Sketching from black to portrait

I drew and smeared black chalk on my sketchbook:

Then I took my eraser and remove the black wherever necessary to make a portrait.

                               

Eggplant

I think I'll have to reveal the source for this painting :-)

I participate in a challenge on: http://paintanddrawtogether.blogspot.de

The painting we were asked to paint is from Henri-Horace Ronald Delaporte (1724/1725 - 1793) and it is called "Egg Basket". When I get a "task" I often get a lot of ideas for how to do it. So I was at once thinking of a painting in large dimensions, 1x1,5m or something like that in a completely different colour-scheme than the original - a modern interpretation, or something using pastels. As I don't have time for doing big things at the moment, I said to myself: think small. And then the photo of this plant came to my mind. The colours in the photo harmonized very well with the "Egg Basket" - this way the idea for my painting was born.

Le Panier D'oeufs

Some detail sketches to warm up for a challenge: "Challenge - 35 - "Egg Basket by Henri-Horace-Ronald Delaporte"

This is the last photo of the drawing I post here.

I add this to the challenge 35 on Paint And Draw Together

The Lacemaker

Jan Vermeer has painted this girl working on a board making lace of fine threads.
The blog "Paint And Draw Together" has put up a challenge: to paint this picture in any technique one may prefer to chose.

Having little time left, today is the final day to send in the picture, I chose to make a sketch in my sketchbook. I added a layer of acrylic, which makes the paper more sturdy and much more important the acrylic gives a pencil drawing a lot of expression. It supports the pencil very well.

It is certainly not a perfect sketch, I could use hours and hours on the picture, but time is running and

today is hopefully the first day for me to participate in the PADT.

Some more details were added to the drawing tonight:

More photos will follow :-)

The composition went out of hand, I certainly should have made an overall sketch, 

before going into detail. 

Intermediate state of Owl

Working on it with graphite, pastel, crayons, acrylic - 

Evolving into something

Can you imagine this owl resting, before it has to take up an important task? - travelling across countries and delivering a message to the girl, who is now sitting in her room in a little house in a small town south of equator. 

:-) you cannot guess yet, where this girl lives. Rugana, the owl will have to go on it's journey and days, maybe weeks will have to pass, before we get closer to the place, where the girl lives...

Art in a journal

After my creative session on the 2. of January I have continued working on different journal pages.

The session was a kind of boost of ideas.

Here come some of the pages I have been working on, mostly today.

The above page (unfinished) is inspired from the session, both colours and technique have been used the other day.

Nr. 2is a mixed media painting starting with pastels in blue and brown, painting over with yellow acrylic. I used a feather to draw fine lines with writing ink, added more pastel and acrylic, detailing spots with a pencil and an oil pastel pen. An interesting process (not finished)

Another example of mixed media with the same material as above (unfinished).

Drawn with a feather and watered down acrylic, something I've never tried before. Actually a great discovery which I would like to use more often. It makes truly fine lines and I can choose any colour I want!

Owl painting in progress, still a lot of work to be done here!

Had a happy PAINT PARTY FRIDAY :-)

Wish the same to you at:

http://paintpartyfriday.blogspot.de

Kreativsession

In an earlier post I told you about a birthday present I gave to my sister and my niece. A Creative session/afternoon.

So yesterday was the day for our creative session. Before we started, we had a cup of coffee and some creme brulé and a little talk about our New Years Eve- experiences.

We started out with an idea I got from Julie Fei Fan Balzer: feathers. balzerdesigns.how-to-deli-paper-feathers

It was a good way to start, to let the creative spirit arouse.

And here are the feathers we did finish:

We started with rice-paper feathers. They have a soft character and turned out to be favored material for us to work with. The second feather was in a more sturdy material (photo print-paper).

The next thing we did were tags. This is a new media for all of us and I have only worked with tags a few times before. We did some collaging and working with layers and used tape to spare parts of our layout and worked over the tape, and removed it in the end. We used net and a simple stamp of cork to create liveliness in the layout.

Two of the tags were painted on both sides:

And one of mine a mini collage is going to be integrated in a bigger collage, which I started using different material: bits of a print I did last year, some toilet paper used to remove colour during the session yesterday and some pictures from a journal about artists of the 1980'ies.

In between we did projects more freely, my niece drew and painted this lady:

And my sister made a layout for a card:

It is truly a mixed media project, using water colour, ink pen, printing with net and some foil, which gives a shiny effect.

After we had dinner together and a cosy talk on the sofa our guests left, and I thought, I would use some of the leftover acrylic colours.

I put on some music and found the owl I drew on my wacom board and started this painting.

The owl got eyes and a beak...

Which I found out was too small, so I painted over it with white acrylic, and then

I somehow made the green colour float all over the painting! I took a break from the owl-painting.

These lines and colours were the last thing for me to work with, before I went sleeping last night:

It was a great session and my sister asked me to do a drawing session next time. We'll see :-)