"Eyes" - Art Elements Theme Challenge

This month's theme at the Art Elements theme challenge was chosen by Laney - Eyes. A wonderful topic and one I sadly was not able to explore as much as I would have loved to. There are several work in progress projects and maybe some of them will also be finished some day (yes, I still haveUFOs that are several years old ;) ).

What I love about the monthly theme challenge, is that it gives me ideas for my blog posts at Art Elements (and hopefully may serve as inspiration for you as well). 

This time I updated one of my old tutorials to create these tiny wee eyeball earrings! They always make me smile, especially mounted on the skull card. 

Although it is not directly fitting to the theme, I also wanted to give you an update about my new ceramic palettes and upcycled/repurposed water color palettes. 

Although not a perfect fit, I managed to put the two smaller test pieces in an old tin I had available (I love old tins!). In some of the small wells I put some water color as well.

The make-up palettes worked better than I thought! Yes, the lid won't open fully so you can't use it as palette but on the other hand it is so small and light weight and allows me to bring way to many colors with me ;)

Even my glued in dividers to create more wells in the lowest row (the are for the make-up brush) worked really good.

I think the plastic itself will be stained over time but nothing that worries be too much. Oh, and I added some Beatles Moeskin sticker on top! Just... because...

The ceramic palette with the larger wells was the only one that had some crackling with the glaze. I didn't notice while using water colors, but I also used some acrylic ink with it and it stained the crackles (being acrylic, maybe it also sealed them as well ;) ). 

A reference picture with my hand so you get an idea about the size.

And the gorgeous tin from the outside! Honestly, all of it worked way better than I thought and I regularly now used it as home as well while sitting on the couch and painting. I got a lot more tins from a friend (she know me, found them on a flea-marked and got them all for me!) and I will try to create some ceramic palettes that fit them. My plan is to finish them before christmas.

Back to the theme... Here are some of my sketches. Playing around with color combinations and styles, not all worked but that is what a sketchbook is for.

And this colorful one is my favorite!

Also an eyeball creature... the people who played pen and paper with me, know these creatures ;)

And my unfinished projects... I painted some eyeball cabochons (some also with glow in the dark paint). The plan is to combine them with polymer clay and create a book cover with a lot of eyes looking at you.

I also remembered that I carved eye stamps during the Luna moth challenge some months ago...

The upper two are still some of my favorite stamps ever.

I played with them on book covers but there still needs to be a lot of marks added to the covers as well as some metallic accents here and there. Also a project that would be nice to be finished before christmas (this year's one).

Thank you for joining us on this month's theme challenge! Laney, I loved your theme even though I was not as productive as I hoped too! But I will finish some of the UFOs! :)

And please have a look at all the other participants!

Art Elements Team

Susan  

Marsha  

Claire  (you are here)

Cathy 

Jenny  

Niky  Jennifer

Laney

Guests

Dawn  

Hope  

Beth & Evie  

Kathy  

Michelle 

Tammy    

Cat  

Elaine

 

Swirls - Theme of the month challenge at Art Elements!

Edit: I had some problems to login - so here is my blog post going online way too late and that even though it was mostly already finished a long time ago... so much for Karma ;)

This month's theme for the Art Elements theme challene was "swirls" and chosen by Marsha. Swirls.... so simple but in the beginning I was a little bit stunned. So I went for swirls and swirly lines in nature. 

I started playing a little bit in my sketch book. Really, really simple sketches but I wanted to play and experiment with swirls in the sense of pattern and movement.

I was really not into the plant "stuff" which is strange because that is normally something I love. But I do love the other two sketches. The pattern and lines are simple, playing with gradients either in size or colour. I think both elements will appear in paintings some day! 

Again I also played with polymer clay. I wrote an easy tutorial how to create swirls molds and stamps for this month's theme at Art Element (have a look here). 

I created several pendants using these molds and stamps and also made some examples what to create with them...

...like this knotted necklaces with czech, indonesian and other glass beads I had in hand as well as waxed linen cord. My stash is running dangerously low now on axed linen *sighs*. If you have any good suggestions for a source for me? I live in Germany and the shipping costs from a lot of countries went through the roof...

