Where's the time gone?

I can't believe it's already almost Christmas. Where has the time gone?

I had a week off last week, and I was looking forward to spending it at home, there was so much I wanted to do. Probably too much, because at the end of the week, I not only didn't feel relaxed at all, but also like I hadn't done anything at all. It was just a bit of an odd old week. But looking back, I have actually done quite a lot (see below). Maybe just not everything.

After a very long time, I finally took my acrylics out again. I started gently with adding more pages to my colour mixing book, and at the same time creating background pages with the left over paints in one of my art journals.

I also got a big old canvas out, that has been sitting around for a while because I didn't really know what to do with it. But now I finally have my own desk at work, after 2.5 month, with a very bare wall to stare at, so I thought this large canvas would be perfect. For some reason, I'm feeling drawn to painting landscapes at the moment, so I just slapped some paint on, thinking I might paint something from imagination. But I soon realised that wasn't really quite working. This will need a bit more work, a bit of looking through references and my photographs to find the right image that I would like to escape to from time to time at work. So there's not much yet to see on that canvas, but just picking up brushes and covering it with paint felt good.

 

I even spent a nice morning in the Kunsthaus (art museum) in Zürich, especially looking for landscape paintings, and it was a wonderful and inspiring experience, and after a week of feeling rather restless, finally calmed me down a bit. The best bit was not only to find inspiration, such as colour, subject matter, composition, style etc. The works of the Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler, Giovanni Segantini and Albert Anker reminded me that I don't need to look further away for inspiration, as I tend to, but that I live in a country that has rich traditions and stunning landscapes - and they are not that far from my doorstep.

I was not only experimenting a bit on my canvas, but also in the kitchen. One thing I really wanted to make this week was bake a bread. A spelt bread. And then, I decided to not just go and make an ordinary spelt bread, but to attempt a sourdough spelt bread. Somehow, I always thought that sourdough was this mysteriously complicated affair that really only a professional baker could ever manage to make. Turns out that it is actually quite simple. All you need is basically water and flour. And patience. Because it takes at least five days until your starter, or mother, is ready and you can start baking. I found a very quick and simple recipe for baking my bread, and it came out disappointingly flat. I guess it was just a bit too quick and simple. Good things need a bit more time. But although it didn't look very pretty, it was actually very tasty. Even my Mum was very impressed and more than happy to take some of it home. And that means a lot! I've since looked up some more recipes and ordered a book as well. And I bought a banneton, which I've never even heard of until a few days ago. The mother has gone into the fridge for the moment, until the Christmas break, when I will have more time to try and attempt another bread. She might be asleep at the moment, but she's certainly smelling deliciously sour.

I also pickled some cucumbers and made Sauerkraut, both the traditional from white cabbage, and another one with red cabbage. The cucumbers are already ready to eat, but the Sauerkraut will need some more patience and another few weeks.

I'm looking forward to when I'll have some homemade spelt sourdough bread with homemade Sauerkraut!

Happy - tidying up and using up stuff

I'm tidying up my studio. There's just so much stuff that has somehow accumulated over the years. Some of the stuff I haven't used in ages, as my style and preferences have changed over the years. I've been hanging on to all that stuff, because... you never know, maybe one day, they might be useful.... But enough of that. If I haven't used them in all those years, the chances that I am doing so now is very little. So it's all going out. Or most of it anyway.

Work in progress - first layers

I found these papier maché letters in one of the boxes, and I had this 20x50cm canvas board that I had bought for a project that I never got round to do. Not a very convient format, but - the letters fitted perfectly on it, so I glued them on to it and added paint.

Work in progress - more layers

I also have far too many paints. Some I've had for ages, but I've discovered new brands that I prefer so they have just been sitting around unused. I've recently taken them all out and painted little samples, and some of them have become all gooey. I've used all those gooey paints for this one, using them up as much as possible before they go into the bin.

Finished!

