Happening Around Here Lately

Hello everyone! I feel like I haven’t posted in a while, even though I had daily posts going on every single day the last 20 days! Phew! I hope you enjoyed the 20/20 series!

For those of you who are subscribed to my newsletter, I’ll be sending out the download link for the e-book to the series later today!

 

1. Happy Spring, everyone!

Look who I finally captured on “film”! I get so many hummingbirds in the garden and they let me come up quite closely, but I’ve never had a camera handy when they do! Until now!

   

 

 

Things are really happening in the garden as we’re moving out of the “winter” veggie harvesting and into the “summer” planting. I put adverted commas, because the dessert seasons are obviously not like the usual seasons! We’re having a little bit of a lull, right now, while the various summer veggies are getting there! But I still have plenty to keep us happy!
I have to say though, I am REALLY looking forward to the zucchini, cucumbers, beans and melons that are currently growing! Won’t be long now!

 

2. I’ve been working on my first portrait. It’s a gift for my father’s 70th birthday.  I am all at once fascinated by the thought of me doing even a single portrait and astounded that it actually looks like him!

I was somewhat in the zone when doing it, but haven’t been able to do another portrait of similar “skill” since! Go figure! Now, how do I go back into that zone?

 

 

3. I’ve been busy playing with my Gelli Plate! So much fun! I am working on a separate post on this however, so here is just a little preview.

 

           

 

4. Lifebook 2014 has had some more rocking lessons, in particular the last two I worked on, which was one by Tamara Laporte and the other by Anna Dabrowska, aka Finnabair!

 

Tamara’s lesson was on the “paint over collage” technique, which took me from this

 

 

To this:

 

 

Anna’s lesson was on her collage technique, which was quite fascinating! My take on the lesson took me from this:

 

 

To this:

 

 

The final collage was a little hard to photograph, as I used primarily shimmer mists to color the collage and they don’t photograph well! In real life the colors and objects have much more distinct colors and the separate objects stand out much more in their own right than the photo suggests. But you get the idea!

 

I am so glad I decided to do Lifebook 2014! We’re only in March and I have already learnt SO much and I just love having all the different artists show us how they do what they do!

By the way, if you’re thinking you might want to join too, you can! It’s not too late! Once you join, ALL the lessons are available for you to download and do at your own pace!

Even though Lifebook 2014 has a somewhat overriding theme every month (this month it is “celebrating connections”,) the lessons don’t build on each other, so you can jump in at any time and do the lessons in any order!

And for those of you that don’t want to do it because they think that the inner mean girl would never let them post their work or enjoy any of it - Lifebook has an amazingly supportive community, with EVERY level of artistic ability fully represented. Really, from ABSOLUTE beginner, the I-never-even-held-a-brush-before kind of beginners, to professional artists!

Anyway, as you can see, I’m really, REALLY enjoying myself in Lifebook 2014! It rocks!

 

5. I want to leave you with this awesome reminder by Ira Glass, about the creative process!

 

 

Yes, yes, YES!

Pin It

The Evolution Of An Intuitive Painting

For week 8 in our Lifebook 2014 class, we had a lesson from the lovely Alena Hennessy.

She led us in a short meditation, then had us write a letter to self/universe/god/angels, all before we started with our painting. There were really no rules or definitive instruction on the painting per se, other than paint and do what you want to do, do what feels  right, express what you feel guided to, paint as freely as a child!

 

I loved it! I often meditate before doing my art these days and I am getting more and more into the intuitive painting kind of style, so this was just right for me! Thankfully it was also a holiday today, so I got a little time to play! It was great, and quite surprising, what wanted to come out of me today!

 

 

And I actually remembered to capture a few stages along the way, so I can show you just how one of those intuitive paintings can evolve!

 

 

This is what I started with. Lots of color! Sprays, drips, splats, scribbles, a stencils. I just went for it!

 

 

Then I toned it down a bit with some white acrylic paint. Some brushed on, some brayered on, some smeared with my fingers. It all was very random!

Then I drew some acrylic ink scribble flowers with the little dropper, right out of the bottle. I also took an old gift card and ran it through some acrylic ink, which I then scraped onto the painting. You can see them as the vertical lines in the painting.

After that I had to sit with it for a bit. I somewhat had a notion of where I wanted it to go, but I couldn’t quite “grab” it. In the end I took a pen and just started to doodle.

 

 

First the large circle on top, then moving on to the middle one and finally I doodled the last circle into the flower petals that were shining through from the previous layers.

 

 

Next, some more dotting and decorating around the circles. Some really free-motion, “let the hand do what it wants and then see what you’ll do with it” kind of stuff! It is SO freeing!

 

 

Then I needed some shimmer! It’s hard to capture it, as always. You can see it a little better in the photo rather than the scan. From this angle you can see the rather more intensly yellow-ochre patches. Those are the perfect pearl shimmers.  Not that they look that yellow when you look straight at the painting. You just get a little shimmer!

 

 

We were encouraged to put a mantra or some positively inspiring words on our painting. I kept on trying to think of something short and sweet, but in the end, what it always came back to, was this excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, that has had me so inspired and fascinated for quite some time now.
It was about time that I did a page featuring it!

 

 

It reads:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

YES! Yes, to daring greatly!

Pin It

Things I have discovered recently

1.) I am really liking these kind of blog pots. You know, the ones I’ve been doing recently, where I cover several points/areas/events in one blog post.  All of them somewhat more on the short and sweet side!

So often, some of the smaller thoughts and events fall by the wayside because they don’t make up a whole blog post and in my case it often means, that I just don’t post!

They are also much faster to do, which seems to help me to post more regularly too!

I see more of those in my future!

 

2.) My latest finished painting for Lifebook 2014. I had so much fun with the inky, vibrant, splattery goodness!

 

 

3.) Baby wipes are my new best friend in the art studio! I might be the last to catch on, but they are awesome when it comes to cleaning brayers, stamps, stencils, general wiping of spills, drips and such.

 

{Oh, how I love it when even the cleaning rags are pretty!}

 

But not only that, I have recently discovered that they can assist me in the kind of blending I love.

When you use acrylics a lot, which I do, they become a little “plastic-y” when they dry. Meaning they create a slightly slick surface. Especially when you use extenders, then that can happen even more! Sometimes that’s a good thing, but often it just means that the consequent layers of paint can slide around a bit.

I also like to use colored graphite pencils for much of my “pull it all together” shading on a face. They are subtle, smudge able and allow me to build up nice layers. For the most part I use my trusty paper stumps for softening it all out, or just my fingers.

But, every so often, the above mentioned plasticy thing, that the acrylics do, gets in the way and the graphite settles unevenly and instead of looking subtle, it ends up looking streaky and just weird.

Enter the baby wipe! I discovered a few days ago, that a gentle, feather light smudging with a baby wipe on my finger tip gives me back that evening out power! It has to be really gentle, or you’ll take the whole layer off!  I love it!

 

4.) Gelli Plate Printing. I’ve been itching to try it, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I like the idea, I’m just not sure that I will end up using it all that much. The other day I was reading something and “hectographs” were mentioned. So, that set off an aha moment for me and I did a search for homemade hectographs/gelli plates and low and behold, there are lots of clever people out there who have this figured out!

Here are some recipes, if you want to try it for yourself:

Shaz in Oz’s original recipe

The Frugal Crafter’s recipe (permanent gelli plate)

Cat Sadowski’s recipe  (for a stickier gelli plate)

I’ll be posting my little experiments at some point. I got a little side-tracked with some ladies that want to be painted!

 

5.) The current state of my work surface paper.

 

 

What you can’t see is all the glimmering  from the various mists that settled on the paper too. Intuitive collage paintings in the making, every time I work on there and wipe something, smear something, scribble with a pen to get it going, drip, overspray, test the opacity of a particular paint, roll the excess off my brayer ... it all goes on here and becomes it’s own component for future pieces of art! I love it!

Not to mention that hardly anything every goes to waste that way!

 

What have you discovered lately?

Pin It

Oh, What Fun It Is To Play!

Last night I finally made some time for art playing - and play I did!

We had  a Life Book  “lesson” by Carla Sonheim this week, which included several little exercises designed to just let go, just be in the flow and return to the childlike approach to art and imagination!

There were blobs that turned into animals, drawings done with the non-dominant hand, one-liners (whatever you draw has to be done in one continuous line,) drawing with our eyes closed, scribbles, making odd paper shapes into flowers and turning randomly placed tape into animals.

 

 

The really cool thing about all these little exercises is, that they are designed for you to let go and have fun. There’s no room for perfectionism to enter the arena, as you just can’t be attached to the outcome. I mean really, even the most present perfectionist in us would have a hard time judging us on a drawing we did with our eyes closed!

 

 

And the outcome can be surprising and quite cute! I’ve been amazed and delighted at all the cute critters that have been showing up on the LB2014 gallery!

There’s no way I could have created any of my little animals or flowers with my brain turned on!

 

 

That is not to say that the brain didn’t want to be part of it too! It’s very hard for me to turn my inner (art) critic off, and it does require a conscious choice to just have fun with this, to let go and be ok, whatever the outcome! And I’m so glad I did!

Pin It

Of Courage And My Inner Artist Guardian

First of all, I wish you all a very happy 2014! May it be a year of great possibilities realized for all of us!

As you may know, if you’ve been reading my recent posts, I’ve joined Lifebook 2014 this year.

It started on January 1st with a whole host of lovely lessons, and amazingly they really catered to complete beginners as well as more advanced artists! Totally awesome!

One of the things that were offered in that first lesson was a brief but beautifully guided meditation to get in touch with the inner artist guardian, our word for the year and our colors for the year! As I have mentioned before, I already had my word(s ) for 2014 come in loud and clear (I thought,) so imagine my surprise (and delight, if I’m honest) when my “receiving/allowing” changed to “courage!”

It felt right! I have a lot of things that I want to realize in 2014 and they will need a LOT of courage, for sure! They will also need receiving and allowing, but even for that I will need courage!

 

Recently, I have (not for the first time) been searching my soul again as to what really makes it sing, what really makes me feel alive inside, even when I imagine doing it day in and day out for the next 30 or so years. What would I really do if failing or money were no object?

There are so many things I enjoy. So many, many things I can get interested in and be all fired up about, but usually those are not things that I would want to do day in and day out for years to come. They burn out, they get a little stale ...

So, even though I enjoy a great many things and I am good at a great many things, WHAT is it really that I want to do?

And, much to my surprise, turns out, I want to be an artist! You know, really, truly, an artist, not a semi-apologetic, I-like-to-paint-and-create in my spare time kind of “artist” but a fully fledged, I-do-this-every-day-and-I-cant-believe-I’m-this-lucky ... artist!

It suddenly became so clear, maybe because I was finally able to receive what my heart and soul was really saying.

I create. It’s what I do. It’s what I love to do. It’s what I need to do. I paint, I craft, I scrap, I do so many wonderful things! I have known it for a while, what I haven’t listened to is the dream behind it. This thing that makes my soul sing and makes me come alive, it’s in my heart, in my thoughts, it’s imprinted all over my energy - and I need to do it! And a lot of it!!

And of course, as soon as I let myself go in this flow of clarity, my old friends doubt and fear show up and they start their usual little spiel about “how I’ll get over it,” and “who do I think I am,”  how it will really mean putting myself out there and how ridicilous and scary of a notion this whole thing really is.

And yes, there is a fine line between the energy of fear - utter, soul shaking, boot quaking kind of fear this realization brings with it, and the excitement of a dream that’s been screaming inside for all this time and is finally being heard. And sometimes they overlap and I think that’s where I currently reside!

And of course it doesn’t end there!

In fact, it’s only the tiniest small step! And what I have in mind, will require many many steps and many of them will have to be real leaps in all areas of my life. But I am ready!

And, yes, I would definitely say that “courage” IS the word for me in 2014. After all, “Another word for creativity is courage!” (Henri Matisse)

 

As for my inner artist guardian?

Well, here she is:

 

I created the wings with the raised Gesso texture technique I described here.

 

 

I also used a different method for this face to the ones before. This one is built from “the bottom up,” as it were. This was my first attempt at underlay painting, where you build up layers of shading first, then glaze it with a fairly translucent skin tone glaze.
As usual I couldn’t quite leave well enough along though and also ended up refining the shading on top of the glaze as well. However, I really love how clear I had to be about what shadows go where and how strong with this method, so I think this may become part of my face shading on quite a few paintings!

 

And ever since I’ve given my creativity permission to flow a few weeks ago, I can’t stop painting! I have so many ideas in my head, so many pictures that need to make it onto canvas/paper! Hopefully somewhere along the way, I’ll be able to actually put what’s in my head down on paper or canvas and both will look somewhat similar! *wink*
But a lot of that is technique, and that I can learn! What I might lack in technique, I make up for in passion!

 

So, yes, my new year has started with a lot of realizations, many of which are still bubbling and forming and making their full extent known! But it’s all good! It’s a lot like a part of me is finally ready to wake up and come out of this obscured corner where it’s been cowering in fear!
But that’s another story, for another day!

Warmly,

Birgit

Pin It