Painted boxes

Well, this week certainly has gone by in a flash! And you know what? I was in a shop today and I couldn't believe my eyes ....: they were selling Christmas-trees already! Can you believe it!? Christmas-trees!!??? In August!? My goodness! I'm not at ALL ready for that yet!  It makes my feeling of time flying even worse.

This week has all been about preparation for next week's market. I've mostly been painting boxes, but I managed to squeeze in some time to work on my painting. Not much, but still, I made some changes.

This is what I had last week:

Most of you suggested to not paint any faces, and that's what I'd been thinking too. So I didn't.
I didn't feel like painting anything else on there either, at least not anything that lives, like other humans or animals. But just leave it like that, mmm, I don't know. On the right side there are 3 forms that could be fish, but they looked as if they were going to bite her bottom, so I needed to get rid of them. And they gave me the inspiration to draw ovals there, so that it might look like water or something ...

Hmm, have to work on that though .... The girl on the right had a half circle around her head, so I tried out some circles and I liked that. And added some more....

Circles seem to be a recurring feature of these intuitive paintings. I love how you can let the background shine through them. It's a great way to save portions of the painting that you like and that you don't want to paint over.

Strange, but the picture I took last week looks much brighter in colour. Even though I didn't change much in the background. Must be the light that the pictures were taken in. Today was a pretty dark day here.

Well, it's not finished, obviously, and in the end I started dripping paint again to change some areas that I didn't like. I hope I'll have a bit more time next week.

These are some of the wooden boxes I painted this week. Not completely finished, they still need to get the locks back on and the inside painted, but most of it is done.

So much fun to make these!

And you know what? Ayala Art is hosting a new "29 faces challenge"! Starting in September. Oh yes, that's tomorrow (!) And although I have enough on my plate right now, I still want to participate. I've participated in the first 2 challenges, and met a lot of great people and got a lot of inspiration. So even though IdonthavetimeIwanttodoitagain!

So I made a deal with myself: I'm going to make one-lined-girls. They're very quick to make, I should be able to do one a day, and I have some ideas about what I want to do with them afterwards. If you feel like participating, head over to Ayala's blog and add your link. But beware: it's addictive!

Thanks for visiting and wishing you all a wonderful warm and inspiring weekend!

Artists that inspire me: Mandy Tsung

Mandy Tsung is a Canadian artist who paints beautiful girls and women, so naturally her art caught my eye straight away.

 I must admit it was very very difficult for me to choose which work I would put on my blog ...

It is all so beautiful and I have so many favorites

that I want to share them all with you ...

In some ways her work reminds me a bit of Audrey Kawasaki

but she definitely has her own style

isn't this gorgeous ...!?

Her faces are so beautiful

strong and at the same time vulnerable, with mesmerizing eyes

And those colours .... lovelovelove all the drippy goodness

There's lots more eye-candy like this on her website and on her Facebookpage. Check it out, you won't regret it!

Hope you're having a wonderful week so far! I've been busy making things for my market and stressing out. Really don't know why. If I can't finish everything, I just take the things that ARE finished. What's to stress about that? But still I do. I've tried the whole day getting a new website up and running, so I can refer people to it, but I seem to get stuck on every little step.

Is it just me? Other people seem to have no trouble writing a flashy artist statement or a welcome word to their site, they throw in a shopping cart and a newsletter and are great in figuring out the shipping costs. They have wonderful pictures of themselves making art, and all seem to have set up their Etsy-shops and Zazzle- and Redbubble-accounts. They know how to put selfmade buttons on their site to link to Facebook and others. I get paralyzed just thinking about everything I have to do before I can make a website. I got as far as printing out the beginnersguide of Weebly (yes, I decided to go with Weebly, if I go with Wordpress it might take another year before I figure that out...). And I wrote half an artist statement. That I'm not even happy about..... Aaaarrghhh!

So I thought this next image, that I found somewhere on Facebook, might be exactly what I need to finish this day with a good feeling ...

Thanks for visiting! See you on Friday for the Paint Party!

Busy bee

Well, the weekend has been a flutter of activity. I've finally started all those things I've been putting off for so long and I feel really good about it. Started working on 4 boxes at the same time, prepared the background for my mosaic mirrors, put varnish on my finished paintings, started on an idea for magnets, and have another idea with papier-machee brewing in my head that I want to try out tomorrow. Finally got some new ink in my printer too, so I can make new businesscards, bookmarks and maybe even art prints (have never made artprints of my paintings before, but am now seriously considering it). My todo-list still freaks me out, but at least I'm getting some things done.

Here's a picture of the boxes I'm working on:

Feels so great to do some dotpainting again. It's a great thing to do in-between other things.

And I even managed a one-line-girl today. Expresses totally the way I feel about housework ;-)

Hope you had a great weekend! And for the people on the other side of the world: hope you'll have a lovely Sunday. Thanks so much for all the wonderful comments!
I'll be back in a few days with another inspiring artist. See you then!

Still, like air, she'll rise

Finished my painting this week! It might not look as if much changed, but I still worked a few more hours on it. Took some pictures this morning, and now it's ready to go on my website. My old one that is, since the new one is still not ready. I don't know how other people from my businesscourses do it, but I seem to  always be short in time. And now with the market coming up in 2 weeks, I'm getting into stress-mode ...

So without further ado, here's "Still, like air, she'll rise", because, for me, this painting is about the power of women and the ability to keep going when the going gets tough.

And this is how it all started:

I think there are a few layers on here already ....

cool colours over wam colours

 adding marks and contrast in black and white

covering with transparant colours

well, I went a bit crazy here ....

trying to get order out of chaos

these are the ones that you saw last week already

So I won't show them all again, just the last one from last week

and again the finished one

Now I have one canvas left. I made the backgrounds for 3 canvases all at once, because you can work on one while the others are drying. I kept this one till last because there were way too many marks on it and I couldn't see anything.

