Hair New Era

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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.

 

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!

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!

It's Friday and that mains Paint Party Friday! I haven't been there a lot recently, and only a week ago I came back from our trip up the Oregon and Washington coast. But now it definitely is time to join the party again.

I'm still full with all the images of our coastal trip. This was one of my most favorite trips ever and I deeply fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. No wonder that it is a topic in my creative work as well. Here is my newest art journal page, just finished this morning.


I used some patterned paper scraps, book page, cardstock, acrylic paints, two stamps and PITT pens.

I'm also linking this to Studio JRU for Sneak Peek Friday. Please come and visit the other artists as well.

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Finally I'm back to the challenges at Inspiration Avenue, and this week's theme is "poetry". So beautiful. Reading poetry in another language than German is still difficult for me as I think too much gets lost and I am not able to understand the entire meaning, which is a real shame. However, I do love poetry in my native language, German. One poet I read over and over again is Rainer Maria Rilke. His poem "Herbsttag" (Autumn Day) is one of my favorites. You can find a translation at the bottom of this post; this one I like better than the one I found back in October and that I posted here. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find out who did this translation, I found it here. If you're interested in how many translations exist of this one poem (and thus show how difficult it is to translate poetry into another language) you will have a ball at this site.

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.