Artists that inspire me: Monika Welch

Today's inspiring artist, Monika Welch, is from New- Zealand. It's a few years ago that I stumbled upon some of her art, and I loved it. When I found her website I immediately felt connected to her because of the way she describes painting as her passion and her addiction.

 She is also self-taught, which was a big deal for me at that time, since I was wondering whether I'd ever be taken seriously as an artist if I didn't have an art degree.Seeing her beautiful art made me believe I could do it too, on my own, without degree.

 Her paintings often remind me of stories that are being told. They have a kind of dreamy surreal quality about them.

 She also sometimes uses collage in her art, and often writes quotes on the paintings

 I love the beautiful intense colours she uses.

She has different styles of painting, sometimes more dreamy and melancholic, other times fun and quirky like this one:

There are often a whole lot of things that you don't see at first. It's like discovering new elements all the time.

The way she blends is awesome ....

I think this is one of my absolute favorites. Lovelovelove it!

You should go check out her website or her Facebook-page. Lots more goodies on there!


That's it for now. I've been painting for hours yesterday but not much to show for it yet. It'll have to wait till Friday ... Here's the picture though of my miniature-canvases that I finally finished. Doing the sides after I've painted it (months ago!) is not much fun. Didn't remember which colors I used and whether I used ink of paint.  So it was a bit of hit and miss, but it's all finished now and next time I'll make sure I do the sides straight away ...

See you on Friday for Paint Party Friday! Thanks for stopping by!

Very inspiring blogger award

I have been nominated for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award! That makes me so happy, it was a really lovely surprise! Sweet Candace N'Diaye, whom I (virtually) met in the business course from Leonie Dawson, has nominated me (thanks Candace!).  Candace makes beautiful soul art, a blend of nature and spirituality. You should go check her work out.

Now what does this mean? I have to tell you 7 things about myself, AND I get to nominate 15 other blogs for this award! I like that! Although it's gonna be hard to choose between the many lovely blogs that I follow. So I think I'm going to concentrate on those blogs that inspire me most, meaning blogs with a lot of information.

These are the rules:

1. Display the award logo on your blog.
2. Link back to the person who nominated you.
3. State 7 things about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them.
5. Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements.

Okay, here are the 7 things about myself, in case you're interested:

1. I love reading! When I read, the world around me doesn't exist anymore. Very much to the annoyance of my family. Since I always seem to be short in time, I tend to combine reading with my everyday activitities. I read on the toilet, in bath, while I'm doing my exercises, when the potatoes are cooking, while I'm brushing my teeth, and for a perfect ending of the day: with a flashlight under the covers so I don't wake up my husband ...
2. who isn't really my husband by the way, since we never got married. We are living in sin ;-) in a "de facto" relationship, as they so nicely put it here in Australia ;-). It's just hard to know how to call him. "Partner" sounds so lame, and he's more than just "boyfriend". So I cheat sometimes and call him my husband  ...
3. I hate cold. When we were still living in Belgium I got in a kind of winterdepression every time October came around. Those long wintermonths ahead, how I hated it. As soon as spring came in sight I started to feel alive again. Just a pity that summer in Belgium doesn't necessarily mean good weather. Since we're living in sunny Queensland, I feel alive every single day, even when it's raining. I adore the sun!
4. I am forever on a diet. When I'm not on a diet I am under the impression that I can eat whatever I want. Which I can't. But I do. Until I don't fit in my clothes anymore, and then I have to start dieting again. It's a vicious circle .... 
5. I have a very vivid imagination. Which is an asset when I want to create something, but it can get quite annoying when I start reading the newspapers or start thinking about what can happen to my kids when they do this or that. It freaks me out sometimes. So I stopped reading grisly stories about the horrible things people do to eachother, because for days afterwards I picture the most awful scenes in my head.
6. I get very cranky when someone or something disturbs my sleep. Especially barking dogs. Or inconsiderate neighbours with loud music. But mostly barking dogs. Don't get me wrong: I like dogs. They just shouldn't bark.
7. I am the queen of the todo-lists. I have a gazillion things I want to do, aside from the never-ending tasks of everyday life, and I often feel out of control. So I make lists. Creative todo-lists, household-todo-lists, diet-todo-lists, chores-todo-lists, administrative-todo-lists and so on. I sometimes feel I spend more time trying to come up with the perfect synoptic list than I do actually carrying out all the things that are on the lists.... Procrastination is one of my flaws. I only jump into action at the very last moment. I need stress to get things done.

