Presenting my daughter's art to you and some of mine

:-) Welcome to the show today!

I'm going to show you some of my daughters paintings in her new sketchbook she got for christmas! I made a collage of her first pages:

And here are her three favorites:

I bought a few books for the whole family to do some art together or on ones own, hopefully inspiring and giving my family the chance to share some time together and have fun!

I've done a few portraits since I posted the last series, here are some of them:

Here is a link to the Paint Party Friday 

 I am now preparing for a family gathering at my house and there is still a lot to do!!! :D My siblings and their families will be here and some will maybe stay over night. Everyone will bring something for the buffet!

Wishing everyone a very happy and healthy year 2014! 

Thank you for visiting and commenting, sending love out into blog-space :-)

The T-Party

Have a cup of tea with me Tracey!

My favorite tea in my favorite cup :-)

It is a handmade cup from a pottery near Hamburg in Germany. They create the most delicate and beautiful pottery and I have bought quite a few items from them. Two cups and two beakers and a teapot, which has survived a fire in the kitchen of my former tailoring-shop. 

Here is a drawing of the teapot and some fruits. The drawing is ten years old. 

And here a drawing with my watercolor pencils and a tiny bit of water that I did for you Tracey :-)

Thank you for your encouraging and friendly comments you spent on my posts on the Paint Party Fridays! And thank you for your wonderful posts filled with beautiful art and that special humor! Wishing you to heal and for Christmas beautiful days!

Yours Ilona

To everyone please be sure of my gratefulness for every comment and wishing you all a very merry Christmas!

Join the Party here!

Artist friends on Facebook for 40 Portraits

I've been off the road with blogging, because life around me had to be put in order. I apologize to you dear visitors, who I didn't get to visit back! I'm really sorry! I feel a lot better now and hope things will run more smoothly :-)

I have been able to make a few portraits this past week and will show you, what they are today.
As I told you two weeks ago, I'm participating in the 40 portraits Challenge with Gritty Jane on Facebook. (I haven't posted there either for the two weeks that have passed since I posted here)
Some of my Facebook artist-friends allowed me to draw their portraits, and it is great, because I really get to learn from the drawing process! So thanks to all of you sweet people! :-)

The first model is Lisa, she is a wonderful model and has a lot of very inspiring photos to chose from/work with. The sketches aren't finished, all of them, but you see her spirit in them, that's a very important part for me. Now I need to make them look like her really ;-)

Next it's Audrey, strong personality and very supportive also, it was great to draw her it actually went pretty smoothly with her portrait. I only had to adjust the nose - the most tricky part for me to get right and crucial to get the likeness with the person in place I think!

Here's Milo, absolutely lovely person, shedding love around her near and far. The first portrait didn't get her features in the right proportions, but she was instantly recognizable to those who know her :-). As I wanted to keep one portrait of her for myself I did another one...

This turned out to be better proportioned, so I'm very happy with it!

Here we have Mariane, she is new to the group 29 Faces on Facebook and she is from Denmark, not that far away :-).

I'm quite happy with this as well.

Last from the row of artists is Beth, and not finished yet. I haven't quite got to the point, where she really is recognizable, which is a bit difficult, because I chose a photo not known by the others from the group:

The last portrait is one of my lovely niece Anne, but it doesn't really look like her. I still have some work to do with this. I added pink rice paper, because it didn't work out for me at all and then painted over it with acrylic and charcoal. Maybe I will manage to get it to a stage where I like it. I need to be patient ;-)

Apart from the last portrait all the portraits are drawn with charcoal. I really love charcoal, it leaves strong lines if you want them and you can make them softer if you want that. 

Sharing this with the amazing artists on Paint Party Friday!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

40 portraits challenge

This week I'm going to share some sketches I've been working on in the past week. I participate in a challenge on Facebook initiated by Gritti Jane from "The Trodden Path", to do 40 portraits. There is no time limit, so everyone works at their own pace. Here are the first eight portraits I posted:

A mixed media painting I have posted before, inspired by Lucas Cranach the elder:

The beauty queen contestant, drawn in charcoal on A2 sized water color paper x 3:

Four charcoal drawings on smooth A3 sized paper. It is very interesting how these turn out and it almost feels like sculpting when I do them, because I have three items in my hand at the same time as I try to build up the features (charcoal-pencil, rubber, and paper wiper):

This challenge suits me very well, as I really want to improve my drawing skills, especially getting a likeness  to the model/photo.

Thank you for visiting and have a wonderful weekend!

Sharing with Paint Party Friday

Feathers for Yanik

It is wonderful to be inspired! I really love to react on inspiration instantly, because of the energy the inspiration evokes and so I did thursday evening. I had seen a video of a woman presenting  two feathers she had received from a Facebook friend of mine. I was so inspired by the beauty of the woman and her loving attitude so I tried to find out what these feathers were about. I went to her blog, where she tells all about a project she is working on. You can read about it here.

