A Tree, a Girl and Lots of Hugs

Sometimes a painting just flows.

It doesn't happen too often since my head is mingling in my painting too often, and I still haven't learned to quieten it. But when I started this girl, the entire process was smooth - the painting almost created by itself.

The prompt was "Tree of Life" in Life Book 2014 - and then take it from there. First of all, I loved the prompt since trees are important to me - can you imagine a world without trees? Second, I imagined something tender and strong at the same time, protecting - and I saw this girl embraced by the tree. Lots of tree hugging, so to say. I picked up the graphite pencil - and off the painting went. 

I love when that happens.

It feels like it is my heart that is pouring into the picture, that my hand is guided by my inner self, by what is really important to me - uh, I sound like being "enlightened" - don't worry, I'm not, it's still me. Anyway, I loved how this painting developed without much thinking, it was done quite fast (very unusual for me) and on top of that - I like it. 

My idea of creative happiness.

It's the first day of spring - so I wish all of you in the Northern Hemisphere a wonderful spring with lots of blossoms and flowers, and to those of you living in the Southern Hemisphere enjoy the abundance that autumn brings. 

I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday - even though it's Thursday. Enjoy the beautiful artwork you can see on all those artists' blogs who join this special party.

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.

Be True to You

This was the theme of week 4 at Life Book 2014. We were asked to pick three things we really like, that we are drawn to.

Well, that has to be the ocean for me. I just LOVE everything ocean - seashells, starfish, driftwood, lighthouses, waves, mermaids, seals and sea lions, whales... seagulls.

So this is what I created:

The colors in the background are teal, red oxide and raw sienna, three colors I like very much. However, I thought they were a little too powerful, so I used Titan Buff to tone it down a bit. Titan Buff is my first choice for toning something down, it works really well for me.

The seashells were stamped on tissue paper. I love how the tissue paper almost disappears when glued down. I love that effect. "Near the sea we forget to count the days" - now, isn't that true?

I'm linking to Paint Party Friday - my favorite party on Friday, and really, I am not a party girl. Except for this one!

Inner Artist Guardians and Cougars

This year I have signed up for Life Book again - I joined Life Book 2013 last year, and although I didn't do all the projects (by far not) I liked this year long class so much that is was pretty much a no-brainer to sign up for Life Book 2014. I love it - no surprise here.

The first week was about our inner artist guardian - no wonder a cougar turned up in my imagination as my very personal guardian. No angel or anything like that - a mountain lion instead.

If this painting reminds you of the cougar I wrote about here you are absolutely right!!!

Week 2 we had the wonderful Micki Wilde. I have adored her art work for some years and I was looking forward to her lesson. She worked around our word for the year which in my case is "making time"

Although the "assignment" itself was not difficult at all, I had a hard time with it. Micki did her lesson mostly in grey which I first did, too. I did not like mine, and I also had difficulties freeing myself from her example and did kind of the same thing as she did.

Needless to say I didn't like that. I just let it rest for a couple of days, and then I started a new painting. This time it worked - I painted what came into my mind - most often my hand just ruled over everything and played with the white paint, making many "swirly dots" - oh, I liked this so much better!!!

Does this sometimes happen to you that you see something that you want to paint and you just can't get free from that image? You're simple blocked to come up with something on your own? If so, what do you usually do?

I'm linking with Paint Party Friday - the first time in 2014 for me.