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.

Fridays is one of my favorite blogging days because it means Paint Party Friday and Studio Sneak Peek! I love these weekly get togethers because it keeps me painting and working on new art pieces - or finishing some.

This girl was still a work in progress last Friday, but now she is finished - she's the girl with a big heart. I really like how she turned out, especially since I've always been afraid of painting faces. She's far from perfect - all my work is like that - but I think she has some soul.


I would like to do a painting of a mother and daughter and am practicing this with charcoal. These two I sketched on the backside of some paper that was lying around (you can see the text peeking through on the bottom) - I still have a lot of practicing to do! But how much do I love it!


Please come and visit the other artists at Paint Party Friday and Sneak Peek Friday; every week there is some wonderful work to see and find a lot of inspiration.

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Oh my, I'm late for Paint Party Friday - again! But better late than missing it again. I didn't have much time to paint this week, but at least I started a new girl and I hope that I can get her finished over the weekend.


It's an 8x8 canvas. The heart was my first attempt to work with molding paste, and I love it. I'm also more daring now with faces, I've practised a lot and slowly I get a better grip of it. Shading is so important for faces, and I enjoy doing it. I wonder where this girl will go from here - at the moment I'm envisioning butterflies in her hair and a bird on her shoulder, but who knows whether this will really happen?

I would love you to check out Paint Party Friday - there are over 70 talented artists and it's a joy to look at their 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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A week ago I had my last mixed media painting class, when we showed our finished or almost-finished pieces. It was so interesting to see all the different works and that tremendous talent!!! The class was so much fun, I learned a lot and I'm a bit sad that it is already over. Those six weeks went by way too fast.

My first finished piece "Día de los muertos" I had already shown here. These two pieces that I'm showing you today are based on the two watercolors I showed you here. I'm not quite sure whether either of them is already finished.


In both paintings I wanted the area where I sprinkled salt into the wet watercolor uncovered, but most of the rest got covered by strips of tissue paper that I had painted in class. I added photos (printed out on regular copy paper), torn book pages and stamps. I quite like the result, but I feel that especially the "sleeping child" is still unfinished. It will help to step away from it for a bit, and then when I come back to it I hope to see what else needs to be done.



This is today's contribution to Art Every Day Month, and I'm also linking to Paint Party Friday. I haven't joined PPF for a few weeks because of lack of time - I wouldn't have had the time to visit you. This weekend, however, looks much better.

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!

"Self Portrait" is this week's challenge at Inspiration Avenue. O-kaaayyy.

Easy, right? Just stand in front of a mirror and click away with the camera. Sure, no problem.

The thing is, that wouldn't be a challenge for me. I did that several times when I had finally hung up the mirror that I had found at IKEA and loved so very much, as I told you here. I wanted something more... daring. Something I hadn't done before. Something that for the longest time in my life I had convinced myself I couldn't do.

So I tried. In my art journal that is mostly for my eyes only and no-one would ever see it without my agreement.

Well, it doesn't really look like me. The hair, though, comes pretty close, not quite as red perhaps. But honestly, I don't care if it doesn't look like me. It's my first attempt and for that it's quite decent. I did my best - and I discovered how very very cool charcoal pencils are. So forgiving!

Here it is, the self portrait of Carola Bartz, as she sees herself in March 2011:


Have you done a self portrait of yourself? Does it look like you? Do you like it, no matter what?

I'm linking this also to Paint Party Friday, Sneak Peek Friday, and Creative Every Day.

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Good night people! Hope everyone is having fun! This is a watercolor caricature comission i did a while ago to present a firefighter a special profession that is not so professional here in Portugal as many are volunteers, in fact i believe its really the only peace corps in the world in this situation aren't we Portuguese special or something? True heroes that's what i think of them.

Firefighter Caricature

Detail of the fireman

Framed Caricature

This painting was commissioned to be handled to Madeira Island in case you never been there just go!