I moved to Tumblr

Hi guys! I'm sorry but I'm not using this blog anymore, because I focused on my tumblr. So if you want to follow my work, here is the link:

http://maikeplenzke.tumblr.com/

A Look at 2014

I didn't post a lot this last year, because I was busy with the comic book "BRAN" I drew with Flora Grimaldi, which comes out on january 14th 2015.
I also realized that tumblr is far better to update quickly, so if you want to be up to date with everything I do, I point you to my tumblr.
But here are some of the pictures from 2014.

December: I illustrated a story for American Girl( more about it on my Tumblr).



In November I participated in Rotopol's Mystery show.



In October I participated in Inktober and drew a lot of ink drawings, you can see some of them on my twitter and tumblr.



In August I was in Iceland with a group of incredible artists for the Light Grey Art Lab Iceland Art Residency.



June: I illustrated another story for American Girl:



February:I illustrated a little piglet for a friend.

Portrait commission

The above painting is a portrait commission from june 2013 for a father, who wrote me if I could draw his wife and little girl with their cats.He gave me a lot of freedom to draw what I think (he mentioned that his wife loved gardening) and even more time to do it, so I had a lot of fun and it was a pleasure to work on it.

Light Grey Art Lab: Rolemodels

This is my illustration for Light Grey Art Lab’s “Rolemodels” show. We had to draw ourselves as roleplay characters. I chose to be a ranger, but didn’t want to draw the normal archer wandering through green woods. As I love skiing especially skate skiing I decided to draw some old ski made of wood, like my grandma owned a long time ago.

All illustrations in this show are amazing again (like every show LGAL organizes)!

Prints and all illustrations as a card game are available here.

What's for Dinner?

Goodbye-Kiss

This was a picture I started before I got a job and then forgot about it. I found it and decided to finish it. Three things that I find hard to draw are in it: bicycles, kisses and houses. Okay the house doesn’t count, that was easy as it’s basically just the door.

Btw the city I live in now has beautiful houses with really amazing old doors. The door on the illo is one of the simpler ones, most of them are really detailed with faces, figures and plants.

Prints are available here.

In Place Exhibition

This is my illo for the LGAL’s "In Place" exhibition (opening August 23th) and I chose Norway’s Hardangervidda. I was there with my family several times when I was young and loved the landscape and the calmness. I felt very free when we wandered through fjords and moss-covered places without any people. I do like spending my vacation in a city but hiking in Norway is the more relaxing and fullfilling thing for me. (And I adore the language!)

Prints and the book with all illustrations are available here: LGAL Shop
(Although there is still a wrong blue-ish preview picture in the store. The print will of course look like pictured above.

Ten Paces and Draw Round 2

Okay here is anothe illo for Ten Paces and Draw.
It was actually a fashion swap, but the costume that I got to draw was so unconventional (you will see when you go to the website) that I couldn’t just draw a pretty girl with a lovely dress.

So it became a kind of sea monster who disguises as a coral to catch cute fishes.

It doesn’t fit in the slideshow of the fashion swap though. Sorry! But it was fun again, as always.

Head over to Ten Paces and Draw to see the other participants’ illustrations!

JAZAM cover

Adrian from the german comic anthology Jazam asked me to draw the coverillustration for them and this is it. The topic of this issue is animals and I couldn't resist drawing a fox and some ravens. The book will be released in May 29th this year.

And as a bonus, this is a little illo for the back of the book:

Skater

Women's Health 03/2013

These Illustrations were part of a job for Women’s Health Germany I did in November 2012. The article (came out now in February) was about how to handle tricky situations, when you have no clue what’s going on or what the other person is talking about. I just got the situations and they wanted me to illustrate it pretty straight forward, not with too much concept behind it.

1.Going to a party, of which you didn’t know that it was a theme party.
2.Meeting a person on a street and which seems to know you, but you don’t know who it is.
3. You didn’t get what your mother was saying because you didn’t really listen to her.