There really is just no point keeping all that stuff if you're never goint to use it. It might be hard to just throw it all away (good if you have arty friends nearby who would be happy to use them), considering that art materials aren't cheap. But hanging on to them might just be counterproductive. At least that's how it is for me. With my shelves full of stuff, getting to what I want often requires shifting other stuff first, and I easily forget what I actually have. And the result: I don't use them at all. And a cluttered space just doesn't work for me, there's no room for inspiration to blossom. Not that I want a bare, clinical kind of space, not at all. But there is a big difference between creative chaos and pure too-much-stuff mess.

Detail

Now that my holiday, sadly, is over, I hope to finally get some much overdue planning, organising and change making done. Not to mention more time spent in my little studio and with my sketchbook.

There's a life lesson in there somewhere

My Mum gave me these plants a few months ago. They were small, both taken from the same plant, and both the same size. The one on the left quickly grew and got bigger and fatter. The one on the right grew slowly and only little. At times I wondered if it would make it at all. And suddenly, last week, I noticed something, what was that coming out of that smaller one? Flowers!

Last Saturday I told my Mum about it, and she pointed out the obvious: While the one on the left had put all its energy into growing quickly and getting big and fat, the one on the left had saved its energy and put it into producing flowers. Of course, it makes perfect sense. Isn't nature clever, and can't she teach us a thing or two.

And here's another lesson. Last weekend, I finally got my acrylics out again. After absolute ages. I had this big canvas standing around, with some layers on, and I thought it was time to add some more.

Before

I selected a few paint tubes, mostly greens and blues, and a brayer, and started adding layers. It was going quite well, the brayer allows you to cover bigger areas quickly and adds some nice texture too. Some dripping in contrasting colours, some white, some more brayering - and it all got rather muddy and messy.

Present stage

I decided to let it dry and work on it on another day, but then added some white to try and brighten it up a bit. Of course, after all the dripping and spraying with water, it was still far from dry, and so adding the white just added to the mess. So here's the lesson to remember for next time: have patience and just leave it until it's dry.

The good things is, of course, that it doesn't really matter that it got all that messy, the next layers will cover it up. And I think there will be lots more layers going on this one. I have no idea what to do with it, so this might well become my "let it all out" canvas.

And one last thing. I love drawing with ink, and love my fountain pens. They're great to carry around with you. But I want to use dip pens again more often, at least when I'm at home. I have a whole collection of nibs and inks, and tried out some of them. I love these colours. Now I just have to find a sketchbook that can take these inks.

30 Faces in 30 Days, Week 1

I'm doing the 30 Faces in 30 Days challenge this month, and the first week is already over. Here are my first seven faces, all done in acrylics/mixed media in my big Moleskine watercolour art journal.

Theme of day 1 was Drips & Splashes.

Day 2's theme was Dream and day 3's Text. It was a busy weekend, with family visiting, long walks in the forest and in the nearby animal park, good food and conversations. But it didn't leave much time, let alone energy for painting, so especially the one on Sunday evening was a real struggle.

The theme for day 4 was Wing, for day 5 White/High Key and for day 6 Twins. There are a few bottles of Lascaux paints in some of my, at the moment, favourite colours standing around on my desk, and I stuck to them for the rest of the week.

Yesterday's theme, that is day 6, was Animal Spirit. It's going towards the end of the week, and it is getting harder to do a painting in the evening, after work, when you really just want to flop into your comfy chair and watch Neighbours for a bit. Instead it's walking through the door, throwing your bag into the corner, getting the stuff ready and start working. A quick break for dinner, and yes, an episode of Neighbours, and back into the studio. Then trying to find a place where it is still reasonably light enough to take a photo, and then editing the photo, trying to get the colours right, because it really is already too dark for taking photos. And then it's already 9pm and time for a chat with N on Skype.

I miss that there isn't any time left to do anything else. But then there are, of course, there's a lot of good things too. The fact that time is limited means that you have to work quick, which in turn means working loser. And of course doing a face every day is a great practice, and I hope that it will help me with some issues I always have when doing portraits. I don't know if I will make it to the end of the challenge, but for the moment, I certainly intend to keep going for a bit longer.

