Another week that flew by ....

Phew, this week went by so fast I didn't even get to post twice ....

Not that I have that much to post, but at least I managed to finish my mosaic mirror and my SOC piece for week 3 :-)

This is the mosaic mirror:

It's approx. 25x25cm (9,8"x 9,8") and made of handmade mosaic pieces, glasstiles and (pieces of) shells. Had fun doing this one :-)

Summer of Color this week had colours that I'm not too crazy about. Here they are:

Lavender and grey with a smudge of plum .... I like plum, I'm not too crazy about lavender and I hate grey. Although grey can be very useful to let other colours pop. But in my "normal" paintings I never ever use grey. So this was a challenge. But then, it's supposed to be a challenge, right?

This is my first layer:

I spread some lavender and a tiny bit of purple with an old creditcard, and then added some plum with a paletknife. Didn't like how it was looking so I put some cling wrap on top and let it dry. Liked it much better then. This is such a simple technique but gives great results.

Then I brought out the figures with grey ...

I like it better than I thought I would, but still, I don't think I'll exchange my oranges and yellows for this combination just yet ;-)

And this morning I got a really nice surprise in the mail: Lee from "Defining me" had sent me 2 minizines. I had no idea what a minizine was, and I really really like it. She sent me one  about a camping trip with her parents when she was younger, and  one about a trip to Paris. It's such a lovely way to keep memories of something.

Here are some pictures:

It's hard to get good pictures of it, but I think you get the idea. It's filled with Lee's typical colourful quirky characters and I love it. Thanks so much Lee!

Okay, that's it for now. I want to thank you for visiting my blog and leaving all those lovely comments. I realy appreciate you taking the time, and I try to get to everybody in return. Although sometimes I'm not able to leave a message, usually because of Google+. But know that I visited you :-)

Linking this as always to Paint Party Friday, and of course to Summer of Color. Have you had a look yet at all the gorgeous art in all those links? If you haven't, you should! I try to keep up but wow, there are a lot of participants in both challenges ...

Well, hope that you're having a great day, and that your weekend will be fun! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

Connections

I finished my painting! I decided to keep the white, since so many people were in favour of it, and also because it's different for me and every now and then one has to try something different, right?

I really loved working on this painting. It's a completely different way of painting than my more intuitive paintings.  Mostly because I can do little pieces at a time, and don't have to get out all of my paints and brushes.
 

I tried to leave as much of the background as possible. When I make another painting like this, I'll take more care with the background and keep in mind that it's actually the end layer in most parts. With my more intuitive paintings almost all of it gets covered or altered, so that's a different way of working.

I don't have that many in-progress pics, but I'll show you what I have:

 I started this painting in Tracy Verdugo's workshop. This is the first layer. Mostly symbols added with different materials and in different ways.

 second layer: it needs some colour!

   Third layer: more colour and drips. I used a lot of acrylic inks on this canvas. Love the brightness of the colours. Although they re supposed to be waterproof, I found that not all colours are when I went over it with the white paint.

 

Fourth layer: still more dripping ….

 

Fifth layer: softening it up a bit, bringing it all together:

Drawing my figures on there. Most come from my imagination, although I could “see” the two big birds and the dog. And I took care not to cover areas that I really liked, like the bright colours of the tree trunk.

  Starting to fill it in with white. Nice and easy, taking my time …

 Almost finished the first layer of white

 Second layer of white and starting on the faces

 

More working on the faces

 And this is the finished painting. I call it "Connections", because to me it's an expression of how close all living things are connected and how we are dependent on each other. It's a square box canvas of 61x61 cm (24”x24”)

 And then my SOC-piece! The colours for this week were dark teal, coral and a smudge of white:

This is the first layer: coral and some white spray ink.
 

And this is what came out of it. A bit surreal, I'll admit, but then in almost of all my paintings there's a bit of surrealism ;-)

It's made on canvasboard and is 20,3x25,4cm (8x10 inches).

I found this quote on Pinterest his week, and thought it was perfect for this little canvas.