Well, actually, I could see one fish and 4 birds. But they were all right in the middle of the canvas and I couldn't find anything else. It drove me crazy.

And then I remembered my own wise advice from 2 weeks ago: turn on the computer and look at the image on your monitor! So I did, turned it in another direction and yesss, right away I saw a dancing figure, first on the left and then on the right:

Do you see them? The left one with the arms in the air, the right one it's mostly the backside that you see.

And then, even though I didn't have time, I couldn't resist starting already. This is what I have so far:

I seem to be into dancing figures lately ;-)

I'm not sure whether I should paint their faces or just leave them without face. What do you think?

Well, I have some time to think it over, because next week will be reserved for my marketstuff. Don't know yet whether I will have time to work on this.

I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday again. Go check out the other artists on there, there's some amazing work!

And thanks again for visiting! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Artists that inspire me: Hugo Urlacher

Today's inspiring artist is from Argentina. Hugo Urlacher was born in 1958 in Buenos Aires and still lives there. I discovered his beautiful work last year.

Almost all information about him on the internet is in Spanish ...

A language which I do not speak .... (I tried once though, but the only thing I remember is "no hablo Espagnol" which means as much as "I don't speak Spanish" ...)

I LOVE the strong colours that he uses

and the softness and melancholy of his characters

Can you believe he is self-taught!?

I don't know what medium he uses. In close-ups of his paintings you can see that the layers are very thick.

I LOVE this one!

But this one is my absolute favorite. So so beautiful ... Look at their hair!

He also makes really realistic portraits, and sacro-art, but these are all examples of his personal art, which I prefer. Check out his website for more or have a look at his Facebook-page. 


Thanks so much for visiting, and for commenting on my previous post! It seems I really SHOULD get a commission from Moo, ha! Have to check out their site for an affiliate-link. Guess I'm not really enough of a businessperson yet ... I'm working on it though ;-)

See you again on Friday for the PAINT PARTY !

Postcards from MOO !

First of all thank you all so much for all the comments on my previous post. Wow, I'm blown away with it. So nice when people say they get inspired by me! LOVE it!

Haven't been able to visit all the PPF-players, but I'll get to it, promise!

I'm very excited because I received my MOO-postcards! I have been printing my own postcards up till now, because I just couldn't find a place where you can print multiple designs in a small quantity. And I don't want to print 100 cards with the same design. What if no one wants them? Besides, I love making cards, I want to make loads of different ones.

And then I found MOO. Located in the UK and in the USA. And you can print every card a different design! Just what I'm looking for :-)

Here are some pictures:

They are on really thick paper, and the quality is awesome. The only thing I regret is that they're glossy. I always prefer a matte finish. But hey, I'm happy that it's possible to get that many designs.

I made 32 different designs! I will sell them at markets and in my (hopefully soon-to-be....) Etsy-shop.

I also have been playing around with drawing one-line-girls. Lately I'm so stressed for time that I just need to find things that are quick and easy, to do in between other things. I like making these girls and then adding funny quotes to it in Photoshop. Here are two of them:

They are made of one line. So I start somewhere and don't lift my pen until the whole face is finished. Which means I have to go over some lines several times, but that's the fun of it.

Well, it's bedtime once again. I'll see you in 2 days with another inspiring artist. Bye for now and thanks for visiting!

Still a work-in-progress ....

I've been painting a lot this week, I'm getting addicted again ;-)

Actually, I should work on some boxes, but I don't feel like it, I just want to paint.
Next week, I'll probably just finish this painting and then force myself to start making things for my market in September. I really shouldn't leave it all till the last minute, like I always do.

Anyway, this is where I stopped last week:

I've been looking at it for days (I usually paint on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the rest of the days the painting is sitting on its easel in the livingroom, so I can watch it and try to come up with new ideas).

And it kind of grew on me. So I decided to stay with it and not change the figures on there.
It went through some phases though ....

I decided it needed some lightening up, so I threw some more paint on there and used my spraybottle to make drips. Aaaah, LOVE drips ...

But, being the impatient person that I am: I didn't wait until the different layers were dry, so in the end I created mud. And I hate mud ...

That's something very important that I learned in Flora's workshop: DON'T mix cold and warm colors! Use warm colors (or vice versa), LET IT DRY, and then use cold colors. It's the "let it dry"-part that I'm having problems with .... ;-)

So I tried to lighten it up again ...

Getting tired of the dark I decided to use my foambrush. Too much paint on there for the first stroke, but hey: happy accident, because I suddenly saw a shoulder ...

And this is where I am now. Not finished, but getting there.

And see: a bird sneaked in ... I can't help it. I planned on not painting birds this time, but when you look at the first picture, you can see it's just sitting there. I didn't even have to change the shape, it was a perfect bird. Couldn't paint over that now, could I!?

This weekend I need to clear out my working space. When we were still living in Belgium, I had half of a room that I could use to paint. It wasn't big, but I had all my supplies at hand, and my table was pretty large.
But here, living in a rental place with carpet almost everywhere and not allowed to hang anything on the walls, my "studio" is reduced to a tiny spot at the kitchen table, and my supplies are scattered all over the house and garage. I NEED MORE ROOM!

See what I mean ? I don't have room to spread things out and let things dry. It's one of the reasons I still didn't start painting my boxes. I always work on several at the same time, but it drives me crazy looking for place all the time.

Oh well, guess I should count myself lucky that I at least have this little place, and that my family doesn't complain when my supplies start taking over the whole of the kitchentable ...

I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday. Check out all the other artists on there, almost 100 people are participating every week!

Thanks for visiting! And I wish you all a very relaxing weekend!