Koos was busy editing his photos. Sometimes Olivia went to have a look at him, enjoying the changes she was seeing in his pictures. Today was the second day he was working on it, and she could already see that he was becoming freer, creating silly things, making unusual photos, fantasising with colours and shapes.

Koos himself did not yet feel like he was really making something. He was mainly experimenting, exploring possibilities. He saved the results, but did not yet see them as his final results. They were all still experiments. Nevertheless, he enjoyed discovering new things all the time.

While he was busy, he often wondered how many more possibilities there would be, and then he discovered more... it seemed endless! In the beginning, he took notes, wanting to memorise the possibilities. But soon he began to dislike that and felt more like he just had to keep trying and that by doing so he would remember more and more, would understand more and more how the programme worked.

Meanwhile, Olivia had decided to just hang out on the sofa with a book until her 3D glasses would be delivered. Luckily she had a nice book, she empathised with the characters in the book and therefore did not see someone walking towards their front door. She was startled by the bell, laid her book open upside down and walked to the front door.

"Good afternoon ma'am, parcel for you!" said the delivery man.

"Oh thank you, you make my day!" she exclaimed happily.

The delivery man looked at her in surprise. "Oh, well, that's fine, have fun with it then!" he responded smiling.

"You bet I will!"

Olivia went inside with her package and started unpacking it. She immediately put the glasses on. The thing felt clunky, but in itself sat well on her head.

"I guess it takes some getting used to," she muttered. "Funny though, I really don't see anything around me anymore."

She heard Koos come in. "The glasses have come, Koos, what a thing!"

"Looks cool on you," he replied, "just take them off, and come upstairs with me, we'll hook things up."

He himself grabbed the box with the controllers and whatever else it might contain from the table and took it upstairs. There he stacked the contents on the little table in front of the window. Two controllers, a manual, batteries... Handy, hopefully they were well charged, otherwise Joke would not be able to get started yet. He placed the batteries in the controllers and looked in the manual for how to put them on.

"Give them to me, Koos, I'll try them out."

Koos handed them to her, saw that she had already connected the glasses to the computer. Ilse had already downloaded Open Brush and apparently Olivia now assumed that it would all work by itself now. Holding the manual in his hands, he lingered for a moment. He saw that she opened the programme and was just going to try it out. To be honest, he was waiting for the moment when she would run into something, but she turned out to be so wonderfully free with this. Nothing stopped her from trying, she just went! He had already felt himself free with the photo editing programme, but Olivia was a free butterfly behind that Open Brush programme. She tried out, drawing, choosing colours, choosing different brushes, accidentally discovering how to enlarge or shrink the image, pull it towards her or push it away from her.

After an hour, Koos had already gone back to work on his own programme, she called to him: "Koos, would you like to take a look through my glasses? How do you like my first drawing?"

She handed him her 3D glasses, which he put on his head. He uttered surprised cries. "How did you do that?"

He saw something that looked like a field of flowers. Not that they were flowers exactly, but they looked like them. And he saw them everywhere, in front of him, above him, left, right, everywhere.

"How weird, it's like I'm in a big garden! Flowers everywhere, and so many colours. I don't understand it, it's so obviously not real, yet it feels so alive. Do you know how to save this too? I would love it if you just made a collection of this kind of thing..."

"I'll see how to do that right away. I think you should also be able to make a film recording of it from inside. I'll look that up on the internet in a minute, it should be possible, I just don't know how yet."

They put the glasses and controllers aside and Olivia started looking on the internet. Koos shook his head, put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her on her cheek. "I'm proud of you, the way you were so freely working on a totally new programme there! My superwoman!"

Olivia smiled at him and kissed him back. "I loved it so much yay. I could spend hours on this! I just felt like I was walking in the middle of my own drawing! I hope that when I record it, I won't see myself in there. Now that doesn't seem like fun."

"Well, I'd like to see you in that film though, I'm far from tired looking at you!" said Koos, laughing.

"Oh you silly, silly darling of mine!"

.

