Curly Sketches

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Nederland
Amsterdam
Curly Sketches

Curly Sketches are mostly inspired by comics, nature and allot of imagination! Curly Sketches are drawings made by Aafke Mertens.

Most illustrations are done with ink pens but there will also be other works made with other mediums.

03/08/2026

💫 Slowly coming back! ✌🏽 What a fab summer to get into my sketchbook again 🌞😎👌🏽

An afternoon of: Park, Metlzi & Alice 💛

29/05/2026

It’s almost a month since Metzli was born 🌙 and I wanted to share the process of designing & printing our baby announcement card (geboorte kaartje) with riso ☺️✨

Starting from an original watercolour painting, the goal was to translate the soft colour blends and textures into a Risograph print.

Technically, it was challenging, as it was important to balance 4 Riso colours, colour mixing, and alignment throughout the printing process, all on beautiful Satogami paper. (Thanks riso team that took on the challenge of printing this for me as I recovered! 🙌🏽)

The making of it also took much longer than expected, mostly because my hands became very swollen during the final weeks of pregnancy, 😔making drawing and preparing the files harder than usual. (Shout out to Rodrigo .a______r.a who helped me with file prep💜)

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Baby announcement cards in the Netherlands are tradition: a small introduction to welcome a new family member and in my opinion a lovely memento of that rollercoaster period 😬

23/04/2026

A new spread of my sketchbook series: Maternity Leave diaries 🐛 looking back at the day I had some fun at the city centre ✌🏽

Did a whole loop with 3 tram lines 😉 🚋

Stop 1: to check out some envelopes

Stop 2: waiting for tram and getting fries ✨🐒

Stop 3: where I visited the Danh Vo installation and Ivna Esajas exhibition 👌🏽
(Also had an extra snack before heading home 🙈)

With little breaks in between this was a great day! Enjoying city life ✨ also, I have never rode public transport so much as now 🤣🚲😅

18/04/2026

ML Diaries - this one is still from week 2 / preg 38 - Making little felt animals 🐯🐤✨

A fun combo of embroidery with a more 3D approach 😉 ~ it was very fun but also quite time consuming! I think I underestimated the use of beads… had to sit a lot to make them (and therefore had to take multiple breaks…) 😬

Actually finished the Jaguar a week later hehe ✌🏽

Tips and lessons learnt:

⚡️ Don’t make too detailed shapes, as they are harder to fill later on and also to stitch together with back part.

⚡️Remember you need special thread & thin needle for beads.

⚡️ Blanket stitch needs to be done well so it doesn’t “open up” when adding filling.

That’s it for this edition of the maternity leave projects! 😉 ok to week 39 🙈

16/04/2026

Maternity Leave Diaries - Week 2 Mini Adventure ✨ (pregnant wk 38)

As spring is here I thought it’d be nice to soak some sun in the park. Normally it’s a 15min walk, which I sometimes make it a longer… but now that became a +30min walk. 😬🐛

No idea how I arrived haha but once I sat down I couldn’t get up 🙄. After a good break I decided to take the shorter road back home and … yeah got an icecream 🐒

That’s how exciting these days are 😬✌🏽

14/04/2026

My Maternity Leave “officially” started two weeks ago. Though to be honest, taking a step back from your own business, and leaving behind a team, is not easy… 🙄

But I DO need to step away! So, in order to keep myself busy, I decided to pursue a list of creative hobbies 😅 and the first one was trying out natural dyes for Easter eggs 🐣✨

Loved the unexpected colours and textures that got printed on the egg shells!

Taking the time to document the process with fotos and a little journal entry has been quite satisfying 👌🏽😌 so I might keep this up as I wait for this baby to come. So yes- this series might be a short one, or a long one 🐒 time will tell!

12/03/2026

It’s been a while since I got to jump into this project again 🥲 and I’m so happy that Amber from invited me to showcase some work in their window gallery ✨🙌🏽

I decided to edit some existing works and selected some from my archive to send out to Berlin.

Will be showing some sneak peeks in the coming days! And if you’re in Berlin - go take a look at this lovely space, my work will be there till the end on the month ☺️✨

25/10/2022

In between all these busy weeks, I’m happy to have my Patreon live sessions booked in for fun drawing ☺️✨

Last night we did some inking with bright coloured inks (of course 😉) and linework with nib pens.

These are two little illustrations using the prompt list again (great to just get going and not stare too long at a blank page!)
Cup of Slugs & Magic 🍄 mushrooms ✨

Hopefully I can work on some bigger pieces soon ☺️

15/10/2022

✨🐺 Hexed Wolf Teeth ~ another fun prompt by challenge 🙌🏽
This is the legendary boy that was gifted a hexed wolf tooth, to protect travellers in the forest ✨

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After being knocked down by the flu this last week, I finally felt “fresh” enough to sit down yesterday and paint this ink illustration ☺️

I did the lineart with a nib pen and the rest with brush & ink. Played with ink as well as - which I love 👌🏽

Recorded the process for my Patreons so I’ll be posting that video up there soon 😎

Who else loves bright ink colours!? ✨

26/09/2022

I just had the most wonderful “welcome back” call with my Patreons ☺️✨

After a summer break where I paused Patreon to get stuff sorted, I felt very energized and happy to host a live session again! 🙌🏽

I did a sketchbook tour, showed new materials, and we drew a prompt from to get warmed up for October 😉 draw-tober / inktober etc

So if you need a little pep for this week, draw a “Lonely Pumpkin” 🎃 >> mine was inspired in a childhood pumpkin dress my mom made me and I didn’t like at all 🙈😂

Adres

Amsterdam

Website

http://www.curlysketches.nl/

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