Owl in black and white

Inspired by a photo and wanting to use the wacom board again I made this doodle drawing of an owl.

It was a wonderful day for a walk at the sea yesterday...

Inspiration from around

 1. Artjournal page

Christmas-card collage in progress

Creative play dough-walldecoration

I've done some playing around with different backgrounds and colors. The first two pictures are made from a mono print done at school with a wide brush and acrylic. 

Some of the pictures are taken on an intermediate stage (the pages aren't finished) ;-)

The first page was colored with water color,

on the second page I used pastels and tea. 

A friend of mine has been to Australia and taken a lot of photos of plants and animals, which she shared with me, as she knows I like to draw/paint, integrating nature in my work. Thank you, Eva!!!

So you can guess that this locust is from Australia. 

Newspaper strips collage on black foundation/art journal, painted with acrylic and black oil pastel.

In the week end I made some tags (the first ones that are really finished) for my sister and my niece

who've had birthday in December and I have chosen to give them a creative session for their birthdays. I am really looking forward to having a great time and crafting with some wonderful beings.

The last picture is a portrait of a girl in two different media, pastel and water color.

I find she is my favorite girl :-)

Hermann Hesse portrait

A little sketch on a calendar page with an Emil Nolde water colour painting.

I used white acrylic as a base to draw on with a dark grey pastel. In parts the white paint was rubbed off by the pastel and the colours of the Nolde-picture came through with a very interesting effect.

Maggie's little story

When summer was gone and the wind started to blow the leaves off the trees in ”Maggie’s garden”, mom started making tea for two in the afternoons. Maggie and mom would sit by the window in the kitchen and look out at the trees without leaves and at birds searching for comfort in the bushes.

They would tell each other stories of the day, and sometimes mom would tell about her afternoon walks in the woods, when she was still a little child living in the forests far up north.

These were happy hours; they were very close at these times.

By the end of November, the two of them started preparing for Christmas. There would be liveliness in the house from early December.

Mom’s parents always were the first to arrive at the big house. Mom would be at the station waiting for them to arrive, while Maggie would stand at the porch, tea and biscuits ready in the living room.

Granny would be the first to reach the stairs to embrace Maggie, and grandpa would walk by mom’s arm. His legs are not well. But he has the kindest smile. And they would walk into the house after a look over the garden with Maggie’s small wonders hidden in the flowers that were now sleeping in the ground, and in the trees – both high and low.

Soon all four of them would be talking, cooking and laughing at everything from a burnt cookie to granny and Maggie’s hide and seek game. And then the funny old neighbour would take a cup or two in the kitchen with grandpa. They could talk of the old days

and it was just so interesting for Maggie to peek around the door frame and look at them.

After a week or two uncle Ben would arrive. Maybe he would bring a friend from some foreign country he had recently visited. Uncle Ben’s visits were always exiting. He would bring something really special for Maggie to play with or use for her treasure box. And mom’s eyes would shine, because Ben was so special to her. They had shared many joyful hours playing around the house and woods, both here and in the other house.

Then just before Christmas aunt Jane and uncle Arthur and their two girls would come to stay until New Years Eve. They were all really good company and they would play games and tell stories. Granny would read for all of them and they sometimes would sing Christmas carols.

Maggie suddenly looked up at her mother and smiled: “We’ll be busy the next few days, mom! Let’s take a walk in the garden and see if the hedgehog is still in its nest.”

  

lnd the two of them went outside and found the nest and they saw some birds searching for food and they went onto the road and took a really long walk after which they would be tired and hungry and they would cuddle under a blanket on the sofa and just enjoy being together.

To see Maggie please visit: lynne hoppe maggie2.jpg

Mrs. Shakespeare?

pencil and water colour on acrylic

collage and painting, acrylic and water colour

Don't you remember Adele

Inspiration from a scrapbook page :-)

 Nathalie's Studio

Blind drawing; added some pencil; and some pastel

Finding more material related to the theme, and creating a picture 

chalk and charcoal

An old man photographed in Poland 1938

Drawing in charcoal and pastel chalk (white) 

after 5 min; 20 min; 30 min; 45 min

10 and 20 minute portrait sketches

20 minute sketch

20 minute sketch

10 minute sketch

10 minute sketch

Seventeen 2 minute portraits

To train my skills in portraiture I chose to find photos of people, interesting to draw.

I found 17, and started drawing on my sketch pad, 2 minute each photo.

Interesting to do and what I found most difficult was to make the drawings resemble the motive.

Often two minutes is far from enough for me to catch it right, but it is also the task of drawing the essential lines, that do the thing right. It is catching the expression on the faces, that was important for me, and sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I didn't. 

Change of layout

Dear visitor!

I have been playing around with the layout for some time switching between two very different types. Now I am thinking of changing the layout of my blog to something more subdued, but fitting to my style, the background is not finished yet. I'm still working on that.

It would make me really happy, if you leave a comment on how the blog looks to you.

Does it look inviting?

Do you get the information you need, to understand, what I did or what I thought in my blog-posts?

Have a nice day :-)

Ilona

cornflower and candlestick

The lines seem a bit curved, that's because the cardboard is not even. 

I used acrylic, pastel chalk and pencils for this drawing of a section of my kitchen windowsill.

Kaki und Knoblauch

Cardboard and acrylic form the base for this drawing.

I used pencils 6B and 8B.

The cardboard was quite soft, so the pencil made marks in it

Second floor challenge

So the last challenge for Julie and Nat was the first try for me...
It is quite a challenge for me to use those 6 colours, especially the primary colours! Though I have chosen shades of them not the most clear/brights ones from Itten's colour circle.

I used pastels only and fixative whenever I finished with a colour.

Starting up with yellow - another challenge filling the paper with this colour, adding orange in the way I usually work with pencils, or ink pens.

With green I did something different, I put peace of knotted yarn under my paper and rubbed the green pastel on top of my paper and a kind of reflection of the yarn appeared on the front.
Next I used the dark red chalk and it is a colour I really like. Then it was time for violet and at last blue, which I used very carefully, because it was a strong colour, on top of the yellow.

Taking it to the second floor? - this explosion of lines and colours is much too much for me. But what can I do to subdue it, while keeping the style?

I chose rice paper, torn into peaces, and glued it onto the drawing. I took a cardbord-peace and used it to paste on some white acrylic onto the rice paper. It still didn't convince me. So I started drawing on and around the white acrylic. This seems to do it! But still some work to do on it ;-)

With a dark grey pastel I started drawing lines and filling spaces, and bye and bye the picture became a unity.

Finished? - I guess so, but there may come something more into my mind for this.