Few days ago I was in Ghent and among many nice people and new friends, I met Martha Verschaffel. Martha has strange dreams that she turns into short stories for her DIY zines. She gave me two of her zines and the day after I went to Paris. I don't know if it's because of this city or because of her stories, but now for two days in a row I have strange nightmares.

So while I was going through our DA archives, a very important question popped into my head. Why, oh why, have we not showed off the work of Sandra Dieckmann before? I have no friggin' idea.

To say that I love Sandra's work is an understatement. The colors, the UH-mazing detail in her pencil marks, it's pure greatness.

Sandra, let's be friends.

I love simple ideas with great effect. Well, dans le ciel tout va bien (in heaven everything is fine) made that great effect on me the other day when I found his post-it drawings, especially his "Good bye dinosaurs!" series. His combination of strong, dramatic scenes with the fragility of little post-it papers made me remember something I heard a few years ago about how big formats are more intimate than the little ones, because your whole body can fit in them. It's a nice theory, but today, I prefer these post-its more.

One more thing: dans le ciel tout va bien will make a book out of his post-it collection for "fais le toi même", a french festival of edition, music, etc. at Lille in September.

Pencil, watercolors and ink. That's about all I know of Mathias Sielfeld. I got tipped on his work from Camila León and was happy to uncover a small collection of drawn buildings, people and alphabet letters.

There was something about the color and lines in his work that really caught my attention and I wanted to see more. With some help from Camila, I was lucky enough to get an email full of photos of his sketchbooks and some other never before seen goodies that I get to share with all of you. Take a look, it's love at first sight.

This is an amazing animation created by Veronika Obertova. In her own words, this is "a story of Viliam, who lives his own animated life within the real world. Childish fun turns into a problem, the problem becomes a solution. No solution is perfect though. "

Wonderfully heartfelt, I personally think we all have a bit of Viliam in us - that slight antisocial charm, that need to always have a pencil in hand, that ability to be content with life the way you see fit...Simply put, you'll love watching this.

Sean Alexander's drawings are a breath of fresh air. I'm not kidding. I literally just took a deep breath while looking at his flickr page. They remind me of the very primitive, very simplistic, very beautiful art you see inside art history books. So much detail and craft is put into each drawing. His tools of the trade? Micron pens, stonehedge paper, prismacolor pencils and number 2 pencils.

Dorset, England's Heidi M is quite gracious. She's eager to share her process and what makes her "tingle and buzz with creativity." Take her up on the offer: peek into her sketchbook where she's developing characters for a new story, and take a gander at her hand-painted greeting cards, including one of Frida Kahlo. You’ll fancy Heidi’s
pencil-sketched watercolor portraits. They’re pretty and polite.