Holiday activity - birthday presents

We've had autumn-holidays here and I have been busy preparing birthday presents for my son and my husband.
My husband loves old cars, especially Volvo Amazons, so my daughter and I decided to make a series of T-shirts for him with his favorite car on them and for fun some chickens, which he is also very fond of. We have been in a cultural centre in Flensburg, where we have edited some photos for the process and made a few serigraphy prints for my husband

and some for me of one of my favorite photo collages:

We had a wonderful time! Two days, in which we were creative and had fun preparing the prints and buying t-shirts, on the second day we made the actual prints, messing around and enjoyed being together.

The following paintings are done as preparation and in between working on a painting for my eldest son, who had a wish for one of my paintings. They are all inspired/painted after old master's portraits:

Below is a detail of the painting I made for my son:

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

Ilona :-)

Linking to Paint Party Friday: PPF

Inspiration for future work

I'm going to this course in Denmark/Århus:

Artists' Book Course

and I'm very curious about it and hope it will be a lot of fun and inspirational!

Otherwise I'm playing with my paints on paper, trying to capture moods with acrylic and a brush. Here are a few impressions of yesterday's work:

Putting some paint on paper; choosing a photo, to sketch a face; putting glue on top; add some more paint...

Adding paint from my wet palette and adding glue on the dry paint:

Fooling around with paints and scraffitti:

A portrait sketch, starting with a layer of graphite, taking off layers with an eraser, then adding and taking away until I thought it had the right variety of light and dark:

I'm working on a chocolate box decorated with acrylics and adding small paintings, that have the size of the chocolate pieces:

A few tiny sketches of old masters' portraits:

And a "copy" in my sketchbook. I was drawing a portrait and this turned up on the backside of my drawing :-)

Finally a sketch of a sculpture from an international art exhibition

I just noticed that writing these comments about my work/process creates awareness! You might call me stupid that I only notice this now, but that's the way it is with me. I'm a bit slow sometimes!

Have a wonderful new week!

Ilona :-)

I posted this more than a year ago:

a-few-of-my-recent-sketches

I have done a lot of art for half a year, and then I started working, earning money, but art making was reduced to drawing a little and painting was next to nothing.
I really miss painting very much! And I need to find a way, to include art making into my schedule once again!

Here are a few pieces I have done in the past year that I think turned out quite well, though they are not all finished!!!  :

Colours and Faces

This week's work with faces and colours was a joy! Here they are:

Nr 8:

Nr 9:

Nr 10:

Nr 11:

Nr 12, charcoal

Nr 12, added acrylics:

Nr 13:

Nr 14:

I hope you enjoyed the show! I'm linking to the Paint Party Friday

and to 28 dage i farver

Ok I did a major spelling mistake giving the sentence a completely different meaning. I've corrected that now and I look forward to visiting many artists in the coming week! 

nr 7

Dette portrait er stadig i arbejde. Jeg nyder at arbejde på det og glæder mig over ethvert skridt, der nærmer mig det endelige resultat = størst mulig genkendelighed af modellen! :D

Kan du gætte, hvem det er?

Besøg også de andre deltagere i Maiken Damsgaards blog-hop 28 dage i farver!

Også 29 Faces challenge på Facebook!

Har arbejdet noget mere på ham, men synes ikke rigtigt man kan genkande ham endnu ;-)

creating faces and making colourful art

Combining my favorite subject, painting and drawing faces, with the use of colour is a wonderful combination for me in this time of work with children with special needs, which is quite demanding, as I'm new to it and I have a lot to learn about it!
Here are this week's faces. I'm working on paper backgrounds that I have worked on previously, unfinished drawings and paintings and papers I have been experimenting on:

The first mixed media piece I sold!

Looking forward to the next faces! 

Linking to Paint Party Friday, Ayala Art's 29 Faces

and

28 dage i farver

Have a wonderful weekend!

Starting 29 Faces and 28 dage i farver

It's February again! Time for the 29 Faces challenge!
And this year I'll add another challenge to it, 28 dage i farver!

My first face/painting, that I'm still working on:

I use acrylics on watercolour paper. The start of the painting was done some time ago, graphite and acrylics:

Visit a fabulous Danish artist, who started the challenge "28 days in color" here.

Painting 28 days colorful in February

Hi all! I'm going to participate in a blog-hop in February with Maiken Damsgaard. She has asked artists to join her creating colourful art through the month of February, "28 dage i farver"
I am going to combine this challenge with the 29 Faces challenge from Ayala Art, which I mainly follow on Facebook!

My wish to schedule my blogging time more consistently hasn't worked out so far, because I have started working more and I lack time for everything now ;-) I am not complaining! It's great, I just have to get used to the new situation.

Last week I have started working on a painting for my daughter. She asked me to paint a canvas with the colours of this painting:

My daughter asked me to paint some birds and if there are any blue birds. Luckily there are and luckily there is a great photographer, who shares photos for artists to paint! So the birds are coming to life slowly on my canvas. Here are two birds that are sitting on the canvas by now:

Another project I have started during a class is evolving in my living room now:

I collaged some lamps and the lady dressed in black from a magazine and slapped some paint on an A2 sized cardboard. In the last lesson on thursday I started drawing the face to the right and gave her a crown. That's when I came up with a title for the painting: "Königin im Lampenladen" "Queen of the Lamp Store". Following are a few process pictures, the painting is not completely finished!

It has been fun to play with paints and collage and I'm looking forward to the two challenges I'm going to start on the 1. February!

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy some art!

Sharing this on Paint Party Friday, go over and see some wonderful art from around the globe by some art enthusiasts!

Finally Friday

It's been a working week, so I didn't have much time for art. Therefore I'm showing you some paintings I have done in December.
They are all made from portraits by old masters.

The first is part of a larger painting, 1square meter, where the reference is from Agnolo Bronzino (again):

The next portrait is a portrait I painted as a book cover after a painting by Ivan or Jacob Argunov, it was not quite clear which of the two painted the unknown woman:

Below you see a portrait I did of Kunigunde of Austria (ca 1485) after a portrait by an unknown artist:

Lastly I show you this portrait of Alexandra Pavlovna ca 1790, (princess of Russia) I painted on a box as part of a birthday present for my niece:

I enjoyed painting these portraits. I hadn't done a lot of painting so the change from the pencils/graphite was wonderful!

Thank you all for visiting and have a wonderful weekend!

I'm sharing my post on the Paint Party Friday