Paint Party Friday and last week of Summer of Color !

Sage and sepia .....
When I read what the colours for the last week of Summer of Color were, my first thought was "UGH".
These are sooo not my colours. Sage is in my opinion a bit of a drab green, and sepia, well, ..... even more drab. And, to be perfectly honest, a bit of a shit-colour, excuse the language ..... Good for photos, but for painting, no. I only ever use it for shadows, and even then very sparsely. Lately I prefer blues and purples for my shadows.

Anyway, at the same time I was a bit excited, because I really wondered how it would look together. I had a hard time mixing the colours, most colours I have are very bright, try making some drab colours with that.... So I'm not sure I got the colours completely right, but this is the best I could do with what I had:

I like the combination of the colours, they work well together. And I got a nice surprise mixing one of my darker greens with white. I got a really nice blue-ish green that I'll probably use again in the future. Something I'd never have known if it wasn't for this challenge. Aaaah, the things one can learn from challenges ... ☺

I'm also still painting stones. Here are some in progress pieces:

And the rock my daughter finished for her dad:

And with this the Summer of Color has come to an end. Next week I'll post a mosaic of all the pieces that I made. How fast 6 weeks can go by. When I just started the challenge I had just returned from Belgium and was feeling very fragile. I'm feeling a lot stronger now, but every now and then reality hits me again full-force, and leaves me sad and empty and shaken. It's often the small little things, like coming across the last email she wrote, or remembering something I wanted to tell her, or having to remove her name from my list of newsletter-subscribers. It makes it all so final. It's weird, with sisters and brothers, you just expect them to always be there. And when suddenly one of them gets ripped away life loses its security. It forces you to acknowledge that life is short and fragile, that you don't know what's coming next, that it can be over in a second. It's not a nice feeling, and it makes me worry all the time that anything will happen to anybody else. It'll take time to get over that sense of fragility.

Marianne wrote on her blog yesterday about a song of the Bee Gees that inspired her to make another beautiful card, and she said the song made her think of me. I'm so happy she introduced me to this song, I'd never heard it. Here are some of the lyrics, so beautiful:

Go on with your song, bird - you can't go wrong bird

You will go on and on bird, like you did before

though your wings are broken, the sky is so wide open

And the wind is waiting for you like an open door.

Next week my other sister will be here again with her family, after travelling up north. They'll stay here another 5 days before flying back. Looking forward to that!

And in the meantime I have my art. And it's such a relief to lose myself in it, and to be able to pour out all my feelings of grief and helplessness onto the canvas or the page, to find comfort in a good quote or poetry. I started a new painting when SOC started, and every week I put the leftover colours from my palette on there. This is where it is now. And no: you won't find any sepia or sage on there. Only a bit of the surprise blue-ish green ... ☺

Looking forward to finishing this .....

Well, thanks so much for being here, and for the advice with Google+. Seems I'm not the only one who doesn't understand it ;-) I'm still not sure what to do. I'll let you know when/if I try it.

Linking this as always to Paint Party Friday and to Summer of Color. Hope you are having a fantastic day, and a weekend full of warmth and joy.  ♥ ♥ ♥

Artists that inspire me: Kelly McKernan

Kelly McKernan is a fine artist and illustrator based in Tennessee.

She's only 26 yrs young, but has an amazing body of work.

She creates mostly watercolour and gouache paintings, but has also illustrated some children's books.

I love the ethereal fragile look of her female figures and the transparancy of her layers

I also really like the little squares in the background of some of her paintings.

She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 2009, and has been working as a full-time artist since 2012.

If you want to see more of her work, you can visit 

her website

her Facebookpage

her Deviantart

and her shop

Hope you enjoyed seeing her work. Thanks so much for visiting, I'll be back on Friday for the last Summer of Color! ♥

New doodle and new postcards in my shop

Thanks so much for all your lovely comments and visits to my blog! Still trying to figure out Google+, still kinda chicken to sign up, but getting wiser.... Thanks for all the advice ♥

I finally managed to finish another doodle. Here it is:

The painting rocks session with my daughter on Saturday didn't happen as we planned. She was feeling a bit sick, sneezing and blowing her nose all day. She did manage to finish one of her rocks though, because she wanted to give it as a present to her dad, who had been away the whole week and was coming back on Sunday after a visit to Bali to see his father. I started several new rocks. No photos yet, will post them later.

Did make new poetry cards and am still adding them to my shop.

Here are some:

That's it for now, time to go to sleep ....

Thanks for visiting, hope to see you again on Wednesday with another inspiring artist post, IF I can find an artist in time who'll give permission....

♥ ♥ ♥

Week 5 Summer of color

The colours this week, Candy Apple Red and Yellow, were quite a challenge for me. I love warm colours, especially all yellows and oranges, but red and yellow together creates a strong contrast that I'm not sure I like so much. On top of that, it's hard to make different shades of red, since it turns very quickly to pink or orange.

