Artists that inspire me: Rebekka Ivacson

Today's artist, Rebekka is a Romanian artist who started to draw at age 12.

She likes to use different techniques and materials, watercolours being the most prominent.

She's also a photographer and an illustrator

I love  her style. I think her images are very powerful.

She doesn't seem to have a website, but she's on Facebook

And she has 2 blogs, one on Wordpress and one on Blogger.

I love all those little details; the lines, the drips, the doodles

Isn't this lovely?

 
The weirdest thing happened to me today. I wrote her an email on Monday to ask her permission for this post, and she wrote back to say that it was okay.

And today I was looking for that mail in my inbox, and I couldn't find it. It's gone! I searched everywhere, even in my trash, but it's nowhere. I don't know where it went, and I can't even find the mail that I sent her in my "sent items". I'm baffled. It's almost as if I dreamed the whole thing. And still I KNOW that she sent me an answer. I even crossed it off my to-do-list. I really don't understand this. Has anyone had issues like this before with gmail?

Anyway, that's it for now. Hope you enjoyed looking at her art. She's also on deviantART, go check it out!

Hope you're having a wonderful day. It's night again here in Australia, so I'm off to bed.

Back on Friday with the names of the winners of my giveaway! Joohoo! Exciting! Looking forward to it ☺
See you then ♥

Lyricsgirl and one-liner

Wow, thanks so much for all the sweet comments on my previous post! My kids are already fighting about who is going to draw the winner ☺ They see the postcards as the "second prize" ...

I read about the big hurricane that's moving towards the eastcoast of America. Looks scary! I hope all of you who live there stay safe and sound, and that all will be back to normal asap.

In the meantime, I've signed up for another market. It's at the 8th of December, close to the holidays, and it's a well-known market. So I figured I'd give it another try. If it's the same disaster as last time, then I won't do it again and concentrate solely on selling online and through a few shops here in Brisbane.

So this week I'll paint some more boxes. Although I really want to start working on my canvases again, but I guess that'll have to wait. Booh!

Anyway, I made another lyricsgirl, since that was a long time ago and doesn't take too much time to make, and another one-liner.

Here they are:

Felt like making another long-necked lady ... The lyrics are from Tori Amos

That's me all right ... My days are fully booked lately, and I'm afraid it's going to stay that way at least until after the market ... Oh well, guess I'm not the only one for whom the holidays are the busiest time of the year. I'm looking forward to January already ☺.

Well, thanks for stopping by! I'll be back tomorrow with another inspiring artist post!
♥ ♥ ♥

Finished calendar and a giveaway!

Yes! I finished my calendar! Uploaded everything to Lulu, which is not always very user-friendly I might say ...., and ordered some for myself. They should be here in 2 weeks. Can't wait ☺

Here are the pages I finished this week:

In case you're interested in buying this calendar, here's the link. I'm going to do some more "marketing" for it as soon as I've received mine.

And this week I reached 100 followers! So excited! For me it's a milestone, I never thought I would reach it before the end of the year. I'd always planned to do a giveaway when I reached 100 followers, but, as always, I wasn't prepared for it and now all of a sudden I didn't know what to give away. First I wanted to give away one of my smaller canvases, until ..... I took a look at the shipping prices for overseas ... To make matters worse Australia post was so kind as to increase their prices as of this week. And since I don't want to limit this giveaway to my Australian followers, I had to come up with something else.

So I decided to give away an A4-sized (8,3"x11.6") art print of my latest painting "A place away from darkness":

 And secondly, for someone else, a pack of 5 random postcards, like these:

  or like these

Now, what should you do to enter the giveaway? Well, it's simple, just leave a comment on this post to enter the giveaway once. If you share this on your blog, Facebook or twitter (with a link back to this blog), your name will be added as often as you share it. Just don't forget to mention the link(s) to your posts in your comment below.

That's it!

I, or better yet, my daughter (she LOVES these things ☺) will draw the two winners next Friday (2nd of November). That's Australian time, so it'll still be Thursday night in some parts of the world.

Well, thank you so much for visiting! I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday, don't forget to check out all the gorgeous art works there.

For now I'll just wish you a very happy day, and a wonderful weekend doing things that you love!

♥ ♥ ♥

Artists that inspire me: Silvia Pelissero

My planning this week isn't working out too well. Where DOES the time go!?

Well, this week's inspiring artist is a young lady whom I admire a lot.

Silvia Pelissero is probably better known as "agnes-cecile".

She is an Italian painter, only 21 yrs old, and incredibly talented.

I discovered her on deviantart a while ago, and am fascinated by her work.

 Isn't this gorgeous!?

She uses different techniques: watercolours, acrylics and oils, ink, and something she calls "drip paintings", made with varnish.

 She has a lot of videos on YouTube. Go have a look, it's mesmerizing, it really is.

All so different, and yet very recognizable as her own style.

I had a hard time choosing which pictures to put on my blog, she has a huge amount of work for someone so young

and it's all equally beautiful ....

Can you tell I'm completely smitten by her work ...?

If you go to her facebook page in the "about-section", you can find a lot more links to various shops and sites. And a massive amount of equally gorgeous artwork. Go go go, it's worth it! ☺

And now for something else: all of a sudden I've reached 100 followers! Incredible! Thanks to all of you, and welcome to my new followers. And as a token of my appreciation, I'm going to do a giveaway!
I'll tell you more about it in Friday's post ...

Hope you're all having a wonderful day / night! ♥

Working on my calendar ....

Thanks so much for your lovely comments on my calendar girls! It's even more fun to do when other people like it ☺

Finished two more last night but didn't get around to posting them. So here they are:

And I even made a one-liner!

