Exploring Art

Page From my Sketchbook

2012-01-21T09:32:00.000+01:00

At the moment I am busy designing patterns mostly on the computer, but I really need to break away so now and then from the computer screen and work with paint, pencil, brushes and paper.
This is one of the sketches that I made from the rose hips that stand next to my house.

Every morning I have to get outside to open up the shutters and this rosebush stands between the two windows. It does not look pretty at all, the roses and leaves are gone, the branches are dark and bare, but if you look closely, the whimsical dried leaves from the rose hips make beautiful wirly shapes.

Too bad though, it does not matter how many sketches I make, whether in pencil, with a marker or in water colour, I just don't seem to be able to capture the whimsical beauty of these pretty swirly things. I need to sketch them more often untill I will get it right. :-) But that is the purpose of sketching: practise, practise, practise....

Pattern Design Published on the Print&Pattern Blog

2012-01-17T14:50:00.002+01:00

Just found out that one of my pattern designs have been published on the famous Print&Pattern blog:
http://printpattern.blogspot.com/2012/01/surface-design-students.html

It is a simple pattern, made from a sketch of a leaf from my garden. Thanks to Laura Coyle's class about Adobe Illustrator (on reneepearson.com) I started using vector software again in my digital design work and rediscovered my love for designing patterns - I used to do textile design and web design in the past - and have now enrolled in a surface pattern design class. That keeps me so busy that I neglected this blog - sorry about that!

It is fun to see that one of my designs was good enough to be published on this blog that is all about surface pattern design! :-)

Christmas Book by Alan Anderson

2011-12-17T19:54:00.000+01:00

A week ago, just before I got bitten by the flu bugs, this book arrived in the mail: The Christmas Sleigh. It is a very special book because the writer and illustrator is Alan Anderson, my brother in law!

I don't get often the chance to visit my sister and her family in the US, but every time I am there, Alan will be sitting with a sketchbook on his lap and drawing, drawing, drawing. I think he needs it as much as we all humans need water...
It is no wonder that he is incredible talented by hard work and practise. No wonder that he finally took a leap of faith and published his first book! Wow!

When I heard about it, I wondered how I could get my hands on a copy. And lo and behold, it was already available from the bookdepository.co.uk website - the website that I always use for ordering books since they do free shipping (all around the world) and has no additional costs for small orders.
Within 2 weeks the book had arrived and I felt that I needed to do something special with it. I took some photographs today and put them together into a little video to post on YouTube (and Vimeo and Flickr and uhhh Facebook....).

My apologies for the music, but I felt that I could not send out a video about christmas into cyberspace without any sound! :-)
I am just so incredible proud of this man, and of his book. The illustrations are so wonderful and I love the way he used colour in parts of the picture to attract the main attention and the background, still with all the thoughtful details, in shades of grey. And then the expression on the faces of the characters...

Though I am in the process of trying to sketch (almost) every day, I know that I will never achieve the level of art that he has achieved. But at least I can thoroughly enjoy it now with this book. Just wonder how I could get him to sign the book since he lives on the other side of the big ocean... LOL

Patience

2011-12-11T17:41:00.000+01:00

Fresh Colour To Brighten Up Grey Days

2011-12-02T10:16:00.000+01:00

Everyday, I receive an email from http://www.design-seeds.com/ in my emailbox with new colour palettes. It always feel like a kind of gift that you get to open: beautiful pictures with a palette of colours attached to it, chosen from the photograph.

Here is one I made myself. I loaded a photograph of the Little Guide Book into Photoshop and made this palette of colours myself. The colours in the photograph might not be as bright as they appear in the palette, but who said that I have to constrain myself to the exact colours? :-)
Just a little bit moving the cursor around in the Colour Picker of Photoshop and I got this beautiful bright set of colours.

Just what you need on these grey, dab days... Hope that these colours will make you smile today as well!

Raw Art Journal: the Elephant in the Room

2011-11-27T16:07:00.000+01:00

It has been a while that I have uploaded the new pages from my Art journal. The last few weeks I am busy with drawing and sketching, trying to develop a new habit and enjoy a bit of uncomplicated creativity every day.
And yes, I certainly need to brush up those drawing skills as well... :-) So that is a bonus as well!

This page is about "the elephant in the room". Something so obvious - there is no way you can't overlook an elephant in your room, can you - and the habit of ignoring it all together.

I have noticed the hard way that there are things that you get so used to, but are not really regarded as 'normal'. You just think it is 'normal' cause you are so used to it for many, many years. It has become a part of your life. It has become normal for me to have that elephant sitting in my room.

But it is not normal. Absolutely not. And I have to see that elephant for what it is: an elephant. Something so big that I can't overlook it. Eventhough it is sometimes hard to acknowledge it. I need to recognise that elephant, knowing that even if I don't speak about it, or are not allowed to speak about it, it is still there.
Undeniable, obvious and present. This page will help me to remember that...

So the question for you is, how many elephants are there in your room? Are there things in your life that you'd rather not speak about? Do you have the courage to acknowledge them and start a converstation about it? Or do you just ignore it?

Gouache Paint and Memories of Art Class

2011-11-13T20:24:00.000+01:00

While I am (hopefully) wrapping up most of the paperwork of the past weeks, I am going through my art materials and experimenting with the old art materials I have lying around for years now.
Most of the time I prefer to work with acrylic paint because of all the layering that I can add on top of each layer of paint. But on the other hand I would like to work quicker and not having to deal with these big jars and palets with drying paint that is then unusable.