Playing with abstract painting, and a challenge

Over the Easter weekend, I spent some time in my studio playing with abstracts.

It is just so much fun to not have a plan and to simply glue down some collage bits on a piece of paper and start moving some paint around on the paper. 

Use whatever is lying around and catches your fancy. Why not try and see what you can do with some graphite powder and paints?

And if you work in a series, you can put one piece aside, work on another, and then come back to it later, when it's dry, to put on another layer. I wasn't happy with the one above at first, it just didn't seem to work. Until I got the pink crayons out. Now I love it.

I'm really glad I re-discovered my crayons! They just add so much vibrancy. And I'm glad I've kept so many of my old annual rail cards, they're great for moving paint around (as is of course any other kind of card). Unfortunately, the railway changed their system, so now everything goes onto one permanent card. Apart from the fact that I don't like the new system at all, it's a shame about the regular supply of cards.

I'm not usually very good with challenges. There's only a few I managed to do from beginning to end, such as some years of the Summer of Colour, the 75 Day Sketch Challenge, and the August Break photo challenge.
But I'm thinking about trying and challenge myself to take part in the Soulful Faces - 30 Faces in 30 Days Challenge, hosted by Galia Alena and Annie Hamman, which starts today! I have to say that some of the prompts sound scary! Just drawing a face every day would be a challenge, but having to come up with something suitable for each prompt every day, well, that really is a challenge. I will probably have to do more than one face on certain days to make up for others, such as Wednesdays, when I have an evening class to go to. But even then, doing, finishing something every day seems impossible. But maybe still worth a try. And that's what I intend to do. I'll see how it goes...

Another not quite weekly painting

After a break of some weeks, I finally did another of my "weekly" paintings. It is only No. 7, but that's okay. And I was too lazy to cut up one of the large sheets of paper into the 25x25 cm squares I used for the first six, so I just took a pad of watercolour paper.

I thoroughly enjoyed painting this over the course of the day, which reminded me that I really should do it more often. And to play and experiment much more. Get down several layers of just play before allowing it to develop into something. There was another stage between the first one above, and final one below, but I forgot to take a photo.

I don't always want to work on my big easel, especially with these small paintings, it's more comfortable at the table. But I just simply cannot work flat on the table. I've done it lots of times, and almost always with the same result. It looks alright as long as it's flat in front of me, but as soon as I hold it up, the whole thing is distorted. One solution would be to stand up while painting, but bending over it all the time doesn't do my back any good at all. So last week, I went to the art shop and got a table easel. This one is wide rather than high and can be used at a low angle too. And on top of it was cheap. It really works perfectly for me.

A perfect Sunday

Last Sunday was just the perfect day for staying at home. And what a perfect way to start the day, after a 30 min Yoga practice, with some painting and a fairy tale. There's a whole series of Grimm's fairy tales made by German television in the past few years, and I recently discovered that you can watch most of them online on their website.

My pile of 25x25 squares is slowly growing. I've already finished six of them, which is twice as much as the one-a-week I had planned to do. But then I'm sure there'll be weeks when I won't be able to paint one at all. And in the end, it doesn't really matter how many I do anyway. The point is to practice. They're like sketchbook pages. Not really finished pieces, although, of course, they can be that too. More or less finished, with sometimes just a a few charcoal sketches and nothing else.

And while I was adding some snowflakes to my paiting, outside, it was snowing too.

Unfortunately, it is already getting warmer again, and the snow is quickly melting away. And next week, the temperatures are going up even more again, well over 0 degrees. What a mad winter.

A visual library of sorts, and some snow

I can't believe we're already in the middle of January. Time seems to be both standing till and running at the same time. The beginning of a new year is always a bit of a strange time, I find. A bit quiet, a bit restless, like when you arrive in a strange town for the first time and have yet to figure out your way around. But also quite cosy, and perfect for staying at home in the warm, curl up on the sofa with a hot water bottle, a warm woolly blanket and a hot chocolate. And of course also for spending time in the studio.

