Betty's Art Journey

Author: Betty

  • Morimens Fanzine 09/2026

    Morimens Fanzine 09/2026

    Recently I started playing Morimens. It is a Lovecraftian horror visual novel/deckbuilder/gatcha game. Sounds wild? Oh yes. At first I wasn’t sure if this would be something I enjoy, but the story and the worldbuilding sucked me in. I never expected that a pretty obscure little game would consume me so much. My friend Caerme also got into it, and since she is a working convention vendor, we decided to make a very last-minute project for the upcoming con.

    I still can’t believe we made it on such short notice! This is basically a love letter to the game. Caerme wrote the entire text. I made the layout and the graphic design elements. A few weeks ago I decided to experiment with mark making. The goal was to build a library of textures in black and white that I can use for different zine projects. Little did I know that these textures I made would come in handy so soon. I was leisurely chipping away at leaf prints, stencil stamping, and just collections of running ink blobs. I think I used almost every texture I had prepared so far.

    Since I am currently not in the best drawing mood, I made the illustrations using a stamping technique. A cleaning sponge had to give its life for this, but it was well worth it. I really enjoyed stamping those character shillouettes. Especially the cover. All the other elements that were way too fragile to cut out were drawn in Affinity Designer, like the silver key on the back or the realm icons.

    All in all, it was a very fun project! Have fun flipping through the finished zine. (Also yes, we’re obsessed with this game; don’t mind us.)

    Zine details:

    • format: A6
    • page count: 28
    • paper cover: 180 g/ms Koala double-sided matte photo paper
    • paper inside: 120 g/ms Xerox copy paper

    Read the Zine:

  • Linocut ATCs 08/2026

    Linocut ATCs 08/2026

    I always enjoy carving stamps. After making mostly smaller stamps from rubber lino, I decided to make two that more or less fit the ATC format. The tree is a little smaller, but I think it’s still nice. I made a whole batch of cards from each design, so I can put them into the ATC Zine as a little goodie. People were delighted to find a card in the zine.

    “watcher”: 14 cards

    “gnarly tree”: 12 cards

  • Bear ATC 08/2026

    Bear ATC 08/2026

    A while back I rediscovered ATC cards. Not only by making a whole zine about them, but also in their traditional sense: by trading with other artists. Bearina agreed on a trade, and I painted a cute bear for her. It’s been ages since I made a card, and it took me a long time to get back into the groove. I still had some bamboo watercolor paper lying around, and I wanted to give it a go. I also experimented a little with the shading. I think this card turned out really nice, and I was glad that Bearina enjoys it as well. 🙂

  • Bramble Zine 08/2026

    Bramble Zine 08/2026

    I keep a commonplace book. A commonplace book is simply a journal in which I collect interesting bits of info that I have either stumbled upon while wiki-surfing or actively researched for one or the other project or while I was reading a novel. One of these info snippets was about the word “bramble”. I met up with a friend for a zine-making afternoon, and while we sat at the table, crafting our zines, I pulled out this journal and picked the bramble theme to turn it into a zine. It was hand-drawn on a piece of paper, scanned, printed, and folded, and that was it.

    Zine details:

    • format: A7 (mini-Zine)
    • page count: 8
    • paper: 120 g/ms Xerox copy paper

    Read the Zine:

  • Open Sketch Stage Amphi Festival Cologne 07/2026

    Open Sketch Stage Amphi Festival Cologne 07/2026

    We are very lucky that we have a very active and creative sketcher and artist community in Cologne. The Urban Sketchers Cologne and the life drawing community Menschen Malen organised a sketch event in front of the Amphi Festival this year. For roughly two hours the organisers asked people to model for the attending group of artists. It was so much fun and I made so many drawings that I decided to complie them into a zine! You can read more about the event here.

    Zine details:

    • format: A6
    • page count: 16
    • paper cover: 180 g/ms Koala double-sided matte photo paper
    • paper inside: 120 g/ms Xerox copy paper

    Read the Zine:

  • ATC Zine 07/2026

    ATC Zine 07/2026

    I admit that it’s been a while since I last made an ATC, or artist trading card. But since I have been making those since they came up in the early 2000s, I decided to make a small zine about them. This time I kept it completely black and white and used normal copy paper for the print. The drawings are made with my trusted pilot falcon fountain pen.

    Zine details:

    • format: A6
    • page count: 16
    • issues printed: 10 (for now)
    • paper: 120 g/ms Xerox copy paper

    Read the Zine:

  • Juist Sketchbook 06/2026

    Juist Sketchbook 06/2026

    I felt a little burned out from the many different art projects I have been chipping away at over the past months. A lot of my time recently was spend in front of my PC, working on projects in Clip Studio Paint, for example. I do love all the possibilities digital art has to offer, but for me it feels a lot more like “work” than “play”.

    So I bought one of my favorite Hahnenmühle Sketchbooks in 14×14 cm for my two week long holiday on Juist. I didn’t manage to fill it completely, there are four spreads left, but right now, that I’m back on the mainland, forcing myself to finish it feels kind of wrong. So I will leave it the way it is and instead focus on a new project.

    All in all it was a great experience. Not only the drawing, but also the trip itself. Juist is a beautiful island, and I can only recommend it as a place for relaxation and for urban sketching and outdoor painting.

  • Weird Snacks Zine 02/2026

    Weird Snacks Zine 02/2026

    Goodies from the ISM

    I didn’t expect to fall into the Zine rabbit hole. However, shortly after I finished my Zinuary Zine, I really wanted to make another one. This time I wanted to experiment with collages. The materials I used for this zine were sourced from the packaging of the sweets that my partner brought home from the ISM (the International Sweets and Snacks Convention). It was truly an experience to taste so many new and interesting sweets.

    Printing this zine was a bit of a challenge. For some reason I had some issues with exporting the PDF file from Affinity 2. The last two finally came out the way I wanted them to look.

    Zine details:

    • format: A6
    • page count: 16
    • issues printed: 6
    • paper:
      • Cover: PPD-69 Photo Paper Double Sided Professional Satin/Satin 290 g/ms
      • Inner pages: 120 g/ms Copy Paper

    Read the Zine:

    Impressions:

  • Zinuary 01/2026

    Zinuary 01/2026

    The Yummy Nom Nom Zine

    This year I decided to join the newly announced Zinuary challenge. I was mindlessly browsing through YouTube one evening and stumbled over this video by Stefan Große Halbuer. This challenge was about making a zine in one month and starting the year with something fun and fresh. I recently got intesrested in zinemaking and felt like this was a great opportunity to not just read and theorise about zines, but actually do the doing. All in all, it sounded like a great way to chase away the creative winter blues.

    Although zines are often political in nature, I decided to create something less challenging and a bit personal. Throughout the month, I created a variety of food-themed illustrations inspired by dishes I photographed. I also added a few comments on the topic of why I like eating out at restaurants so much.

    While I was working on the zine and talking to the people on the Zinuary discord server, I discovered the zines.cool podcast. Jenni, the hoist, is organizing a zine exchange, so I printed and made a few more issues to turn in. Since I just love stickers I added a home printed dim sum sticker to every issue. I’m hoping that someone will enjoy my first DIY zine.

    Zine details:

    • format: A6
    • page count: 16
    • issues printed: 10
    • paper: Canon Matte Photo 170 g/ms

    Read the Zine:

    Impressions: