Busy busy busy ....

... but not much to show for it ;-) I've been filling in the white background in my big painting, so it's still looking more or less the same. Can't wait to start working on the figures. I am preparing a new background for the same kind of painting, but instead of white I plan on using Payne's Gray. And I've also been putting more layers on my intuitive painting canvas. But like I said: there's not much to show right now ....

I have been making new ACEO's too, but only one's finished. I make the drawings while I'm sitting with my daughter on her bed at night before she goes to sleep. It has taken a while before we took up this habit again, but we both really enjoy it, even if there's only 10 minutes left before she goes to sleep.

This one was made with coloured pencils, markers and acrylics. It's available here.

Today I want to share art from some students in my Soulfood class. Didn't manage to reach everyone, but I got some to share already:

Lloydene calls these her "quirky collage girls". I love it everytime she comes up with yet another creation. You can see more of her wonderful art on her Facebookpage.

Joyce made 2 versions of the same girl, and I love both of them. Can't pick a favorite! You can find more of her beautiful art on her blog.

Amazing faces by Jackie Beeman. Also really love her colourful backgrounds.

And some more by Lloydene.

I really enjoy seeing what my students create. Makes me want to make more workshops, only to see what they will come up with :-)

There's another promotion in my Society6-shop (free worldwide shipping), so I decided to add some more art. Here are some examples:

 iphone skin

 stationary card

 totebag

 framed art print

I am late this week, but I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday anyway. Thanks so much for visiting! I'm wishing you a wonderful weekend with lots of warmth ♥ ♥ ♥

Funny of the week:

lol :-D

See you next week!

April ... where did you go ?

Another Friday, another month, we're almost halfway the year! Can't believe it. Except for the warmer weather, I don't like it at all that time moves so incredibly fast. I cannot remember that it was like this when I was younger... :-{

Meanwhile, I'm working on several things at the same time. Still painting away with white:

I have almost finished the first layer and added a second layer in some places already. It takes at least 3 layers to completely cover the background. For my next painting in this style I will try another colour instead of white.

Put some more layers on my canvas  for my new intuitive painting. I'm still not seeing any figures emerge, so I keep layering until I do :-)

And I made some more ACEO's. This first one is again mixed media with collage:

But then I also felt like painting one:

Takes some getting used to this small size, but it was fun. I'm a bit done with collage for the moment, it's weird, with me everything always goes in phases: I have my sketching phase, my intuitive painting phase, my collage phase, my journalphase, my markersphase, my coloured pencil phase and so many more ....  Guess I'm in the painting phase right now ... ;-)

And today was the last day to subscribe for Soulfood! It's finished already! Another example of time going too fast. It's good that I have till the end of the year to watch all the video's, since I only saw a few of them yet. The classes are as diverse and creative as their different teachers. It felt wonderful to be part of such a talented and generous group of people. And it was so exciting to see the work my students did after watching my video's. I was a bit late in asking their permission to post it on my blog, but I hope I can show you some examples next week. To start with: this is the page I made as an example for my class in Soulfood:

Well, that's it for this week. Linking this to Paint Party Friday, as always my favorite bloghop. Hope you take a look over there at all the work the artists have done this week! You won't regret it!

Here's my funny for this week:

 hahaha! Overambitious cat ...

Thanks for visiting me here, I hope your day started out well, and I wish you a beautiful and loving weekend! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

Spring is here!

Oh yes, finally! The sun is shining and I only want to go outside and feel the warmth on my face. The kids are here all day and we've been doing things together, so art has gone to the back burner for now. No painting, just a few ACEO's. But that's okay, there will be time later :-)

What I did manage to do this week is finally figure out how to put Paypal-buttons on my blog and make a gallery of images. Oh, you wouldn't believe how good that made me feel! I have been wanting to do this since such a long time, but every time I started it seemed so overwhelming and there was always something that made me postpone it again.

I couldn't believe it when it actually worked :-) I've been so happy about it that I'm now thinking of making a page for my smaller paintings to sell as well. Here's the page for my ACEO's. You can also click on it on the top of my blog. I'll be adding the new ACEO's regularly.