I painted two more of my 25x25 squares. The first one didn't quite turn out as I wanted, but I didn't yet want to work on fixing it, so I just started another one. That's the good thing with those. You can just try something out, and then take certain elements and use them again, and again, and see what you can do with them. I imagine it like a library of ideas, images, patterns, that you can refer back to whenever you want/need some ideas. A growing library of references, hopefully. So even the ones that go wrong can still contain some useable elements, and therefore deserve a place in stacks.

I'm happy to say that by now, the snow has not only arrived in my painting, but also outside. It's only a very thin layer yet, but it's a start. Now just keep coming, snow, keep coming!

No expectations, no pressure, just fun and play

New year, new goals, dreams, intentions. One of them is to blog more often, and here we are, already a week into the new year, and I haven't posted anything until today. But I'm also keeping one of my biggest intentions in mind, that of letting go of expectations, of the pressure I tend to put myself under. In life, in my art, in everything. And instead to just do the job, as good as I can.

I want to spend a lot more time in my studio this year, and to figure out where I want to go with my art. But most of all to just paint. Without expectations. And to help me take the pressure off things, I've come up with a little project or challenge for myself. A little 25x25cm painting on paper, just to explore, experiment and learn. One a week. Of course it can be more than just one a week, and it's not the only thing I want to do, but - no pressure. Last weekend I did the first one. She turned out a lot more pink than I expected, but that's alright too. After all, the whole point of this exercise is to let go and have fun. A pure practice and learning experience.

I've been reading a lot of complaints on social media about the weather some are experiencing at the moment - cold and snow. And how they feel they are/have been born in the wrong place. Well, I certainly feel that too. But the other way round, as I am made for snow and low temperatures, but unfortunately, we're not having any of it here at the moment. Being up in the alps, going for a walk in the early morning, the crisp cold snow scrunching under your feet. The air so cold that with every inbreath, the hair in your nose slightly freeze together. The first rays of the sun appearing behind the mountaintop, transforming the thick layer of snow into a carpet of sparkling diamonds. Coming home with your cheeks red and burning from the cold, warming yourself with a big mug of steaming hot chocolate, before going out again to spend more time in the beautiful winter wonderland.

How I miss the alps. And winter. After that terrible summer (that's my definition) of 4 months of sunshine day after the day, and temperatures well above 30 degrees C, I think I deserve a proper winter now. But temperatures are still closer to 10 than to 0, and there's no snow in sight. But I haven't given up hope of Sunday walks in the snow yet. And another of my intentions for this year is to go on the one or other day trips to the mountains this year.

Inspired by Autumn

I finished my autumn inspired painting. The original idea was for it to be all abstract, but a little leaf that I picked up on a walk and forgot in my bag, where I discovered it two days later, dried and neatly folded flat, made it on to the canvas.

40x40cm, acrylics/mixed media on canvas

I love the beautiful autumn leaves that we're getting in such abundance this year, thanks to the dry and calm weather. I've been out capturing them with my DSLR and Polaroid cameras several times. They're beautiful in all weathers and stages, and just so inspiring and uplifting.

A visit to an art fair, and back to some abstract painting

Last Friday, I went to the annual International Art Zurich - Contemporary Art Fair. I was given a free ticket for two at work, and my Mum was happy to join me. It was already the 17th fair, but I have to admit that it was the first time I visited it. But I'm glad I did. It was really inspiring. The exhibitors were both galleries and individual artists, some from as far as Australia and Thailand, but also many national and local ones. There were lots of mediums and styles on show, and although not all of them were to my taste, I appreciated the high quality of the works. There were only about two or three paintings, which in my personal opinion, weren't very impressive and didn't really quite fit the high quality standard of the fair. But as I said, that's just my very personal opinion. I prefered the individual artist exhibitors to the galleries, and apart from the very inspiring work of theirs, I also found it interesting to see how they presented their work and themselves. I collected a lot of business cards, flyers, cards etc. It's always good to get some ideas of how these things can be done. You never know. It was also interesting, though, to see what kind of paintings/artists the galleries represented.