Things like these.

It was a fun job and working for WH was a pleasure!

Postcards for Rotopolpress

I did three postcards for Rotopolpress which are available in their shop now. :) To see all cards in detail visit my tumblr.

Light Grey Art Lab "Girls - Fact & Fiction"

The “Girls - Fact and Fiction” show opened last friday at Light Grey Art Lab!

I am very honoured to be part in this show (there are so many great artist in it again!!) but it was also very hard to decide for one girl. In the end I went with Ofeliá from Pan’s Labyrinth, which was quite a challenge. When I started sketching I wanted to put so many things from the story in this illustration, but realised the show is about the girl and not so much about the story. So I kept most of the things subtle in the background.

There are also prints of all the pieces from the show available HERE and a Girls book with all the pieces in it: here is a PREVIEW.

Calendar

This is an illustration I did two months ago for the book-calendar of my illustration group in university. We were completely free to draw everything we like. So why not some blackberries and a mouse.

LGAL Tarot Prints and Opening

Last weekend the Tarot, Mystics & The Occult Exhibition opened and it seems it was a wonderful night! The Team wrote a lovely blogpost about it, I unfortunately couldn't be there because I live here in Europe.

Photos by LGAL

There are also big beautiful prints of the Tarotcards available now. To see them all click here. You can decide if you would like to have the Tarotcard-style or the normal poster.

Detective Swap

I took part in a Detective art swap on Ten Paces and draw and got a lovely sketch from Levi Hastings to work with. (Everybody of the participants has to do a sketch which get swapped and one has to do a final illustration to the sketch one received.)
I stayed pretty close to the sketch, you can see it and the other swap participants here.

And this was my sketch, which Levi had to do a final illustration to:



Coincidentally I had a similiar idea like Levi. ;)

Practise illustration

From time to time I do these practise illustrations to draw some things I usually avoid drawing, because they seem hard to draw.As I can't avoid all this forever I paint these pictures. This time I wanted to paint some water. And a background and a man.

Light Grey Art Lab's Tarot, Mystics and the Occult exhibition

This is my card “Strength” for the Light Grey Art Lab's Tarot, Mystics and the Occult exhibition in October.

So many amaaaaazing artists participated in this show and I am really honored to be part of it as well. Here is the artist list.

Preorder the Tarot now!

"The Light Grey Tarot

We are officially announcing a pre-order the full 78 card deck plus guidebook of the Light Grey Tarot.



We're printing a limited quantity run of The Light Grey Tarot to accompany our Tarot, Mystics and the Occult Exhibition (Coming to Light Grey Art Lab October 19).

Each 78-card boxed set of the Light Grey Tarot comes with a 32 page guidebook that walks through all of the meanings, symbolism and details of each card, plus instructions on how to read several classic Tarot spreads. The cards are approximately 2.75 inches x 4.75 inches (nice and tall!)

If you're interested in staking claim to a deck before the opening, here's the link.

We'll also be launching all of the amazing full size giclee prints of each artist's work on October 19, so be sure to check back then to see all of the available prints! We will be sure to keep you posted!

A full list of contributing artists can be found here.

For now, here are some shots of the deck - (You'll have to wait to see all 78 until the show!). We'll have more information as we get closer to the opening!

**Pre Orders will be shipped with all other orders made through the duration of the exhibition (Second week in November). Orders are first-come, first-served. We fulfill orders as we receive them and when we run out, we run out! Thanks for the support and hope to see you at the event on October 26th at Light Grey Art Lab in Minneapolis!

If you are local and decide to pre-order, bring your receipt and you can pick up your deck at the Exhibition Party on October 26 in Minneapolis at Light Grey Art Lab."

Running Ladies

Here are the running ladies I already posted on my tumblr.

Summer

A drawing to practise light and wishing that it would be summer in Hamburg and not rainy all day.