Spring blooms for the eyes and soul

I mentioned last week that I was going on a day trip to Germany on Friday, including a little "visit to Sweden". Well, last Friday, me and my mum went to Constance for the day, which is just an1 1/2  hours train ride away from Zürich, on the other side of the border. We left early in the morning and after arriving in Constance, took the next bus to the beautiful Mainau, a little island in Lake Constance. It wasn't hard to find beauty there, as the whole island is an abundance of beauty. Floral beauty. And right now, it's a feast of spring blooms. Daffodils, poppies, and many more, but most of all tulips. Tulips everywhere, whole carpets of tulips, and in so many colours and varieties you didn't even know existed.

I remember coming here for the first time (at least as far as I can remember) a few years ago, and I was somewhat puzzled that all the information was in German (obviously), English (makes sense) - and Swedish. Swedish?? Well, it all became clear when I read a bit more about the history of the island.

In 1928, Grand Duke Friedrich II, to whom the island belonged at that time, bequeathed it to his sister Viktoria, who was married to Gustav V, king of Sweden. The island so became property of the Swedish royal family. In 1932, Viktoria's grandson Lennart Bernadotte was given charge of the island. After his marriage to a commoner, he quite the royal house and moved to the Mainau and started to turn the island into a beautiful park and opened it to the public. Today, the island is still managed by the Bernadotte family, who continue to live in the palace. Many of the buildings on the island have a Swedish touch, and the oldest of the restaurants, the "Schwedenschenke" (Sweden tavern) serves some typical Swedish dishes.

The baroque palace, church and palm house on top of the island.

There was an orchid show in the palm house as well. Some of them look like little alien flowers from space.

They are fascinating flowers, orchids. But sometimes a little bit too fancy for my taste. I really prefer the simpler, more "common" flowers, and anyway, it was a hot day, and even hotter inside the palm house, so we soon went outside again, to continue wandering around the island and adoring yet more tulips and other spring blooms, sometimes displayed in rather unusual ways.

After lunch we took the bus back to the city for some retail therapy before taking the train back home. It was a wonderful day, and I took tons of photos of flowers on the island. I want to use these photos to practise some botanical painting with watercolours. And although I was far too exhausted to get started with it straight away that evening, I couldn't resist making some drawings into my sketchbook and colouring them with Neocolor while resting on the sofa.

A gift from nature and the beauty of yellow

I'm sure you all know those days, when everything just gets a bit too much, and all we can see is all the things that are not right in our lives, and none of the positive, good things that are there too. On those days, we just want to pull the covers over our heads and feel really really sorry for ourselves, before we can pick ourselves up again, and get on with it.

I've been trying to make some changes in my life for the past few years, but I feel that I haven't managed to achieve a single one of them yet. It's frustrating, and it is hard to keep focusing on the positive, and acknowledging my achievements at times. Last week, I was feeling really down and just overwhelmed by everything, when, on the way to the station after work, I saw a perfect rainbow stretching over the field. With pouring rain, sunshine, and a light shower again all within half an hour, this wasn't really such a great surprise, but I decided to take this beautiful gift from nature as an inspiration to make a serious effort of focusing on the positive, the good, on the little every day gifts that are all around. It may still take some time for those changes to happen, but I'm sure that the journey is easier and more joyful when you paint it in all the colours of the rainbow instead of only seeing grey.

The day after my rainbow, I happened to read Kristin's blogpost about changes in your perspective, with a link to Liv Lanes blog. I had to smile when I read Liv's "about the blog" post, and how she saw a rainbow while sitting in traffic, and how it made her begin to focus on the positive. I really like her idea of taking a picture of something beautiful every day for 365 days. I think that capturing and recording those pleasures helps to stay focused and it will give you something to look back to for the bad days. I'm thinking of doing a little project of my own, or at least making a bit more of a conscious effort to capture and record the everyday good, with my camera, in my sketchbook, or just with a few words in my notebook or diary. I made a sketch of the rainbow into my sketchbook when I got home - and actually managed to get the order of the colours wrong, despite having a reference to work with, how embarrassing is that!!.

The following day, I went out for a walk during my lunch break with my little Moleskine sketchbook to  look for something beautiful to capture. I chose these rape seed flowers very much on purpose. Because

a) yellow is probably my leasts favourite colour, and
b) I find yellow flowers, to be completely honest, quite ugly really

So why then choose these yellow rape seed flowers for my "beauty of the day" to begin my conscious search for every day beauty? Because those rape seed fields that cover the landscape with yellow patches everywhere around, and those tiny, delicate and very very yellow flowers are very beautiful, even if my personal colour aesthetics is not able to fully appreciate them the way they deserve. 

