Friday again and a giveaway.

I did not notice where this past week went.

Making art and looking after the youngest grandchild took my week.

Have you ever thought of how inspiring the world wide art community is? The internet has indeed made a huge change in our lives. I still find it incredible how I can write something on my computer and within a few minutes have answers from the other side of the globe. How many people we meet online and connect with, it's nothing but a miracle.

I so appreciate you all, the followers of this blog, you who regularly visit the blog and not least you who take the time to leave a comment. It's very nice to get some feedback and read your point of view. But, mostly I appreciate you for all your sharing as well. To see what you do and read about your process, learn from tips and tricks you share are all things to learn from and  every time I read a blog post I get inspired. I am truly thankful for all your sharing, and what a variety there is to choose from.  These are thoughts that have been on my mind lately, and a need to give something back has occurred. And that brings us to the giveaway part.

Click to enlarge 

 I have made these tiny pieces of art (10 by 10 cm only)  all displayed in the photo above. My hope is to give away three of them to three different persons as a tiny thank you for all the inspiration you provide me. I hope you have room for one more piece of art.
They are numbered 1 - 10 just to make it easy for you. All I need you to do, is to name which pieces are your first, second and third choice in a comment to this post. I'll draw the winners Thursday March 3rd. and publish the result next Friday, March 4th, here on my blog.
Anonymous comments will not participate.

Now, they're all mixed media techniques. The colors used are watercolors in some form, and they have all been coated with matte medium on top. The 10 x 10 cm piece of paper has been mounted onto a 10 x10 cm canvas.The edges are painted black/dark grey.

I hope many of you will find something you like and participate, and I'm very excited to see which pieces are your favorites.

Linking to Paint Party Friday, enjoy everyone!

Much going on.

I've been so busy making art the last few weeks

that I hardly noticing the time passing. Handyman baught me an online class (ehmm.... I told him to) for Christmas, and I haven't really had time to look into it properly until now. It's a fun class and a very good teacher. From magazine to masterpiece, is the class and the teacher is Roberta Laliberte. She has made me understand things that I somehow knew about but didn't really understand. Like the importance of contrast and lots of other stuff too.

This piece is made using her technique, and it was fun doing it. I did, of course, do some major mistakes mostly because I did it first and then re-watched her videos. Just the same as to read the instructions, first I do, then I read the instructions.
If you enlarge the photo, you'll see that what seems to be a window, in the background, actually are lots of faces.
Right now I'm working on a project that I enjoy so much. I'm making some tiny pieces of art, and they are looking so good if I may say so myself.
Sorry I can't show you any today, but be sure to pop in next Friday, then I'll make a post about them and have a tiny giveaway.

Linking to Paint Party Friday, enjoy your weekend everyone.

Something different.

Some time ago I felt the need to make something different.

What I wanted to do was to explore shape and dimension in a piece of work and at the same time try to achieve a texture which could remind of an oil or acrylic painting, by using watercolors/twinks.
I am happy with the result, but what you see here is not how it looks in person. The first photo is a scan of my piece, and the second one is a photograph. Neither of them are telling the truth. The darkest blue area ( where the red line ends) is darker in person, almost like deep purple. The brown areas are more correct in the lower one.

It's strange how some colors are impossible to get right. There is also a distinct aqua color above the lower ball, and that one color is nearly invisible in these to photos. 

Looking in the back mirror, I wish I had made a connection  between the upper ball and the white space, that would have been a better composition.

Just for fun I printed this piece and made some additional lines using Neocolors 2, but the result is no good. I have to practice a bit more on that. I'm sure it has potential though. Some of the line work  I did felt very good, but I over did it. Well, it's fun to make such experiments as this, and I'm sure it won't be my last one.

Busy week.

It's Friday again,

and this has been a busy week for me. Normally I don't have things I have to do, except housekeeping and such. So, when each day has something that I must do, it feels busy. I did find some time to play with colors though, and had much fun doing this page in my altered book.

 What I've used here is copies of some old work of mine, prints, rearranged them and add in some new. My old art turned new and the expression is completely changed. The background is in fact a sheet of paper I did for use in an earlier project, and before ripping it, I scanned it and now it came in handy. This is my week 5 piece in the challenge Color me Positive. The prompt was all about having big enough dreams. I changed it to one word, Dreaming.

At some point in my process I'm always photographing what I'm doing, to have a different look at it. And most times I then see things to change, so also with this one. The butterflies have too strong a color and the background need some more depth around the flowers.

 I also added the word, Dreaming in a lemon yellow color to give a bit more warmth to it. Notice how the small addition of the same color beneath the flowers makes a big difference. This is all made using water soluble medias except from white gesso. It was fun and fairly quick done, and you know, cutting and gluing just like in kinder garden. Fun!

Linking to Paint Party Friday, have fun everyone.

Just a little mandala.

Today I was out walking again,

and now my thighs and other sets of muscles are hurting. It's a really tough trail we're going and as many rounds as we can in 30 minutes. I had to stop after 6 rounds, the best ones make it 10.

I didn't mention that last Monday one of the participants fell and broke her femoral neck, ambulance,  hospital and surgery were the result. She is set back for at least 8 weeks. Not fun when such things happens.

I did this little mandala to get myself started to paint after a long break. It always help to make one of my mandalas, and often the result is that I make more than one. Nothing much to say about it, it is what it is, but I'm very happy with it.

Today I also got a package in my mailbox. Some days ago I ordered a few new paints, some pens and Sumi ink. First thing I had to do was to rearrange my paintbox and make a new color chart for it. I love doing these little color swatches, and each time I see this particular one I want to paint. It's watercolors by the way.

The Sumi ink is meant for my dip pens, and I was very curious on the bottle I'd ordered. Not at all sure it was the right thing. I had this little empty bottle ready for the new ink and filled it up. While pouring I thought , is it meant to be this thick? I tried my dip pen and it didn't work at all.

Only one thing to do, read on the bottle, oh I see, it's paste ??!  My 100 ml bottle Sumi ink might be mixed with water, even as much as 1/6 . I tried mixing a small amount and then it worked fine. Lesson should be learned a long time ago, but this is what I do all the time, do first then read. Not good, but you know...........!