Artists that inspire me: Svetlana Tiourina

Svetlana is a Russian artist who lives and works in Amsterdam.

I discovered her a few years ago, and fell in love with her beautiful paintings.

I love the movement in her work, and the emotion that radiates from it

and the expressive faces ...

I don't know what it is with Russian artists, but a lot of my favorite artists happen to be Russian ....

Hope you like her as well! 

I had planned this week to make a business-plan and finish my Facebook-page. Alas, didn't do it ... I read a lot about it though, so I should have all the information I need when I do find the time to start.

Instead, I have been doing a lot of art this week. A lady from the Netherlands contacted me about 2 painted boxes I had on my website. They are sold, but she wanted me to make new ones for her. So that's what I've been doing. I discovered it's not so easy to replicate something I've done before. The boxes I paint, I always draw straight on the box, which means I don't have sketches that I can use again. I tried for hours to get it as close to the original as I could, but I'm still not satisfied. When I show it to my family they say it looks the same, but I can see exactly where it's not the same .... I've painted part of it already, but I might go over it again.

Here's my table with works in progress:

That's it for now. Thanks so much for stopping by and leaving those wonderful comments! I try to get back to you all in the next few days!

Hope you all have a lovely, restful weekend!

hugs, x

Summer of color: week 3

The flavor of the week is Baseball Nut. I would never in my wildest dreams have associated that with ice cream! The things you learn from Blogging are endless ...

Baseball nut is vanilla, black raspberry and cashews. Interesting colour combination I think.

So I started out with a background in those colors again.
And found that my Summer of Color paintings are turning into Summer of Birds paintings. Because I saw birds. Again!

Actually, this time I saw 2 possibilities, depending on how I held the canvas.

 This way up, I saw a bird in the upper right corner, and a face with 2 eyes in the upper left corner. 

And this way up ....

I just saw 2 pairs of eyes ....

I decided to go with the second one, and this is what came out of it:

I'm not sure whether I'm completely satisfied with it. Seeing it on the computerscreen there are some things that bother me about it. So I might play with it some more. But for now it'll do.

Going to have a look at the other participants now. There are 70 already!
Thanks for visiting! I'll be back in 2 days with another inspiring artist (there are sooo many!)

Start of a "real" art journal!

I finally did it. I started a "real" art journal.

Not that I didn't have any journals before. I have several actually. But I use them mostly to sketch or work things out. Sometimes I paint in them, but usually when it comes to painting I grab a canvas.

But I was always admiring other people's journals. The colors, the looseness, ... And I wanted it for myself. Just didn't know how to start. Until the 29 faces challenge in May. I was fascinated by the journal pages of Courtney, who made an art journal of an old book. And then I discovered Orli Avineri, and became even more eager to try it myself. And last but not least, I went to the papercraftshow in Brisbane, and saw Jane Davenport. She had her gorgeous journals spread out on her table for us to look through, and oh my, I was almost literally drooling over it.

So I went to a thriftshop, bought an old book with a hardback cover and googled how to turn it into an art journal. I took some pages out, glued some pages together and put some collage in it.

Then what?

I had no clue how to start. Tried putting gesso on some pages, tried drawing with a paintbrush, tried to loosen up and just paint a face, which I quickly covered with gesso again. I even ended up putting the book back on the shelf.

I must say that art journaling is way more difficult than it looks ...

But last night I flipped through the pages again, and decided to MAKE something. ANYthing. Loosen up.
On one page there was a collage of a little body, so I just put a face on top of it. And went from there.

It's by no means anywhere near the quality of the 3 people I just mentioned. But at least I had fun. And didn't feel like throwing the thing in the bin anymore.

So who knows? I might become a "real" artjournaler.

Here's my first page. Don't know whether it's finished, but for now it'll have to do.

Played around with ink in an old-fashioned pen. That was fun! You can make really fine lines with it. Bit more difficult to handle than markers, but I'll definitely try some more with it.

And here's a sneak peek of my box ....

Tomorrow it's summer of color-time again. This week the color is Baseball Nut ...

Thanks for taking a look! So nice to have you here :-)

Artists that inspire me: Ademaro Bardelli

I can't believe this! I looked up this artist's website to put the link on here, and guess what: he died in 2010! This is the third artist that I write about here who has inspired me over the years, and he's also the third one to be dead. Seems like all my favorite artists are dying ... What a shame!

Ademaro Bardelli was an Italian painter, born in 1934, who started his painting career in 1956.

I adore his work. The strong colors, the beautiful faces, the way they seem to come out of the background, it's just so beautiful.

I'll shut up now and just show some more of his gorgeous work ...

Last night, I managed to visit about 1/3rd of the blogs in the challenge. Phew, it's a lot of work. But I'm discovering some new fascinating artists out there, which makes it all worth it.