At the end of the day, Ilse received a blazingly enthusiastic email from Olivia, with a film recording and a few photos of her first work of art. Ilse was stunned by the result, and emailed back: 'Are you sure this is your first work? It looks like you have years of experience! Is it okay if I show this to Huib too?'

'Of course! I'm happy with the result, show it to everyone at the Bloemenhof if you like!" emailed Olivia back.

It took 15 minutes or so, then Olivia got a response from Ilse. 'Huib agrees with me, this would be great for our gallery. I could make a page on the website with your videos, do you agree?'

Olivia replied: 'The gallery website? Do you think it's good enough for that then?'

'Without any doubts! And I just thought of a name for your first artwork: Bloemenhof!'

'Good name, super cute. I had only given it a number, but I'll put Bloemenhof right after it. If you guys agree, just create a page. I will definitely continue with this, feel wonderfully free in it. So who knows what other great things will come...'

'I'm definitely assuming so,' Ilse wrote back. 'I'm going to ask the other gallery participants first if it's OK for them too, you'll hear from me!'

Olivia sent her a thumbs-up back, and settled down on the sofa downstairs. It was so great, so fantastic to work with Open Brush! Like being in another world, a world you made yourself....

All kinds of things she had discovered came to her mind, until she felt her mobile vibrating. It was a new message from Ilse, with the link to the new page on the gallery website, the new page, her page. Her beautiful video was on it, with two photos underneath.

She read in the mail, that there was an agreement with the participants that ten per cent of each artwork sold would go to Ilse for her work on the website and correspondence and administration. 'For the clips of Sjaak and Lisa, and for your videos, that doesn't apply, they are free for all to see.' Ilse added that this was no problem for her, as she experienced it as an enrichment of the gallery. And she immediately had a question for Koos, whether he already had some photos he wanted to send. She was curious!

Olivia walked up and passed on Ilse's question. He looked at her in surprise: "Ilse? Nice of her to ask about that. Just all of a sudden?"

Olivia smiled: "I had sent her my video. She was so happy with it, liked it so much, she couldn't believe it was my first. And she created a page for my work on the gallery website. My video is already on it! And she hopes, I think, although she didn't write it that way, that you will also want to provide photos for the website. If I'm honest, I'd think it would be really cool if there were photos of you on the website too. I've looked at you from time to time, and I've noticed that you're getting freer and freer about it. Just send a few, and wait and see what she thinks of them."

"I did make some nice ones yes, but whether they are good enough for such a gallery..." doubted Koos.

"Did you feel like you were working from the inside out?" Olivia asked.

"Not at first, when I was haphazardly trying out, seeing what was possible. But later on that did go very smoothly, things got easier and easier."

He showed her his latest photos. And by Olivia's reactions, he became convinced that sending them in itself was not a bad idea. He would see what Ilse thought of them. He sent them on, without writing much else.

What he didn't know was that Olivia did send an e-mail, expressing her enthusiasm about the pictures in a lavish way. And at the end she added: 'if the others agree, will you make a page for him too? He still has doubts about it himself, not me!'

She got a whole row of smiles back from Ilse.

Half an hour later, she heard a scream upstairs. For a moment it startled her, but then she was almost sure Ilse had emailed him. She quickly looked at the website under the heading 'Our artists', and saw that she had created a page for Koos, with the photos she had sent!

She heard him roll down the stairs, got up and went to meet him. She put her arms around him and congratulated him. "Great colleague!" she laughed.

"How do you know...?"

"I heard your scream and looked on the site. That's all!"

"Had you emailed her that she should just do that?"

"No boy, I just asked, and added that I had no doubts about your work."

"Oh you...!"

He pulled her against him and hugged her.

"There was one more thing... she thought the photos were good to sell, but she didn't know how to do that yet. She actually expects that won't work with this website. So for now, if I agree, people can view them for free. Seems fine to me! It feels like a hobby to me, and I like it when others can enjoy it."

"True, that's the same with my videos. I can't sell them, but I don't care that much either. It's just great to do. And just what you say, it's nice when others can see it too," Olivia thought. "Maybe it will be different later, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary for ourselves. We'll see!"

To chapter 45. Party!

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