29 faces day 2

I have been experimenting a bit with coloured pencils. Last I saw a video of PeonyandParakeet, she has a great way of using coloured pencils in her art. I didn't quite manage to do what I had in mind, so in the end I limited myself to drawing a face and doing the hair in coloured pencils. Here she is:

I will probably add a quote or something to the black area, but for now it's a face and I'll leave it like this :-)

Interested in joining ther 29 faces challenge? Here's the link. Go have a look, it's fun!
Thanks for visiting, see you tomorrow!

29 faces day 1

Yes, I decided to post every day for the 29 faces challenge, but only a very quick post, and then every Friday I'll share an overview of the whole week. Today, to start out well, I didn't have much time ;-) So I decided to draw a quick face with Stabilo-all pencil. I have had this pencil since last year, but have hardly used it. I always shy away from using black in my faces, but with this challenge I want to try out some things that I usually don't do.

So here she is:

I put her in my handmade gelliprint-journal. Still have to get used to this pencil, the lines are really dark, and in some places I used too much water and the line almost disappeared. But it's a nice way to make a quick portrait. I'll definitely use it more from now on (especially when I'm pressed for time).

Okay, like I said: short post, so I'll see you tomorrow! Thanks for visiting ♥

summer's almost over ....

It has been raining all day today and there's a chill in the air that promises fall is almost here. Yuk! I certainly do hope that summer will come back for a few more days (or more ☺) so that I stay dry at my last market this Saturday. I haven't been painting much this week, just finishing up some stuff and mostly doing administration. I decided to bring new life to my old website, because it's in Dutch as well as English, and I have always been pretty happy with it before I moved to Australia and had to do everything in dollars. I'll still use my own website as well.

Today I managed to work a bit on my big painting. Frustrated that I didn't  have more time, but ... that's life I guess....

Here are some more products that I'll take with me to the market:

I found 3 old wooden bowls at a flea-market and decided to dotpaint them. I really like how they turned out, but never imagined it would be so hard to make a good picture of ;-)

Here they are all 3 together:

This is a new doodlebox that I painted and took with me to the market last week. It's sold, as well as the little round side-table I showed you last week: 

This is something new I wanted to try out. In my local artshop I found these papier-machee figures, and decided to paint them and put a quote on them:

Not sure whether I'll do them again though. I like to try out new things, but sometimes I just do it once and then decide I don't really want to bother anymore....

A few more of my small dotpaintings (yes, I discovered how much I like to dot all over again ;-) )

And some more rocks:

 This one's a hard one to translate. I think it's something like "everything that's worth something is defenseless". Or something like that ......

And this one means: "everything that has a beginning also has an ending. Be at peace with this and everything will be all right". Or something like that .... ;-)
  
And then I finally did something I had been wanting to do since a long time: I made some designs from my backgrounds and used them in my Society6-shop for all-over-tees. Here's one example:

I love using these backgrounds. Usually they are just a detail from one of the layers of my paintings, I don't even remember which painting this was.

That's it for this week. One more market, a few more days, and then school wil start again. And with school comes the 29 faces challenge. Are you in? I will be participating, not sure yet whether I'll be posting every day though. It's one of my favorite challenges, twice a year (February and September) and I always end up with a lot of material to use in further projects. You can find more information here. Hope to see you there!

Linking this as always to Paint Party Friday and to Show your Face. Go have a look over there, you won't regret it! Thanks so much for visiting. I wish you a happy day and a glorious weekend ♥ ♥ ♥

Oh yes, my funny for this week! I found it on Katie Jeanne's blog and thought it was really funny :-) (and so true ....)

lol :-D

See you next week!

busy with the markets ....

I've been preparing for the markets this weekend and next weekend, and it all took a lot more time than I realized .... But I had fun in the process, so that makes it worthwhile :-)

I'll show you just a few of the things I've been doing this week (amongst many others ....)

Decided to make some small dotpaintings. Here are 2 examples:

They are both painted on very small canvases of 10x10cm (4x4 inches). Love making these small paintings. And I already have some ideas about making them into a pattern too ....