I read her instructions for the feather-project and found material I would like to use. And here are the feathers:

Yanik asks us to use a cereal box or something as a base and then add whatever we like to decorate, just make it colourful and with love. I chose some fabric in my favorite colour and added some golden and pinkish red acrylics and ink. I started out drawing four feathers onto the back of the cardboard and glued the fabric onto it. I realized that I could make at least two more feathers from the cardboard and so I did :-) 

This is the fabric I used:

And the first feather I made (and kept as a keepsake):

Sending them off today!!??? I have to get them posted nooooow! Lol

Sharing with Paper Saturday's

Paint Party Friday Week 36 Year 3

I've been fairly busy training my drawing skills and painting and playing around. But before I show you, what I have done I would like to ask you something. Do you prefer to get an answer to your comment directly on the post you commented on? Or do you prefer to be visited by the other blog-owner on your blog as to get more visits on your blog?
Now to the fun part of my post

Some sketches
The first one is done on a small piece of paper (x inch square)

The second is done in my faces sketchbook and it is the beauty queen from last week, only this time I sketched with an H (Faber-Castell) pencil.

I've done some more drawings of a real princess (Marie, the second wife of the second son of the Queen Margrete of Denmark). There is no special likeness to the photo I used for reference!

Finally I would like to show you a canvas I've been working on this week in acrylic:

The background I prepared:

Painting in the figure of a woman:

And finally the face. I'm not quite sure, if it is finished:

This is it for this week's Paint Party Friday, hop over and enjoy the art presented by many artists around the globe!

Beauty Queen

Hi you all! Thank you for your visits and for your comments. They mean so much to me, as this is the way I share my art. I'm not a professional artist and I don't sell my art … yet. So feedback from other creative people/artists help me get through times of doubt.

Today I share two pieces with you. They are inspired by a young woman I know, who is participating in a world wide beauty contest.
The first piece is a pencil sketch in my square portrait sketchbook. I sketched after a photograph with her natural look:

The second piece is a mixed media painting, sketching her face with charcoal, using a glue stick to smudge it out some and redrawing with a graphite stick and charcoal. I collaged the "dress" and painted the gold and white acrylic mix to the background and finished it all off with some doodles.

Sharing this with Paint Party Friday

and 

Paper Saturday's

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

A special wish for well being and healing to all of you who are suffering illness, small or big!

Mix it Monthly November

A new theme is up for the Mix it Monthly Challenge. This month it is: Children and Graphics combined with these colours:

I already did a few pieces with the colours. The first is a business card printed with a linol-print in the blueish colour. I added the pink to the background and black acrylic for the details of the face. The original print is barely visible!

The next piece is painted and collaged on an A4 sized piece of cardboard.

There are scraps of newspapers and paper with different prints and two small children climbing a ladder. 

 I added a face:

 and gave the whole thing some extra colour with a mono print technique.

The third piece I did is a small piece of green paper painted partly black, to which I added some bits of ribbon. Then I used a pink piece of candy wrapper, added some white acrylic and sketched a face onto it with black acrylic and a fine brush. Finally I printed on top of it all with a glass plate added color and scratched some lines into the paint:

Happy Birthday

Today I only have a short post, as there's a busy weekend ahead.

The second of November is my birthday :-) and also the birthday of my daughter's friend. She is having a party tomorrow - theme? Halloween of course! :D So I painted a little scenery with the Halloween theme as my present for her:

Wish everyone at Paint Party Friday a wonderful weekend!

Collage-work and Faces

Welcome to the Party, or did I miss it? It's Saturday already!
I want to begin with a thank you to last week's visitors, who commented. It seems like you enjoyed the visit as much as I did enjoy to put up the blog post :-)

This week I have worked over some pieces I have done earlier, but didn't quite like or just hadn't finished. I also did some pieces, where I combined collage and painting. I think collaging has an interesting effect on a painting.

Starting with the new from old, the first three pieces are works in progress:

I cut the couple out of a newspaper-photo. They stood in front of an old guesthouse. I think it was from the 50'ies or 60'ies, putting them together with the bird to create some humour. I'll have to think up something to bring it all together.

This background is one of the favorite results of the past week's work!

Work in progress,  a caterpillar - bird mimicry :-)

And the last piece of the reworked art series: a portrait that I hadn't quite liked. I painted over her with white acrylic and found a photo to sketch after to give her a better expression. Then I added acrylics to the background and the blue hues to the hair. 

This combination of collage and painting fits in with the above pieces, the only difference is that it is all new. I'm not quite sure if I should add anything to it???

The above face is painted and drawn on a canvas (20x20 cm)

I also collaged different kinds of paper scraps to the background.

And at last a parrot on a canvas board. It is also 20x20 cm and it is cheap and a great alternative to canvases for teaching art in schools I think. It is really solid and gives the impression you have something of quality at hand.

Thank you to Eva and Kristin for hosting Paint Party Friday!

And for the paper art shared on Paper Saturdays!