After the visit to the fair, my Mum and me walked through the cold, wettish and autumny city, looking for a place to have lunch, before taking the train back. Back home, I just felt inspired to go to my studio and take out some paint tubes. I've always liked abstracts, and I used to paint a lot more of them earlier, but much less recently. But now I felt like getting back to it again. I've mentioned in last week's post how our own expectations can often get in the way before we even start a drawing or painting. I think that abstract painting can help with overcoming those expectations, as it is a much more intuitive process. I enjoyed very much putting these first layers on, and I'm looking forward to the weekend now to add some more and see where it goes. Apart from the visit to the art fair, it's heavily insired by the season. I'm not a fan of yellow at all, at least not of a cold, lemony yellow. But all the deep golden yellows of the leaves outside have definitely made me grab those yellow paint tubes. And we get a lot of grey, foggy days with the clouds hanging low here too. I love autumn!

Work in progress, or finished piece?

I'm enjoying a lovely holiday in England at the moment, but I managed to squeeze in some painting time at the weekend, between the laundry, packing and general getting ready for a holiday. This is the first time I started a painting on a black background, but I really like the effect. So much so, that I'm not sure where to go with it now, or rather, if I want to go anywhere else with it. It can often be hard to decide, when a painting is done. And sometimes, it is done long before you thought it might be. And even though I can see quite a few areas that could do with some fixing, I think I might just leave it as it is.

And now I'll go and practice drawing some noses.... But first we're off to Bournemouth for the day, to see the Alfons Mucha exhibition.

It's finally finished, and I'm off soon

I finally finished my landscape painting. All that was missing was a little house on top of the cliffs. Wouldn't that be a lovely place to live? Or at least to spend a holiday? Falling asleep to the sound of the waves at the bottom of the cliffs, breathing in the cool, fresh sea air on a walk on the beach first thing in the morning, maybe even dipping your toe into the water. I certainly wouldn't mind spending a week or two in such a place.

"Clifftop" - 40x60 cm, acrylics on canvas

The colours are quite muted, which makes the painting look a bit dark at times. But when light hits the canvas, the muted greens and yellow light up just as the grass and cliffs do when the sun suddenly emerges behind the clouds after a shower.

The painting was inspired by the Dorset coast, and while I'm not going to spend it in a lonely cliff top house, I'll be off very soon for a much needed two weeks holiday in that beautiful part of England. Hopefully, the weather will allow for lots of walks along the beach, cream teas outside, and maybe even the dipping of a toe in the sea. I'm not having very high hopes, though, and so I'm having a look around for what else we could do and where we could go. This place in Bournemouth looks pretty amazing, and there should be just about enough time to see the Alphonse Mucha exhibition before it ends.

Slow progress, and a little drawing challenge

Last Sunday, I spent the day in the beautiful countryside of Appenzell, to celebrate a 85th birthday. I would have loved to go for a proper walk, taking photos, but with temperatures of just over 30 degrees Celsius again, and not a cloud in the sky, it was just too hot for walking, and too bright for photos.

From the alpine meadows and cowbells to a very different landscape. With the heat, and being away all day on Sunday, I didn't get much painting done, but I made a little progress with my landscape. After having started it as an imagined landscape, I decided to take some inspiration form a real one, Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset. It still needs a lot of work done, but it's slowly taking shape. On Tuesday, with the beginning of September, summer made space for autumn, and now that the weather is getting cooler and wetter, I hope to be spending a lot more time in my studio.

I really enjoyed the August Break photo challenge last month. Thinking about the prompts and how to translate them into a photo, setting up a scene, choosing the camera, taking the shot... I felt a bit sad when it ended, it was nice to keep busy. So I decided to try and to my own little challenge. With all the photographing, and summer in general, I have much neglected drawing. I'm therefore trying to do a little drawing every evening of this month, well, almost every evening. Just a very quick sketch, nothing special or elaborate. And not on Wednesdays, as with the end of summer, Swedish class has started again, and I get back late. Here's the first two, Tuesday and Thursday. As I already have one sheep painting in progress, and another one planned, it only makes sense to practice drawing them. And I found these pretty acorns the other day, which made a lovely subject to draw too. Now I just have to remember to keep my little challenge up.