About my business-courses ... I felt a bit like screaming today ...Watched some tutorials for Wordpress, got confused about whether I should use Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org (yes, there IS a difference between them...), got some more confused about hosting and domains, hesitated between Wordpress (which seems to be really technical (which I'm not)) and Weebly, which is supposed to be easy but "serious artists should use Wordpress", huh!?, wanted some simple answers and couldn't find them, decided that I shouldn't be bothered since I don't have anything to put on my website anyway if I don't start finishing things, tried to figure out the shipping costs from Australia to Europe for a small box and was blown away by the price, and I'm not even sure it's the right price, realized that I have no idea how to ship a painting, let alone how much it would cost (just in case I would ever sell one through my new still not even embryonic website), and where the hell should I go to find all that information that all other artists seem to have no trouble with AT ALL!? Aaarghh! I think I'm overwhelmed and spinning out of control.... Almost bit my hubby's head off in the process...

Suffice to say that it was a bit of  a frustrating day .... ;-)

Maybe I should take a break tomorrow ...

Summer of color: week 2!

This week the color was mint-chocolate-chip. I'm not sure whether I got the color right this time. Try as I might, it either was too bluish or too greenish. And probably not enough dark brown either.
But, well, it's close enough I guess...

I started out with this background:

And, contrary to last time, I could see 2 figures right away! Just wasn't sure about the purple in the middle. Could it be a man?? I drew a man, but he didn't fit in, so I erased him and kept looking.

And then I saw a beak, and I knew it had to be a bird again ;-)

So that's what I drew ...

And here's a sneak preview of the box I'm painting:

For once this week, I'm gonna try to get into bed at a decent hour. And tomorrow I'll try to see all the entries for Summer of Color. There are 69 already!!

Thanks for stopping by! I'll see you in 2 days with another inspiring artist :-)

One more teesha and finally: the start of a new painted box ...

It was a verrrry busy weekend, so I didn't have much time to make art. But I did finish the last teesha I was working on, and I signed up for another business-course: Art Empowers Me. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon the website of The Abundant Artist, and was fascinated by what Melissa and Cory are saying. Signed up for their free course, and decided that I wanted to do the business-course as well. I had to decide quickly, because Saturday was the last day they accepted new members.

So now I'm doing 2 business-courses! I sure know how to keep busy now (as if I didn't know that before...). But I love all the ideas I'm getting from them, and I'll keep you posted on where I'm going with it.

In the meantime, here's my new teesha:

The text is from a song by Rod McKuen. I might go back over it with white, since I think that's easier to read. So much for trying out a different color ...;-)

And then I finally decided to start painting wooden boxes again. One of the things I love doing is decorating useful objects, or making "new" things out of old things. You can use them and at the same time you make it a unique one-of-a-kind-object. Last week I got an email from a Dutch woman who wanted to buy a wooden box from me, but all the boxes on my website are sold. And I realised I hadn't made any new ones since the end of 2010.

High time to start again! Luckily I had brought some plain boxes with me from Belgium, so I could start right away. I decided to make another zendoodle-box. They're such fun to make. Here's an example of one I did a few years ago:

This is what I have now:

I have only done the drawing-part, but that's the nice thing about it: I can do it in between other things. So I'll share the progress with you over the next few days/weeks.

And now I'm off to bed! But first I want to thank all the beautiful people who took the time to come visit here and to leave comments on my posts. It is so motivating and so inspiring, and I want you to know I really truly deeply appreciate it! Tomorrow I'm gonna take the time to visit your blogs as well!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

Should I or should I not?

Well yes, why not!? Seeing all those pinky-orangey-yellowy pictures everywhere, I decided to also join the Summer of Color. It's a weekly challenge, which is a bit easier to combine with all the other things I'm doing right now.

The first color prompt is Rainbow Sherbet. Pinks, oranges, yellows. Well, these happen to be among my favorite colors (the one from next week also is...).

So I made a very pink background.

This is what I started with:

And then .... I couldn't find anything. No images came up to me. I turned it in all directions. And then finally, holding it like this, I could (with a whole lot of imagination) see the shape of a face. But it was very high up on the canvas. And I just couldn't see anything else. Well yes, I could. But it was only a small face, and when I drew it it just didn't feel right.

So I decided to just draw something out of my imagination, and since birds are always a favorite of mine, that's what I drew.

Still struggling with my Facebook-page. Well, actually, I didn't do anything with it yet. I started looking on the net to find easy tutorials, and then I started thinking: what am I going to put on there? Maybe I should first get a website. Because the one I have is from Belgium and all the prices are in euro on there. I can't change that. So I want to make a new website. And I might want to add pages to this blog. And I want to open an Etsy-store. So which one goes first!?

Still trying to figure that one out ....