So I took out my tubes of gouache paint. While I was adding colours to my palet (one where they can dry and then hopefully be re-used by adding water again), memories of my schooldays immediately popped up in my head.
It was in this art class that I first used this kind of paint, the one that comes from tubes or pots. We learned to sketch, learned calligraphy with different pens, made posters and even learned to do hand lettering with this paint.

And I still remember that I always had a problem to add the right amount of water so that the paint would cover the white of the paper - the teacher would not approve of transparant paint in our work - but still be fluid enough to paint nice letters. Back in these days we had no computers to make our fonts, so we learned to draw them with pencil on paper with T-rulers and set squares and then coloured them with paint. A very labour-intensive job, but I loved to lay down the colours and turning a plain white paper into a little piece of art.

In a small container I found some very old tubes of gouache and some newer ones. One of them was completely dried up. So with a sharp knife I cut through the metal of the tube and put the paint on the palet.
This way I can still use it (like a pan) and don't have to throw it away.

In a seperate small sketchbooks I painted swatches of all the colours that I have. While I had no reasons to add new colours while I was working with watercolours earlier this year ( see: How many colours do you need ), I think I need some new ones for gouache... I definitly need some extra red, purple, green and a light blue. Maybe even some grey? :-)

I am looking forward to try drawing over the paint with coloured pencils (mixing media as usual) and I might try to do some handlettering as well, something I learned from this teacher as well. Though I might want to try updating the look of these letters though... :-)

Absorbed by Digital Design

2011-11-03T17:57:00.000+01:00

One of the challenging bits as a mother of special needs children is the enormous amount of paperwork that has to be processed when something changes in their lives. It is unbelievable what you have to do to make things work out.

You have to bury yourselves in papers that have to be completely read and understood, find the little 'snakes underneath the grass', research internet thoroughly to make sure that you know almost as much as the help line operators of the organisations with which you have to deal with. And of course, it is just not one organisation, there are often at least three different ones!

And did I mention the amount of papers you have to read (and reread cause you simply get confused)?

So it was very refreshing for me to be distracted and getting totally absorbed by the online Illustrator 2 Class with Laura Coyle on www.reneepearson.com.

It has been a while that I had taken a class on anything digital for a while. Working with mixed media and getting my hands literally dirty was working just fine for me at this moment in my life.
But am I glad that I signed up! This class was so inspirational, the teaching was superb and I learned so much. Which is a great achievement for any teacher since I have been working with digital design and software for decades.

Laura really got us absorbed in Illustrator. There was a huge amount of instructional videoos, but not just techniques and how tools worked, but she got us busy from the first few videoos on, which I just loved. Ideas were running around in my head and I could not keep up with that flow!
The promise of getting my hands dirty in Illustrator helped me to get through all the heaps of papers and rules.

And I even skipped yoga classes 3 weeks in a row to enjoy the live chat we had in which Laura gave mini demonstrations and answered our questions right on the spot. Never done that before...

As usual, the online classes from Renee Pearson are of high quality. High quality video and sound, great website, prompt messages about the posting of lessons and extremely quick responses to any technical difficulty that you encounter.

The teacher, Laura Coyle is a professional illustrator and designer and is a great skilled teacher. Chek out her art work and blog here: http://www.coyleart.typepad.com

She offers several classes and is preparing a new one for Illustrator Brushes in december. To keep informed, make sure to sign up for the newsletter from www.reneeparson.com for info about upcoming classes, live chats and sometimes great discounts for limited time for some of the classes.

There is still a lot of paperwork to be done, which I absolutely start to hate (a word which I hardly use but is the one word appropriate for the situation). Papers seem to be scattered all around the floor in my little workroom (but believe me, there is some kind of a system in it) but I love the escape that I have rediscovered: designing digitally and letting my ideas run wild!

Marit's Big Surprise

2011-10-09T14:43:00.000+02:00

Marit, a Dutch Mixed Media Artist, Art Journaler, Photographer and Haiku writer, surprised everyone last sunday with the news that she is starting her own magazine: Featuring.
It will be a printed magazine, in English, and the first issue will be published in Spring 2012. Can you believe it?
I am so happy for her with this new adventure.

Read more about this terrific news at: http://www.featuringmagazine.com/
You can also sign up on that website to be kept informed about the birth of that magazine. I am looking forward to the first issue!

The Day Before Today

2011-10-06T22:38:00.000+02:00

Pico

Yesterday,wednesday october 5th, this dear, 15 year old cat passed away. She did not go quietly, she put up quite a fight but her little body gave up.

Pico became an orphan when, at two weeks old, het mother was run over by a car. Our kids were so upset that I promised that I would try to feed the litter of kittens with a bottle. So I found myself after all these years back to night time feedings... But it worked, and all kittens survived.
She was different from the other kittens and we first thought that she was a male, so she got named after Picasso: Pico. Not very colourful while being just black and white.

Pico was pretty fierce, and ruled most of the the garden for years. Coco, her timid sister, was only allowed to sit in the front of the house...
Pico could spin, we could feel it when we put our fingers on her throat, but she did not make a sound with it. Then, just a few years ago, she started to spin out loud. She wanted to be heard, I guess.

She did not like people very much, but she did liked to stay with me and annoyed me by trying to wrap herself around my neck instead of sitting in my lap. She loved being outside and we had to convince her pretty hard to come inside on cold winter nights. To be honest, I often had to go out and find her hiding place in the garden, the dyke being her favorite part, and try to catch her.

I named the last quilt I was working on, to her: the Pico quilt. (For a picture see: http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-was-i-thinking.html ) We shared the quilt together even long before it was finished: me underneath it, she on top of it, together with her sister Coco. We spent loads of evenings together this way.

Thank you for your companionship, your friendship and your own way of showing love, dear Pico. I will never forget you, you will be missed, sweetie.

