Not much painting

I'm still having the flu

and didn't do much this past week. Just some small quick paintings to get to mess with paint.

A tulip always makes me smile this time of year, and this one did too. It always gets me in a better mood to play with colors.

This last one was very quickly done, and I love the result. It seems I can't get enough of rough handmade papers. Have a nice week everyone.
 I'm linking to Paint Party Friday.

Preparations

Once in a while I like to paint a larger piece

and in those cases I find it very useful to research my subject.

I always try to find the right lines or the most typical movement of my subject. As you see this time it's all about magpies. I really love this bird, and I have 4 or 5 of them in my garden on a daily basis. They're much fun to watch but they can be rather mean to one another.

At this point I have no clear idea of how I want my new piece to be, the composition, I'm just playing with lines and movements until I get a feel of it all. It's also very useful to try different colors so that I can find what I'm searching. How do you approach a new larger painting?

I'm always surprised of the white color, nearly every time it's in use it's every other color than white that bring the eye to see white. Think of a white flower, how is it we paint  the white??
Oh, how I love working with colors, always so much to learn and to understand. My Neocolors have become my favorites, for the longest time I've preferred the twinks but now it's changed.

How do you like the greedy one? I so fell for this one, photo from Steve Lyddon, PMP, it just HAS to be the main focus in my piece.
To my great joy I discovered that a pair of magpies are nesting in one of our apple trees, I hope they will stay there and hopefully get fledglings. That would be great fun.

I have to thank you all for all your well wishes last week, I'm still coughing like crazy. This flue is said to last at least 5 weeks, so well, one week down.

Linking to PPF. Have a nice week, friends!

Still cold

We're still having this very cold weather

and I'm sick of it. I want spring, not more snow!! In addiction I've caught a terrible sore throat that makes it hard to swallow.......... Ok I promise, no more complaining. I have some art to share today as well.


I very much love to paint on a black substrate, so that was what I did here. I used twinkling H2O's for the initial layers but didn't like that as much as I'd hoped for. Next I did was to add neocolors on top of the twinks, and that really looks good and exciting.

The above painting was considered ruined so I didn't put much effort into the layering process, but I do see the potential here. If I don't cover all the twinks, they do shine through and add to the final result. I'll most certainly try this more

The substrate I've used on the above painting is actually matte board. I went down to a professional framer in our city and asked them for cutouts and pieces too small for them to use. I did offer to pay for them, but they gave it all to me. These pieces have a snow white and an off white side. So far I have used the bright white side only, and I love working on this substrate. Still using the Neocolors.
I'm very pleased with this one.


Just a few days before Christmas I started making a new Mochilla. It's quite a challenge to keep it all even and flat, but I love doing them. Below is the bottom of it.

To keep it smooth and even up the side is also hard and very time consuming. I have put it aside for a while  but think it's time to finish it off. Not many rounds left to go here.

 I'm going to make a patterned strap and a Kumihimo tie to close the bag. There will also be some tassels. I'll show it when done.

I'm linking to PPF, thank you for visiting and your lovely comments. I really appreciate reading every  single one of them.

For all those who require a name and e-mail to leave a comment, I will not do so. Sorry for that.

Friday again.

Where did this week go?

I've had such fun painting that I didn't notice the days passing.

Have you heard of a site called Paint my photo? I'm a member there and use the site to find wonderful photos to paint. All my paintings in this post are from pmp photos.

The owners/ photographers are allowing one to use their photos as reference, and we are free to do whatever we want with our art pieces. Most times I try to alter my piece a bit from the photo, that way it feels a bit more mine. The blue flower above was orange in the photo, so I downloaded it and turned it into a black and white copy, that made it easier for me to know where the light and dark should be.

I always upload my result to the pmp site and thank the photographer for the use of his/hers photo and at the same time they can see the result. It's a great way to have reference photos that are free to use. 

This last piece is a mixed media one, and I had great fun making it. The photographer was very surprised with this and he said he loved it.

It's free to create an account over at Paint my photo, and there are thousands of photographs to choose from. Give it a try and I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

All colors used is Neocolors ll. The last piece was done on a black substrate using gesso washed book pages and white and gold ink. 

Thanks for visiting and also for all your lovely comments.
I'm linking to PPF.