Painted the whole day today!

Well, I started at 10 am and stopped at 3pm, so it wasn't exactly the whole day, but it was a long time ago that I managed to paint that long. The hours flew by. I thought I would have it almost finished by now, but nooo. I'm always surprised by how long it actually takes.

I worked on the other woman today. I also decided what to do with the birds. I know I wanted birds on there, but the birds that I saw in the paintmarks were too big and not in the right place. And while I usually go with what I see on the canvas, I now decided to paint "my own" birds ... ;-)

This is what I had:

And this is where I am now:

I also decided on painting a tree. Because for me this painting is about our planet, and the sad state it's in today because of us humans.

Can't wait to work on it again, hopefully on Thursday....

I finally listed some of my original miniature-paintings in my Etsyshop. I want to start selling originals there but first had to figure out a way to make it affordable to ship. These small paintings are on canvasboard, which makes the posting and shipping price a LOT lower compared to the stretched canvases I normally work on.

These are the ones that are currently for sale:

I have 2 more that I still need to do the backing of, all the other ones were sold at the Christmasmarket. So I'll have to make some new ones...

Okay, time for bed! Thanks for being here, I'll be back on Friday for the Paint Party :-)

Working on my painting and more gelliplate fun

Oh, this has been a bit of a frustrating week. Very busy with work, and at the same time my head was overflowing with ideas that I wanted to try out but didn't have time for. But when it itches, you scratch, so I made time for it and as a result I have been diving in my bed after midnight every single day while having to get up early. And now I'm starting to feel it ....

The only day I've been able to paint for a few hours was Wednesday. Remember the picture of last week where I asked you whether you could see the images in there?

I admit it's not easy to see them, I only saw them when I was standing really close to my canvas. I've circled the 2 figures, the 2 birds and the face that I saw (click to see it better):

But when I started to bring out the face, I saw a third figure and decided to get rid of the face. I'm still in doubt about the birds. Asked my housemates, and my daughter reckons I should keep the bird on the left, my son thinks I should keep both birds, and my hubbie thinks I should get rid of all the birds ....

Hmm, not much help this way ;-)

Here's what I have so far:

And a bit of detail:

I have also been experimenting with my gelliplate. Just had to try out some things. These were made last night with selfmade stencils, and the more I look at them, the more I think of things I can do with these. Ooh, if only I could lock myself in a studio one day and not surface again until I've truly painted my heart out ....

These were made on canvasboards, but I noticed they are a bit harder to use on the gelliplate. They don't pick up all the paint because they're too stiff to make really good contact with the plate. Which gives some interesting results too, but is not always what you want. I'll be back with more of these ...

Remember the painting I finished last week? This one?

It's sold! The very next day! Never had a sale that quick :-) Thanks so much Jessica! I have been giving it some coats of varnish, and now I'm leaving it to dry completely before I'm sending it off to the United States. The first time I'm sending a painting by post. I'm a bit nervous about it, have been trying out all kinds of packaging materials, and I'm still not sure what to use. I just hope it'll arrive safely ...

And last but not least: 2 days ago I started the 100 happy days challenge. For 100 days in a row, you post a picture of something that made you happy that day. Here's more information if you would like to join. The purpose is to make you more mindful of the moment that you're in, to notice the things that make you happy. Sounds like fun to me. I'm posting my pics on my Facebookpage every day, so feel free to follow my daily journey here :-)

And I'll also make a new board on Pinterest with all the pictures. Looking forward to putting them all in a book at the end of the challenge...

Okay, that's it for now. Linking this as always to Paint Party Friday, the wonderful community of artists that come together every week and share what they've been doing artwise.

Thanks for being here and thanks for commenting. It makes me happy .... (see, I found another thing that makes me happy ☺. When you start thinking about it you can find a lot of things actually).

I'm wishing you a wonderful Friday, and a restful and peaceful weekend! ♥ ♥ ♥

gelliplate fun, printing plates and a little bit of painting and sketching

I am doing so many different things at the same time, without having enough time to finish anything, so you can imagine how my worktable looks. Actually, my worktable is spreading out over the entire kitchentable ... ;-)

Just a quick overview of what I've been up to the last few days:

First of all, I finally played (a little bit) with my gelliplate again. I didn't really have time, but I squeezed in 10 minutes just before bed last night to try out some printing plates I had made. And now I'm all excited to try out some more ...

