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!

Is the week over already??

I don't know what it is, but since March the end of the months seems to come right after the start. The middle seems to pass me by in a haze of busyness, and when the haze lifts another month has started already ... I must admit I don't like it. At all .... And I have no clue how to change it :-(

This week I worked mostly on my mosaic. I finished the new mirror I started:

And felt like starting another one! But first I needed some more mosaic pieces. So I got out all of my materials Wednesday night, and started working the clay. Oh boy .... that didn't feel good on my hands ... The clay was really hard and crumbled in my hands. And all the kneading didn't do much good. I kept going at it (I'm stubborn that way ☺), and succeeded in getting it more or less like it needed to be. But my poor hands ....I even had a blister in my palm! The things we do for art ..... I know some people would call me crazy ...

Anyway, the mosaic pieces I managed to make weren't nearly enough, so I started searching the web for solutions on handling hard and crumbling polymer clay. Thank goodness for the internet! And for the people willing to share their experiences and solutions...

I was so inspired by all that I read that I stayed up until 1.00 am ... Decided to "marinate" my cut-up clay in some oil overnight, and expected them to be soft and pliable in the morning. Were they?

Nooo!
Still felt very hard and couldn't get them to mix together. So I took another (more extreme) advice I read about, and went to work on them with a hammer .... And managed to beat them all into submission :-D
It felt very liberating smashing those stubborn pieces of clay (great stress reliever) and I finally had soft and manageable clay, phew ...

These are the pieces I finished before the kids got home from school:

Still need more, but I think I'll give my poor hands some days off ;-)

As a result of my mosaic making, I didn't get to paint very much. But I've almost finished the first layer of white. I love this kind of painting, it's very relaxing, almost like a meditation. This is where I am now:

And then yesterday I got a big surprise in the mail! Netty, who had won one of my paintings in the giveaway a few weeks back, decided to send me a surprise package with art goodies.

Oh, so exciting to open up ... :-)

And look what was inside! I love every single thing in it!

A beautiful pendant. I'm in love with the little glass beads at the bottom. It's nice and glossy, and the girl is so cute.

Love this tag too. And I had to write her to ask how she got the girl on here so glossy. Love the result! And again those lovely beads ....

 And this is actually a little notebook! I'll only write very special notes in there ;-)

And it was all wrapped in a beautiful napkin that I can use in collage:

Thanks so much Netty. You didn't have to do this. But I'm happy you did :-)

And following my last post about all the time I'm wasting on Pinterest lately, Conni from Atelier Tante Trulla sent me this pin:

 Hihi ... so true ;-)

Well, that's it for now. I'm linking this post as always to Paint Party Friday.

Hope you're having a fantastic day! Thanks for visiting, and enjoy the coming weekend! ♥ ♥ ♥

getting distracted

It's very late already and I should be in bed by now, but I got distracted. Again.....  By Pinterest ...

I now understand how you can lose hours and hours on there without even realizing it. And it's not as if I go there deliberately. No. It's very clever how they set it up. I get emails from Pinterest telling me that maybe board so and so would interest me, with some pictures. And usually, there's some board that interests me. So I think: I'll have a quick look....

Problem is: it's never quick. Because from looking at one board I see another board that's even more interesting, and then I have to check out the interesting pins as well ... And before I know it my evening is gone and I need to go to sleep.

Need to change that. And sooner rather than later ...

Managed to work on my mosaic today. It should be finished by Friday.

And I also tried out something new in my journal (being very inspired by the flowers from Alisa Burke ☺):

And now I'm going to shut down the computer and GOTOSLEEP !
Thanks for visiting! See you on Friday ♥

finally mosaicing again (and a little bit of painting ...)

I finished a small mosaic that has been on my worksdesk since months. Don't know why, it was almost finished but I just didn't feel like working on it. Now I forced myself to finish it, and guess what? I started another one already because I'd forgotten how much fun it is :-)

This is the one that's finished:

It's small, only 12x19,5cm (4,7"x7,7"). I'm experimenting a bit with new sizes and formats.

This is the new one I started:

Lots of little details in the beginning, but I so love to see how it looks all together. I want to get it finished by next week Friday, so I can take it with me to the gallery.

In between, I've also been working on my second canvas from Tracy's workshop. I'm experimenting with negative painting, and leaving the positive space as much as possible as it was. I will have to bring details out a bit more but I'm going to try to change as little as possible. I'm really enjoying this, the nice thing is I only need white paint at the moment, so I can do it in between all other kinds of things, like cooking. Doesn't take much room and makes no mess. That's quite handy every now and then :-)

This is where I am right now:

That's it for this week. Don't forget there's still a sale going on in my Society6-shop. Free shipping worldwide, the cards are on sale at the moment and from tonight there will be 5$ off all tees, tanks and V-necks. This sale will be on until Monday at midnight PDT.

Here are some products from my shop:

 

 cards

 rugs! Believe it or not ... ;-)

 throw pillows, with or without insert

 different models of tops

 wall clocks

... and so much more. Have a look, the quality is superb!

Thanks so much for visiting! I'll link this to Paint Party Friday, go over there to have a look at the diversity of artprojects people created this week!

Hope you'll have a wonderful weekend ahead of you! Enjoy your day ♥ ♥ ♥

Quick little post

Long time ago that I did a sketch. It was fun, really should do it more often. When I scanned her and saw her on the computer I had the feeling something's off, though I'm not sure what ....

I think it's something with her eyes, though it could be something else entirely. Guess I'll have to look at her a bit longer in order to find it ;-)

And despite a promise to myself to finally start a new mosaic today (people in the gallery keep asking me about it), I just couldn't stay away from the second canvas I started in Tracy's workshop. I so want to work on it. I'm trying out something new, and having lots of fun in the process :-)

Finally, believe it or not, but Society6 is having a promotion of free shipping again! I love Society6, they so regularly have promotions, and I always use those to also buy things for myself or for a friend. Here are some products from my shop that I haven't shown yet:

 wall clock

phone cover

pillow

Well, that's it for now! Hope you're having a wonderful day! Thanks for visiting ♥