Horses - Theme of the month at Art Elements (AE)

Horses were the theme of this months theme challenge at Art Elements! Jenny chose the topic and put together a wonderful collection of inspirational images. Have a look here!  

My personal inspiration was this little wooden horse I found at a flea market. In one of my planters on our balcony we have some moos growing, so I used it as background.

I struggled a little bit what to do. Seems my usual line at the moment, which is strange, because I am creating a lot at the moment. So while I started with some polymer clay, I stopped that and went back to monoprinting again.

I love the magazin resist technique Birgit Kopsen showed at the Gelli Arts blog. I use it now to create a kind of "collages" with monoprinting. I often use several layers of paint, removing some parts of every layer before I pick it all up with the last one.

I so love how the paint looks through!

I used detailed pictures as well as abstract silhouettes. Still not sure what I prefer.

I also remembered that I carved a Pegasus based on a vintage image years ago. 

So I had a look where it was and played with it. 

As much as I love the stamp, I probably won't use it for monoprinting again.

A really simple technique I probably will do with the small kids in our family. Simply stamping with a waterproof ink and then some water colour on top (the ink acts as a resist... mh...maybe I should try that also for the monoprinting? Have to try that!).

And here is my work in progress piece made with polymer clay. Not sure whether I will work further on it or not.

I also used my handmade coffee water colour (yes, real coffee!) for a quick sketch. I used to paint a lot of horses as a kid and teenager, but I was better during that time than now. Seems I have to train again ;)

Also another fast middle in the night sketch where I went a little bit over the top with the colours. 

Please have a look what everyone else made for this challenge!

PS: Thank you Cathy for taking over the challenge reveal! :)

Guests:

Alysen

Anita

Beth

Catherine

Jill

Paulette

Raven 

Sarajo

Tammy

AE Team Members: 

Caroline
Cathy

Claire (you are here)

Jen  

Laney 

Lesley 

Marsha 

Niky 

Sue

Letters and numbers...

Just playing with materials a little bit. Honestly, I find it still strange that there is (and was) a label for something I also already did as a child: Just playing and mixing all available materials. But it is: Mixed media. 

"Time can tell" - Artist Trading Card

A collage made with paper, cardboard, book pages, fabric...
Painted with acrylic paint, gesso, stamping ink, water colour, black marker...

Maybe I will add some focus point... some day... but also love the tree as it is right now :)

"Aloud" - Some more of my mixed media work

As my time to create is limited after all and also sometime I fell rather tired, to take part in challenges is a good way to focus myself and find the energy to create nevertheless (strangely enough I feel more energized after I started creating but even knowing this, sometimes it needs energy to go there).

Challenges help to narrow down the topic, parts, colour schemes and/or narrative to find a starting point. There are a lot of ideas in my head, often too many to decide what I actually want to do. ;)

Therefore I also love to combine challenges if they fit. This time I combined two challenges: 1. The colour mixing blog challenge at Paper Artsy and 2. The july challenge at an online mixed media class "Wanderlust" (sadly only open to participants). The topic of the july challenge was: Create a collage with at least 4 different kinds of paper and be inspired by Coco Chanels quote: "The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud."

Here are my thoughts to my piece:

"It is rather difficult to see in a photo how different the paper qualities are as well as the tactile quality these collage pieces have. I used a lot of different papers with my homemade gelatine plates for printing. I didn't use words or script but rather wanted to show the ideas and thoughts as interlocking patterns, one above the others, being in her head as well as around her. If you have a closer look: Her mouth is open, she is talking right now and her colours and ideas change the world around her. Aloud not only by talking but shown through the bright and striking colours."

Since creating the piece I changed a few details, I added some contrast around the faces (very subtle but with a great effect) and very lightly darkened the edges.

There are 6 different panels that belong together. Maybe I'll mount them at a black background... or maybe I'll mount then as single pieces that could be arranged variably. I do think (at least right now) that they belong together but actually they also would work as single pieces. What do you think?

And to make and use homemade gelatine plates for monoprinting is so easy, I still don't understand why it took me so long to start using them :)

ATC - a little bit of paper piecing...

I know I show a little bit more "paper" related things in the last weeks over here. It is not that I didn't make jewellery but either I can't show it until now because it is made for special occasions and persons... and I also didn't manage to get got pictures during the last two weeks... so... paper "stuff" it is!