So I didn't mix any shades, but used 3 different reds that I had. Here's the result:

It almost looks like a modern version of the Belgian flag ;-) (or the German for that matter, both have red, yellow and black in them). I had to add a quote again, once again pretty sad, but it just fitted the expression on her face. Still my way of working through my grief I guess ....

And then I finally did something I've been wanting to do since January. During our holidays my daughter and I gathered rocks to paint. We once saw these at a market and wanted to try it since. But we couldn't find the right stones, smooth and flat and round, until we were at a beach in New South Wales. So naturally, getting weird looks from hubby and son, we dragged some home, and they've been laying in the garage since then.

Still trying out how and what to paint on them, but I must say I love it. I like how the form of the stone determines the end look, and no 2 stones are alike. These are 4 that I finished:

 frontside

and the faces also have a quote on the backside ....

Planned to take them to the gallery, but my son already seized the coloured face one. There isn't another stone that's exactly the same size and form, so he doesn't want it reproduced on another stone, he wants this one......

Never mind, I plan on making many more. Here's a face in progress, and the 2 stones my daughter started. We're planning on devoting the entire Saturday to painting rocks .....

And then to finish, I have another question for the experienced Google+-users out there. I vowed never to get a Google+-account, because I haven't been hearing many positive stories about it and I don't want to shut out people from commenting because they don't have a google+-account. But now it seems I'll have to. I have been doing a workshop with lifelong access online, but they're moving from a ningsite to a google+-community. So I want to get a google+-account but I don't want anything to change in my blog. I don't want to appear as a Google+-user, I want people to be able to comment and to find my blog. How can I do that? Sharon once sent me a link about changing back to Blogger from Google+, but I'm a bit chicken to try it out for fear of doing something that I can't undo. So basically what I want to know is this: What happens when I sign up for a Google+-account? Does anything change in my blog or do I have different options?

I would be really grateful to get some advice on this......

That's it for now. Thanks so much for visiting and leaving those wonderful comments. Hope you're enjoying the lazy summerdays (in the largest part of the world anyway), and I wish you a wonderful weekend full of laughter and love. Linking this as always to Paint Party Friday and to Summer of Color. Take a look over there, you won't regret it!

Oops, and I just noticed that I'm the featured artist on Paint Party Friday this week! Thanks so much Eva and Kristin ♥ ♥ ♥

Artists that inspire me: Leilani Joy

I don't remember when I first discovered Leilani Joy, an American artist from California. It was a while ago, but I rediscovered her recently through her Youtube-channel.

In her Etsyshop she describes herself as a fashion illustrator and fine art painter of whimsical, elegant and edgy females.

 I like the stylized illustrative nature of her work

and the elegance of her female figures

In her Youtube-channel she generously shares her creation processes, and her blog is very informative as well.

To find out more about this artist, you can

visit her website

become a Facebookfan

have a look at her videos

browse through her shop

and visit her blog.

Lots to see and read in these places! I hope you enjoy her art as much as I do.

Thanks so much for visiting! I'll be back on Friday for the Paint Party and Summer of Color (only 2 more weeks to go ....!)

Hope to see you then! ♥

quick post

Time to go to bed, but wanted to quickly post a journal/collagepage I just finished tonight. Had fun doing it ...:-)

And wanted to share this too. Have no idea where it is, but I love it ....

I'll be back on Wednesday with another inspiring artist-post (if I get permission from an artist in time ....)

Thanks for being here ♥

Back in blogland

More than a week almost without computer ..... it's definitely a change from "normal" life. But so much fun. We have been having a wonderful time with my sister and her family visiting from Belgium. Leaving family and friends behind is the hardest part about emigrating to the other side of the world, but when they visit it's double the fun.

They have now left to go travelling up north in Queensland, and will be back here in a few weeks for another 5 days. I am now trying to catch up with emails and blogposts, which have been severely neglected in the past week...

I managed to make a new Summer of Color painting in the nick of time. The colours this week are charcoal grey and soft pink. If there's one colour I really do not like it's grey. I don't even think of it as a colour.... But that's the challenge, isn't it? Using colours that you don't choose yourself. And I do like the combination with the pink. So here it is:

A girl and birds of course .... What else .... ☺. And a quote from Alfred Tennyson.

And I received a pleasant surprise in the mail once again. Sandra is giving away her SOC-paintings every week to a lucky winner, and guess who was the winner of her first painting? Yes indeed: lucky me :-)

Here's what I won:

Thanks so much Sandra! If you want a chance to win one of her paintings, go visit her blog and leave a comment!

That's it for now. Linking this as always, though a bit later than usual, to Paint Party Friday, and of course to Summer of Color. I'll be doing my best to visit you all this week!

Thanks so much for being here. I hope you're all enjoying the weekend and for those of you in the northern hemisphere the long warm sweet summer days.... ♥ ♥ ♥