'. This is why I listened to the same songs over and over again. Actually, it helped me to see a whole new meaning in some songs or to understand them better. I had clear pictures to every song in my head. 'My December' was the first one. But it turned out to be pretty difficult for me to bring the picture in my head on the sheet of paper in front of me. I'm still thinking about it. So the first one I drew was about 'She Couldn't' (one of my fav LP-songs to be honest):

(I've seen her smiling... Sunlight's shining on her now... She couldn't stay here...)

For the second picture I was inspired by a sunset we saw the day before. You know, it was all like the cliché everyone's dreaming of: driving on an American highway into the sunset. When I finished the pic I looked at it and immediately had 'Shadow Of The Day' in my head:

(And the sun will set for you)

Before drawing the third one I listened to all the songs again and chose one of them to illustrate it. I decided to take 'Breaking The Habit'. Maybe my interpretation isn't really what the band actually wanted to say, but that's what I see in this song and what it tells me:

(I don't know what's worth fighting for; Or why I have to scream)

All three pics are more like sketches, so I don't want them to be perfect. They're on gridded paper anyways... Also, this series is not finished. I plan to draw more pics like that. 'Right Now' by Fort Minor for example is a song I have loads of ideas to illustrate. Let's see... maybe someday I'll get the one and only idea for 'My December'.
I hope you liked both the art and my thoughts.

Happy Birthday Leonard Cohen!

(source: http://newsitemstoday.today.com/files/2008/12/leonard-cohen-poet-large.jpg)

The great (one of the greatest, though) singer/writer/poet/composer Leonard Cohen is turning 75, today. Congratulations! He was born in Montreal/Canada. This is actually how I got to know him. Of course, I've heard his name before, but when I knew that I'd go to Canada for holidays I was searching for some musicians and writers of this country. And he's definetely one of the greatest! I found it interesting to read, that he never wanted to be a musician, but a poet. It wasn't different than today back then, that it's pretty hard to earn money with poems. And so a friend told him to play the guitar to his poems... the rest is history.

The news said, that he broke down during a concert in Valencia/Spain (yes, he's on tour right now!) some days ago. So I hope, he'll feel better soon.

One of his most famous songs is 'Suzanne': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snMOmHzgssk

Welcome to my blog...

With this blog I'd like to share some things of my life, e.g. journeys I did, things I love or hate (art, music...). I decided to use a blog as a platform for things like that, cause I don't have to feel like bothering somebody with what I write. It's up to you, whether you wanna read it or not. That's a difference between a blog and for example Twitter. At some point you get tons of followers, but I personally am thinking often about posting something or not. Some might like it, but some also might see it as spamming or something like that. To make a long story short: Welcome and have fun, if you choose to read my blog!!