Travelling Journal

Hi everyone!
I am participating in a travelling-journal-round this year that is initiated by Martha Ayala, who you all know I guess :-). She has created groups like 29 Faces, which is coming up soon again!

12 artists from around the world will create a journal and send it on to the next artist on a list.

I have created a page with links to the participating artist's blog. Here's a link to the The Travelling Journal page. You can find the link under the header of my blog as well!

Here is the first page I created in Anita Mistry's journal. I may be adding to it, but I'm happy with the outcome so far! Anita wanted us to use "the colours of India"/bright friendly colours. And so I went looking for inspiration on the net.
I started by collaging pink, yellow and orange papers onto the page and to give it a little contrast I added some greens.

I really loved the feel of this colourful collage! The bright and happy colours are quite different from, what I usually use, at least in that amount!

To evolve from there I had to find a face to paint, so I searched again, for people in India and found the image of a girl that I liked. I put some white acrylic over the collage and started to sketch the face with charcoal:

And added more paint and worked on details of the picture:

Here is the version I ended up with until now. It can rest for a while now and maybe I will get some ideas or things I would like to change.

I very much hope Anita will like the first page in her journal! I loved to work in it. It feels rather special, to do this kind of work for another person.

Because of my current situation I am going to reduce my blogging, but I'm going to post pictures from time to time without linking up with my favorite challenges and parties, as I am not able to get around to visit all the participants.

I am always happy to have visitors and I will visit you my dear blogger friends whenever time allows it. So feel welcome at all times! 

Mix it Monthly in January

Starting off with a little self-portrait in a notebook.

Here you can see a blogpost about my inspiration/model

Mix it Monthly in January is all about odd hats, so fitting very well with me! :-)

Here's the LINK

And linking to a beautiful piece of art by the wonderful and creative Karla Bardanza:

HEALING WOMAN

Paint Party Friday Week 43 Year 3

Welcome to a new year!

At our family gathering at our house on the 28th of December I had a little drawing session with my elder sister. Can you guess who did which side? ;-)

In the third picture we worked all over the place! We enjoyed it a lot and had fun with drawing! My niece in the  green framed picture was astounded at what we were able to achieve in a quite short period of time.

 

Below I drew a scene from a holiday we were on, when my second son was still very small.

It was a lovely place!!!

At last I show you a few portraits I have done/finished this week:

     

Thank you all for visiting! Hope you will visit the PAINT PARTY FRIDAY

where a lot of amazing artists come together and share their joy with art!

Getting myself ready for a new challenge

Wishing everyone a very happy new year and hoping for all of us to be able to grow and make the world a better place to be in!

On Mix it Monthly Conny has given us a new challenge working with head-dresses and beautiful colours and I'm very inspired once more and ready to pour out my colours and inspiration on as much canvas or paper as I can lay hands on!
To get in the mood for the theme I took a few selfies with some of my hats:

:-) some of them are my own creations (the blue on the left and the small dark-red in the centre) the top right I bought in London in 1991 and the green one I bought in Prague in 1993 - wonderful memories from my youth.

The little white thing I bought for my tailoring shop to fit to a wedding dress I once worked on.

A lovely day today, 1. January 2014!

Ilona

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!