What I've been doing in the last 7 months ....

Hey there! It feels strange to write on my blog again! So many months have passed, and it felt completely natural not to blog anymore. But lately I've started wondering how everyone's doing and who is still out there in the virtual world. Also, I made a promise to keep you up to date on what I've been doing :-) So here I am!

journal page

Those of you who subscribed to my newsletter already got an update of my digital sabbatical. As it turns out, the extra time I should've had by not being so often on the internet anymore wasn't spent creating and experimenting and painting. It just kinda disappeared into daily life things and duties. Which is a pity, but on the other hand maybe this was just what I needed. There was less stress, so that's a positive.

The first three months of the year I  painted quite a bit. The last weekend of February I taught a live weekend workshop artjournaling, and most painting was done as a preparation for that.
Here's a journalpage I finished during that time:

In April I had an exhibition, and for that I finished one painting, and about 15 small woodblocks that were given to visitors of the exhibition. Here's the painting:

"Summer Dreams" - 40x40 cm - mixed media

And some of the woodblocks:

 

I find that for paintings lately I seem to go more to these kind of negative space paintings, while leaving my intuitive work for my art journals. I really enjoyed working in my journals. I experimented with 2 kinds of spreads: one more collage, of wich this one is an example:

And one more intuitive, like this one:

And then my exhibition started, and I was done with painting. Just like that. Too many other things going on, nothing in the future that required me to finish a project, no need to get art ready to post on social media... While I enjoyed the fact that I could just relax and didn't need to prepare anything, after a while I started to get this nagging feeling that I should do something, that I should get out of this slump and start using my art materials again, before they all dried up.

So in July, when I went to Lissbon for one week with my daughter, I took my doodle-book with me and "forced"  myself to work in it in the mornings while my daughter was sleeping in (she's a teenager, they seem to be physically unable to get their ass out of bed in the morning ...) Well, in reality I only had to force myself the first day. After that I couldn't wait to get out of bed and start doodling again.

I am now finishing all the doodles I started last year, and will use these for my new 2020 calendar. That'll give me an incentive to keep going and make art part of my daily routine again. And I'm hoping I will also find time to paint, so I might even be able to make 2 calendars this year!

In October I will be teaching two workshops about lettering. Here's an example of a journalpage I did while experimenting with different ways of lettering:

I have in-progress pics of most of the spreads I showed here, but since this is already such a long picture-heavy post I won't show them now. I might do so in later posts though, if you're interested.

Sooo, that's a bit about what I've been doing artwise this year. Sorry for such a long post, but I guess that's inevitable when you only blog once or twice a year ;-)

Don't know yet when I'll be back, only that I'll be back. I will be visiting blogs this week, see what everyone's been up to. And I'll also link to Paint Party Friday later this week.

To keep up with an old habit: here are some funnies and thinkies :-) (yes, I'm still collecting them!)

Well, that's it for now! Not sure whether there's still somebody out there reading this, but if you are: thanks for still being here! 

I'll be back! 

♥♥♥