Here are some more painted rocks, with Dutch quote on the back:

 quote says something like: "Logic will bring you from A to B, imagination brings you everywhere"

"Never regret anything that made you smile"

What else did I do? Oh yes, I dotted another sidetable:

This one was really fun to do. Love these round ones..

And since it was my birthday yesterday, I allowed myself to stop doing things for the markets and painted a (little) bit on my big intuitive painting:

I now know exactly which way I want to go with it. Can't wait for the markets to be over so I can spend more time with this painting :-)

I showed you an artjournalpage last week that I made in my new handmade artjournal, and I promised to share some pictures. Here they are:

This is what I started out with: when I purchased a gelliplate some years ago I spent an afternoon trying out different things on different kinds of paper. I also had some new Dylusion inks, so not everything is done on the gelliplate. I ended up with a whole pile of painted papers, some beautiful and some not so. What to do with them? I decided to fold them in half and make an artjournal out of it. And then left them for I don't know how long. In the meantime I used some of these papers to draw or paint on. And before we went on holidays a few weeks ago I decided it was time to finally do something with it. I found this tutorial on the internet and followed it more or less.

 gelliprint with a piece of thread. You can get really fascinating patterns with that.

 

 you might remember this one: it was a face for the 29 faces challenge last year. I now used the paper she was on (it was folded double) to put in one of the signatures

I'm very happy with it, but must say I'm a bit intimidated by the pages I really like. Don't want to "ruin" them by putting something on top. Which is silly really, that's what they're there for, so I'll just have to get over it ;-)

That's it for now! I will be linking this to Paint Party Friday, and to Show your Face. Show your face this month is about making a face that is inspired by another artist that participates. I'd love to do that but haven't found the time yet. Hopefully next week.

And here's my funny for this week:

hahahaha! Mind you, I have no idea how these machines work either, but I'm pretty sure this is not how it's supposed to be :-D

Thanks so much for visiting! Hope you'll have a beautiful day  and a weekend full of warmth and smiles. See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

I'm back :-)

I'm back from holidaying with the family and busy preparing for some markets. I almost completely disconnected from the internet during the time we were in the south of France, and I must admit it's something I could get used to... Although I'm also looking forward to seeing what everyone's been up to during my absence :-)

I made myself a new artjournal from gelliprints and tryouts. I need to make some more pictures and then I'll show it to you next week. This is one page in that journal, that I did during our holidays. Somehow I thought the artjournal would be almost full by the time we returned, but alas, that proved to be pretty unrealistic. I mostly relaxed and read heaps of books :-)

I experimented a bit with making patterns though, and had a lot of fun in the process. I want to use these patterns for duvet covers and all over tees in my Society6-shop. Here are some examples:

This is a drawing that I made for the Inktober challenge last year, and I turned it into a pattern. Love experimenting with this!

And this is a detail of a journalpage that is turned into a pattern. I have so many ideas that I want to try out now. Wish the days had more hours ....

But for now these things will have to wait, since I'm very busy preparing for 2 markets that I'll do at the end of August. I did one last week already, and these are some rocks that I painted and took with me (and sold ):

They both have a quote on the back, as all of my rocks do, but it's in Dutch so I'm only showing you the front. I need to start using more Dutch quotes now, since that's the language they speak here. I will still use English too though.

I don't have much more to show for now. Lots and lots of things in progress. I will be linking this to Paint Party Friday and to Show your Face. Hope you'll visit there, lots of things to see!

And I'll end with my funny of the week ;-)

lol :-D

Thanks for visiting! Have a lovely day and a fun weekend. See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

Summer of Color week 5 !

Yes, this week I'm participating in the Summer of Color again! Two shades of green and one shade of pink.Very interesting colour combination, and one that I hardly ever use. So I made another doodle and painted it in a darker green (emerald green), a light green (brilliant green) and a pink (quinacridone rose light). I kinda like this colourcombination, might use it more in future projects :-)

I scanned it but the colours look much darker than in reality. Somehow my scanner always has trouble with pink. I changed the colours a bit in Photoshop, but still, the original painting is much brighter. And the light green looks more green instead of the yellowish it looks in this picture. But well, you get the idea ....

