A wedding.

Good morning to you.

This weekend we were celebrating a wedding. It was a wonderful day and a celebration quite extraordinary.
At the Church the sister of the bride sang them (the bride and her father) in. That was very nice and touching. After the ceremony we (the guests 125) assambled in their private garden and was treated with fingerfood and champagne.
In a while the bride and groom and their parents came by horses. Just like in old times. Walking in front of the parade was the brides brother and his girl dressed in Bunad, then came a carriage with a musician in it. (he was playing a saxophone) In the next carriage was the newwedded. Their parents walked alongside waveing their flags. Both the carriages and the horses was decorated with beautiful flowers. It was indeed a breathtaking sight.
Later on we were seated in a huge partytent and served a three course dinner. There were a lot of speaches but the brides father was the most astonishing.
Since he so easily get emotional he had decided to sing the bride a song instead of a traditional speach. With a little help from his oldest daughter he sang a very touching song called "I loved her first"
The food and wine and everything was so tasteful and beautiful arranged. I think that most of the guests won't forget this evening for a long time, and my husband and I won't forget it ever since it was our weddingday too. Our 34th.



I had to make a journal spread for this occation.
What have you been up to this weekend?

Yeah....this is a fun way.

Yet another "few colours" painting.

Good Sunday morning everyone!

I feel I can do it this way. Todays painting holds 3 colours only + my drawing pencil to outline. The colours used are: Black, white and raw sienna.
It feels a bit confusing to start with but even at my second try I felt it worked better. This time I started with the background, I painted the whole sheet the shade I wanted. I'm still dependent to the drawing and that irritates me a bit so I'll try at some stage not to draw the image before painting it. Well, at least just to draw it loosely. On this one I even painted the eyes with acrylics.

I really have improved, now I draw an image in half an hour and the painting is mostly done in an hour. To start with I used 3-4 hours at the whole process. So, it helps to practice in many ways.

What I like the most in this painting is that the background shines through the face. I feel I have gained another depht by that. What I don't like that much is that the highlights seems a bit too blue. I didn't mix my own black and perhaps the black I have contains too much blue in it. I don't know, but I will try to mix my own next time to see if that changes.
Her hair has something unnatural about it too, something about the outlines. Perhaps it would look better with a more diffuse outline.



For me this is an interesting face. It's not about beauty, but expression. I'm definitely on my way to something that can be "my way" of doing it. I do need to practice faces in other angles than stright forward though.

Wish you all the best.

My 18th but still the first.

I tried something new.

This is my 18th face, but my first male face and my first try of a new way of doing it. I don't know if this is how I'm going to do it, but I feel it came out quite good and not far from what I had imagined.
I liked to use just a few colours and I see it can work well. I have to practice to get used to do it this way and I certainly will. It's something quite different from what I've been doing and that is like a new inspiration to me.

The colours I used on this painting was: Cobalt blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna and of course titanium white. I did a mix of the three first and used the white to lighten that coolour in different shades. Finally I used a black pencil to outline the image. You should give it a try, it's fun to see how different it is to paint and make it look good with a limited palette.

The shadowing in his face is far from good but this was my first time. I promise to do it better next time. The shadow "behind" him is just luck. I didn't pay that any attention at all.



Please don't look too close to the details, his ear, eye and mouth, they could have been far better but for me it was important to try this out and not be afraid of trying it.

I used my stones for the first time today. They are really nice and it was not that difficult to crochet around them.

I wish you all the best and enjoy your weekend!

I'm struggling

I'm starting to loose interest.

Hello everyone!

It's not that I'm giving it up, but now I feel all my faces looks the same. I have to do it differently. I have been thinking of withdrawing from " the natural look" and turn into a more "my own way" of expression. The problem is HOW do I do that? That's the question I have to find an answer to. And what is my own way....is the next question. Well, time will show. I have some thoughts and I will try them out to see if it works. Amongst other tings I'll try to reduse my palette, or perhaps limit it to a couple of colours. It feels frightening and unsecure to even write it down, but perhaps it's easier than I'm thinking at the moment.

Todays girl has my hair, but she's not a selfportrait. If she were I have given myself a huge facelift. :-)
Her right eye seems to pop out of the scull. I always tend to make the eyes too big so I'll have to pay attention to that.