Art Journal: Wordgames

2011-09-30T14:39:00.001+02:00

This page came together pretty quickly. I had just cut away a rosebush that seemed to be sick for several years now, never producing beautiful flowers. It tried, but the roses got dried out or just brown before opening up. And after all these years I felt it was time to give up on that rosebush. So out came the saw to cut through the thick branches.

By trying to cut them in smaller pieces so that they would fit in the green bin, I hurt my fingers several times, despite the gardening gloves and me trying to handle the branches as careful as I could.
When all the work was done, I got my symbols, I got my words and I expressed it all together in this page.

I took a picture of the branches that were cut and glued it on the page. Outlined it with a marker and made it blend in with the background. For that purpose I like to tear the paper of images so that the blending in is easier.

It was way too graphic, and looking for a solution by rummaging through some textured stuff, I came across a sample of textured wallpaper. Just some brushing on of undiluted acrylic paint and you have a wonderful stamp!
The words that were hanging in my mind for the past days, were stamped on an old book page, a part came from the title of the book itself.
Then it only needed some borders and letter stamps to strengthen the words: the wordgames that were such a destructive part of my life and which are now - just like the rosebush - cut away and put away.
Such a relief!

The way such a page comes together is a process on its own. There are some things that you want out, want to express and then there is Life which helps you to tie together the emotion, the feelings, the symbolic imagery and the words. There is no particular order in this process. There are just elements that keeps lingering in your mind and finally it all comes together.
All expressed, on just one little page with some extra symbolic meaning added to the mix as well... I love art journaling: this way of expressing yourself with simple things like paper, paints, stamps and a wall paper sample!

Raw Journal: Just More of the Same

2011-09-27T16:34:00.000+02:00

Somehow this page seems to be a newer version of a similar page from my Little Red Book:
http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-pages-from-little-red-book-part-6.html
which says:

"This too was on repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat for a long time."

Though this time this new page was made based on an observation from someone else which I needed to write down because of the new meaning that was given.

I guess that despite all the things in life that changes and all the actions you undertake to make changes, some things will just never, ever change. No matter what you do, how much you try to turn it inside out and upside down, it just won't change. It kind of feels like moving a mountain with your bare hands.

The question is, will the mountain defeat you or do you accept it? Can you work with it, around it, or is ignoring the mountain an option? In my case, ignoring it might be the best strategy for now...
And this all leads to another question: how many mountains are there in my life? Something to think about!

The meaning of circles?

2011-09-24T13:00:00.001+02:00

Working in an art journal can be quite a coincedence of things that play in my mind, objects that surround me, things that I have heard, sentences that were spoken. I start with a simple thing like painting a background and from there a chain of choices are made.

There were foam circles on my worktable that I wanted to glue on wood to use as a stamp. But I had no small pieces of wood around, so I glued the circles unto a piece of cardboard instead. The life time of that stamp is of course short - no cleaning possible - but at least I had some dots to stamp with.

But the glue had to dry thoroughly before I could use it, so I turned to an empty paper roll to use as a stamp. It gave me great circles to colour in with pencils. From there, the idea started to flow. Though I did change my mind several times. I repainted the background white, part of it in purple red. I started to draw lines.

And before I glued the text to the page, I used the newly made stamp to stamp white circles all over the page. In the middle of that process I remembered that the circle is the symbol of Soul and that this page had a lot of circles...

Sometimes you need less words

2011-09-22T13:00:00.005+02:00

A page that turned out to be full of symbolic meaning to me. Though the text is clear, there is a lot of fog into the page as well. I had glued in some text and after several days, I teared these away. It was saying too much, I needed less words on this page.

The little Russian dolls are symbolic for the many layers we have inside of us. And the little line of text: "Through the Chaos, Objects appear Fresh"? I guess that was meant as a wish!

Art Journal: The Bridge

2011-09-20T13:00:00.001+02:00

I found this picture lying around in a drawer which I really needed to clear out. No need to say that the drawer was left in the same state and I started to lay out the photograph on the different backgrounds of my art journal.
Nothing seemed to work at that time though, and the picture found its place on my worktable for several weeks.

That is the reason why clearing worktables is such an inspirational activity: you come across things that you wanted to use, but still hasn't. It is fun to rediscover these little treasures under a pile of papers after a few weeks!

So when I refound (a new word) the photograph, I cut away the background, sanded the water and added gesso over it, blending it with my fingers. The text was something I wanted to work into a collage for a long time, so that was easy.
Just a line of poetry to finish it off.

How many bridges do you need in your life's journey? Do you cross the wild waters by foot and get wet, maybe even go under for a while, or do you first build a bridge?
How many times have you turned around and taken another path in the hope that it will lead you to a safer place to cross these rivers?

Page from Raw Art Journal

2011-09-18T17:00:00.001+02:00

This little format of wired book is wonderful to work in. Though I seem to be unable to paint on a small scale, for art journaling this size works wonders for me. This is my second art journal called "Raw". The first one was the Little Red Book which I already filled up completely.
ReBuild and ReInvent is the theme for this page. Accompanied with a cheerful picture.

And I love Found Poetry, the messages that underline my intention of the page. This one: "Move, to get free".
Moving, or taking action is the only way to change things. Just watch the news: Egyptians caused the biggest change in their history by taking action. Libia is undergoing their change by the movement, the action, of people who no longer accept life as it used to be.

Though we might not be in need of a revolution, we do need to move once in the while to stir up a change in life and get ahead.

