Hair New Era

As usual (it seems) I'm late for Paint Party Friday. But at least I have something I can show, I actually finished a mixed media painting in two days and also tried my hand on charcoal again.


This girl with the giraffe neck was inspired by Jeanne Oliver's class "Creatively Made" that I am taking at the moment. I'm learning a whole lot of new stuff there, and I thoroughly enjoy it. In this mixed media painting I played with molding paste and charcoal. The texture of the molding paste - I used Golden's light molding paste - is fun, and I added some pan pastels to it after it had dried. It's on a 4x4 canvas.


Girls/women is a subject I love to paint and draw. This bird girl is made with charcoal, and I mainly did it to practice drawing faces. Then I remembered one of Lisa Wright's girl who had some color in her hair and face that you usually don't see and which I liked a lot. So I tried that and added some blue to my girl's hair and face, some red and yellow (I used pastels for that). It is interesting and I quite like the effect.

Please visit the other highly talented artists at Paint Party Friday - such a wonderful way to see some inspirational artwork.

After weeks and weeks of no painting at all, I finally picked up the paint brushes again and started a new mixed media painting that I finished two days ago. It feels so good! This time I tried to be less messy, "cleaner", actually paint a little scene. I'm not quite sure whether I really succeeded in it, but I do like the result. It's on an 8x8 stretched canvas.


Oh, and you bet - it will be in my Etsy shop very soon.

This, however, is not my first "The Owl and the Girl" painting - a few weeks ago I created another mixed media painting featuring a girl and an owl. I did make it for the swap with Donna who sent me her wonderfully altered book.


Yes, the owl is a photo of "my" Mama Owl. I hope I will see her again next year.

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After all the rush over the past two weeks I'm finally back to painting. I had two unfinished canvases sitting on my table and I started working on one of them yesterday and hope to finish it over the weekend.


Since ever I was a child I've been drawn to funky little houses - either on stamps or by drawing them or whatever. I wanted to create a happy little canvas and just started this 8x8 canvas with sky and green bottom, then added the house - and just went from there with whatever came to my mind. I particularly like the trees. I still want to work on the roof, it's too plain for me at the moment, and I also plan to put little blossoms in the grass.

The second canvas is a different story and I'm not sure where it will take me.


I tried something more abstract as a background for this one. I'm thinking of adding women silhouettes and then perhaps draw wings on them - I just don't know at the moment. For the background I have torn some models out of my favorite women's fashion catalogue from Sweden, painted Golden fluid acrylics on top of them (I like these acrylics for their transparency) and then added the circles and the torn paper strips that are out of the same catalogue (they match the skirt and the pants of the models).

This morning I'm off to a mixed media painting class at the college - I'm really looking forward to it, but I'm also a bit nervous. I expect to learn a LOT!!

I am linking to Paint Party Friday and Sneak Peek Friday - it's good to be back!

In January I created this mixed media canvas for an Inspiration Avenue challenge. Today, I've put it in my Etsy shop for sale. It is still one of my favorite works - I just love the warm colors of autumn (I really don't know why I prefer the word "autumn" over "fall", perhaps it is more poetic. Is there a difference between the two words?).

I'm quite excited about the season change. Many trees in my neighborhood are turning leaves, it looks beautiful. The two crape myrtle in front of my house are glowing in a deep pink, it's marvelous. I simply love this stunning display of bold color.

I hope all of you - at least in the Northern hemisphere - enjoy the earthy colorful season.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love its quirkiness, the craziness, of course the ORANGE, the bats, spiders and ghosts. This is the first time that I attempted a Halloween themed mixed media painting. I was thinking of glittery ghosts who dance in the night. The glitter is really hard to see in this scan, but anyway, here it is - finished in a couple of days:


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A few days ago I read some of the letters again that my mom wrote to me when I was 18 years old. Her letters are so beautiful and while I read them I remembered everything we did at that time - it was 1978. Although it brought tears to my eyes, it also painted a huge smile on my face.

My mom passed away four years ago, and those letters (I've kept them all) are the biggest treasure I have from her. I can hear her voice when I read them - she wrote the way she spoke, so completely her. She was a wonderful letter writer and I am forever thankful that I grew up in an era when people would still write letters - something you can keep.

It inspired me to create another girl - "The Daughter".


It is a 6x12 canvas, a size I have never worked with before. I discovered that I really like this size, it's perfect for the girls.

Beneath the acrylic paint you can see some written words peeking through - this is a copy of one of those letters from my mom that I adhered to the canvas first. It's a piece of my heart, so to speak, something very personal of myself that I worked into this painting. The words say "She kept her mom forever in her heart". It is still not quite finished, but very close. She will be available in my Etsy shop.

This is also my contribution to this week's Paint Party Friday and Sneak Peek Friday. Please come and visit these talented artists - there is so much inspiration you can get and just some real honest eye candy.

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Oh boy, I'm late for Paint Party Friday and Sneak Peek Friday! This has been a busy morning, and I'm on the go again, but I at least want to post my contribution this week before I have to leave for my next appointment.


This is a mixed media painting on a 6x6 canvas. You sure can tell that I like orange and red... I just love bright happy colors. This is not done yet, I hope to finish her over the weekend. Again, it took me quite some time to work on this and I didn't like her for a long time until finally it somehow came together.

Acrylic paint as a base, I cut head and neck out of my old worksheet (the sheet that was lying under all the work I did and turned very colorful over the weeks) that I then finger-painted with gesso. The colors of the sheet still show through and give it some texture. I really like that, but it was hard to get the color of the face - I used PITT pens and more gesso for that. Eyes, nose and mouth are cut from the same worksheet. The headband is a piece of fabric, the dots and flowers cut-outs from the worksheet. I also stamped it to give the background more texture. Some glitter on her hair. And of course she's crooked...

