a little bit of progress

Where oh where does the time go!?? I cannot believe it is the end of the school year already. A few more days and July will be starting. This year feels like the fastest year ever.

Needless to say I didn't nearly get as much art done as I would've liked. Just a bit of progress in my toilet / bathroom, some sketches and some preparation to finally try and participate again in Colour me Positive.

Here are some glimpses of our toilet:

The swirl on the wall gave me the inspiration for this face. It looked like an eye. Now I'm not sure whether I should leave it like this or give him/her a "real" eye. What do you think?

Next are 2 pages I sketched in marker, all kinds of faces, stylized mosty, which I think I will be using in collage.

And that's it again for this week. Wish I could show you some progress on my big canvas, but alas, no progress at all. In fact I still need to start ....

Linking this to Paint Party Friday! Thanks for visiting, thanks for commenting! I'll finish this post with a few funnies :-)

:-D

Wishing you a great day and a happy weekend full of fun! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

sneak peeks of our bathroom

Didn't get much done this week, so just a few glimpses of the small changes in our bathroom / toilet :-)

Thanks for all your suggestions last week! Most of you suggested working with dark and light instead of stark black lines, and I must say it feels much more me. That's often the problem when you're inspired by another artist and need to make it your own. It sometimes takes a few try-outs and frustrations before you get it the way it feels right. I find it much easier now to work on it, I don't really need to think about it anymore.

Because I really like this technique I also started two very similar canvases. These are to experiment a bit more, my artjournal turned out a bit too small for what I want to do :-)

Still in the early stages, but the colours cheer me up, which is something I've been in need of this week, what with all the horror happening in the world, all the hate too many people feel, all this fighting and yelling and shooting and stabbing. I'm sick of it. So I take refuge in my paint....

This is all I have to show for now. Still didn't get in the habit of creating every day, and it is not because I don't want to. It's actually quite frustrating that I can't seem to find the time. I wonder how other people do that. If you happen to have a tip, please share!

I'm sharing this with the good old Paint Party Friday, the weekly bloghop that I don't get tired of :-)
But before I end, here are my funnies for this week:

:-D

Thanks so much for your visit! Wishing you days filled with love and compassion ♥ ♥ ♥

in progress ...

I have been working in our bathroom this week. Well, mostly I've been thinking about how to continue and trying things out in my journal. Don't know whether you remember but I got the idea for the bathroom from this artist. I loved what she did, but after I tried it out on a wooden box, I decided that just flowers isn't really "me". I wanted to include birds and fish.

But since I painted all the different colours in there, I keep discovering faces. Mostly profiles, but still. So I decided to just go with the images that appeared to me. But how? Sandra Kaye used a black Sharpie-marker to draw her flowers, but I'm afraid that the black is going to make it too dark. I still like the result though. So I decided to try two different styles in my journal. The first one with figures lined with black:

I made the background a bit less chaotic by painting it with gesso and then adding a transparant colour to it.

The second one is using different colours for the contours of the figures, and only use black very sparingly:

In this one I left the background as it is, I just added some highlights to the figures to make them stand out more.

To be honest, I'm still not sure which technique I should use. So I would love to know what you think! Black lines or no black lines (or at least not many). I'm really curious as to how you would do it :-)

I did bring out a few figures in the bathroom already. They just kept jumping out at me, and I really wanted to start. I didn't use black for these (except for the eyes), because it's easier to put some black on top than take the black away.

It is going to take a (long!) while before I finish it, but it's so much fun :-)

Here are my funnies for this week:

Okay, time to go to sleep! I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday. Thanks so much for your visit, and please let me know which method you like most: black or no black. I'm really curious :-)

Enjoy your day and make the weekend a good one! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

Back again

This whole trying to get back into creating isn't as easy as I thought. It seems there's always something else I need to do first, and before I know it the day is over and it's time for bed. But last weekend hubby and I built a big table for me to use as a desk/painting-table, and I finally was able to unpack all my painting materials this week. Today I was trying out some ideas to use in the bathroom, and in between, while I waited for it to dry, I made a quick journalpage. Aahh, the joy of dabbing my fingers in paint again.....

Guess the really nasty weather here is making me long for wings and the ability to fly away to more sunny regions.... ;-)

I also made a June wallpaper for my newsletter-subscribers. Here it is:

If you want to use it, you can download it here!

And just for the fun of it: here's a sneak peek of our bathroom :-)

Not at all finished yet, I'm still thinking about how to continue. But the colours make me happy every time I walk in there :-) To be continued .....