The Ingredients of Life

2011-09-11T16:26:00.000+02:00

What would happen if you change the ingredients of your life? Would life still be, look, taste and feel the same - because the main ingredient is still the undeniable You?
Or would life become different? How much do you have to change to achieve the difference? And do you have to change just one or two ingredients, or do you change the recipe all together as well?

Loads of questions that emerged in my mind as I looked at this old recipe and wondered if the cake would taste as good as it did in the Fifties. And then started to compare Life with the cake in the picture.... :-)
I am still trying to find the answers to all these questions and I am glad that I made this page with the picture of the cake!

Do you stick to your default recipe of Life? Or do you make changes? How far do you go? Have you ever switched back to the old recipe?

A New Art Journal: Raw

2011-09-06T11:00:00.004+02:00

My Little Red Book has been completely filled. It was time to start to look around for a replacement. I loved working on the small pages ( 16 cm x 16 cm) of that little book. Luckily I had another version of that diary lying around and could not resist using that as a successor of the Little Red Book.

So there I went: tearing pages out, glueing several pages together to improve the strength of the pages and adding a layer of gesso over the page to hide the text underneath it.

I had noticed while working in the Little Red Book, that somehow I lost the idea of making the pages pretty or beautiful. Instead of artfully decorated pages, it soon became all about the thoughts, feelings and ideas that I wanted to express on the page. It was kind of raw, with everything on the page enhancing the mood of my expression with no regards toward art or rules of art.

Since I loved that feeling, I decided to work in the same way in this new book. Expressing myself in a free, raw way and leaving it up to the viewer to interpret the page and decide on her/his own interpretation.

This way of working gives me a lot of freedom and helps me to express myself without the restriction of bearing my soul to the world of internet. You might understand what I am saying, or you may not understand it at all.
Maybe you discover a different meaning of the page, or maybe it stirs up your soul. Or maybe it does not say anything to you at all (and you get ideas on how to improve such a page).
Whatever it is that you feel while looking at it, I hope that it inspires you on some level. :-)

The Beauty of Wastepaper

2011-09-04T15:11:00.000+02:00

We were talking on the Dutch Art Journaling Forum about protective sheets on our desks to catch sprays and splatters from ink. They are not easy to find here in the Netherlands.

Personally I prefer to 'catch' all these ink and paint spills on thin rice paper, let the paper dry and re-use them again.

Even stamps are 'cleaned' on these sheets by stamping them untill all the ink or paint has been absorbed by the paper.
This means less cleaning to do in the sink. And adds fun motivs to the wastepapers too.

Just place a page under the page you are working on, and one on the opposite page as well. You can also brush leftover paints from your brush unto these papers before rinsing the brush.
After a while the papers have become pieces of art on it's own - spontanious splashes of colours in unexpected colour combinations. Use them in collage and as a background for wordstrips!

----------Dutch Translation----------

Op het Nederlandse forum Art Journaling en Mixed Media hadden we het over speciale vellen om je werktafel te beschermen tegen verf- en inkspetters. Deze kun je niet zo gemakkelijk vinden in Nederland.

Zelf prefereer ik dun rijstpapier om deze spetters op te vangen. Ik laat ze drogen en gebruik ze dan weer opnieuw.
Zelfs stempels worden 'schoner' gemaakt door ze eerst op zo'n vel te stempelen totdat de verf of inkt door het papier is opgenomen.

Je hebt dan minder schoon te maken in de wasbak of gootsteen. En bovendien heb je ook nog eens leuke motiefjes staan op je 'restpapiertjes'.

Na verloop van tijd worden de papiertjes vanzelf kleine kunstwerkjes: spontane spetters kleur in ongewone kleurcombinaties. Gebruik ze in collage of als achtergrond voor woordstrips!

Tutorial: using existing books as a journal

2011-09-01T14:34:00.000+02:00

TJ from Studio Mailbox sent me this book a while ago for me to alter. I am planning to use it as an art journal and thought it would be fun to share the preparing of the book here with you.

This book had hard covers and a sewn binding: ideal for altering the book. The paper inside is a bit old, but not yellow or brittle at all. This means that I have the perfect base to start with.

To make room for all the painting and collage, I rip out several pages so that the binding will be able to hold all the extra weight that will be added.

Sometimes, I will tear out as much as half of the amount of pages that are in the book!
After tearing out a page, look for the opposite page that is now loose in the book. Remove this one too.

It always feels a bit wrong to tear out pages, but the spine will not hold long if you are not brutal enough at this point.
You can save the pages and illustrations though for collage. And you can always use the text for Found Poetry.

The next step is glueing several pages together to strengthen the paper. This way it will be able to carry all the paint and collage even better.
In this book I will glue 2 pages together. If the paper was thinner, I would even glue 3 pages together.

My favorite glue to use at this point is Gel Medium, you can buy these in big cheap(er) pots in art stores.

Place a waste paper behind the page that you are going to glue. Brush the glue on, press the other page to it and use a plastic old ID or credit card to smooth it over.

Let the book dry completely. As long as the glue has not dried, it will be too fragile to work in.

My favorite way to prep a page is to start with a thin layer of gesso. Just the process of brushing this over the pages is relaxing and often opens up my ideas and inspire me.

The cover is almost always left as the last thing to do. When the journal has been filled, I know what I want to put on front. It is all about keeping open to possibilities, though you could say that it is all about not being able to make a choice as well... :-)

Have you been using existing books as an art journal? Or do you buy blank books for journaling?

More Labels to Print

2011-08-26T12:01:00.000+02:00

While collecting materials to make an art journal from scraps, I decided that I needed longer labels than I had already made. So here is a collection of 8 different labels for you to download from 4Shared.com and to print at home.

The pack contains 4 different coloured PNG files (black, blue, red and green). Here is a preview of the blue labels.