And now my favorite part: 15 bloggers that I find very inspiring (in no particular order):

1.  Sharon Tomlinson from All Norah's Art. Norah's blog is a wealth of information. When I first discovered her, years ago, I spent hours just looking through all her previous posts and getting the most brilliant ideas.
2. I wrote this for you: a blog with the most beautiful writing. I don't even know whether it is a man or a woman who writes this, but it often gives me shivers reading it. 
3. Jane Davies from Collage Journeys: I only discovered her blog recently, but she is so generous with sharing all kinds of techniques, that I became a follower right away.
4. Empty Easel: I'm not sure I can call this a blog, it's an online art magazine that is chock-ful of information. Really. I have spent hours on there and still didn't read even half of what's on there.
5. Kristen from Art Play Today: another artist who is really generous with sharing her knowledge. I love her art.
6. Dina Wakley from Ponderings: I had come across her name a few times since I started blogging, but it's only recently that I took a good look at her site and became an enthusiastic follower. Inspiration galore!
7. Julie Fei-Fan Balzer: she's one of the teachers of 21 secrets and I loved her workshop (I still didn't get to do all the workshops there). On her blog she recently put up a button with all her tutorials. Very informative!
8. Julie from On the Dot Creations: If you want to grow a small (online) business from your art then you don't want to miss this blog. There is so much information and tips on there, I think I'll need a few weeks just to get through it all. Very useful when you sell on Etsy!
9. SuziBlu: I think Suzi doesn't need an introduction. Most of you probably know her. She was one of the first artists I discovered online, through her YouTube videos. Also the very first online workshop I did was with her. She taught me a lot and has been a great inspiration all over.
10. ProBlogger: full of information and interesting ideas about blogging.
11. An'Angelia Thompson from Angelia's Art journals: I love her intuitive art and she is very generous with sharing her ideas and how-to's. Check it out!
12. Giggles from Happy Tiler: in between pictures of her art, she shares pearls of wisdom about everyday life. I love reading her posts!
13. Michelle Allen from Close2myart: Michelle's art is whimsical, fun and unique. She often shares in progress pics of her art, and there are some cool tutorials too. Her journalpages are awesome. She started a new blog in February, and I haven't been able to find a link to the old one. Which is a shame, because there was so much eye-candy on there...
14. Artodyssey: almost daily updates with pictures from different artists. I have found so many great artists there already. It's always exciting to find a new favorite one.
15.  And last but certainly not least: Christy Sobolewski from Gulfsprite: Christy in another artist who very generously shares all her tips and tricks with her readers. She's also a teacher on Art Geeks.

I would've liked to nominate everyone I'm following but I had to make a choice. I hope you take the time to check out these links. Take my word for it: they're worth it!

I finally finished all my miniature paintings. They had been waiting since forever to get the sides done. Now that's out of the way I can put some varnish on them tomorrow, and then I can scratch it off my creative todo-list ;-) Yesss!
No picture though, because it's nighttime here and I can't make a decent picture with or without flash. That'll be for next time.

Bye for now! Thanks for stopping by!

Let me take you to a secret place

I fnished my painting this week. Although it doesn't look that much different from last week, can you believe I worked for about 4 more hours on it!? All those little details, the sides that had to be finished as well, ... Phew, takes a lot of time!

I called it "let me take you to a secret place". Here it is:

And I started working on another one of my Flora's. This is what I started out with yesterday (I'll show you all the in-progress shots from the beginning to the end when I finish it):

I saw a face on the top right side. So I started painting around it to define it. But there were so many lines on there, I saw all kind of figures but none of them appealed to me. So I decided to turn the canvas around.

And right away I saw two heads and a figure. So I went with that. Here's what I have so far:

And now I'm not sure whether I should've taken this way. Something's bothering me about it and I don't know what. The one face has an odd circle-body, but that is because I already started to paint the other head that I saw. But that's not what's bothering me, I even kind of like it this way. Why do bodies always have to look like bodies, right? It's my painting and I can paint whatever I want. Aaahh, the freedom of that ;-)

But aside from that, I'm still not sure whether I'll leave it this way. I really need to learn to take a look at the pictures on my monitor instead of just diving in and throwing paint around without thinking. Just now, when I saw the first picture, I could see all kinds of different figures in there, and I'm a bit sad I didn't see it before.

Oh well, too late now. I might just treat this as another layer and start dribbling and spraying paint again. Or I might put it aside and start working on the third canvas ...
By the way, I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday.

