Nikki Smits

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks.  She  went for a walk in the forest.  Pretty soon, she came upon a house.  She knocked and, when no one answered, she walked right in. 
At the table in the kitchen, there were three cups of tea. Goldilocks was thirsty.  She tasted the tea from the first cup. 
“This tea is too hot!” she exclaimed.
So, she tasted the tea from the second cup.
“This tea is too cold,” she said
So, she tasted the last cup of tea.
“Ahhh, this tea is just right,” she said happily and she drank it all up.

I’d like to show you some pictures of one of my favourite books in my bookcase. It’s a book full of engravings by J. Jonstons from 1660 called ‘A description of the nature of four-footed beasts: with their figures engraven in brass‘.  It’s realy cool to see how he drew animals that he clearly hasn’t seen for himself. Take this giraffe for example:

There are a few versions of the giraffe in this book, but I think this is supposed to be the one as we know it.  It  looks like someone described it for him as he drew it :D Like in the next picture, I think it’s some sort of baboon and a Guenon. Wouldn’t it be really creepy to run into an animal like that? With it’s human face and big claws.

 This book has  a lot of ordinary animals, but it’s also full of mythical creatures. Like the manticore:

 And whatever this is:

 It is supposed to be an alicorn, but all I can find about alicorns is that they’re winged unicorns, which this is clearly not… And the animals next to this one are not much help either, since I have no idea what an ‘eale’ is either.

The last page I’d like to show is my favourite, a page full of monoceros, unicorns!

 I have three other books like this, fishes, birds and insects. the insect are especially interesting, what you look close, there are human faces on some of them. But I’ll save that one for another time!

The 2nd of June the singer-songwriter Glass Promises will play his songs in my living room. This is the poster I made:

It is organized by SmithsFoodGroup bookings. I make posters for their gigs from time to time, it was a little weird to design a poster for my own home this time.  I made a sketch in Photoshop and it looked ok, but when I drew it with pencil it didn’t have the right look.  The mouse and cats had more expression on their faces. So I wasted a couple of hours, but I wanted at least the expressions to be right. So I drew it all over again with ink and brush to get it the way I wanted. I really had to be satisfied about it because it was something that pointed directly at my house. This is how it turned out and I’m quite happy with it.

The entry fee is €3,50, but there is only room for about 25 people so reservation is required.

Glass Promises:

Edit: The Concert has been cancelled, because they couldn’t plan a second gig in the Netherlands to raise enough money to cover the costs. I also made a poster for the second gig. I liked it so I’ll just post the unfinished version.

1000 Drawings is a a creative platform to collect and sell A5 drawings to support FairPen, who help children in Uganda publish their very own newspapers. Everybody can enter and this is my submission:

It’s been a while since I cut paper to make an image. I like using it in combination with string, most of the time I end up making balloons. A teacup, balloons and a cat, some of the things I love drawing most :D

The past month I’ve been working on illustrations for a children’s story by Manja Maas. It’s  a story about some animals that instead of staying where they’d normally live, they go to the mountains and do other this like skiïng (Elephant), climbing (Bird), running (Octopus) and skydiving (Horse). Capricorn is surprised to see all those animals on his mountain and is delighted to see them trying someting else.

This is a pencil illustration of elephant talking to bird, after this I colored it with photoshop

And it all looks something like this

In 2010 I had an internship at Bart-Illustration. It’s a freelance design studio run by Barbara Termorshuizen and mainly she designs t-shirts and fabrics for brands such as Kuyichi, Mexx, Lee, Jottum and a lot more. After my graduation in 2011 I continued to work there and one of the things I made were illustrations for Prénatal in Italy. The final designs are collaborations between me and Barbara and are nog available on t-shirts for little kids in the Prénatal webshop. I really love the way they turned out!

They can be bought at prenatal.it

Yesterday, me and my friend Rosanne Groeneweg made live visuals at Lo Friday. While the bands Fusée Dorée, Here Come the Wolves and Yesterday’s Men were playing, we were drawing on sheets and those were projected on the wall.

Also we made special illustrations that would be handed out in zines to the visitors.

We had a lot of fun, and we hope to do it again sometime!

Last week I heard that I was one of the 20 nominated for the Boekie Boekie StArt Award. It’s a competition for starting illustrators that focusses on illustrations for children. There were a few poems and short stories to choose from to illustrate and I made two paintings for a poem about winning a giant pink bear at a carnival and giant cotton candy. All the poems and stories have a carnival theme.

Please vote for me here if you think I deserve the public’s choice award!

Whether I win or not will be announced on March 10th.  Also the illustrations of 10 finallists will be in the next Boekie Boekie magazine.
I really hope I’m at least one of those 10!

I entered another contest, this time it was to design the cover artwork of  ”Only if for a Night’ by Florence + the Machine. The song inspired me to paint a ghostly doe in a crystalline dress.  This contest is to raise money for a good cause. The winning designs will be printed, exhibited in Londen and sold, and the money will go to Teenage Cancer Trust.

I love the music of Florence + the Machine. So when I found out about this contest I worked really hard with the deadline breathing down my neck. But it was finished in time and I’m quite happy with how it turned out, though if I had known about the contest sooner I’d probably made something better. But I’m not complaining

Florence + the Machine will choose 45 winners and 5 winners will be trough public voting. So please vote for my design here!

In December I entred a poster contest. You had to design a poster for 2 bands that were going to play at a Dutch music festival called Eurosonic. It was really great because I won : D So last week my poster was all over Groningen, where the festvial was at. And I had to design a fitting flyer. I was really pleased about how it all turned out : )