You can print them with your own printer on cardstock and cut them out by hand. It is not really that much work since there are lot of straight lines involved!

Vary the colour of the cardstock and your labels will get a different feel and look. I like to print them on a yellowish cardstock which give it a slight vintage feel.

As usual, the zipped file has to be downloaded from 4Shared.com. It is safe to download files from that site, as long as you click the right buttons! The buttons of ads can be very confusing, think before you click. So don't think you have to download something else first - or have you PC checked for errors!

After the first click you will have to wait several seconds before you get the real download link. So there is some patience involved, but then again, the labels and the download service are for free. :-)

Here is the download link:
LabelsLong.zip

You are free to use these labels in your personal and commercial projects. You are just not allowed to sell the file, or the prints of the file. You can share the blogpost here, but you can't put the link on your own website/blog/facebook page etc. and claim them as your own.

This means that you can use the labels to glue on a jar of jam to sell, but you just can't sell a set of prints of the labels.

I would love to see what you do with these labels!

My wish for this summer

2011-08-11T13:00:00.009+02:00

One of the prompts from the class In The Sun was making a page about the songs that you love to hear in the summer.
Despite the rain and the wind, the feeling of summer comes back to me if I watch James Blunt's video with "Stay the night". Happy and upbeat: Simon Webbe, a summer should be without any worries.
I like Bruno Mars' song because it is full of energy. Oh, and what is a summer without a song in Italian? That is not really summer!

Another prompt from the class was to write down your wishes for the summer. I made this page this week, and eventhough I have not seen or experienced much of these things up untill now, I will still keep on hoping!

I like the simplicity of using lists for a journal page. And, as the previous pages, I did things that I normally don't do. Just working quickly, keeping it light and just accept the results as they are. Even using a silly picture and ruining it with using the red crayons around it.
It is summer after all... :-)

In the Sun journal pages

2011-08-09T13:00:00.003+02:00

One of the first prompts, I think back in June, was making a page of your purpose and intention of this art journal.
The main thing that I want to achieve is this feeling of 'anything goes' and experiment without restrictions. This became a 'cute' page! And I normally don't do cute!

Another prompt was about making a self portrait and writing down several things that make up you. I did not put a lot of thought into the list. I just wrote some things down about me. Another thing that I hardly have done: using my own handwriting in my art journals. But this is something I like to experiment with these last weeks of summer.

Working quickly, no overthinking - or hardly thinking - and keeping it simple feels so much like fun. I am not over the moon about these pages, I just want to let the flow goes where it takes me, and enjoy the process of making a quick page in the mean time.

Time keeps on running...

2011-08-07T15:40:00.002+02:00

The month of July has passed away so quickly. It has been the wettest month since ages and felt more like autumn than summer. I missed that summer-kind-of-feeling.

In the beginning of July I had read about the art journaling workshop: In the Sun by Natalie Malik.

The whole project sounded so much like summer to me that I wanted to give it a try, even though I was already a few days behind.
On one of the dry mornings in July I went outside and ink sprayed a bunch of pre cut pages using the simple dot stencil that I made from punching out the Round Tags (Blogpost with instructions ) and lettering stencils.

To keep that airy feeling of summer, I kept the use of colours to a minimum, and only used light coloured inks.
My intention was to keep this journal as light and simple as possible. Giving myself lots of space to experiment, or to use the same materials and techniques. Just go along with a summer-kind-of-flow.
And then, Life happened.

So now, a month later, I cleaned my desk and found these pages again. The cover was already made, and so were two pages. When I checked the class blog I saw that I was so much behind. No way that I would be able to catch up in any way.

Instead of trying to catch up, I am giving myself permission to just pick out the prompts that I like and go ahead anyway. It is summer, after all!

Here is the cover that I made several weeks ago. I will upload the other pages the coming week as well.

Today

2011-07-14T22:29:00.000+02:00

Speeches won't be made today,
Clocks will carry on,
Flowers won't be left in parks,

Work will still be done.
People won't be dressed in black,

Babies will be born,

No flags will fly,

The sun will rise,

But we will know that you are gone...

(lyric: The Day Before The Day by Dido)

Keeping it simple today

2011-07-10T16:11:00.000+02:00

Outside my window... the birds are singing

I am thinking... of going outside and enjoy the day

I am thankful... for the sun and the clouds today

In the kitchen... are dishes waiting to be cleaned

I am wearing... clothes that are too big for me

I am creating... a crocheted blanket

I am going... to design more digital printables

I am wondering... what the future holds for me

I am reading... again: The Memory Keepers' Daughter

I am hoping... for more space in my life

I am looking forward to... a walk down to the river

One of my favorite things... is working with colour

Free Round Alphabeth Tags to Print

2011-06-27T08:00:00.001+02:00

I had fun cutting the printable labels (see post here: http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2011/06/sharing-my-printable-labels-for.html ) and thought about other items that I could design and print out to us in the scrappy journal I am planning to make.
Pretty soon the idea of 'something round' came up. And since I wanted to punch it out with my 1.5 " puncher, I knew the size to start with.

I wanted to add numbers to the circles, but thought it would be fun to have the complete alphabeth in circles. I started to work out the idea in CorelDraw but switched quickly to Photoshop.
The idea was simple: a scalloped border, a border inside and a quirky font to use as letters.
Most of the time was spent adding and adjusting the size of the individual characters within the circles and placing them neatly in rows in 2 files that could be printed on A4 size and Letter size paper.

I printed the tags on a yellowish cardstock. After printing, it was just a matter of turning the punch upside down and postioning the paper so that the tag would fit in.
If you don't have a puncher, cut them out with scissors. It might take a longer time, but it is worth the effort.