I'm linking to Paint Party Friday as always. Didn't get a chance last week to have a look at my favorite blogs, but I'll definitely do that this weekend!

And to finish, here are some funnies (I have so many that I'm going to share more than one):

lol :-)

That's it for this week. Thanks for your visit, it is greatly appreciated! Wishing you a day full of sunshine and a weekend full of fun things to do. See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

Quick post

The dog is sitting next to me, pushing his nose up against my leg, as if to say: "hey, it's time to go to sleep"... And yes, it is, so this'll just be a very quick post. Don't have much to show anyway, the week was rather full with other stuff. I did start painting in our toilet, and it's looking bright and busy already. Hubby visibly paled when he saw it, and is anxiously waiting for the next steps.... But he did promise me I could do whatever I want with it ;-)
Will take a while before it's finished, but it's fun. I'll show pictures when it's ready :-)

For now I just have a sketch in pencil and marker:

 That's it! I will be linking up to Paint Party Friday, and I might also link to Show your Face again.

Here's my funny for this week. A bit rude, but I can't help laughing everytime I see it :-)

Thanks for visiting, take care and have a great weekend! See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥

Thunder and lightning

At the moment I'm writing this there's a severe thunderstorm going on outside and it's raining cats and dogs... We had a few days of summer, which was lovely, but I'm afraid the weather is turning round now.... Just when I had planned to work in our garden ....

But I did manage to do a tiny bit of art this week. I long to paint, but I can't find my paintbrushes and paints in the piles of boxes that are still standing around everywhere. So it's just drawing for now. This is a figure I found in the background of one of my journalpages. Strange, I never saw her before, and I've been working in that journal quite a bit now. But all of a sudden there she was. As well as the words that accompany her ....

Very simple drawing with pencil, I added the words in Photoshop.

And I doodled a bit too. That is just the perfect thing to do when you don't have many supplies at hand and don't really have a place to make art (yet).

That's it for this week. It was so nice last week to read all of your comments and connect again. I've really missed this, and I plan on not being away from the blog this long anymore.

Just for the fun of it, here are some pictures that I took of our garden today. We haven't done anything in the garden yet, we don't even have a lawn mower yet, so everything is just growing wild and I love it.

I have no idea what kind of plants and flowers we have in our garden. It is an adventure to walk around and see new flowers grow every day. 

Wild, I know :-) Some people recoil in horror when they see our garden, and want to start mowing right away and pulling weeds. As long as there are no nettles I don't really mind. We will mow the grass eventually but for now I'm just happy that these little yellow flowers had the chance to show their cute little heads.

gorgeous, isn't it!?

I will be linking this to Paint Party Friday. Thanks for your visit, looking forward to seeing what you have created this week!

Here's my funny of the week:

hahaha! Whoever invents this .... !?

See you next week! Have a great day and an even better weekend ♥ ♥ ♥

Sign of life ....

Well, I certainly never meant to stay away this long! Two whole months, without any art and frankly also without any spare time. And it still isn't finished. When I look back over the last two months I can't believe all the things that we've gone through and all that's been happening. Almost every single thing we did in the house took more time than we thought or went wrong all together. It was exhausting. To top it all off we had the terrorist attacks in Brussels with the whole country in shock, 2 days after we moved to our new house hubby's dad died, and hubby himself has been on deadlines in his job and has to work overtime almost every single day as well as in the weekends. I can tell you: we are very much in need of a break....

But looking on the bright side: spring has finally arrived, with warm weather and blue skies, we are discovering new flowers in our garden every day, and we very much like our new home. It's still full of boxes that we can't unpack because our floors are not ready yet, but it is so light, there are windows everywhere so we get the sun shining through the windows every moment of the day, and it is nice and quiet. It's a dead-end street, so very few cars pass by. So all in all we're happy, we just need a bit more free time :-)

I did manage to make a wallpaper for May. Here it is:

And you can download it here if you want!

I even managed to make one for April as well, since I promised my newsletter subscribers a wallpaper every month. Didn't put it on my blog because, well, there just wasn't enough time.... Here it is:

And in case you want it you can download it here.

I missed the blogging community, and I hope from now on I'll manage to find the time to make some art, and to blog weekly again. I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday and am looking forward seeing what you all have been up to! Thanks for visiting me here!

Ending on a funny note :-)

hahaha!

Take care and I'll see you next week! (I hope!) ♥ ♥ ♥