Paint Party Friday, Week 23, Year 4

I can't tell you how fast time is running, I can't keep up with it! :-)
I'm going to tell you, what has been going on recently and of course I'll show you some art I've been creating.

Friday last week my eldest son moved out, to live with three friends closer to their school. Wow that is a weird feeling. He's growing up! And I feel happy for him, because he get's the chance to grow up and become independent. But there are a lot of worries as well of course. I hope he will enjoy his time and be the reasonable and sensible person I know him as!
Two days later on Sunday my second son moved to a boarding school, where he is finishing his primary school education. It seems like he is doing well so far. The last two days I haven't heard from him ;-). It is a great school with a lot of varied possibilities for the pupils to learn and engage themselves in meaningful occupations. So far one of his favorites was kayaking!
This means we are three persons left in our household. And more changes will happen here with me getting into more teaching related work.

Now to my art…
For the Travelling journal I have done a page in Beth Gould's journal. Her theme is "Through the Eyes of a Child" and I have created a page inspired by one of my childhoods favorite stories/movies: Emil of Lönneberga. A story written by Astrid Lindgren about a boy who constantly gets into trouble with his father because of small accidents that happen to him.
Here is the page I did:

I used pencils and gouache for this page and it was inspired in the composition by Marc Chagall, as I had seen a documentation about him, before I started painting.

Here is a link to the song Emil's sister Ida is singing:

The most fantastic about all this is that we as a family visited the very place where the film was produced, it is an old farm in Sweden, and we loved to see it!

It is such a lovely place and it looks exactly like it does in the film.

I also drew a portrait sketch of Robin Williams this week. He is one of my absolute favorite actors. 

We can only wish for more people to be more like this man.

Have a beautiful weekend, take care of yourselves and others

bring more joy and love to the world!

Ilona xx

Sharing with Paint Party Friday

Visiting the Paint Party Friday :-)

I guess I found out why it's become so difficult for me to post regularly on my blog. It has stopped since I've finished my studies. While I studied I was at my computer almost all the time and now I've so many other things to do that I have to make time for blogging. If I want to keep at it, I will have to really schedule blogging-time in future. I'll have to get myself pulled together :-)

Now I want to show you a few projects I've been working on last week:

The first piece I want to show you is my contribution to the traveling journal of Lizzy Love. There are a lot of process-photos and some detail-photos. I very much hope Lizzy will like her!

Next is a sketch of a Mufflon on 300g water colour paper. I used pencils and pastels, a brush and water (The reference photo was provided by Karina Sturm)

Finally I'm working on Frida Kahlo portraits, which I enjoy very much. I am going to do a collaboration with postcard sized Frida-art. I blogged about that a few weeks ago here.

This week I did this painting:

Sketching in graphite:

Adding, acrylic, pastels and a bit of structure-paste:

Adding more structure-paste:

…and dry pastel:

…and some glue:

More dry pastel:

This where I've ended up for now…:

I hope you annoyed your visit! I certainly enjoy sharing my art with people at:

Paint Party Friday

and

Paper Saturdays 

Have an awesome weekend you all! 

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!

collection of pieces I have worked on in the last two weeks and Pay it forward

The first two paintings are my contributions to two of the traveling journals I joined on Facebook.

I have made a page with information/links to all the participants' blogs.

The hen is going to be for Audrey. It is still a work in progress:

The second one is for Lauri, who asked for our ideas on "positive headspace".

This is, what I have come to until now with her journal:

Below you see the head of a cow. She is painted after a reference photo from a new group I joined on Facebook, where we post our own photos and give permission for other group members to use them for their art. That's a pretty cool idea and there are a lot of wonderful photos of animals, nature and also some people. 

This cat is also drawn after a reference photo from the Fb-group:

And finally "Snowwhite" in graphite (in my sketchbook):

And I will add a little game today. I joined Marji's "Pay it forward" challenge and offer my own work now for the first five people, who comment with "Yes I want in"

Here are the rules:

* Pay It Forward Art-making Project for 2014 *

I promise to make a small work of art for the first five people who comment on this post and say "YES, I want in". A 'like' alone is not enough of a commitment, nor is a comment about thinking Pay It Forward is a great idea.

You must in turn post this as your status update and make something for the first five who comment on your status.

The rules are simple:
– It has to be your work, made by you, and the recipient must receive it before 2014 ends.
– It can be anything art-based: a drawing/illustration or a conceptual work of art, a photograph, a knitted item, cross-stitch, paper maché – or anything in between.

I'm paying this forward thanks to Jack Oudyn.  Yes, you can be on each other's pay it forward lists.

First five, GO!

PS. It doesn't matter if you aren't an artist, try something out, google/ YouTube how to make stuff, step out of those boundaries.

 Step 1Copy&Paste this (see below) as your latest entry on your favourite social website (in my case, its this blog) 

 
Step 2For the first five people who comment on your blog entry saying they want to participate, you will do an art trade with them that must be completed by December 31st 2014. I would count as the first person so technically you only need another four. If you find your friends are keen you can do as many as you want. 


Step 3All forms of art count including creative writing , photography, digital anything goes!
 
If you have any more qustions, just email me and let me know

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!