Making art and waiting for the new week to start

I've been working on a few things and still preparing for the show. I've also managed to add two canvases collaged and painted ready to hang on monday!!! Suddenly time is getting short and it's my second sons birthday on saturday too, so a day full of celebration and guests and delicious cakes and food for family and friends...mmh!

Here is what i produced lately:

The riding woman is my first painting with gouache paint only, on a paper splattered with a little water colour.

The painting below is for the exhibition:

worked on a square canvas (the photo didn't cover it all, sorry). I painted her after a digital sketch I have made some time ago...:

Before I sketched and collaged her on the canvas I did quite a lot of preparation. The canvas had been covered with a mixture of paint, earth and glue, which gave it a very rough texture. (I did this last year and then I put it aside, not knowing what to do further). Tiny stones are still visible in places.
Now I have started collaging backgrounds recently, you can see examples of it here and here and I just thought the very rough background could use some smoothness, so I found some of my torn up papers, strips this time that I glued onto the canvas. Then I played with different colours and mixed acrylics with liquid water colour. I let it dry and sketched the woman onto the canvas, collaged her in rice paper, because of the subtleness the paper has and the background would still be visible! I sketched on top of it with charcoal and added colour to her with water colour pencils. To me she looks very strong and determined, just what I really want to become - that's why I want to keep her! ;-)

The following face is sketched after one of Lucas Cranach the Elder's paintings. She is painted and drawn on water colour paper with some acrylic splatters serving as a nice background.

Last but not least a sketch in charcoal/pastel:

This was it for today/this week :-)

I enjoy very much concentrating on making art most of the days. How lucky am I? Soon other tasks will fill some of the space, giving Danish courses for parents at the local school. But that will hopefully be a good change, meeting people to talk to and hopefully have fun with!

So on monday will be the day when we put up the art and on thursday the 5. September there is a vernissage for interested people. A bit scary, but hopefully also a good experience, as I already know of a few people/friends, who will be there and make it all worth the nerves :-)

Hope you will have time to make art and stop by and visit the great artist gathering on Eva and Kristin's blog for the Paint Party Friday! 

Thank you for visiting!

Ilona 

Paper Saturday and Mix it Monthly

I found out today that we as a family needed a calendar in the kitchen. We use a calendar on the computer mostly. So I had a task for Paper Saturday :-)!!!

I found a piece of cardboard (from an old calendar?) that I used as the base.

Starting with a little greenish ochre and thinking of the "Mix it Monthly" challenge, and decided to combine paper art and a mixed up challenge.

I found some torn up paper that was painted and printed earlier.

I collaged it onto the background

mixed yellow and gold and added it to the collaged cardboard, the colour was just transparent enough to let the print and colours look through.

I sketched a face on top of it all with charcoal and adding grey pastel:

For the Mix it monthly challenge we were asked to use yellow green, red, violet colours and flowers. I decided to take butterflies for "flowers" and the golden colour for the ornament that also was thought to be used in the challenge.

Feeling that the background and the skin tones were difficult to see apart, so I added white acrylic:

Painting out the details in face and around the butterflies:

Here's what the finished piece looks like complete, I actually love it :D Happy to see this every day on my kitchen wall, 

only with the calendar pages hiding a good part of the painting ;-)

Hope you enjoyed the process and please hop over and visit Manon at Paper Saturdays

and Conny at Mix it Monthly!

Face in the World 2 EXTRA

I have told about the Face in the World challenge before and today I will show you the three pieces I received this week after they travelled to California and England. Milo Wylde Chin, Gina Morley and I grouped together to make an extra round, each making three starts.
My starts looked like this:

I didn't paint ar draw any faces, because I wanted to see, what my group mates would do with the backgrounds I had created. I find it very inspiring to work on a background someone else has created, it is often different from, what I would usually do. And so in the following row of pictures you can see, what happened to my backgrounds :-)

When Milo had worked on them she posted these photos:

And Gina added her magic to the paintings and sent me these amazing pieces:

It fills my heart with joy to look at these faces, I can't even tell you...