If any of you are interested in doing this yourself, I'd be happy to share how I did it on my blog next week. Just let me know in the comments.

And then I had a really nice surprise in the mail today. A few months ago I got an email from a lovely lady in Australia asking me whether they could use one of my paintings for the front of a booklet about climate-change. Since climate-change is something that is really important to me, I felt honoured and proud to be a part of it, and of course I gave them permission to use an image of one of my paintings. They chose a painting that I made a few years ago and that has been sold already. And today the booklet came all the way from Australia to me! Here's the front cover:

It is such an interesting approach to climate change. It's from a Melbourne based group of psychologists and helping professionals who are working to foster emotional engagement with climate change. In the booklet are personal stories of people concerned about climate change who are trying to raise the subject with friends and co-workers, and the different reactions they get to it, going from silence to denial to anger. It's about how to engage people and overcome psychological and cognitive barriers to talk effectively with others. Very interesting, I'm even more proud now to be on the cover of this!

And last but not least: next Monday my Soulfoodlesson will air! Oh, I'm so excited! And nervous! For those of you who would still like to sign up: I know I said last time that you can sign up until the end of the year, but that was a mistake. You can access and download the lessons until the end of the year, but registration for Soulfood ends on April 30. So there's not much time left. If you still want to sign up, here's the link!

Okay, that's it for this week. I'll finish with one of the funny pics I find on Pinterest, since I've been forgetting that for the last few weeks ;-)

Just yesterday, our cat must've thought the same thing. She was outside for all of 5 minutes, captured a mouse and managed to bring half of it back into the house. Urrgghhh!

Well, I hope the sun is shining in your part of the world as well. The world looks so different with sunshine all around. The people are different too, I just love spring! (and summer even more!). Makes me miss Australia a bit less ... I'm linking this as always to Paint Party Friday. Hope you're having a wonderful day and beautiful weekend ahead. Thanks for being here ♥ ♥ ♥

Painting in progress

Didn't get to paint as much as I would've wanted this week, but still, managed a few hours and it felt sooo good :-)  I remembered all of a sudden that I still had an unfinished canvas from when we were in Australia, and I've worked on that. It's not finished yet, but almost there. Here are some sneak peeks:

I used very bright colours, to make up for the grey and rainy weather we're having here. And cold ....! Man, I forgot how long the winter lasts in northern Europe ... Although, reading some of the other blogs, I guess we can't complain, there are places that still have snow. Ugh!

I didn't draw my figures on the other canvas that I showed you last week. Because I decided it could do with a few more layers ;-). So I went to work with my inks and, yes, with bright colours again, and got some gorgeous details. Here are some of them:

Oh, I so love playing with colours. The possibilities are endless. Next week I will try to draw some figures on this canvas. Or maybe, just maybe, I'll keep this canvas for an intuitive painting. Not sure yet ....

That's it for this week. Artwise I mean. I've been trying to re-open my Etsy-shop for ages, but it has taken me until now to recalculate the shipping rates and put all the prices in Euros. Almost finished now, so one of the next days it will re-open. Although I was in serious doubt about opening up again, since there are some things about Etsy that I really don't like. But I haven't found a good alternative yet, so until then it'll have to do ...If any of you have any suggestions about other sites similar to Etsy: please share!

One more thing about Soulfood: I got a comment last week from someone who forgot to sign up and thought she was too late. No, you're not! You can sign up for Soulfood until the end of the year if you want, because that's how long the class stays open. The videos are all downloadable to your own computer. So even if you've missed classes, you can still catch up. Getting pretty excited now, my class will air in 3 weeks :-)

I'm linking this as always to Paint Party Friday. Click here if you want to see lots of varied artwork from around the globe!

Wishing you a wonderful day, and a peaceful and fun weekend to reload your batteries!! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

I'm back

Phew, lately I feel as if I'm constantly short on time. I cannot believe how time-consuming making a video-lesson is. It might have something to do with me making it too long, wanting it to be perfect.... And of course, since it's the first time I do this, I still need to learn a lot about editing. But it's a great learning-process, I'm so happy to have been given the chance to do this, and I know I'll be able to use everything I'm learning now in future projects.