When the tags were punched out, I had these strips of paper with these huge circles - just like a stencil.
This inspired me to tape the strips back together and brushing a layer of acrylic paint on both sides: to strengthen the stencil.
I love it when one idea evolves into another new idea.

The files are free for you to use in your personal and commercial projects. However, you can't sell the tags or claim them as your own.
Please do not share the files - you may mention this post on your own blog though for your readers to download the files for themselves.

Here is the download link on 4Shared.com:

AlphabethTags.zip

You don't need an account to download this file. Press the button to download this file, a count down will start - ignore all the ads. After the countdown another download button will appear. Press this one to start downloading.

OK, the next idea I came up with is printable journalers and ledgers.
Do you have any special requests for printables? Just leave a comment with your ideas!

More from the Red Book

2011-06-26T15:00:00.003+02:00

The last pages of the Little Red Book have been filled but I had not uploaded these yet. This is a simple page with a strong message. I was reminded of the statement that Dr. Phil made: no matter how flat you make the pancake, there are always two sides.
Yes, there are always two sides of a story. So when you have heard one side, don't judge untill you have heard the other side as well - you might be surprised when you hear the whole and true story.

I used a self portrait that I combined with watercolour paintings in Photoshop. The text was found in a magazine. The background was acrylic paint and I added pencils to get more texture, but this is not visible in the picture.

Sharing My Printable Labels for Journals

2011-06-22T17:01:00.001+02:00

I am collecting materials to make a sort of 'scrappy' kind of art journal. I will be using left over papers, magazine pages and so on for the pages and bind these together. Then I would like to add small images and 'thingies' to liven it up a bit.
I was thinking of these red classic labels, but since I live too far away from the city, and was too lazy to search te internet to order them online, I decided to make my own labels.

It took some dabbling in Corel Draw (similar to Adobe Illustrator) to make an A4 sheet (almost same size as Letter size) with 2 x 9 different labels. Beside using black and red, I also made a blue and green version.
Some I printed on a sticker sheet, the green version was printed on a creme paper.

I thought it would be fun to share these label with you. You can download them in one zipped file from 4Shared.com. This is the download link:

LabelsJournal.zip

You are free to print as many as you like. But please do not redistribute them or claim them as your own. Thanks! Love to hear what you will be doing with these labels. Have fun!

Little Guide Book: Anytime, Anything

2011-06-21T20:00:00.016+02:00

Another spread that I made last week in my Little Guide Book. This idea, the title, came up when last week something happened which I did not expected. I was glad with the change that it caused, Up untill then I felt that everything was going in the same direction, but now some things seem to be heading into a different and better direction.

As usual I used chipboard letters to trace the title and stamped the rest of it. Journaling was written with the Tria Markers and Portfolio crayons were used to colour the edges of the pages.
It turns out that in this book, it is not so much about art after all. It is the words that count. I love to go through this book and read what I have written so far, all these little guiding words and phrases begin to mean a lot to me. Comforting, encouraging and always uplifting. This is definitly a different kind of art journal that I have ever made.

There are still 4 empty spreads left. In the beginning I was so eager with filling the pages, now I have the feeling that I should be a bit selective about what I want to put into these last precious pages. :)

Little Guide Book: Speak Up

2011-06-19T19:00:00.003+02:00

The Little Guide Book still has some empty spreads left. I would like to fill the book and start working on the cover. Complete the book, complete this project and enjoy the content. But on the other end, I don't want to rush and put things in the book I might regret later, or things that are not so real and authentic at this moment in my life. I love the sincerity of this book, it is becoming more valueable with every spread that I am making. Not just for this year, but probably for many years to come.
So I need to be more patient and wait to see what comes up and inspires me to fill these last pages.

This spread is about me daring to speak up, letting my voice be heard. Stop hiding in this little corner of life and silencing myself.
There is no need to keep up the silence. I do have a voice. I do have the right to speak up and defend myself. And it is never too late to start.

How Many Colours Do You Need?

2011-06-18T20:00:00.014+02:00

Like I wrote in my previous post, a change of the weather makes me change the art medium I am working (read doodling) with. So with some pretty good weather here in Holland, I took out my watercolour box and the tins with the watercolour crayons and watercolour pencils as well.

The watercolour box is wonderful, but the colours are so sensible and serious. And with the sun out, you really want sunny and different colours to work with. I got quickly bored with the lack of reds in the watercolour box, so I grabbed the crayons which needed a bit of sharpening first.
With a pencil sharpener I started with some fun red colours and when the shavings fell on my table, I realised that it would be a pity to just throw them away.

So I took out an empty plastic palette and collected the shavings. I added a few drops of water and let it mix together.
My intention was to let the 'paint' dry up in the pallette and use it like the watercolour box: just brush some water over it and you can paint away. This way, the colours of the crayons would be as easy to use as the watercolours in the box - which means: loads of different colours!

Always available, easy to store, easy to use. Just my kind of thing.

What I did learn was that you only have to use one single tiny drop. It took several days for the shavings to dry up in the pallete!

Watercolour crayons are a bit waxy. The medium that binds the pigment together is different than the one that is used in watercolour pans (arabic gum).This would explain the drying time in the palette. I did not notice a different drying time when actually painting on paper from this self made pallette.

Inspired by all these reds, pinks and purples I thought it would be nice to make tags with all the colours that I have to take with me to an art store to compare colours.
The funny part was, that when I was making these tags, that I discovered that I really had no need to go to the art store anymore now, I have way too many colours now...

What a pity! No art-store-visit-excuse anymore!
Well, maybe I can use that time to use all those colours instead!