Thank you Milo and Gina for playing with me!

I'll show you the other pieces in another post. Milo's are still with me, being sent off today and Gina will receive hers soon too :-)

Happy PAINT PARTY FRIDAY!

drawing training and painting something new

My art teacher told us that you never forget what you have learned in drawing, you can only get better. My Facebook artist friend Lizzy Love has shared a link to a you tube video with a series of drawing lessons. Focus is on learning to omit the schemes we have of conceptions of the world and to draw what we see. Here is one of the drawings I have worked on (WIP)

The other WIP I share with you today is a painting containing various objects and faces that have come to my mind through visual impressions from my surroundings or coming "out of the painting".

Preparing for the show

I've told you about the show I got the chance to do together with one of my study-mates. On Wednesday I visited the place and agreed with people there on how things are run, very exiting but also I am a little more relaxed :-)

To have something achievable for everybody, I am going to make some cards with prints and splashes and paintings that might be interesting as birthday cards or a small gift.

I'm only showing one example that is finished today:

Also while cleaning my workspace and one of my shelves I found these homemade papers with models torn out of a newspaper, integrated in the process:

I made these a few years ago and remember that I wanted to add something to them, but just didn't know then, and now??? Well they will stay like they are for now.

Lastly I want to show you the finished piece of the one Face in the World II group I have worked on. It is the start by New York artist Malissa Priebe who started this and she has a strong style with expressive lines, Ayala Art added colour to the face and I collaged some firework sparkles and eyecolour and added some lines to the face.

This is it for today, please look over to Paint Party Friday

also sharing with Paper Saturday!

Mix it Monthly August

A new theme was set up for this month in "Mix it Monthly at Conny's blog.

And I instantly grabbed the idea, the colours are a bit out of my range in the combination, you know I'm rather subduing things in my art very often, but I love a challenge and Conny is putting things together in agreat way to get the muse smack fat kisses on you! :D Thank you for that!!!

Here come a few photos that show what I have done:

I think I am finished with her...

Hope you enjoyed and have a look at the awesome art that you find on Mix it Monthly. You can add more than once to each theme, so I might get more ideas ;-).

For now be well and enjoy ART!

Ilona 

A very busy week full of art

First of all I want to thank you for visiting and I hope I did get around to everyone who commented on my post at least! I've been so busy making art and tried to get around to people but at some point I kind of lost count. If anybody has advice for me as to how it is most easy to get through it on the PPF page, you are welcome to give me advice! The group has grown so much I can hardly get around to all the people!!!

I'm participating in a second round of Face in the World (FitW II) with Ayala Art on Facebook. (Earlier Face in the World posts). We are working in groups of three sending a postcard-sized start to the next in line. I'm in two groups and I have worked on two pieces from group members and my own starts of course.
I guess you would like to see a little of the work I've been doing? ;-)
Here are the starts I've worked on: group 6 (Ayala Art and Sandra Sherman). Sandra sent the outline of the face and I added a little colour to it, collaged a part of an earlier painting I had started. I added some water colour and acrylic to the background and highlighted with some gold circles.

And group 8 (Malissa Pribe and Ayala Art), for this face I found a picture of a boy that I liked very much to use as inspiration for the start that Ayala had made. I used pastels, acrylic and charcoal.

It is a lot of fun to do these collaborations! It can be scary to work on some body else's work of art, but it is so enjoyable too, to be part of an artwork that travels across the globe!

Also I've been working on a few small linol cuts cutting and printing with acrylics on all kinds of paper, post cards...I just love the expressiveness of the cuts!

Here is a collection of my prints:

Now back to work!

Sharing this with the artists on

PAINT PARTY FRIDAY!

Thank you Kristin and Eva for hosting the show!