The Warrior

February is almost over and I am far behind with my 29 Faces. Oh well...

Today, I only have one to show you, and I will also link this one to Paint Party Friday. This is the Warrior, based on a photo I found on Pinterest.

I'm sorry that I'm not in Blogland very often these days. My Dad died a week ago. I hadn't seen him for almost five years. We had planned to travel to Germany this summer and celebrate his 90th birthday together. Monday a week ago he went to bed in the evening and peacefully died in his sleep during the night. He is with my Mom now which is what he has always wanted since she died almost exactly seven years ago.

I will be back soon.

Carrots Anyone?

For the 29 Faces challenge I painted a few faces on ATCs - I wanted to try this smaller format and see how I like it. I like it a lot!

The top one emerged after I had worked on some Irish blessing tags for my shop - the Irish girl appeared almost on its own. Of all the girls here she is my favorite.

Then there's another Arab woman, this time with watercolor crayons. The stars I added with a gold PITT pen that I discovered at Michaels shortly before Christmas.

The head of this girl is heart shaped and I decided to go with a summer theme - flower in her hair and a butterfly buzzing around her. The name "Angelique" popped up.

I wanted to paint the face of a little girl, but that didn't work out. This is actually done on a piece of watercolor paper scrap, it's smaller than an ATC.

And finally a charcoal girl - the face is wayyy too long, she looks more like a horse! I'm tempted to offer her a carrot....

I'm linking to Paint Party Friday.

Losing my Faces?

Well, of course I'm not losing them... but I'm trundling behind with my 29 Faces, way behind. It doesn't really come as a surprise - was I ever able to do these kind of challenges completely AND stay on time? I think during all my online classes and challenges that only happened once.

So I want to show six more of the faces I have done so far. The one on top was another one with the spray ink technique, but I don't like this one as much as I did the first one. The girl with the long red braid is Eleanor - I just love to draw/paint girls. It gives me so much pleasure. I wish I was more able to paint more expression in their faces - I still have so much to learn.

Then I thought it would be nice for a change to paint something completely different and still stay within the face-frame. That's how this little star was born.

But in the end I went back to girls. The following was just a practice sheet done on some piece of copy paper. I have never been good in painting profiles. Tam showed us how to do it in Life Book 2014, and with that it was easier. But I wanted to practice it before I started painting on the "big sheet".

And here is week 6 of Life Book - spray inks and acrylics. This lesson was so much fun, and I quite like it.

My plan had been to link up with Paint Party Friday, but I'm way too late for that now.

Rose

On we go with the 29 Faces!!

Please meet Rose - I called her Rose because she reminds me a little bit of Rose in "Downton Abbey". I know she doesn't look like her, it's just that something reminds me of her.

She was done with Caran d'Ache watercolor crayons. I like to work with them more and more - they are easy to blend and it's just plain fun to play around with the color.

After I had scanned Rose, I played a little bit in Photoshop, I couldn't help myself. Here she is in black & white, probably what she would look like if I had used charcoal and the graphite water soluble pens by Faber Castell, one of my new favorites.

Then I added a texture because I was just curious what Rose would look like with that. I think it added some interest to it.

Today's face is the "splatter girl". I just sprayed some ink sprays on watercolor paper and then added the face with a black PITT pen. The spray inks are not permanent, so when I went in them with a gray PITT pen the color would spread. I liked the effect and think I will do something like that again.

I like all the experimenting and playing that 29 Faces provides. It's not overwhelming - today's face didn't take longer than 30 minutes - and I start to loosen up with it and play more. It's fun!

I'm also linking to Paint Party Friday.

Here Comes the Rain Again

Finally we had some rain. Yesterday it started to rain about six o'clock in the morning. It was lovely lying in bed and listening to the pitter patter of the rain on the roof. Unfortunately, the rain stayed just for one day, by far not even close enough to change anything in our drought situation. All we got was six-tenth of an inch.

So it was a rainy Sunday. Perfect excuse to be lazy! I took out my coloring pencils and started drawing a girl in the rain. Judging from her face, she's not quite as excited about the rain as I am... well, perhaps she lives in Oregon or Washington or even BC where they have much more rain.

This morning, when I started face no. 3 for 29 Faces, I went to a different climate - the desert. Again I used coloring pencils. I never really worked with coloring pencils, and I quite enjoy it, but I am not sure that I use them the right way. However, I'm having fun with this!

A Meditarranean Surprise

This February I'm taking part in 29 Faces - the first and last time I did was in February 2012, and I missed it ever since. But not this time!!!

This morning I wanted to paint a woman's face. I started out with a triangular shaped face, added nose, eyes and mouth - and while I was working on it I noticed that this face wasn't female at all. Just the opposite.

What a surprise! This Mediterranean man took shape - pretty much in its (his?) own. I've never painted a man's face before. Boys' faces, yes. But men? I didn't even know I could do that.

But here he is. My first of hopefully 29 faces. Not the man I would fall in love with, but not bad either...