Don't forget to visit all the other amazing artists participating in Paint Party Friday and Sneak Peek Studio!

The recovery time after my surgery has tested my patience quite a bit. There are many things I simply cannot do yet - lifting for example. Have you noticed how often you lift something? Something that is heavier than a mug full of some delicious latte? Do you know how often you use your abdominal muscle? Coughing and sneezing is the worst!

Consequently, I spend a lot of time reading and in my studio (aka the dining room). This little (5x5) bird canvas has been on my mind for quite a while, and the background was painted before I went into surgery. After that it hang around a bit until I finally got the kick to finish it - and I like it. The bird is made of fabric.


Kaefer saw the fish canvas that I finished some weeks ago and told me she wanted one for her room, so I took out a 6x6 canvas, painted it and cut some fish out of patterned scrap paper since she wanted it really colorful. I enjoyed playing with this one, and Kaefer loves it.


I also played in my art journal and created some backgrounds on a few pages - this one is my favorite.


I'm quite happy that the recovery time has turned out to be a rather creative time. I'm convinced that it helps the healing process.

I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday and Sneak Peek Friday - both sites are full of wonderful artists (go check it out). I hope to visit as many as possible of you, but I can't promise. The painkillers that I still need (though in a lesser amount now) make me tired a lot and I can't sit at the computer for a very long time.

Almost two weeks ago I started a new ecourse with Christy Tomlinson about Art Journaling, "She Had Three Hearts". This is my second class with Christy, and I really like it. I felt a bit stuck with my art journal and needed a kick in the butt - and I certainly got that one! I feel so inspired, I've learnt new techniques and remembered old ones, and the best, I paint and paste and write all the time. I absolutely love it. I'm actually working on two books at the same time so that I don't get too impatient during those drying times. I'm more than happy about this creative boost and hope it will last for some time.

This page only needs some journaling and then it will be done. I used acrylic paints, watercolor crayons, oil pastels, Pitt pens, stamps, fabric, music sheet and book paper. I was surprised how quick the page was done, I'm usually a slow worker. But at the moment I can't get my ideas on the paper fast enough. A completely new feeling. It's gorgeous.

I'm linking this to the ever growing Paint Party Friday and Sneak Peek Friday - on both sites you can find wonderful artists that you don't want to miss.

Well, I guess it had to happen - after all my visits to the family of Great Horned Owls I was inspired to do something artsy about them. So I started a small 5x5 canvas, covering it with acrylic paints and a tree. My mind was set to have a fabric owl on that canvas - this was a great excuse to go and get some fat quarters (no, I'm not a quilter, I can't even sew). I guess fat quarters make a fat owl - this one is rather round...(she probably had a lot of mice to eat).


Now my question is - how do I do the finish? Usually I just cover the entire canvas with a layer of gel medium, but I have no idea whether I can put that on top of fabric. Can anyone tell me, please? Or shall I just leave it as is?

This is my entry for Paint Party Friday which is one of my blogging highlights in the week - please visit the other talented artists, there is so much amazing work to see. It is a wonderful artful journey.

Hello WOYWWers, thank you so much to all of you who visited my desk last week and left those super nice comments on my first Girl. You are such a sweet crowd! This really is the encouragement that I completely appreciate and each one of you really made my day!


Today I just finished my second Girl - she also is a result of the wonderful She Art Workshop with Christy Tomlinson. This time we added a scene to the background, and I totally loved it. This is already the last week of the class, I'm really sad that it will be over so soon. The good thing though is that the classroom is open for another two and a half months - until the end of May. This is exciting.


If any of you think about taking this class, I can highly recommend it. Registration for the next class is open, and all the information about it you can find here.

Now go and hop over to all those other desks - you can find a list at the lovely Julia's blog.

I'm late this week for Sneak Peek Friday over at JRU Studio. All morning I was reading and trying to get more information about the enormous earthquake and devastating tsunami in Japan. Living in earthquake country myself, every earthquake hits home with me. Christchurch in New Zealand only a short time ago, and now Honshu. My heart goes out to the people in Japan, my thoughts are with them.

Therefore, I went to my blog only half-hearted and then decided to leave it all together. In the afternoon, my husband's company had an Open House for the families of the employees, there were tours and demonstrations about the products they are developing. Interesting enough, they talked about GPS that have the ability to measure along fault lines that can trigger earthquakes like the San Andreas fault. I wish there was a device that could give us an early enough warning of earthquakes, more than just a few seconds (although, if you get a signal for example through a special tone on your cell phone, 10 seconds would be enough to dug under a desk - an early warning system, by the way, that is already practised in Japan and unique in the world).

Compared to this disaster, my efforts of creating some art appear meaningless and small. I was struggling all day whether I should even blog about it and then decided to do it, against all odds.


This is my second girl I'm creating as a result of the She Art Workshop by Christy Tomlinson that I am currently taking and that gives me so much joy (you can find my first girl here). As you can see, this is a work in progress, the girl is not even glued down. I enjoyed making the background on a 10x10 canvas and getting my hands dirty again. I think what I really like about this work is how my hands are getting into the paint, how messy they get, it's downright dirty and incredible satisfactory. Honestly, I feel like a child who got permission to play in the mud to her heart's desire. I used some stamps (the houses, tree and flower heads) because I'm not good at drawing/painting (which would be the right word?), paper and acrylic paints. Next I'll work on the girl; I wonder how she will turn out in the end. I'm a slow worker, I really enjoy the process.

Actually - I'm really glad I blogged about this. Somehow I feel better now. Thank you for your patience.