Didn't have time to work on my furniture anymore, but I did manage to do some work on my intuitive painting. It's been so long since I painted a large intuitive painting, last one was somewhere in May last year I think, and it felt so good to be doing it again. Looking for figures and creatures in all the layers.....

This is what I showed you last week:

Asking you whether you could see the figure in there with outstretched arms ....

I outlined in white what I saw, but there are so many lines on there that it's not easy to see....

This is where I am now:

Not sure whether I'll have much time to work on it in the coming weeks. We'll be holidaying with the family, so I'll take a blog break for the next few weeks. When we were living in Australia this time of year it was winter and we didn't have holidays. So it was always easy for me to do the Summer of Color challenge. Now that we're back living in Europe the summer holidays are around the same time as the challenge, and I won't be able to finish it this time. But I'm happy I participated for 4 weeks :-)
I enjoyed it although not as much as other years. I like it better when there are 3 colours to use. I'm a colour junkie, I know.....

Last but not least: I listed a few of my doodles as instantly downloadable colouring sheets in my Etsyshop. For now there are only three, but I might list some more in the future. For those of you who like to colour: give it a go! It's a perfect way to de-stress and relax. You can find them here.

Anyway, thanks so much for visiting me here and leaving those lovely comments! I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday, to Summer of Color and to Show your Face. So much wonderful art everywhere, I'm getting a bit frustrated that I don't have the time to see every single entry...

Ending this post with another funny:

oooppss .... busted ! :-)

Well, I hope you are having a fantastic day, and that the weekend will be even better! See you in a couple of weeks! Take care ♥ ♥ ♥

Colour .... Give me colour .... LOTS of colour ....

Well, no entry for Summer of Color this week. This is the first time that I skip it, but I might join in again next week. Why don't I join in this week? Well, I have a confession to make: I crave colours at the moment. Using lots of colours, all at the same time. And I can't satisfy my craving for colour with SOC this year. Which is weird, because other years I had no problem whatsoever with the limited number of colours. But I could still use different shades and tints of the prescribed colours, and that made it exciting for me. Just how many tints can one colour have. I love experimenting with that.

For this week the colours are red - red - metallic. Well, I hardly ever use metallic colours in my work, and if I do then only in very small quantities. But the real problem for me was the two shades of red. Too similar. You can take a dark red and a light red, but there's not that much difference between the shades. Not enough at least for me to create enough contrast in a piece. It would be too similar to the result from week 2 with 2 pinks and one orange. And I really didn't feel like that. So, no SOC-entry for me this week...

I did go back to the background for my intuitive painting. In the past few weeks I've been smearing paint on there every time I was doing something and had some leftover paint. Last time I showed you it looked like this:

I kept searching for images in there but I couldn't find anything that spoke to me. After adding little bits and pieces in the past few weeks it looks like this:

And finally finally finally I could see a figure emerge from the background! Phew, so happy! I can see a female figure with outstretched arms, but I must admit it's hard to see it in the photo, it was much easier to see just looking at the canvas. Can you find her? I'll show you next week :-)

I also finally finished another doodle:

and another ACEO:

Summer really has started here now! We are experiencing a heatwave at the moment, and I'm loving it! It reminds me so much of Queensland.... School summer holidays also started this week, and we're doing a lot of lazing around and catching up with stuff that we never have time for. I am still finishing those side-tables, but painted the base colour on three new ones:

And last weekend I went to a flea-market and found some cute old little cupboards, that I've been sanding and putting some primer on as well:

The top one I'll use some kind of dry-brush technique on I think, and the second one will be dotted, with some mosaics around the mirror. Oh, so much fun, I'm a bit addicted to recycling furniture at the moment ;-)

Well, that's it for now! I'm linking this as always to Paint Party Friday, and to Show Your face. 
Both places are worth a visit!

I'll end with my funny of the week:

lol ... ;-D

Thanks for taking the time to visit! Wishing you a beautiful day, and a weekend filled with warmth! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