Fairies - Art Elements theme of the month challenge

This month's theme challenge at Art Elements was "fairies" chosen by Caroline. Even though I had taken time off work, I didn't manage to create a lot. The time was required to simply get back to recharge my batteries. The first days I made nothing. I had a lot of plans but my body just wanted to sleep and do nothing at all. Maybe drink some coffee...

Still, I played with different materials. Most importantly, I started my new water color sketch book! Yay! And I have to tell you, it works like I want it! Water color paper makes it easier. I may play with different brands in the future but probably will go on binding my own sketch books. The coptic binding makes it so easy to have it lay flat and paint in it.

Fairies was a difficult topic for me. Because as much as I enjoy seeing the cute, beautiful or playful interpretations of this theme, it is not me. So taking a deep breath, I thought about the other stories about fairies or the older name fae. If you are into fantasy literature, then you may know that in this world fairies and fae are actually describing different things. Not that it is "right" in the true meaning of these words. Fae is the older one, fairy rather the description that over time became the name itself (yes, oversimplifying here!). But in fantasy literature the name fae is often used for all the fae creatures, the seelie and unseelie court, while fairies is often used to described a certain type.

No, this is not important in general, but it helped me getting my ideas. I am a roleplayer since being a teenager and I also played a lot world of darkness (still doing) including changeling. So I went into the ideas of the unseelie court...

...and went on to the wild hunt. Keep in mind, this is all in my sketch book. There are no perfect paintings but rather ideas and experiments. For my wild hunt I went on to playing with layering to the extreme. There are a lot parts I went overboard (no going back with water colors) but I embrace them because they help me learn.

I also played a little bit with clay and made some new faces (I use the sculpey face mold, I think the most used one worldwide for faces? ;) ).

I had a lot of plans for them, since I wanted to create some earrings with the tiny ones and some beading with the bigger ones (yes, seeing all these gorgeous beaded creations of Art Elements members made me give it another try!)... but... somehow the time was gone. But as soon as I have used them, I will show you the results!

My husband and I managed to at least take a few days off for a small trip. We went to the Scharmützelsee and there we stumbled over this little place. I think it is magical.

Then a few days later back in Leipzig I stumbled over this place. It is not really as green as the one above since it is simply a green corner next to buildings but it made me smile!.

Last but not least I wanted to show you an old project that I still thought was fitting for this month's theme. I so love to use beetle wings in my work and I have made quite a lot of earrings with them. The colours look gorgeous especially in the sunlight.

I hope you enjoyed this month's theme challenge and please have a look at what everyone made!

Guest Artists
Vic
Divya
Alysen
Kathy
Tammy
Kimberly 
Hope 
Alison 
Cat 
Sarah 

Art Elements Team
Jen 
Jenny  
Niky 
Laney 
Claire (you are here)
Cathy 
Marsha