Earrings are the kind of jewelry that is essential for me! I rarely wear anything else. I work in the lab so I would have to take off most jewelry all the time and in the beginning I couldn't count the times I forgot my jewelry after work. Now I am simply not used to it anymore. Even my wedding ring took a long time to get used to ;) (and it is a lightly textured gold band, we got the wedding rings from my husband's grandparents)

Working on the projects I realized how much I love "swirls" without really thinking about swirls. For me they were rather the organic lines of movement you can find with tentacles, ammonites, ferns... but in the end, they are all swirls!

While I made the swirl molds I stumbled upon an older pieces I made years ago. This covered lid is still one of my favorite boxes I ever created. Can you find the little pieces of broken beetle wings I included?

I also went through my stash and had a look what I still had lying around unused and what other molds and stamps I had collected over time that somehow had swirls, curls, or spirals in them. 

I have a lot of older pieces that are somehow not fitting my taste (anymore) but I also don't want to get rid of. So I tried to use at least some of them...

I managed at least one pair of earrings...

...but then I was rather motivated to create new stuff! ;) And yes, there is my favorite colour scheme back again!

I so love these swirls!

....and colours!

Of course, I made a lot of earstuds with the molds and stamps too. This is my favorite way to test patterns and paints while creating little lovely earrings without using a lot of material. I only show you the ones I like, there are always some who won't make the cut.

I will also be at the alternative christmas market at the Werk II in Leipzig together with a friend again this year. So I will need a lot more earstuds! Also why you see them already mounted on cards.

Strange thing is, that I so love to make them and think they are lovely - but I rarely if ever wear earstuds. I always go for really long and/or big earrings. But I am thinking of getting some more earholes to combine some studs with long earrings. My little sister did this and it looks great.

I am sorry but I had to include more pictures of them! At least from my favorites....

Can you see the little lion head with the swirly tongue? The same image from one of the pendants I showed above. I took an impression from an old box my husband has and uses it to store some tools in.

I really prefer using white polymer clay and adding a contrasting colour with paint afterwards.

This is again I pattern I already showed above: The same one like in the white an turquoise earring charms.

This pattern came from an old fork!

For the mold I used here, I stamped with an clear polymer stamp into a sheet of clay. Now I get a nice raised image!

Again a pattern I used above (and don't remember where I got it from) and these earstuds are my absolute favorites of the whole batch!

Last but not least I played with some monoprinting using the image resist technique. I can't show you in progress pictures because I worked on this project late in the evening to relax from work and simply forgot :/

But I used the prints to finally make a first test version for a water colour sketch book!

I bought a lot of sketch books that should be useable for water colour in the past.... since my favorite brand went out of production (still hard for me). I don't require perfect water colour paper but it needs to be useable at least with some amount of water without crumbling and glued enough that the pigments are not soaked into the fibers instantly (gets blotchy then and I can't lift any paint off anymore).

I used not professional but rather craft water colour paper I got from a friend. The back of the pad I used for the book covers (this is why they are rather thick, but I like that!). 

This was made only with half of the pad and paper, so I could make a second one like this. I really, really wanted only to have a sketch book I could test to see whether this would be a better option than buying another commercial available book and be disappointed again.

There were also several brands I wanted to try.... but most of them had horrendous shipping costs to Germany. Also I don't want to pay too much for a sketch book. It is after all to be used without thought about "wasting" material. 

You can see the spiral pattern that I used for the resist technique. The paint is payne's grey from Schmincke. It works better for me than the various blacks I tried. I think it may depend on the pigment in the paint.

I even managed to get the pattern fitting to both sides!

The binding is a coptic stitch I made with thin nylon cord I have for beading. I also have book binding linen cord but I loved the contrast with the red colour (and the nylon stuff is also really, really durable). The coptic binding allows to open the book completely so it will lie flat on the table for painting.

  

It was really an inspiring theme, thank you Marsha! 

And please have a look what everybody made for the challenge!

Guest Artists:

Alison

Anita

Cat 

Caroline

Jill

Kathy

Karin

Kimberly 

Mischelle

Raven

Sarajo

Susan

Tammy 

Art Elements Team: 

Cathy

Caroline

Claire (you are here)

Jen

Jenny & Lesley 

Laney

Marsha

Susan

Sunflowers - Art Elements theme challenge!

