some more faces

Hi everyone! Today I'm sharing some progress works. I didn't have time to finish any of the pieces I'm working on at the moment. First comes a drawing of an owl from a photo I've found on the PMP site. The Barn owl was photographed by Mike Gullick. I'm grateful for all the wonderful photos that great photographers share for artists to draw and paint!

The owl, sketched on a small moleskin journal.

The next few pieces are done on lose paper, all Bronzino portraits with additions

(One of the old Italian masters):

1. is a lady with sheep and birds photographed by Valerie Jael. She takes a lot of beautiful photos on her walks and I got permission to use some as reference for my drawings. Thank you once more Valerie! :-)

2. a Young Man, and I gave him a set of cow-horns.

Finally I'm showing a few photos of a portrait I'm working on. She seems to grow on me, the longer I work on her :-):

3. is Lucrezia di Cosimo with flowers added.

I really enjoy drawing and I would love to do something really big, a few square yards/meters!

Wishing everyone a wonderful sunday, don't get blown away by the storm! (For those affected by the weather)

Sharing this on Paint Party Friday

and Art Journal Journey!

Bronzino study

Another visit at Art Journal Journey

As I'm working with portraits by the old masters I surely have to add another blog post with a portrait I have done lately.

Here is a study of a portrait by Bronzino his birth name was Agnolo di Cosimo (November 17. 1503 - November 23. 1572) but he was known as Il Bronzino probably referring to his complexion. More information from wikipedia.

The animals are drawn after photos from Valerie Jael. Thank you very much for the permission to use some of your photos as references!

This is a work in progress and it will be a present for a friend, who appreciates my art very much.

Have a great week!

Happy New Year!

Hello dear friends and fellow bloggers!
I miss blogging and I miss you all! So I have decided to schedule my time for blogging and other computer related time more strictly this coming year. I hope it will work!
I have been practicing faces all year long and I enjoy it very much. I have mostly done drawings in graphite and charcoal and recently I've started painting again with acrylics, which I enjoy very much. There has come a lot of color into my paintings :-)

Now here's some of my art inspired by the old masters:

"La Bella Pricipessa" by Leonardo da Vinci, this painting is acrylic on watercolor paper. I've got it framed, which makes it look like a real piece of art! 

 Isabella d'Este by Titian, graphite and pastel drawing on my favorite "drawing paper", not finished

 Catharina van Aragon by Juan De Flandes. 

I'm still working on this! It is hopefully going to hang on a wall in our local hospital in the cancer tracing/control section. I've accompanied someone last summer, who was diagnosed with cancer and it was such a dreary place. So I immediately thought it would be nice, if there were some beautiful pictures hanging on the wall. I'm going to ask the hospital, if they would like some art for their walls. Luckily the person I was with, did get an operation that was able to remove the cancer.

Wishing everyone a year of hope and with possibilities to move on in your life in a way that you wish for. Sometimes that can be hard to accomplish, maybe we need to change our point of view to be able to move or to see other possibilities…

And sometimes only the tinyest steps are possible.

My best wishes to you

Ilona

Sharing this with the wonderful people at Paint Party Friday

And also at: Art Journal Journey (which is a first for me)

PPF visit

Hello my dear friends, fellow bloggers and new visitors!

Today I'll show you a single piece on this blog and give you a link to a new blog, where I show my 29 Faces in September work. I have just started the blog that I am going to use for my teaching courses (art and language).

Here is the painting I have been working on the last three days:

It is painted with acrylics, charcoal and pastels. I have concidered adding a wash of acrylic in another color, but I'm not quite sure.

Thank you for visiting my blog! I hope I'll get around to everyone over the weekend!

Have a great Paint Party Friday!

Ilona

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! 

Loving Frida

Hi dear visitor,

I have an idea and I would like to ask any of you, who love Frida too, if you would be interested in making a project with Frida Kahlo as the main theme?
Postcard sized pieces of art would be the easiest to send by mail and the cheapest!
The idea is just coming to my mind and I am open to suggestions.
Please comment on this post, if you are interested!

Viva la vida!

Some of my recent attempts: