My Guardian Angel

This is my second mixed media art journaling piece made on a canvas (30x40 cm, 12x15").

When I took a workshop by Kate Crane in 21 Secrets earlier this year, I fell in love with her way of drawing whimsical angels. I tried painting three angels on a small cardboard and loved them! Now I've taken it one step further and made one big angel and added more details like arms and hands. I'm so in the process of learning and I enjoy every minute of it.

One thing I love about acrylic paint is that it's so easy to cover mistakes. I think I repainted the face at least five times. At first it had no facial features at all. My husband thought it looked like a football and I decided to add eyes. That was a mistake, so I repainted it. Then I thought, why not paint a whole face? So I did... hahaha... the poor angel looked like a eunuch so I had to repaint it again.

So... no face, face, no face, face, no face... and here he/she finally is... my Guardian Angel :)

 

Mixed media painting with doodle

Today I felt like trying out doodling on a painting which at first felt like I was wrecking the whole painting but then turned out to something nice.

I got the inspiration from the book "Doodles unleashed" by Traci Bautista, a great book by the way! I cut out pieces of scrapbooking paper for flowers and stems and glued them on the canvas which I had painted with acrylics. Then I painted the flowers and stems kind of "clumsy". It isn't supposed to look neat and tidy :) After that I doodled with Molotow pens and my new favourites, Liquitex paint markers. I had a great time and enjoyed every mistake I made and just made some more so that you wouldn't guess they are mistakes at all ;)

I LOVE colours! You who know me are probably surprised because I'm always dressed in black, grey and white and sometimes, maybe, with a slight touch of colour. But inside I am full of colour and it is about time it shows in my art (it feels kind of pretentious to call it art, but I don't have a suitable word for it.)

Hope you enjoy it! And if you don't... I'm happy anyway :)

 

Recycling

I went through all our cd-records the other day and decided that I no longer need them. A strange feeling that the cd-epoque is over, but all the music I need is on Spotify and available at any time, easily and at a low cost AND it doesn't need any physical space in my house :)

I found inspiration for cd coasters at Crafts by Amanda and made my own interpretation of it. I sanded off the surface and painted it black, then used some of my stencils and painted it white. Tip: I painted the wrong side of the cd, the shiny side, and unfortunately the "ring" in the cd is visible. It's much better to paint on the side with the label. I didn't know what kind of varnish to use so I first painted a layer of matte gel medium and then one layer of glossy decoupage varnish. Then I cut out a circle of dark grey felt and glued it on the other side of the cd.

I like the result. It was really fun to make so I'm sure I'm gonna make some more :)

Take me as I am...

I spent the entire evening making this piece. I didn't know what would come out of my playing with colour, stencils, cardboard, stamps etc. It's so fun to just DO things and see what develops!

I cut out a picture of a model from a catalogue and painted her black since I don't have any stencil with girls. Then I just added paint and stamped, made circles and so on. I used a metallic green/blue paint for the tree and it kind of glows but you don't see that in the photo. Found the text "Confidence is not for sale" in another catalogue and then wrote the text "Take me as I am or have nothing at all". Like that quote.

Hope you like it!

Mixed media painting

I'm proud to present to you my first mixed media painting that I actually want to put on my wall. I bought a stack of books from Book Depository (free world wide delivery and low prices, love that) all about mixed media and art journaling. So after being inspired by Kelly Rae Roberts, Suzi Blu, Dina Wakley and Traci Bautista I made this piece :)

I made it on cardboard and mounted it on another cardboard covered with an old black tablecloth. I didn't really know how to attach the painting to the background and considered using screws but decided on sewing instead. I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Hope you like it!

Canvas painting

I'm really astonished that this new year has started so great creatively for me. As I mentioned in my previous post I've had a hard time finding what I want to do, or to choose among all the things I want to do. But then I read Tracy Verdugo's blog where she wanted us to mention one intention for this new year.

One of my intentions is to be more persevering, persistent, to go on and go through with what I'm doing. I often give up thinking that everyone is much better than I am and that I might as well quit.

So, I've been wanting to make a canvas painting for a long time. I've looked at all the beautiful canvases that all talented artists out there have made and ended up not daring. Today I had the word persistent in my head and just started making my painting without thinking too much. I knew what colours I wanted to use and then I just made it.

The quote says "Don't grieve what you miss, be happy for what you have". I like that quote. It's so easy to forget to be happy over the things and people that fill your life and to focus on what you don't have.

Anyway... I started with painting one layer of gesso on the canvas, then went on with decoupaging some napkins and after that painted with different blue, green and white acrylics. Then I did some stamping, and  making circles with metallic paint. Some washi tape and a brown string and then it was finished.

I'm really happy with the result!

The first zentangle of the year

New year, new goals... or maybe the same goals as before but with a few additions :)

I have no idea if someone is still reading my blog, but I've decided to write in English as many of my new found friends from 21 Secrets are English speaking.

For the moment I have run out of inspiration. I don't know why and I don't know how or where to find it again. I google, I visit blogs, I read books and papers, I look at tutorials on Youtube. Or maybe my problem is not to actually find inspiration it's more the lack of energy to do the things I want to do. There are so many techniques to use and so many different kinds of paint to choose from and I can't decide what to do first. So instead I do nothing. But I hope that will change soon :)

Anyway, I started this new year with finishing a zentangle I started making a few days ago. That was an achievement. I had no inspiration at all when I made it but it was kind of fun to draw the bird. The background is made with Dylusions inks, stamps and different circles painted with acrylics.