Marks on Abstracts

 

In August of last year I took a class - I can't even remember by whom and what the topic was, it might have been part of Laly Mille's "Layers of Light" - where we were supposed to create a series of small abstracts with neutral colors. As you can see from the gathered papers above, my first "rebellious" act was to add a dash of color with those purple circles.

I worked on 6" x 6" watercolor paper and glued down the papers pretty much without thinking a lot. Then I added some random lines and scrolls with a black Stabilo All pen.

I found it so boring and uninspiring that I put the abstracts to the side for more than six months, until I dug them out again from my unfinished pieces (of which I have quite a bit). I had the idea that some marks might spruce up the abstracts. I used a white gel pen (Uniball Signo) and a black pigment liner (Staedtler) and with the help of a couple stencils (Stencil Girl) I drew some marks on each piece. I also used the gel pen for outlining the flowers on the dark brown paper and make some dots and tiny circles. 

I think it really changed the abstracts in a good way. Now I like them. 

It's interesting how stepping away from a piece and returning to it later can give new ideas and how a few marks can change an entire piece. 

I'm joining Nicole for Sunday in the Art Room.

Beaded Earrings

 

For Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room I want to show you the exquisite beadwork of my friend Susan. 

Susan and I "met" when we were both writing for Vision and Verb in the 2010s. In 2015, when we did a college trip with Kaefer to look at the University of Boulder and the School of Mines, we stopped for a Christmas Day community breakfast in Manitou Springs, CO, where we finally met in person. It turned into a wonderful morning; we - Susan and her husband Larry, the Geek, Kaefer and I - got along from the very start, there were good conversations and lots of laughter was involved.

We stayed in touch after the end of Vision and Verb. Susan is a wizard in beadwork (and much more), and when she recently posted a picture of her "Flame" earrings on Instagram I asked her if I can buy a pair. She then came up with the idea of a trade - a handful of my photo cards for a pair of earrings. Deal. 

The earrings arrived yesterday (Saturday) in the beautiful handmade little pouch you can see in the top photo. The quote by John Muir "Going to the mountains is going home" really speaks to me. She also included the bird feather.

The earrings are stunning.

She let me choose from two lengths and I opted for the longer ones. I am so glad I did!

You can see more of Susan's beadwork and her other art (stitiching, leather, clay) on her Instagram .

Intuitive Watercolor Landscape

 

Before I show you my watercolor landscape, I want to tell you that I finally got a set of Schmincke watercolors. I am so excited!

The set includes three of their super granulating colors and a travel brush by da Vinci.

It also comes with its own color chart which I find very handy. I fell in love with the supergranulating colors (the three colors on the right in the bottom row). They have wonderful names like Glacier Green, Tundra Violet and Desert Green.

It didn't arrive before I painted the watercolor trees, so for the painting that you will see I used Sennelier watercolors which are wonderfully buttery and just a joy to paint with.

The "Intuitive Watercolor Landscape" was a lesson by Trupti Karjinni - it was part of this year's Sketchbook Revival hosted by Karen Abend. Trupti was a "new" artist for me, and she was so inspiring that I put everything into practice right away.

We were told to use just two colors and make a color swatch first. This is a practice I have been sticking to since then. Then we did our first little practice painting. I chose the colors Burnt Sienna and Forest Green.

After that we did our "real" watercolor painting. Even though my painting turned out less than mediocre, I'm quite proud of it - watercolor is a challenging medium. I enjoyed the entire process very much. Of course, as a "final touch" I had to add a trio of birds.

This is for Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room. 

My Battle Against the Weeds

 

For Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room I don't have "regular" art today, but I see my garden as an art room as well. It has dominantly native flowers, but also non-native poppies that I first sowed 14 years ago and they have come back reliably every year since then. What also comes back every spring is the weeds. Some of them I'm okay with, but others are really annoying and spread way too much. Like these ones:

Cleavers (Galium aparine), also known as "catchweed". It's a sticky, vining weed that clings to surfaces - like other plants. It was traditionally used as a medicinal plant, but medicinal or not, it has got out of control in my garden and I don't want it to climb into my natives and choke them. So I had to do something.

First I did the hard work of pulling the cleavers. Since we had some good spring rains in April, they were easy to pull, but gosh! there were so many. After I had cleared an area, I covered the ground with newspaper.