 
Well, that's it for this week. I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday and to Summer of Color. So many talented participants in both of these art parties, so go have a look, there will be lots of eye-candy :-)

Thanks so much for visiting and leaving your sweet comments. I hope your day has started well, and your weekend will be bliss  ♥ ♥ ♥

Slowly but surely ....

It's not going very fast, this painting that I'm working on, but I managed to paint another face today. That leaves 4 more to go, and then the birds and the bodies .... But I enjoy working a little bit here, a little bit there. Time is limited lately, and I like to have something that I can work on in between.

Still not sure what to do with the white. I'll leave it like this for now ...

I also started the first layer of the second week of Summer of Color. Colours this week are Dark Teal and Coral, and a smudge of bright White. Here's what I have now:

Still some work to do, that's obvious .. ;-)

Thanks so much for leaving all your wonderful comments on my previous posts. I really appreciate this ♥ I'll be back on Friday for the Paint Party, and hopefully the finished canvas for Summer of Color. Have a great day!

Summer of Color week 1

Phew, I made it! Two days ago I didn't think I'd be able to finish my first Summer of Color piece today, but I did. Although I might change some things about it later, for now I'll leave it as it is.

These were the colours for this week:

aqua blue, yellow and a smudge of hot pink ....

Because I'm still working on my big canvas with all the white, I decided to use this same technique for my SOC-pieces,  so I can try out different colours, and also because I really like painting like this.

I completely forgot to take pictures of the first layer, but Wednesday evening, when I started on the second layer, I thought about it and took a picture right then. It's not very clear with the lamplight, you can't even see the difference with the table underneath, and it looks all orange-y, but it's all I have.

I painted most of it with different shades of yellow, scraped out with a credit card, and then I sprayed some pink ink on it. Then I made the drawing, and coloured it in with aqua. Nice opaque colour, but I still had to do 2 layers to get it completely covered. Here's the finished piece:

I wanted to find a way to hang everything together, so I decided to make their legs come out of the tree. Loved making this, looking forward to making more.

I also worked a bit on my canvas that I started in Tricia Reust's workshop on Monday and Tuesday. Put some more glazes on top to deepen the colours, but now I'm officially stuck:

Really don't know what else to do with it. My hubbie says I should leave it like this, but to me it doesn't look finished. Something is bothering me, and I don't really know what. I'll have to take some more time with this one. This coming week I want to work on my other canvas, and finally finish my mosaic mirror.

Well, that's it for now. Have to get my daughter to gymnastics practice now :-)

Hope all's well with you! Thanks for visiting me, and don't forget to also have a look at what the other artists created this week in Paint Party Friday and in the Summer of Color.

Wishing you a lovely peaceful weekend ♥ ♥ ♥

workshop with Tricia Reust

Monday and Tuesday I've been doing another workshop :-) Yes, I've really gotten the taste of live workshops and I want more more more ;-)

This time  it was a workshop with a local artist, who exhibits in the same gallery that I have my work. Tricia Reust has won many prizes with her art and is a gifted and gentle teacher. I've learned so much in those 2 days, not only about techniques but also about materials and which product to use for what. I really enjoyed it.

This workshop was about incorporating drawings on a textured canvas. Lots of collage, and I made myself try out the heavier and thicker pieces of collage as well. Guess what? I think I still don't like thick pieces of collage. I prefer to make texture by using stencils and molding paste, or by dripping paint on canvas. But I'm glad I tried it out, because I would forever be wondering about it. You see, I really like these collage-bits in other people's work. But somehow, in mine, I prefer collage that almost disappears into the whole of the painting.

Here's what I did in those 2 days:

Not finished yet, and not really sure how to continue. I'm not used to having so much white space on my canvas, and I'll have to keep myself from fillling it up. I've put it on my easel in the livingroom, so I can look at it every time I pass, and I hope I'll get some bright ideas that way ;-)

Today I started my little canvas for the Summer of Color. I forgot to make a picture of the first layer, and only thought about it at night when I was working on the second layer. So I took a picture then, but it's really bad quality because of the lamp-light. But it's all I have at the moment. I hope I'll be able to finish it by Friday.