That's something to keep in mind when making art ... ☺. I remember finding this quote just when I'd been struggling for hours painting a face. I just couldn't get it right and started over so many times, got really frustrated in the end, and to top it all off I didn't like the end result at all. So when I found this quote, I wrote it all around her head, because, even though it wasn't how I wanted it, I learned how NOT to do it. In the end, it all comes down to practice, practice, practice. And just trying out things. And most importantly: never giving up!

Well, that's it for now. I'll be back on Wednesday with another inspiring artist post. Thanks for stopping by, hope you're having a lovely day!

Some more calendar girls

Well, strictly speaking I didn't paint this week, so I'm not sure whether I should link this to Paint Party Friday. I actually prohibited myself this week to touch my canvases. I must admit I've been looking at them longingly, but I need to get this calendar finished first. And after that I need to build up my stock to sell in a shop here in Brisbane. Not much use to start selling in January, when nobody has any money left and people don't need presents anymore ....

Well, in fact I did paint a tiny little bit ....  I have been looking through my sketches to see which ones I want to use for this calendar, and after I use my coloured pencils on top of the graphite, I always put a transparant layer of titan buff on top. It gives it a softer look I think. So there, you see, I CAN link this to PPF!

I decided to go with Lulu, since I'm in the process of making a diary there also. So if you'd be interested in buying this calendar after it's finished, keep an eye out for it the coming weeks.

I just finished 3 more pages/months:

I'm not sure yet whether I'll use all of these. I have more than 12 sketches, so I might just play a bit with all of them and then decide.

Do you recognize the backgrounds? It's so much fun to be able to use them now!

I've also been experimenting with drawing different body postures. Which is a lot of fun btw ☺ I'm hoping I can use these girls too somewhere in my calendar or in my diary. Here's one page I did:

Well, that's it for this week! Thanks for stopping by and I hope you'll all have a happy Painting Friday and a lovely weekend! ♥ ♥ ♥

Artists that inspire me: Dan Casado

I discovered Argentinian-born Dan Casado only recently, but I'm glad I did! His multi-layered work immediately drew my attention.

Dan is living in Spain since 1980, and he calls his art "outsider folk art".

I would love to do a workshop with him to learn how to achieve that incredible depth and transparency.

I like the surreality of his paintings. There's so much to see.

Look at that little man sitting on his shoulder ... Love it!

His work reminds me a little bit of Corneille. Mostly because of the figures sometimes floating around on the canvas, the fish and birds, the surrreal elements.

Love the transparancy of this.

Here you can see him at work:

Fascinating, isn't it!?

If you want to see more of Dan's wonderful artwork, you can visit his website, go to his facebook-page, or have a look around at Flickr. So many more goodies on show there!

Well, I hope you enjoy his work as much as I do. Thanks Dan for letting me feature you!

See you on Friday for the Paint Party! Thanks so much for visiting ♥

Calendar girls

I'm having fun with putting my sketches together with my in-progress-paintings as background, and then searching for an appropriate text / poem / quote to go with it. Since I will use these to make a calendar that I want to sell, I need to make sure that there's no copyright infringement. So now I'm looking into quotes and poetry from authors that have died at least 70 years ago ... Takes a lot of work! How I wish I could write my own poetry ....

Anyway: here are some old sketches that I coloured in  and gave a background. Not sure yet whether I'll leave them like this for the calendar ...

Aren't those background colours yummy!? It's so nice that I can use pictures of the different stages of my paintings in other work. This is a very big advantage of working with many layers ☺ I have loads of them since I did Flora's class!

And here's another one-liner !

Thanks for stopping by. I'll be back on Wednesday with another inspiring artist! ♥

A place away from darkness

I finished my painting! It might not look much changed for an outsider, but those last details were a lot of work! I'm so happy that I discovered Paint Party Friday. It really makes me force myself to paint at least a little each week. Not that I don't like painting, far from it!, but you know how it is: life sometimes gets in the way and before you know it a few weeks have passed and you didn't paint.

Well, with PPF not anymore! Even though I have been really busy this week, I painted and it sure felt good!

I'll show you the process from start to finish:

This is the way it looked when I took it out of my closet. Just some leftover paint scraped out over it, and a sand background (fine sand mixed with primer and put on the painting with a palette knife.

Finally used some of my stencils (I have a whole bunch but rarely use them)

Doodled a bit on top (because the sand background makes the surface really rough, I used different techniques than the ones I use with my Flora-paintings)

Doodled some more and tried some drips

Contrary to my intuitive paintings, I didn't look for something to jump out at me. Instead I use a sketch from my sketchbook that I wanted to turn into a painting.

Started with the figure but thought it was too dark

So I lightened it up ☺

Starting on the face

Started working the background but changed my mind several times. Tried painting waves: blah, tried painting lines: blah, painted a bird: yes!

Finally decided on painting corals. This is where I stopped last week.

Thought it'd be fun to add some bubbles

Worked a bit more on the fish and the corals (and boy that was a lot of work!)

Gave the bird some legs, finished the eyes, gave her an earring and used my white paint pen to bring out the details in her hair. Although, now that I see it next to the other one I'm not sure I should've done that.

Oh well ....

And since I discovered sketching again, here's another sketch:

Sketch with graphite and coloured pencils, then scanned it and in Photoshop pasted a picture of an in-progress painting as background.

I'm going to make a calendar out of these sketches with painted background, and add some words to it. But I'm not sure which service to use. Does anybody have experience with Redbubble, CafePress, Zazzle or Lulu for making calendars? Tips and advice are very welcome!

Well, thanks for your visit! I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday, be sure to check out all the beautiful work on there.

And once again: I wish you a wonderful Friday and a restful playful weekend! ♥ ♥ ♥