some surprises in the mail and some new art

Hi all!
I've told you about my bachelor-project and it is now handed in. YES I DID IT!!! :D
Now the last task for me is, to get through the oral exam… I will manage somehow ;-)

But now to the fun part - art!
When I returned home after a few days of writing-exile I found a pile of mail on my desk. First to mention a tiny (not really that tiny!) but fat envelope from Marji, who had posted a "Pay it forward"-post on her blog some weeks ago. I was the first person to sign up for some art from Marji, how could I not??? :-) She is an amazing artist! (You can still join in the game on my post: collection-of-pieces-i-have-worked-on)

Here are a few photos of her art-gift for me:

A booklet of collage and wax-paint combined, a very energetic piece.

Thank you so much for this treasure, Marji! I'm preparing your piece, almost posted a WIP, but stopped myself just in time ;-)

Then I received my journal page from Audrey Breed! She is an artist from Tennessee. Since I got into the artist-groups on Facebook, Audrey has been part of my artist existence. She is an experienced person in art and life and always ready to give advice and share her knowledge. You see, she is amazing! :-)

And here is her beautiful and quirky piece of art already on my wall:

Also in my mail was my traveling journal cover I had prepared, to protect the journal pages. Unfortunately it was too bulgy and made mailing more expensive :(

I asked Manon to mail my journal without the cover. Manon was so kind and sent the cover back to me and with the cover she sent some of her lovely paper dolls:

Wow, thank you Manon! I'm looking forward to "building" them together with my daughter! As if that wasn't enough I also received a painting from Manon:

"The Lady-bird Keeper"

I love it! Thank you Manon!!!

Now a little bit of my own art work:

You know I love to draw faces and I'm drawing faces almost daily. Here is one of the latest works:

Graphite sketch in my faces-journal.

The last piece for today is a little mug I like to use for my coffee:

I painted with derwent art bars on water color paper. The mug is from a pottery in Denmark (Fanø).

The painting is partly inspired by Marc Chagall, but mainly it is inspired by Conny of Mix it Monthly and it is my contribution to the May challenge with the theme Coffee/Cafë. 

I'm sharing this on Paint Party Friday

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Mix it Monthly May

Making a slow start reentering the blogging world with Mix it Monthly…
I have created three small paintings with the coffee-theme Conny has chosen
for the month of May. I put them into a photo-collage:

("Madam blå" is a classical Danish coffee-pot)

I used three water colour paper pieces, sketched my ideas and painted with derwent art bars and a brush. I enjoyed it and hated it…I wasn't really happy with the result and added some dry art bar-paint and smudged it with a wet cloth. I guess I miss the combination of acrylics and pastels that really give some texture and really dirty fingers :-).

Still have an oral exam to do before I can celebrate, but I got a lot closer, when I handed in the bachelor-project. YAY!!! :D

Mix it Monthly in January

Was very inspiring and so much so that I rather accidentally created paintings that fitted into the category. Here are two portraits that I did this month:

The Birdlady is a mixed media work on cardboard sized approximately 70x100 cm:

The page below is part of the Traveling Art Journal (you can see who is in the group on the link above). It is a combination of collage and acrylics.

And a pencil sketch and acrylic painting. I added the colours to the drawing last week. The woman in the painting has recently lost her father and somehow the idea to add colours came to my mind and the dripping paint just was a spontaneous idea.

Lastly I wanted to add this fair lady to the show, as she is wearing the most stunning headdress! She is the result of an international collaboration (and I need to frame her properly) 

Thank you very much for your wonderful challenge Conny! I enjoy it very much :-)

Visit the Mix it Monthly challenge, it is growing and beautiful and amazing to see!

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

Mix it Monthly November

A new theme is up for the Mix it Monthly Challenge. This month it is: Children and Graphics combined with these colours:

I already did a few pieces with the colours. The first is a business card printed with a linol-print in the blueish colour. I added the pink to the background and black acrylic for the details of the face. The original print is barely visible!

The next piece is painted and collaged on an A4 sized piece of cardboard.

There are scraps of newspapers and paper with different prints and two small children climbing a ladder. 

 I added a face:

 and gave the whole thing some extra colour with a mono print technique.

The third piece I did is a small piece of green paper painted partly black, to which I added some bits of ribbon. Then I used a pink piece of candy wrapper, added some white acrylic and sketched a face onto it with black acrylic and a fine brush. Finally I printed on top of it all with a glass plate added color and scratched some lines into the paint:

new faces: 6, 7, 8 and Mix it Monthly

I've found a wonderful sketch by Leonardo da Vinci here:
http://www.universalleonardo.org/media/100/0/pointingladyrc.jpg

I used the body as part of my contribution to the Mix it Monthly challenge.
As I'm making portraits and sketches of my niece during the whole month of September for the 29 Faces challenge that Ayala Art has set up again this September, I added my niece's head to the body of "The pointing lady". But I must say that the tiny size of the head in this piece makes it difficult to get enough detail to really work out the likeness I strive to achieve! I would like to work on it a little more :-)
The colors for the challenge are hibiscus (collaged paper leaves and flowers) mint green (dress) and grey (sketch, pastel pencil). In the second version I added feathers digitally, to complete the challenge themes.

Lady with Feathers

Lady with Cap

The faces 6, 7 and 8 of 29 faces:

I bought some gift wrapping paper rolls (5!) because they had such nice colors and prints that I liked for collaging and I used one of them straight away for a portrait/sketch. She is a bit askew, but otherwise the likeness is pretty close I think! "Entschuldige bitte liebe M! Ich übe gang fleissig und arbeite daran, die Ähnlichkeit besser hinzubekommen!"

Face 7 above could even count as conrtibution for the Mix it Monthly challenge as well as the colours I used are there as well as the feathers :-)

Here a little charcoal sketch on water colour paper.

Thank you very much for visiting! There are a lot of amazing artists around the blogging world, hop over and visit the wonderful Ayala Art and Pia Rom!

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!

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 

Mix it Monthly - July Theme

Beach - inspired colors and themes:

blue - violet - sand

birds

wood

and a favorite song- "You can go your own way..."

Here is my entry so far (work in progress???)

I painted this bird on a piece of left over wood (2x4,5x30 cm) with my dry pastels and some water. I quite like the effect, but am not sure if it is finished... :-)
The photos are not the best, sorry for that, but the size and form makes it a bit difficult to take good photos.

Thank you Conny for the Mix it Monthly challenge! I think you really have some great and inspirational ideas for us to play with!

I'm looking forward to new challenges!