One disadvantage of the days getting shorter and darker is, of course, that it is much more difficult to get a good photo when having to take them in artificial light.

Happy Paint Party Friday!

Painting backgrounds

I had a busy and productive day in the studio on Monday again. I put the sheep painting aside for the moment in order to just play with some colours and prepare some backgrounds. I had some colours in mind that I wanted to try out and put on canvas, colours that are a bit less bright than the others I used for the intuitive paintings, and a bit more earthy. I really do like these colours together. There might be some more sheep going on this.

I also had a canvas that I had started with some time ago, and which was waiting to get some more layers on. I had intended for this to be a portrait format, but working a bit more on it, it decided that it wanted to be a landscape. I had thought of painting a coastal scene for some time, inspired by my frequent visits to the beautiful Dorset coast.

The greenish layer in the above picture was actually the leftover paint after trying out a technique that Alisa Burke shared on her blog the other day. When I saw that marbling effect, I knew I had to try it out. When your studio is a carpeted room in your rented flat, you have to be extra careful when going a bit wild with acrylics, but with the help of a big sheet of plastic and a rug, I managed to keep it all under control. Oh I'm longing for the day when I'll have a proper studio space, and don't need to worry about paint getting all over the walls and the floor. Anyway. I only did the one little canvas, but I like how it turned out. I'll definitely have to try it out again.

With so many backgrounds and other works in progress, it looks like I'll be busy for a while. I just have to find the energy to spend more days in the studio than just Mondays. It seems that at the moment, come Friday evening, I am so tired, that I end up spending Saturday and Sunday relaxing and just hanging around. By the time my energy is back and I'm in painting mood, it's back to the office on Tuesday. And it bugs me. Relaxing is good, our bodies need time to recharge. But maybe I could find a better balance. Hopefully, my new meditation and yoga practice will help me with that.

Happy Paint Party Fridady!

Taking what works

Last weekend was wet and cool, and my energy was slowly returning. Monday, my day off, I spent most of the day in my studio, working on one of my intuitive canvases. I must admit that I found it very hard to just let go completely, and let the painting develop all "by itself". I ended up feeling that I was just putting layers upon layers, without really getting anywhere. Then I read through the last lessons, on how to incorporate the techniques from the course into our own work, to "take what works and leave the rest behind". And so I got out a charcoal stick and drew some sheep on my canvas.

Oh and it felt good. Finally, I felt that I was back in control, and my painting going somewhere, somewhere I felt more comfortable with, while still incorporating the former layers.

I enjoyed all the playfulness and energy of the first layers. To begin a painting with just some fun and play with colours. And I think that this is a part that I will continue to use. To start a painting with a certain vague(ish) idea of what I want to paint, start loosely with some layers, and let them help the painting develop and be part of it.

I only worked on this smaller canvas, and I still got some work to do on it. The colours are just a little bit too bright for my taste. For the second canvas, I will probably continue with the sheep theme, I think. But we will see. I also already have some ideas for more paintings. 

Happy Paint Party Friday!

Some very little progress with my intuitive paintings, and some doodles

I finally made some progress with my two intuitive canvases. Only very little, it was still too hot, and the heat and humidity is robbing me of all my energy. But at least I got another layer added to both paintings. I had actually worked on them a little bit in my holiday, but never got as far as posting them. So here's the earlier layers.

And here's the latest layers. It seems I had an urge to tone them down a bit, using cool colours. And I enjoyed using my new foam roller. And lots of dripping. I just love dripping. It's probably my most favourite technique.

Detail canvas #1

Detail canvas #2

I still have no idea where they are going, but I'm trying to enjoy the process and stay open, and to suppress any urge to plan and decide too much ahead (which is not always easy). Today's finally a bit cooler, and according to the weather forecast, temperatures should go down even more at the weekend, with lots of rain. Perfect for staying at home and spending the days in the studio.

I also got my "left over paint" sketchbook and white gel pen out again, and drew a mandala and some doodles.

Happy Paint Party Friday!