Helping Hands for Japan

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Boy, I'm late for this week's Paint Party Friday and Sneak Peek Friday - simply because I just finished the hands for the Helping Hands for Japan project a few minutes ago. If you don't know what this is and you're on Facebook, you can check it out here and hopefully join - it's a great way to help raise money for the victims for the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe in northeastern Japan. Every little bit helps.

Truth be told, I'm not quite sure whether these hands are really done. I have the feeling that something is still missing, on the other hand (!) I certainly don't want to overload them. What do you think?

Short and sweet today - please feel free to visit all the other fantastic artists. It is very inspiring.

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Helping Hands for Japan

Hello WOYWWers, yes, it's Wednesday again... How are you? I hope you are doing well and enjoying this ride around the world to peek at other peoples' creative workspaces thanks to the wonderful Julia.

This week I'm working on "Helping Hands for Japan". I had first seen this on Rhonda's blog, then went to the Facebook page. If you're on Facebook, you can join, too. Artistically created hands will be auctioned off at the beginning of May, and all the funds will go to the Red Cross to help victims of the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear catastrophe in Japan.

The tags you can see in the upper left corner are humble beginnings for a tag class I'm teaching in May. I also want to start another girl canvas. Let's see how far I'll get by the end of this week.

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WOYWW 95

Hello dear WOYWWers, how are you today? The last two days we had lovely weather and I'm hoping that it will keep like this since I am a bit tired of all the rain. I know that I have no real reason to complain, we're living in a wonderful place with great weather most of the year - I actually sound like a spoilt Californian, and I don't like that at all!!!

Perhaps some of you feel like I do - I can't get Japan out of my mind. This triple disaster has touched me in a way that is quite new to me. Perhaps it is the dignity of the Japanese people; perhaps it is me getting older. I don't know and the why really is not that important. I have these feelings; and finally I took out my watercolors and just put to paper what I felt - a big wave that got angrier with every single stroke.

During the past few days I have prepared my German class that I'm starting to teach tomorrow evening. It's called "Survival German" and is a six-weeks-course for people who want to travel to Germany (or German speaking countries) and learn some expressions, sentences, useful words, small conversations and lots of information about the country and the culture. I have been teaching this class since 2003 and am constantly changing it, learning from my students. Most of all, it's a lot of fun.

Now I guess you want to go on and see other interesting and creative desks around the world. Thanks to the wonderful Julia we come together every Wednesday and visit each other - please join us.


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The Second Girl - WIP

I'm late this week for Sneak Peek Friday over at JRU Studio. All morning I was reading and trying to get more information about the enormous earthquake and devastating tsunami in Japan. Living in earthquake country myself, every earthquake hits home with me. Christchurch in New Zealand only a short time ago, and now Honshu. My heart goes out to the people in Japan, my thoughts are with them.

Therefore, I went to my blog only half-hearted and then decided to leave it all together. In the afternoon, my husband's company had an Open House for the families of the employees, there were tours and demonstrations about the products they are developing. Interesting enough, they talked about GPS that have the ability to measure along fault lines that can trigger earthquakes like the San Andreas fault. I wish there was a device that could give us an early enough warning of earthquakes, more than just a few seconds (although, if you get a signal for example through a special tone on your cell phone, 10 seconds would be enough to dug under a desk - an early warning system, by the way, that is already practised in Japan and unique in the world).

Compared to this disaster, my efforts of creating some art appear meaningless and small. I was struggling all day whether I should even blog about it and then decided to do it, against all odds.

This is my second girl I'm creating as a result of the She Art Workshop by Christy Tomlinson that I am currently taking and that gives me so much joy (you can find my first girl here). As you can see, this is a work in progress, the girl is not even glued down. I enjoyed making the background on a 10x10 canvas and getting my hands dirty again. I think what I really like about this work is how my hands are getting into the paint, how messy they get, it's downright dirty and incredible satisfactory. Honestly, I feel like a child who got permission to play in the mud to her heart's desire. I used some stamps (the houses, tree and flower heads) because I'm not good at drawing/painting (which would be the right word?), paper and acrylic paints. Next I'll work on the girl; I wonder how she will turn out in the end. I'm a slow worker, I really enjoy the process.

Actually - I'm really glad I blogged about this. Somehow I feel better now. Thank you for your patience.