I'm not sure when to start my experimentation but it will be soon. At first I was thinking of not showing them (new things) off, but I think it's a great way of documenting a process don't you agree?
Well, enough bla, bla, bla...
Have a nice day and take care.

My 16th face.

Today I'll show you my painting step by step

Today I want to show you how my faces are made.
This first image shows the final drawing, as I imagine it to be. I'm thinking of painting a child wearing a cap and a jacket with fur edges.



This is how it looks with the first layer of paint.



Second layer of paint.



Third layer and some shadows. At this stage I can see that this child is not going to look as young as I wanted, and therefor I start looking for an alternative.



Fourth layer of paint and some highlights. I did regret the shadows at the cheeks so I removed them. I also chose to change the clothes into a cape with a hood instead of what I first thought of. This solution seems to fit better to this child.



I changed the hood a bit and added some colour to the face. Eyes, mouth and painted the fur.


This is the final result, I can see that the highlights are not that well done in this one but I chose not to change that. The child is now somewhere between 8 and 12 years old instead of 2 to 4 as I was thinking of to start with.



It is very exiting to do these faces and to see how they turn out. I'll have to practice small children to learn the differences in the lines. Children are very different in every way and I want to learn about it.

I hope you've enjoyed my journey with this one and how things can change during the process.

Have a nice day and take care everyone.

It's time for a cityview again.

Three new images from old NY.

Today I'll show you three impressive buildings. Impressive if one take into concideration how old the buildings are.

The first card shows: Municipal Building
When I enlarge this photo on my computer it looks like there are 22 or maybe 23 statues on top of the row of pillars. To me it looks like a giant building. This is what is printed at the reverse:
" Municipal Building, New York. Covering a city block, Park Row, Chamber and Centre Sts. 34 stories, 585 feet high, built by the City of New York under Mayor Gaynor, to be used exclusively for offices of city departments."

There are no such beautiful buildings built today so I do hope this one is still excisting.



The second card shows The Equitable Building.

Compared to the building above this one looks quite modern. When I see these images I think it's no wonder so many of my fellow countrymen imigrated to America. At that time these images must have expressed "heaven". This specific image is dated to 1913. You can see it at the bottom line, written in white.
The printed text says:
"Equitable Building, New York. Largest Business Structure in the world. The Equitable Building will occupy the block bounded by Broadway, Nassua, Pine and Cedar Streets, it will be 38 stories above ground and 3 below, with a floor space of nearly 45 acres. It will house 15.000 people, and will have many of the departments of the city government. It will cost $ 29.000.000"
Was it ever build?
It's a very impressive sight though when we know how old it might be.



The last card today shows Singer Building and part of financial district.
This is my favorite of todays cards. Look at that view!! And notice the people far down there. The flying flag and the water in the background also contributes to make this card my fav.

Listen to the printed text:
"Singer Building located on the corner of Broadway and Liberty Streets is 47 stories high rising to a total hight of 612 feet. In it are 5.000 tenants, who are carried to their offices by 16 Otis traction elevators. The foundations consists of 36 caissons sunk to bedrock 92 feet below surface. Built by the Singer Mfg.Co."

This image is copyrighted in 1912 by Irving Underhill.
Where the stamp is ment to be, there is a text saying: "United States and Canada one cent. Foreign two cents." Well, those were the days!



That was all for today, but I have new images to show you next week.
Wish you all the best.

This one is a bit scary.

My 15th face is pure imagination.

Hello and welcome back!
I'm awfully glad for all of you who visit and comment on my blog. Thank you so much for that!

This is the first face this week and I really felt the pressure with not using a photo as inspiration. Therefor I felt for doing a "hidden" face.
When I look at her now, she reminds me a lot of one of my nieces. Especially her eyes are the same.
All her stash doesn't have any other meaning than to help hiding her face a bit. She feels a bit scary to me.
In the first place I thought of doing some kind of carnival outfit, but it doesn't look like that either.
As you can see I skipped her ears, and I'm thinking they are hidden behind the facemask.
I don't have much more to tell you about her, so I'll stop with this.



Tomorrow there will be another tour in old New York.
Untill then.