Blanca Ambel (Badajoz, 1987) grew up surrounded by art, making and imagination, in a family whose artistic sensibility her mother knew how to pass on. She studied Fine Arts in Cuenca, and it was there, thanks to the people she met along the way, that she took her first steps in craft: she started with macramé, making necklaces, bracelets and earrings that she sold from a street stall around the city.
She has never been able to settle into a single trade: “if I spend too long doing the same thing I feel limited”. From macramé she moved to trapillo yarn, and from there to hand bookbinding, turning a close friend’s illustrations into notebooks. That is how Kaotik Book was born: nonsense notebooks (sometimes) that nobody could tell her were wrong. While binding them she began painting their covers with colour washes and abstract shapes, and that is where watercolour caught her: the one discipline she had not studied at university and, for that very reason, the one that drove her most.
She painted more and bound less, until she decided to bring both together under a single name: KaotikArtByBlanca. Today she works to commission — children’s illustration, portraits of people and pets — paints live watercolours at weddings, christenings and communions, and teaches beginner and advanced watercolour courses in groups of five. In 2025 she illustrated the official Christmas card of Badajoz City Council, with the old town die-cut as a skyline.
WORK AND PRODUCTS
JOIN THE WORKSHOP
Watercolour workshop: three sardines
Dive into watercolour through a motif that matters a great deal to me: the sardine. It has become a symbol in my classes — there is no course where we do not end up painting them somehow — so I was especially keen to make them the stars here. It will be a relaxed, creative and fun session: no previous experience needed, just the urge to play with colour and let the magic of watercolour carry you.
- Led by
- Blanca
- Painting three sardines full of colour, building up their shapes layer by layer
- Working with transparencies and colour mixing
- The two core watercolour techniques: wet on wet and wet on dry
- Experimenting with the effects that water and pigment create together
- No experience required: suitable for beginners and for those who already paint