Edit: I am sorry that my post is late. I accidentally set the wrong time ;)

This months theme at our Art Elements challenge was "sunflowers" chosen by Susan! I really love sunflowers in real life, just gorgeous. You know how it goes, there will be a "but" and in this case it is a big one. Yellow. 

I really struggle to use yellow in my work. I like it in nature, I also like it combined with other warm colours on a bead spread or a pillow... but other than that... difficult!

But this is why I love challenges - it is not only to create something fitting for the theme but rather more so, I want to challenge myself to go out of my own comfort zone.

I thought about sunflowers and the put it down to some minimal elements I could use for inspiration: Colour (yellow to orange, gold counts too since I also struggle to use  gold;) ) and in general floral pattern.

Not sure if you can see it because it is sometimes quite subtle, but in all monoprints I used the resist technique for image transfers with scientific papers about sunflowers. 

Quite literal - but hey, I am a scientist, even a biologist and though I am not working with plants, I actually read some literature about how sunflowers follow the sun. 

This image is also taken from a scientific review that included some really old literature. I will definitively go back to this image creating some more prints. 

Sometimes I love the single details even more than the whole print!

One thing about our new challenge format is that I really create more. It seems that it works for me to use different materials and just play with it.

I created several water colour sketches. My aim is not one perfect painting but to get more training and see what works for me and what not.

One mistake I make over and over again is that I work flat on the table so I look at the paper at an angle. That really distorts proportions! If I look at the painting at an angle, all is perfect but if I look at it straight, the image is not proportional anymore! 

It happens to me over and over again ;)

As you can see on the left page: I try to make a lot of training pieces. You will learn more from painting 100 fast flowers than painting a single detailed one. 

My favorite part on this sunflower is actually the single leaf! 

And this last water colour sketch is my overall favorite! Especially because I became more free in my use of colour and rather focussed on impressions than on reality. Nope, there are no turquoise and bright yellow spots on sunflower leaves but it works for me!

I also made a lot of earrings. These ones are super simple: Nail polish and glass cabochons. They are the perfect excuse to own a lot of nail polish while only using it a few times a year (if at all). 

I made more super simple nail polish and glass cabochon earrings. They are simple, easy, and cute! I only had problems to take pictures because the light is so strongly reflected. In the last image of the collage you can see that I also had some gold flakes before the golden background but... really hard to capture on photo! In case you are wondering how the blueish-purple earrings fit in this collection - they don't - I just loved the contrast ;)

This pair actually way on my table as WIP for a long time. I thought the yellow ceramic beads were a good fit for the challenge. The enamel pieces are from Kimberly Rogers (numinosity) and I think the organic purple and green surface are a nice contrast to the yellowish beads.

I also made several beads with polymer clay (and painted with acrylic paint) and used nearly all to create earrings from them as well. I kept it simple in general because with yellow as such a bright in-the-eye colour it happens really fast, that it can be too much for my taste. I am not sure about the last pair, they are the only ones without a protective coat because I couldn't decide whether to add some gold leaf, crackle paint, or other paint at the bottom as accent. We will see... maybe they can join the other WIP pieces... 

Last but not least more detailled images of the polymer clay earstuds I made. I love to create them, small dots of colour! All the yellow and black combinations are reminding me more of bumble bees or radioactive warning symboles than sunflowers - but they still fit in my "use yellow as inspiration" category. 

Please have a look what all the participants of the challenge made! I am really curious myself (and there were a lot of cool sneak peaks ^^).

PS: Art Elements is also on Instagram. If you search for the tag #art__elements (two underscores) you can find in general work made by Art Elements team members as well as challenge participants or you can use the tags #AEThemeChallenge and #AESunflower to find the work especially made for the challenges!

Thank you so much Susan, I enjoyed the challenge and for a short time it got easier to work with yellow! (I know that this won't last ;) )

Guests

Alysen

Anita

Cat

Divya

Jill

Kathy

Linda

Linda

Mischelle

Norma

Raven

Sarajo

Tammy

AE Team

Caroline

Cathy

Claire (you are here)

Jenny

Laney

Lesley

Sue