This little artist trading card I made for the challenge over at Paper artsy. This is the second time I take part but I really, really enjoy challenges! It is all about playing and exploring for me with different techniques and media. Even though I like the results most of the time, often the result may not be "me" with a new technique. But I only get to know this after I tried! Also I learned something from it ;)

The challenge now at paper artsy is "Paper piecing" (go over here to have a look for yourself and see what other people made). 

Surprisingly enough it seems that paper piecing is something I enjoyed more than I would have thought! I took a print of a bird I had laying around and cut out all shapes with different colours and glued them on paper scraps I had. This includes some gelatine monoprints I had that I made on a little bit heavier paper. I wanted to have a slightly raised image.

And yes, even if it can't really be seen now (only if ou look at it closely): All the different colour / body areas were made from different pieces!

I glued everything together, went over it with acrylic paint, water colour, markers... and added a stamp I got at a destash (from Laura, I follow her blog "Bugs ans fishes" for years now ;)) because it missed a little bit of colour.

What shall I say? Love the result! It is more grungy and organic than I would have thought and that is actually me! :)

Winged crocodile - Playing with mixed media (Wanderlust 2016)

There are another year long mix of mixed media classes I had to join: Wanderlust 2016. A different kind of atmosphere compared with Life book 2016, but both are special and both have parts I am not into. But they are so minor, otherwise I really enjoy both! Most of the time I don't have to do the shown project but rather take the inspirations. I love to see other people work, how they use their material and how their creation process is. Together with the small tips and tricks that can't be shown with only pictures and text.

This lesson was from Finnabair and actually the reason why I joined Wanderlust (a little bit late but since you can watch the videos whenever you want, that is no problem). A mixed media collage with all the pieces you can find ;)

If you would know my crafting room (and the rest of our flat) you would know that this is not a problem at all! A piece of cut wood was the basic and on top are lace, plastic wrap, glass, pepper corn, metall, wood and a lot of polymer clay pieces I made and was not happy with (for whatever reason).

The crocodile was from a Kinder surprise egg and the wings were originally polymer clay pendants I made.

Sorry for the little bit blurry images of the creation process. But I just remembered last minute to take at least some pictures!

On top of black gesso I used: Reeves acrylic paint in copper, bronze and gold (in this order) and afterwards a lot of different Pebeo iridescent acrylic paints. 

So difficult to capture the shimmer and shine but the end result is: Bettle wing colour! ;)

I went a little bit overboard with the colours but sometimes one just has to! Maybe the next ones will be more subtle...

Or maybe not....!

Formentera - This time some mixed media...

We were for one week in spain... back where I feel at home more than anywhere else: Formentera. I always take something with me and over the years I made a lot of things there. Not too much at a single holiday but always a little bit. 

This time I worked on a collage inspired by the Life Book 2016 lesson "make it shine". I had a magazine that I used to cut out the boy and some backgrounds as well as the trees and started to paint over it, layer for layer...

This is how the table looked like! 

The gold is really glowing and reflecting the light beautifully. Just so damn difficult to catch on camera. Here I tilted the paper a little bit so you can get an idea about how beautiful the effect is!

I worked with a limited colour palette and am surprised how well this worked for me. Of course it could also be that it was due to the place, everything could work for me as long as I do this at Formentera ;)

Just the stuff lying aroung...

Another picture (collage) I made (also while being on formentera). 

As the title of this blog entry says: I made this with stuff I had at hand at that moment. I liked the picture which I used as the basic. From a spanish (or english? don't really remember) magazine which all family members already read or just looked through... I cut out some leafs also from a magazine and a butterfly... some text... 

Okay, you see it. Or maybe you can see it if you look at the picture in more detail (just click on it, this time I used a higher resolution for uploading than usually!). Because I painted over all the stuff so often that it is not always to see where I glued one piece over another one ^^

The text is a kind of wordplay in german... but not really to translate. You could read it as "to know science" or more "knowledge creates knowledge"... (and for the german readers, yes, it is not perfect, in one case a f is missing... but still, I like what you can read in this :) ).

Wissenschaft - Science
Wissen - knowledge
schaffen (schafft) - to create
wissen - to know

And also, yes, everything in this picture has a reason, even the number ;)