Yacouba girls with a beautiful face paint , wearing cowrie headdresses.

You can read about the Dan or Yacouba people here.

I tried to use different colors for each of their skin tones but the two first ones look very similar.

Did you know that at some point cowrie shells were the most popular currency within Africa? You can read a bit more about that here .

Explanation of this drawing (though you can interpret it as you'd like to :D ) ⤵️

It's all about our reflection, but, our "mental" reflection. The way we perceive us in our minds. When we close our eyes.

We might see our physical body, our thoughts, our behaviors. Sometimes it depends on the mood or mental state.

But you know what? We're always colorful. Take a moment to meditate and see all the beautiful colors around us; all the power we have that comes from within, and the inner knowledge we ignore for being too focused on other things that are mainly ego-made.

You are not what others say you are. You have the power to be whatever you want to be and if right NOW you want to be the best version of yourself, YOU CAN!

You can start again.

Life is long enough to give you plenty of opportunities to change. And yes, whatever you want to be is an option.

A personality is not something you have to maintain the same way forever.

You're not "anxious". You're neither "loud" nor "boring"; you're not "depressed". You're not "shy". You're not "naive" or "slow". You're not "unproductive" or "lazy".

You are what you decide to be.

You're those beautiful colors you have inside and they look good on you! :) Be proud of it! It's your essence ✨

✏️ I used a 2B pencil and oil pastels.

Whispers of the heart 🌬💫

There were many quotes I found on Pinterest that matched this anime and my perspective of it and most of them talked about soulmates✨ He helped her discover her passion and purpose and she inspired him.

I tried to portray a picture I saw on my mind while watching the part of the movie when Seiji was leaving the country for 2 months, the night before they had a walk saying goodbye at the end. I was suffering more than her maybe😂 so I imagined her crying and showing him her feelings at that moment🤭. And also confessing their feelings for each other! but yeah, I still like more the original version and not my rushing eveything- romantic made-up version ;)!

I made a re-draw of Totoro❤️ It was cool to paint the rain~ Using the same technique that I applied for a galaxy painting (using an old toothbrush, let's recycle things! ♻️) it was fun :) then I added some other details (lines and drops falling in different directions) with a thin brush 🤭🖌 

Check my post on Instagram for more pictures :) 

Princess Mononoke fanart 🐺🌿

Follow me on Instagram! @valievlz 💫

Check this post on instagram for more pictures! 

A re-draw of this little fluffy friends from Spirited Away✨❤️ I changed the background cause I wanted to mix different vibrant colors (since it was the first time using that paint) 🤭

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBT2RNijimv/ << check it out on instagram ;)

So this is a re-draw from Howl's moving Castle✨ I decided I wanted to change how the background looked like but still having the same context(? so I added more colors to it :D and lines!

Finally finished!! I love this movie so much❤️ It was so nice to paint this, I'm trying to learn more about color harmony and for this painting I used only 5 colors + black (only to make some colors darker or create shades but didn't use it alone) and I definitely tried to draw the attention to Kiki! Most of the colors except for the plants and flowers, are just shades of greens, yellows and magenta. Definitely Studio Ghibli movies are masterpieces in all the ways possible!

Spirited away fanart

So this is a drawing I made for a challenge. I chose to draw 6 fanarts of some studio Ghibli movies. I love Spirited Away so much, it's such a good movie with great messages, great music and animation, the story is very easy to relate to (your inner child will relate too!) So, as one of my favorite movies I had to make a fanart of it and it was the first one I finished! (I'm currently working on a fanart of Kiki's delivery service)

Galaxy. Watercolor painting

The galaxy 🌌

I feel that when you paint galaxies, there's magic in that action, not only for the beauty the galaxies and things related to the universe have, but also because you get to free yourself from the fear of messing the painting. With galaxies there's no wrong thing or right thing. You can add colors where you want them to be and you can get as creative as you want experiment with different combinations of colors. I feel that there's magic in freedom. No rules, only what your heart tells you to do.

You are also forced to be patient. You finish one layer and then you have to add more but you need to wait for the paper to be dry until you can add another one. There are lessons that art teaches us, we only need to be open to them, open to receive. ❤️

be still like a mountain and flow like a great river.

A work in progress :) can you guess what is it?

So this painting is in progress :)

Fish, fineliner art

More fish drawings on envelopes 🐟🐟!

They look like they just took the wrong path and they met the shark who told them "fish are friends not food" but deep down they KNOW what their future looks like.

Stay safe guys, this situation is going to get better, don't feel hopeless♥️

you can also follow me on Instagram as @valievlz :D!

lights & shadows

wow that plasticine painting is amazing !!! I have one question though, will it dry by itself or will you have to use some sort of fixant?

Hey~ Thank you so much ❤️ I don't think it will get dry or like hard as a stone if I leave it exposed to normal temperatures, I like it the way it is now....cause I feel that if it ever gets dry it could cause problems like breaking into many pieces and falling off the paper or things like that :( So I wouldn't recommend that,also it's not recommended to be exposed to high temperatures or to keep the surface vulnerable to objects or people touching it without noticing or even intentionally, that will make the painting get another different color thanks to the constant touch of them. And also keep it from the dust ! it's really hard to get rid of that😢 ❤️ Hope those tips help~ And if you have any other question here I am :D