There's a danger of getting too stuck in your ways, inside your little bubble, when you tend to stick too much with what you like, what feels comfortable, what you're used to, and ignore the rest. When your little bubble bursts, you might find yourself unable to handle it, and you'll end up putting all your energy into desperately trying to hold on to what's gone, and unable to cope and move on and embrace the new possibilities. So peeping out of your comfortable bubble and seeing what else is around from time to time can only benefit your journey. Leaving our comfort zone at times will help us to be better prepared to cope with change, with our lives, to move on and make the best of it and shine.

As it happenend, "rainbow" was also last week's theme of the Artist's Play Room Challenge. I didn't manage to post this blog post last week, but I'm linking up to it anyway. It's just such a great coincidence. Have a look what the other participants came up with for the theme. Such a burst of colours, and so inspiring.

I'm really sorry for not having caught up with anyone these past few days, but I really just needed these days for myself, to think and re-focus. I'll do my best to catch up visiting your blogs during the rest of the week.

Dreaming myself away for a while

I've been feeling a bit low recently, so what better to do than taking out my art journal and dream myself away a little.

One of my favourite colours, a shipping tag, a postcard and some other stamps, and a strip of paper with a copy of the title of The New York Times sent me away to my two favourite places, Sweden and Great Britain.

I'm going to visit both of them this year, so I guess it's a good year. I'm certainly looking forward to both trips, even though they're still quite some time away.

It's been a busy week, but it's Thursday evening at last, and I've got a veeery long 5 day weekend ahead of me to look forward to. And tomorrow I'll be off for a day trip to Germany, including even a little visit to Sweden for a few hours. I'll tell you more about it during the weekend, and hopefully with a few great photos to show :).

Posting this today already but linking it up with Paint Party Friday tomorrow, and looking forward to visiting you all during the weekend!

Getting messy

I found this great project last week on The Wright Brain Stuff. Lisa suggested grouping up and working through Keri Smith's book "Mess - the manual of accidents and mistakes". The book encourages us to play and to be creative by messing around.

My copy of the book very conveniently arrived on Friday, so I had the weekend to start getting messy.

Lisa suggested that we started with opening the book at a random page and do what it says on it. That's what it said:

1. Soak the page with water

2. Try oto write on it. Alternate: Drop ink onto wet page.

I decided to go for the ink dropping, and so dutifully soaked the page and started dropping some of my lovely green "Pascha" ink, followed by some walnut ink on it. And then to brighten it up some bright red ink. Of course it all just got worse and worse, until it definitely turned into a very ugly page indeed. The ink dropping part wasn't very hard to do. In fact, this is how I love to paint. Splattering, and dropping paint on canvas, scratching and scraping around, no problem at all. But. I would never have chosen these colours together. They totally go against my personal colour aesthetics. I admit I have a bit of a "colour harmony obsession", and I found it really very hard not to try to make this page look prettier in some way. But I guess that's the point of it. Make a mess. Make it ugly. Don't try to make it pretty. Just mess around.

I added some random doodling, using a black and a white pen. I have about three different white pens now, but I'm still looking for that "perfect" white pen that everyone else seems to have, as none of mine really is working the way I want to. 

Well I most certainly managed to make a big mess of this page. I think my biggest problem challenge with this book are the thin book pages (yes, I have a thick-paper-obsession too). They are of course not really the most suitable for working with inks, paints, and everything very wet. The water did not only soak the page but also dissolve the glue so that one page has come off complete, and the only will no doubt soon follow. But I guess in this case, this is just perfect.

After my first "success", I tried a second page. The instruction was to fill a five-inch square by using all of the colours I had on hand. As I had just very diligently and neatly sorted all my coloured pencils into two separate tins, one for water-soluble and one for non-water-soluble pencils, those were the ones nearest at hand. I must admit it greatly helped to cheer up my wounded colour sense.

The page looked a bit empty with only the colour square, so I added all the colour/paint/doodle etc. mediums I could think of.

Also on the page was a tip about some further research about an American artist called "Sol LeWitt".  must admit I that I was not familiar with his work, so I dutifully looked him up, and added some of the information about him to the page. Apparently, he's considered to be the founder of both conceptual art and minimalism.

This is definitely great fun, and I think that it will be a good experience to just mess about and do all kinds of things into, and eve to the book, that I wouldn't normally want to do do (although I think that I will most certainly NOT bury the book in the garden and dig it out again after two days...).