Now for something else: I have 43 "likes" on my Facebook-page already! I'm so happy! Thanks so much to all of you who have "liked" my page.

And thanks once again for visiting my blog! I appreciate it enormously, and this weekend I'll try and visit everybody's blog again.

For now: I wish you all a great and restful weekend! See you soon! xx

Artists that inspire me: Elena Iwanowa

This week's artist is a bit of a mystery to me. I have found his art on Artodyssey, and that's all the information I can find about him. No website, no blog, nothing. I even doubt whether he is a male. Elena doesn't sound "male-ish" to me, does it? I found his work in some galleries, but all the text was in an Eastern European language that I don't understand. So I'll just let his art speak ...

He uses very strong colors. Always a favorite of mine ...

dreamy scenes

I like the contrast between the transparant layers and the opaque layers

beautiful beautiful background

While I love this composition and the colors, I am not so keen on his men with moustache. 

Wonder why that is ....

oh those vibrant colors! 

Hope you like it! Thanks for stopping by. I'll be back on Friday with my (hopefully...) finished painting!

Smile and be happy

Felt like doing a whimsical art journal page today. Although I need to learn to get my pagebackground  ready before I start drawing, because I find it very hard to make a nice background after I paint a girl on it. So I went with the dots again ...;-)

I used some watersoluble Neocolors on there, but I guess not all of it dissolved, since almost none of my markers wanted to work on top of some parts. I know a lot of art journalers use Neocolors in their journals, and markers on top, so I'm kind of wondering which markers do you use? I'm afraid of ruining my "good" (read "expensive"...) markers....

Thanks for stopping by! I'll be back in a few days with another inspiring artist!

Not quite finished, but getting there ...

I concentrated on one of my Flora-paintings this week. I reserved Tuesday and Thursday for painting, but didn't get as much done as I thought I would. But I think next week it'll be finished.

I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday. Have to get the button to put in the sidebar since I want to do this weekly ;-)

Here's where I am now:

And this is how it all started:

There were a few layers on there already before I took the first picture ....

warm colors on top

adding contrast with black and white

making more marks

drawing and making marks

starting to make order out of chaos

At first I could only see birds and fish, and then I saw a head. But for some reason I didn't feel like going with that. So I tried drawing something else on there, but kept coming back to the head. She just wanted to be on there, so here she is ...

some more dripping ...

some more dots ...

lighten it up again

looking too clean for my taste, so dripped some more ...

Oh, this painting style is just soooo much fun. Before this workshop with Flora I used to sketch something and then paint it, and I often changed things along the way, but overall I knew how the painting was going to look in the end. Here I just start playing with colors, dripping, spraying, twirling, stamping, making marks, and I have absolutely no idea what's gonna come out of it. It is totally freeing. And it makes me yearn to paint, because I'm curious about what I'm going to find.

And I have big news! I finished my Facebook page! Well, for me it's big news anyway, since I'm not very technical and I had a really hard time figuring out how to do it. I started in June already and then left it alone for more than a month before I could muster up the courage to look at it again. I even have a Facebook button in my sidebar. If you click on it, it should bring you straight to my page and you can "like" it if you want. If I get more than 30 likes on my page, I get a view into the statistics, which should be interesting. At least, that's what the people in my businesscourses keep telling me. I will first have to figure out how to interpret it though ... ;-)

Thanks for stopping by! And have a GREAT and wonderful weekend!

Artists that inspire me: Erika Husselmann, alias ARIKE

I discovered this New Zealand artist a few years ago, and fell in love with her work right away.

One of her typical styles is long stretched figures of women, usually somewhere in a dream landscape with birds or flowers.

 She usually works in oil, but also uses acrylics and mixed media.

I love the dreamlike atmosphere of her work

She has a blog and a Facebook-page too. Go check it out for lots more eye-candy!

It's funny how I always seem to be drawn to those artists that paint mostly women. Maybe it's because that's what I like to paint myself. Sometimes a man sneaks into one of my paintings, but mostly it's just women, birds and fish. I guess it's because women have those graceful, elegant, curvy lines that add a kind of movement and vulnerability to the work.

How about you? What attracts you in a painting? Do you always tend to paint the same kind of subject? I would be interested to know!

I'm off to see the rest of the PPF-list artists, before it's Friday again and I have to start a whole new list ...

Thanks for visiting and leaving your lovely comments. It means so much to me :-)