Then I covered the newspaper with a good layer of compost, hoping that this will suppress the weeds for a while.

Since this garden was created on top of an existing lawn after we had bought our home in 2012, by using cardboard and huge amounts of compost (if you're interested how to do that, you can read about it here), this now resembles a lasagna with all its layers of cardboard, compost, newspaper, compost. 

It's a rather healthy, fully organic garden. Even while concentrating on battling the weeds, I still noticed little critters like this orbweaver hanging out on the clary sage (Salvia sclarea).

It is a very big garden and I'm far from done. Unfortunately, I have to pause wielding newspaper and compost because with all the bending (there isn't enough space to kneel on a knee pad while weeding because of dense planting) I hurt my right leg. It crept up on me and I didn't pay much attention to it. But the pain became progressively worse until I wasn't able anymore to walk down stairs in a normal way without stabbing pain. So on Thursday morning I called my GP and got an appointment in the afternoon. He pressed on some parts along my knee and thigh up to my hips (ouch!) and diagnosed Iliotibial band syndrome. Great! Now I'm doing stretches, hoping this will help with the pain, and no more weeding for now (or only in places where there actually is enough space for a knee pad). Wish me luck, please.

Earth Colors Challenge

 

Recently I was going through a box with some of my pieces and found a few that I had never shown here, for whatever reasons. But since we have Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room, I feel comfortable showing them here. If I remember correctly, this was inspired by Laly Mille's "Color Challenge" which is part of her "Mini Abstracts" Workshop. I had done a couple of those mini series (green, abstract, and imaginary landscapes) and for this series I had chosen earthy colors. I thought since I love earthy colors this would be relatively easy and quick, but as is so often the case, I was kidding myself. These four little pieces I created in September 2023.

The substrat is four 6x6 inches watercolor papers that I collaged with different papers that I then covered with a thin layer of watercolor. On each piece I used the same papers. But since I'm not really into abstract painting, I only created one abstract piece using a few buttons I had.

For the others I chose some pictures that I had cut from magazines and added them to the pieces.

The following one is my favorite.

The Kestrel in the picture reminded me of the sweet Kestrel we had seen in Kaysersberg in Alsace in 2022. Even the bricks are similar.

Isn't he (she?) super cute?

Collage Papers

 

The last couple of weeks have not been very productive in regards to creativity. But at least I was motivated enough to make some more "collage fodder" - paper. All I needed was a few pages from an old book, some acrylic paints and a handful of stencils.

I spread the paint on the book pages and after they had dried, I added more paint through stencils. 

Gold, silver and white look great on a background painted with Payne's Gray. For the page on the left, I mixed gold and Titan Buff which creates this beautiful muted color. Here's a close-up:

The same mixture I used on the red background.

Of course I had to use my favorite stencil. Here I mixed light portrait pink with titanium white for the stencil color.

All these papers will eventually been torn up and used in some pieces of collage. This is a great way to use up leftover paint - just spread it on a book page (or any kind of paper) and add a little bit more - stencil patterns, marks, stamps, whatever you like - and you have some material for a future piece of art.

This is for Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room.

AI Watercolor: Home Sweet Home

 

Exploring the AI feature in my photo app has become a bit addictive, especially the watercolor feature. I spent quite a bit of time playing with it. All my photos in my phone are organized in folders so I can find a specific photo easily. Yesterday I chose photos from the "home sweet home" folder.

The view out of the kitchen window is very accurate.

The "Good vibes" neon sign turns on in the early morning and in the evening. We have a few of such signs in our windows - the Geek found them.

The pantry - just open IKEA shelves in our breakfast nook.

I had to laugh what AI did with one of our book shelves. Do you see the little dragon in the left picture? Well, we don't have a dragon sitting there - there is a piece of the Berlin Wall. Obviously, the dragon is way more fun. Now I wish we had a little guy like that.

Some pictures from the garden. I love how all the colors are so well coordinated in this top image. They are coordinated in the original photo as well, but not quite as well.

These are some shells and rocks I found at the beach. The dry seaweed turned into these colorful scrolls.

My collection of garden lights and terracotta birds.

Another collection - this time empty bottles of different shapes - at sunset.

I love the Moroccan lights on our porch, a present from a former neighbor in our old neighborhood. They were part of her wedding decoration.

I'm sharing with Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room.