These are the printing plates I made: one with tacky glue and the other ones with craft foam:

And these are the prints I pulled from them:

Okay, it's not much, I admit, but I'm excited about the possibilities. The ones with the craft foam gave really good prints, the one with the tacky glue was very interesting but the glue wasn't as 3D as I had hoped. I tried to make a printing plate with my (tiny and very cheap) gluegun, that I had never used before, but I find it very hard to make a figure with that glue. There were blobs everywhere and when I stopped there were still long threads coming off it that I didn't really want on there. But it was much more elevated than the tacky glue, so maybe I should try again.

I also managed to paint a little bit and started to bring out the figures that I saw in my new painting.

I found another figure in there and decided not to bring out the face that I saw last week. Still in doubt about the 2 birds. Tomorrow is the only day I will be able to paint this week, so I hope I'll get a lot done, and hopefully can show you some more on Friday.

And I finished preparing another canvas for a doodle-like painting like last week, and made a drawing on there last night when I was sitting with my daughter on her bed:

And, oh yes, I started painting some new boxes for a market in 3 weeks:

That's about it. Lots of in-progress works, and itching to get back to it, but too many meetings and too much work this week, boohoo.

I'll be back on Friday with hopefully something more to show ... Thanks so much for being here, and leaving your lovely comments ♥

Finished my painting (I think ...)

I am not completely sure yet, but I think my new painting is finished.

It's a bit like one of my doodles, but in colour. I just love drawing something and then putting lines through it everywhere and getting all these little spaces to fill up :-)

And this time I could fill them up with colour, which adds a new dimension to it.  I used mostly transparant colours and inks, and my Inktense pencils.

Because I wanted to make a more detailed drawing, I didn't want the canvas structure to come through, so I collaged the complete background, then gesso-ed it and then sanded it. Got me a pretty smooth surface to work on. Although there's a lot of texture too from the collage. But I wanted that.

This is how it started out. I didn't take many in-progress pics, since it was basically just colouring in.

Love the brightness of the transparent paints and inks. But since they're more fluid, it's hard to paint without seeing the brushstrokes. So after painting I smoothed it out with a soft cloth.

And this is the finished painting:

It's 30cm x 30cm (11,8"x11,8") on a box canvas. I never used to work on a box canvas, but I had some in my cupboard and because I didn't have any other ones left I used this and I must say I like the stability of it. Might use it more in future.....

I called it "I don't know how to let you go", for no other reason than that I was listening to a CD from Sarah MacLachlan when I was painting, and this was a sentence from one of the songs. It stayed with me and when I had to think of a title it just popped in my head and stayed there. And I think it fits the painting well. I even wrote this sentence down on the painting, but not really visible. You can only see it when you go real close.

In the meantime, I've been studying my other canvas and drawing out some figures I saw on there. I found 2 figures, 2 birds and 1 face. Can you see them?

I admit, they're not so easy to find ... ;-)

I'll show you next week what I did with it ...

I found something interesting in one of the Facebookgroups I'm a member of so I want to share it with you. If you do art journaling, you can try to get you pages published! Here's the link.
It's for a new book: "Artjournal Kickstarter", and the deadline to submit pages is the 16th of April.

I'll be submitting some of my pages too, although I must admit my artjournaling is a bit on the backburner at the moment, since I've been painting so much, and there's only so many hours in one day ...

I'm linking this again to Paint Party Friday, which has just entered it's fourth year running. I haven't participated since the beginning, since I didn't even have a blog then, but I'm sure happy to have found it 2 years ago. It's a great group of artists that come together every week and share their art. And new artists are always welcome. Have a look at their blog!

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for visiting! I hope your day is beautiful, and your weekend will be happy ♥ ♥ ♥

Paintings in progress and finally another doodle!

When I was looking through my sketchbook I found an unfinished doodle. So I decided to finish it, since I haven't done one in quite a while and felt like it again. Besides, I bought loads of new black markers, so I had to try them out, right?

And I'm working on 2 paintings at the moment; This is a smaller one, that I'm not sure how to continue ...

And this is the one that I showed you already. This is the 5th layer I think (or maybe the 6th, could even be the 7th ... ☺):

Starting to see some figures in there, but not very clear yet. I'll have to look at it some more, or add some more layers ... ;-)

Today I brought 12 paintings to the Sails Restaurant at Suttons Beach in Redcliffe. It is such a beautiful location right at the beach, and I'm so happy my paintings are allowed to hang there for 1,5 month. And guess what? I forgot to take my camera ..... And I don't know what it is with my phone, but I can't take good pictures with it. So I can't even show you how it looks. But I guess we'll be going there for a snack or a meal in the coming weeks, and I might be able to take some pictures then.