Change of Season - Change of (he)Art?

2011-06-13T12:00:00.021+02:00

I read about the GPP Street Team on TJ's blog at Tales from Studio Mailbox. Michelle Ward sets out a challenge every month on her blog http://michelleward.typepad.com/how_cool_is_that/ and invites everyone to play along. I hopped over last week and found the latest challenge: Seasonal Wardrobe.

And this is the question:
When seasons change and you change your wardrobe, do you also change your creative habits?

Oh yes I do! Ever since the warm and bright days of May, I want to go outside and just soak up every ray of sunlight that there is. But on the other hand, I want to paint and work in my books as well.
So my wish is to take out a sketchbook and go outside and just do some doodling, not even serious artwork. Just playing.

And there is a change in using materials. I am a of acrylic-paint-kind-of-girl But one thing that does not go well with warmth and sun, is acrylic paints.
It quickly forms a skin first and then start to dry everything under it. It is frustrating to work with it outside and I tend to throw away too much paint.

So, when the sun comes out I like to dig up the water colours again. And to be honest, watercolours are just not really something for me. I have the feeling that I can't express myself that well with these soft transparant colours. And still, every year when summer approaches I think that this summer is the year that I really learn to use them properly.

And, I feel more like doodling and doing small and simple things, like sketching in a small book. Or working on loose pages.

And instead of spending lots of time behind the computer, I just take notebooks everywhere and write out new ideas that come up. The change of seasons certainly brings me more inspiration.
I even started to change the appearance of my blog since spring arrived. I changed the black background to a fresh white, posted bigger images (just for a while) and recently changed te font too. And I am full of ideas to make more changes.

So I guess that my 'Seasonal Wardrobe' is a change of working in medium, a lighter and brighter way of working, and getting too much ideas that I really have to write down in notebooks!

And how about you? Do you change just the clothes that you wear? Or do you change the way you work, or the colours that you work with?

Overview of Glue Art Journal

2011-06-11T16:18:00.000+02:00

I was cleaning up some stuff and came across this little art journal that I made over a year ago. It is only one single signature and sewn it together with a pamphlet stitch.
The cover was sewn in together with the pages, and I used a heavy watercolour paper for this.

This journal is a bit different than the others that I made. Except for one page, I stuck to just scraps of paper and some journaling. In Holland we have this magazine Flow which has lots of eyecandy, and I just tore of part of pages to glue into the journal. I also used images from Happinez as 'focal' images.
All I had to do then, was to add my journaling. I prefer to use the old Pantone Tria Markers for that.

So I only used paper, glue and markers. Not my normal way of working. It felt restricted in some way because I could only use the scraps of paper and stayed away from my favorite gesso and acrylic paints! OK, I cheated by painting the covers with watered down acrylics - it is hard to kick a habit. :-)
I am not sure if I like to make another book like this. Though I might do it again, just to challenge myself a bit!

Instead of putting the pictures on the blog, I decided that I needed a video. I used my photographs and compiled these in the video. I am still working out how to work with the software. Especially setting the size and exporting it to the right file format is something I have not found out yet. Trying to convert it to a YouTube video made the software crash. Vimeo made it all easier though!

Little Guide Book: Thoughts

2011-06-06T12:00:00.002+02:00

The mind is so powerful and creative. Thoughts will come and go. Too bad that often the most negative thoughts hang around much longer than the positive and uplifting kind of thoughts. And the longer they wander around in our mind, the more real they become.
And the question is: how real are these thoughts? Are they really true? Or are they made up?

It has been several months ago that I made this spread, I think it was back in February or so . This piece of advice was inspired by a YouTube video that I watched from Tolle Eckhart. It is funny since there is something about this man, how wise he is though, which annoys me immensly! But this is one lesson I would like to be reminded of.

Watered down acrylics were used for the background, which give it allmost a water colour look. I added a row of cut out circles at the bottom of the spread. Used an ink pad to define the borders of the pages. With chip board letters I laid out my main title and used Tria Markers to trace and colour them.
I stamped the other text on a strip of painted scrappaper. Gesso was rubbed along the edges of the picture from a magazine and my own journaling on the page was written with the fine point of a Tria Marker.

Appreciate the Little Things in Life

2011-06-05T12:00:00.003+02:00

I have no idea where this flower came from. I discovered it a few years ago back in the darker part of the garden. Since then it seeded itself along the shed to the doors of the shed. And despite me opening that door to get my bicycleout almost every day, it still keeps on flowering and seeding more little plants.

Mother Nature blessing me with little yellow poppies. Strong poppies. The one that comes back again and again each year despite the bad spot where it has to live.
A small miracle in my back yard.

Little Guide Book: Forward

2011-06-04T12:00:00.001+02:00

Looking back in the past is a good way to learn from your mistakes. The problem is that if you keep looking back, chances are that you are tripping over your feet while walking away from that past.
I guess the solution is to stand still, glance backwards, take the time to evaluate what you have done and where is has brought you, and turn back to the future. The past is history and you can't change a bit about it anymore.

This spread is made in my Little Guide Book. An art journal with gentle and kind reminders of advice that I wrote for myself.
I still got 6 spreads that are empty. Only when I have filled these pages, I will finish the covers.

What piece of advice would you give to yourself? Or what kind of advice have you been given that you carry around with you?

Little Guide Book: Dream

2011-06-02T12:04:00.002+02:00

More from the pages of the Little Guide Book. This spread is about dreams. The dreams you make up while you are awake.
In the past so many dreams have been shattered into pieces. To be honest: to many. I guess it is time to start making up dreams again. Fun, colourful and happy dreams.