The colours for this week are aqua blue, yellow and a dash of hot pink. I know it doesn't look like this on this picture, but that's because of the lamp light. When I finish it, I'll make a picture in daylight, and hopefully the colours will be better then. Stay tuned ....

That's it for now.  I'll be back on Friday with hopefully my finished piece for Summer of Color!
And don't forget: you can still join in. It's a wonderful challenge, and lots of people are participating.
Hope to see you there! Thanks so much for visiting ♥

Still works in progress

I've been painting in between other things, so not many changes compared to last week. Although I managed to figure out how to finish the figures. So that should make the rest of the painting easy to finish. I hope ... :-)

I am really trying to stay away from the coloured bits as much as possible, because I want the colours to stay "raw". But leaving her face like it was was no option, because there was a spot that looked like her mouth but was twice as big, and it just looked real weird when I tried to leave the face as much as it was. So in the end I decided to put some white gesso over the skin parts of her and I like it better now. Since she's wearing such a short skirt, I would've had to paint over all those lovely marks, and I didn't want that, so I gave her some trousers instead ;-) Not sure whether I'll leave it like this, I might embellish it a bit more ....

Here's how it looked before I started working on the figure:

I have been wondering, and still am, whether I should leave the white as it is, or go over it with titan buff. It looks so ... well ....  white, if you know what I mean .... What do you think?

I have also been "floodling"... :-) What on earth is that you may ask. Well, a little while ago I doodled a girl with some big flowers next to her, this one:

 
and Nic called it a "floodle". Really like that word, so I decided to make some more floodles. They're all still in the pencil-phase, but I was working on this one last night and all of a sudden had the idea for a quote to put in her hair:

Two weeks ago it was exactly one year ago that my sister died unexpectedly. I had been wanting to paint or make something to commemorate her, and my father, who passed away in 2004. But I couldn't come up with something. I am not good with prompts. When someone tells me to paint something about a certain subject, I freeze. But then I realized every single thing I painted or drew in the year since her passing, had been influenced by her death. Especially my more intuitive paintings and my doodles. At the time I was painting I didn't always realize it, but afterwards I found signs in my paintings that told me of my feelings, that showed me a way of dealing with it. I love how it just comes all naturally. It is inside and it comes out through my paintings. Automatically. Unconsciously.

So I gave up on the idea to paint something specifically for them. And now, while I was drawing this girl, I knew I wanted that quote on there, and I knew it was again a kind of commemoration of the 2 most important people in my life that have died. I now know that I don't need to force anything, it'll be expressed when it's ready to come out ...

Well, that's it for this week. Just wanted to let you know that there's another worldwide FREE shipping in my Society6-shop, until Sunday midnight. I keep adding images, these are a few of the new ones:

Did you know that Summer of Color is about to start again?  Six weeks of colour prompts.... Looking forward to it! I'm not sure yet which kind of paintings I'll be doing, but I just might try out that negative painting-technique I'm now using in my bigger painting. That way I can try out different colours instead of white ...

I'm linking this as always to Paint Party Friday. Hope you're having a wonderful day so far, and wishing you peace and rest/excitement (whichever you choose) for the weekend ahead! Thanks so much for visiting ♥ ♥ ♥

In progress

Oops, almost midnight again, so this'll be a quick post ;-)

Not that much to show today, all are works in progress ...

New mosaic that I'm still thinking about ...

Putting a second layer of white on my painting  (this is a detail) ...

Making new postcards that will be available in my Etsyshop (hopefully by Friday...) ...

Adding new products to my Society6-shop ...

AND getting ready for Kristin's Summer of Color!

Check it out! It's one of my 2 favorite challenges and a lot of people are participating!

That's it for now. Like I said: a quick post ;-)

Thanks for being here! I'll be back on Friday!