Okay, time to get to bed, have to work tomorrow and need a clear head ...

Thanks so much for visiting, and for leaving those beautiful comments on my previous posts. I cherish each and every one of them ♥ ♥ ♥

I'll be back on Friday!

New painting: Still you pass me by

Yesterday was a really productive day. I finished my painting, put a new layer on the other one, and started 2 brandnew ones. Aahh, wish all days were like that :-)

And guess what? I was in such a flow that I even forgot to make more in-progress pics of the one I fnished. I was looking for them on my camera but I must've forgotten because they were nowhere to be found. I have a lot of pictures up to the point where I was a few days ago, but not after that.
Oh well ...

I wasn't happy with how it looked a few days ago. In fact, I was completely stuck. I didn't like her hair, I didn't like the collaged eye, I didn't know what to do with the background ....
So I just started glueing things down, painting a bit, using my square sponges again etc ...., until finally I had more or less what I wanted.

 This is how it all started:

Another canvas that was used to clean up my leftover paints. Decided I wanted some collage on there ...

Almost all of the collage I used was from my own artwork. I used torn up pieces of old postcards that I didn't like the quality of, and I printed out some of my doodles on greaseproof paper. I LOVE to use that for collage. It just kind of disappears, you don't see the edges, it looks almost like it's been transferred on there but without the hassle ;-)
Don't just stick it in your printer though, tape it to a normal piece of paper and put it through the printer like that. Otherwise I'm afraid your printer will  protest in a very nasty way ...

Used the canvas again to wipe leftover paint on when I was working on another canvas ... And of course I had to drip a little bit of paint ...

I saw a shoulder underneath that one eye so decided to go with that. But then what?

No idea how to proceed, so I started collaging some more and also using some stamps

That's when I saw the lady with the long neck in the back, and decided to bring her out (the face was from a stamp I made a few years ago)

I even added flowers, because it looked to me like she was sniffing something ;-)

It was way too busy, so I toned it down a bit ... Added some splashes of blue and my squares ...

Tried a weird hairdo which was harder than I expected and I didn't like it....

This is where I got to a few days ago, and the last in-progress picture that I have ....

Staring at it for a few days helps..... Yesterday I grabbed it and decided to finish it, no matter what. And I did! I glued on another eye, because it kept bothering me, got rid of that ugly hair, painted some bubbles and started scribbling things on there like on a normal journalpage. And a small part of a poem that I had glued on in the final stages suddenly leaped out to me as the perfect title. Love little finds like that :-)

 "Still you pass me by" - mixed media on canvas - 40x40cm (15,7"x15,7")

You may have noticed that I changed my blogs' sidebar a bit. It was getting too messy, so I decided to make my own buttons to make it look a bit more uniform. Not sure yet whether I'll leave it like this. But I like the idea that it's easier to find everything. It so often happens that I'm on a blog that I really like and want to follow, and I have the hardest time finding how to. I prefer to follow blogs with Bloglovin', because there you can choose to get an email every day with new posts from your favorite blogs. You can also choose to get one every week. I have the hardest time with Wordpress blogs. It seems like there's no way to follow them, except sometimes by email, and I prefer not to, since I get so many emails already. So, all I can say is: if you want people to follow your blog, please make it easy for them ...

Well, that's it for now. Linking this as always to Paint Party Friday. Hope you'll go and take a look there, it's worth it ....

Thanks  so much for visiting and commenting! I hope you're feeling wonderful today, and have a great weekend ahead of you! ♥ ♥ ♥

Keeping busy

I've been keeping busy with getting more images ready for Society6 and experimenting with Photoshop. And as a result I haven't gotten much other art done. And didn't feel like it either ....

But yesterday I forced myself to start a new painting. Not really new new, it's a canvas that I did some background on already, but it had been standing here since a long time and I thought it time to do something with it.

Here's where I am now after adding some contrast colours:

It's another intuitive painting, but with this one I'm trying to work in a bit more "controlled" way. The last paintings I made I went overboard quite a few times with dripping paint and scribbling lines, and as a result I had to make new layers all the time in order to get to a point where I could "see" something in it. This is the first time I'm happy after doing my blacks and whites. Looking forward to working on it some more....

And here's another one I'm working on:

I figured I'd try some of my journaltechniques on canvas. There's lots of collage in this piece. Not done yet, but hopefully by Friday ....

That's it for now. I can't seem to get back to 3 times blogging a week ... Time just escapes me.

Thanks so much for visiting! I'll be back on Friday ♥ ♥ ♥