And I think that this could be just the perfect thing to do after a long day at work and commute home in the evening, when you don't really have the mind to do anything "good". Perfect stress management, so to speak ;).

Back-to-green-again wip

 Last week I was happy experimenting with a sudden red phase tea inspired worn background, but I haven't quite decided yet how to proceed with it. Jenn suggested adding teal, and I must admit it sounds very appealing. So maybe some teal combined with light green and white? Abstract or not? I simply don't know yet. I'll just have to let it hang on a wall for a bit and wait & see.

So this week, I started working on a new canvas. I'm thinking about buying the wooden frames and fabrics  separately and start stretching them myself, as it allows much more room to experience with different fabrics  etc. than the ready made ones. But I haven't got round to get all the required supplies yet, so I just popped into the shop and bought a stretched canvas, a 70x100cm one.

I usually stick to my usual tried & tested products and brands, but this time decided to try out another brand. I like these broad ones, but they tend to be quite expensive, especially at this size. This canvas was half the price of my tried & tested brand's normal, narrow one, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm usually quite suspicious when these big canvases are "too" cheap. After all, when you're going to create a piece of art you want to be proud of, you shouldn't economise on the quality of your supplies. But anyway, the most important thing is that the canvas lies flat and isn't warped, and this one was plane enough. And I think it was the first time I walked out of the shop without having spent a fortune - despite having not only bought a big stretched canvas, but three bottles of paint and a sketch book as well!

I'm back to painting with my beloved greens and added a first layer of paint. Green just makes me happy :).

The pictures I took of my palette unfortunately didn't turn out very well, so I'm afraid I'll have to post some pictures of my paint bottles instead. I don't stick to one particular brand of paints when I paint, instead I mix and match them all. I'm quite fond of Lascaux paints, though. Unfortunately, they are on the expensive side.

Unlike with last week's red painting, I know exactly what I want to paint on this one. But the background is not quite right yet and will still need some more work until I'm happy with. But first I'll have to go back to the shop and get some more paints.

Happy Paint Party Friday 

&

 Happy Palette & Paint!

Time tor creativity & tea

I'm participating in Jennifer McLean's Artists Play Room Challenge over on her blog Just Add Water Silly. This week's theme is "Coffe & Tea". As I'm a total tea lover and tea addict, this theme suited me perfectly, and I really wanted to participate, even though I knew I was not going to have any time at all to sit down and get out my acrylics in the evening this week.

But then the whole thing with being creative is not that you should or can only be so when you have enough time to sit down and take out your preferred art medium (acrylics in my case) and spend as much time creating as you wish (although that would certainly be very very nice indeed). The thing is with being creative is that you can be so where ever and whenever you chose to be, using whatever you have on hand.

So, while I couldn't sit down and spend hours creating a pretty tea themed canvas this week, I could without problems:

1. do so some sketching into my little Moleskine sketchbook on the train while commuting, adding some little watercolours with one of those handy water-reservoir-brushes, which takes about 5 minutes and doesn't involve long workspace preparations, and
2. do some Scribbler scribbles during my lunch break.

So here's my little sketchbook Tea Time sketch. I guess that teapot would probably make quite a mess when you tried to pour some tea from it, but I didn't have a model to sketch after, and it doesn't really matter, now, does it.

I usualy prefer herbal tea to fruit tea, mainly because fruit tea often tends to have rose hip in it, which I don't like, but I'm very very fond of my Tetley Pomegranate & Raspberry tea, which does not only taste very lovely, but has a great deep red colour as well.

It was actually the first time I was using the Moleskine sketchbook, and I found out that it doesn't really seem to take watercolours very well, which did somehow surprise me. The watercolours seemed to form little puddles on the paper, which gave some special effects when finally dry. But once dry, the paint seems to stick well enough on the paper.

My Scribbler tea party, with everything I need for a good brew. My favourite tea  really is Earl Grey tea. I couldn't live without it, and befor I didn't have my first cup of it in the morning, you better not bother talking to me at all. I have my tea with a bit of milk, and a lump of brown sugar. At home, I only have lose tea, (except the above mentioned fruit tea) but at work, tea bags ar serving me well.

So here we go. One doesn't really need a lot of time and supplies to be creative. A pen & sketchbook, a computer, and a few minutes of one's lunch break or commute are enough to help creating just a little bit every day. But now I think I'll go and make myself a nice cup of tea, and enjoy a well-deserved break.

Do hop over and have a look what the other participating artists have done for this week's theme, as well as for last week's theme, which is beautifully presented by our host Jenn.