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

Making art and waiting for the new week to start

I've been working on a few things and still preparing for the show. I've also managed to add two canvases collaged and painted ready to hang on monday!!! Suddenly time is getting short and it's my second sons birthday on saturday too, so a day full of celebration and guests and delicious cakes and food for family and friends...mmh!

Here is what i produced lately:

The riding woman is my first painting with gouache paint only, on a paper splattered with a little water colour.

The painting below is for the exhibition:

worked on a square canvas (the photo didn't cover it all, sorry). I painted her after a digital sketch I have made some time ago...:

Before I sketched and collaged her on the canvas I did quite a lot of preparation. The canvas had been covered with a mixture of paint, earth and glue, which gave it a very rough texture. (I did this last year and then I put it aside, not knowing what to do further). Tiny stones are still visible in places.
Now I have started collaging backgrounds recently, you can see examples of it here and here and I just thought the very rough background could use some smoothness, so I found some of my torn up papers, strips this time that I glued onto the canvas. Then I played with different colours and mixed acrylics with liquid water colour. I let it dry and sketched the woman onto the canvas, collaged her in rice paper, because of the subtleness the paper has and the background would still be visible! I sketched on top of it with charcoal and added colour to her with water colour pencils. To me she looks very strong and determined, just what I really want to become - that's why I want to keep her! ;-)

The following face is sketched after one of Lucas Cranach the Elder's paintings. She is painted and drawn on water colour paper with some acrylic splatters serving as a nice background.

Last but not least a sketch in charcoal/pastel:

This was it for today/this week :-)

I enjoy very much concentrating on making art most of the days. How lucky am I? Soon other tasks will fill some of the space, giving Danish courses for parents at the local school. But that will hopefully be a good change, meeting people to talk to and hopefully have fun with!

So on monday will be the day when we put up the art and on thursday the 5. September there is a vernissage for interested people. A bit scary, but hopefully also a good experience, as I already know of a few people/friends, who will be there and make it all worth the nerves :-)

Hope you will have time to make art and stop by and visit the great artist gathering on Eva and Kristin's blog for the Paint Party Friday! 

Thank you for visiting!

Ilona