I forgot to show you the journalpage I made in preparation for my Soulfood-class. I showed 2 of the faces, but there were many more on the page. Here it is:

I didn't get the chance to celebrate the 4th anniversary of Paint Party Friday last week, but as far as self-portraits go, I guess all of these figures could've been me at one time in my life ;-) (except maybe for the hair colour.....). I really enjoyed visiting the blogs of other participants on PPF and see all the different and unique self-portraits.

As I've been buried in video-editing material over the last 2 weeks, I didn't get a chance to do much else. I've made some sketches though, that I want to use in a new painting of mine. Do you remember this background?

When I unpacked it after our container had arrived, it gave me such a happy feeling because of the bright colours. I can't wait to start painting on a big canvas again. I want to make another painting like this one:

And these are some sketches I've been making in preparation:

Oh, so looking forward to it :-)

I also want to try out some of the other lessons on Soulfood. There are so many different styles, and each single one gives me inspiration. We're approx. halfway now, so still a lot of lessons to come. Can't wait!

Well, I'll go back to putting the finishing touches on my Soulfood class. Hope you're having a wonderful day, thanks so much for visiting! Linking this to Paint Party Friday, the weekly blogparty that has entered its 5th year already!! Take a look over there, it's worth it! ♥ ♥ ♥

overview of the 29 faces challenge

This'll be a quick post, because I'm in the midst of videotaping my lesson for Soul Food! Oh, I'm learning so much doing this, and you know what? I really really enjoy teaching! I might start to make a whole series of small workshops online. And some people have been asking me to do live workshops. I might make that my mission this year :-)

But first I'll show you the last two faces for the 29 faces challenge.

Face 28: pencil and marker (and more hair than face really .... ;-) )

And the bonusface (since February only had 28 days this year): watercolour and marker:

And here's an overview of all the faces I did this month:

I'm always amazed by how much one can get done in one month. Thank you so much Ayala Art for organizing this! It's one of my favorite challenges and I'm already looking forward to September :-)

Okay, I have a question for you: when you do an online workshop do you prefer to watch everything in "real time", or do you prefer to have some parts fast forwarded? If I leave everything in real time there might be a lot of video's to watch and with people always being stressed for time it might not be the best thing? Just wondering .....

I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday and for the last time to 29 faces challenge! Take a look over at both blogs to see the beautiful things people create!

And don't forget: you can still sign up for Soul Food! The classes started in February, but you have access to the class until the end of the year, and all video-lessons are downloadable to your computer to keep! I haven't had time to try out any of the lessons yet, but I have watched almost all of them and really enjoyed it. Give it a try! There's so much you can learn :-)

Hope your day has started out wonderful, and that the coming weekend will find you happy and healthy. Thanks so much for visiting! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

Where did February go?

Can't believe it's almost the end of the second month of the year!! Time always flies when I'm doing the 29 faces challenge, but it seems this time it went even faster.

I managed to keep up with the faces though. Here's faces # 20 through 23, all from the same journalpage:

I had been reading an article about the lives of women in societies where women have no rights whatsoever. It was heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time. And a few days later, when I was painting in my journal, these women appeared. Shapeless, without hands, powerless, but somehow still with strong minds that can't be broken. I love how my feelings find their way on my pages and paintings without me having much say in it. Sometimes I only realize after I've painted something that it has to do with emotions or feelings or things I've dealt with in the days before. Here's the whole journalspread:

The quote from Virginia Woolf says: "there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind". Love that quote!

Here's face #24: another lyricsgirl with lyrics from Heather Nova

Face #25: coloured pencils and marker

And faces #26 and #27: both from the same journalpage that I made while preparing for my Soul Food class in April. So much fun to try things out, I'm getting really excited about it :-)

I'll show the whole spread in my next blogpost. Only 2 more faces to go!!

That's it for this week. Thanks for visiting! I love reading your comments :-) I'll be linking this to Paint Party Friday, and to the 29 faces challenge of course. So many talented artists, click on the links to see their work!

Hope you're having a wonderful day, and I wish you a nice relaxed weekend doing things you love ♥ ♥ ♥