The background is painted with watered down acrylics. Decorations are handdrawn with Tria Markers from Letraset and the word Dream has been filled with these markers as well.
Some of the text has been stamped on strips and glued in. Gesso was used to blend the pictures from magazines with the backgrounds.

Bold and Loud

2011-05-25T16:00:00.001+02:00

This clementis is flowering out loud in the garden. Not one ounce of modesty, absolutely not. The colours are bright, the flower is large and the stripes are so bold.
Everytime I see them, I need to smile!

Little Guide Book: Remember Your Strength

2011-05-23T16:00:00.007+02:00

Something to remember: all the things - great, small and even smaller - that I have achieved in my life. Just by not giving up, using my strength an determination to keep on going. Although I can see my weaknesses, I can also see the strength that I have developed during the past years. I think it is good to stand still so now and then, and remember my own power.

Little Guide Book: Nourish

2011-05-21T15:00:00.009+02:00

Sometimes you need to take the time to nourish your soul. To fill it up with light, ideas, inspiration, peace and space.

Little Guide Book: Reconnect

2011-05-19T15:34:00.001+02:00

Reconnect: the word says it all. Reconnect with oneself, with nature, with people, with the world.

Little Guide Book: Express

2011-05-13T07:00:00.002+02:00

A great reminder: go ahead girl, express yourself freely. Something I have to get used to after all these years of carefully weighing my words and considering them before saying something.

Little Guide Book: Shine

2011-05-11T07:44:00.001+02:00

Another spread in The Little Guide Book, a reminder to stand still and see what - despite all the rough years - I did accomplish in my life despite everything. There are no medals, no awards and no papers to remember these achievements. And I am way too modest to talk about it. I have to learn to let it all shine instead of hiding it all away.

This artjournal has good drawing paper, the pages were coloured with watery acrylic paint washes in soft colours. Gesso has been lightly brushed over the picture and page - smeared with fingers as well.
The big letter text has been traced from chipboard letters, small text has been stamped. Journaling text written with a thin marker (the old Tria Markers). The edges of the spread has been inked with a brown stamppad.

Question: Where Do Cats Come From?

2011-05-05T16:06:00.000+02:00

So I finally understand where cats come from: they just grow in pots. And here is a snapshot from Pico (the dark, moody and black cat) proving this theory of mine. :-)

Have a nice day!

Art Journal Becomes a Personal Guidebook for 2011

2011-05-02T11:47:00.002+02:00

My little art journal is starting to become a little personal guide book with kind reminders for myself. This spread was all about Compassion.

To me, it is so much easier to feel compassion towards others, even people I have never met, then to allow myself some compassion.

I expect from myself that I have to bounce back immediately after each adversity, I am very critical about the things that I have done and often blame myself when things are not going the way they should be.
Strange, because that is not the way I feel about other people. I experience patience, compassion, understanding and - as long as I am not driving :-) - I am not that crital at all about others.

So this spread is a reminder for me to allow myself more compassion to myself, the same way I feel towards my family, friends and even strangers.

Interrupted by Spring

2011-04-23T15:24:00.000+02:00

Personally, I think Spring is the most positive season. After the long, grey and dark winter comes Spring and offers us hope and let nature become alive again.
The sun intensifies and the light gets brighter, nature start showing off her power and everywhere you feel the sense of rebirth.

I love to watch the tiny buds that start to grow and then burst open to unfold new leaves. It feels like Spring is opening up and showing the good and beautiful things in life.
So I really love Spring.

And with all the magic and wonder around me, I tend to go outside, away from the computer and watch all the miracles unfolding in my own backyard. Seems that Spring is getting all my attention and I forget to post the dozens of pictures that I took to post here on my blog.
So I apoligise for my absence, Springtime is my excuse, that is, if you need an excuse.

Here are more pages of the little art journal that I used to choose my One Little Word for 2011. The word Soul had then already been chosen, but I just loved the way of making a page about an inspirational word.
In a way, this art journal is becoming a kind of personal Little Guide Book.

Learn to Focus

2011-03-25T10:47:00.003+01:00

My art journal had brought me the word of 2011 for me: Soul. But I did not want to stop here. It was so relaxing to work these pages in this simple style that developed throughout the book. The use of those gentle words and my own thoughts in journaling kept me coming back to this journal and adding more words and ideas to guide me through this year of transition.

So for this spread I had chosen the word Focus...

Life can be so interesting, if you open your eyes, there is so much going on right now. The internet is an enormous source of inspiration - and it brings forth so many new ideas to develop and experiment with - that sometimes it can make me restless. I want to try this, I want to try that, of and if I do this...
All these ideas that trail off from one to another, it just keeps on going and can cause some turmoil inside of me.

I try to deal with this (fun) turmoil by scribbling ideas on pieces of paper and making lists of things that I want to do. Thinking that by writing them down, it will ease my mind and calm me down. But I am so open for new and inspiring ideas, so quickly diverted, that it really needs quite some effort to streamline my thoughts.

This page was made to remind me that it is about time that I learn to focus. That I need to set my priorities, focus and a few good things and start working from there.
It would help me to give more attention to the things that really matter - life wise and art wise.

But I think that I need to practise it first. Little baby steps, tiny steps...

Forgive Lead to the Choice of my Word for 2011

2011-02-13T14:00:00.002+01:00

This word was not on top of my list; Forgive. But after making the spread with Heart, I guess I wanted to go further in this direction. Forgive. It is a pretty big word and holds a lot of meaning.

When I thought about it, what crossed my mind first was the question if I would be able to forgive myself for all the mistakes that I made in the past.
Especially since I ended up in a situation in my life where I really did not want to be. And I understood that I had been ignoring a lot of signs, moments and opportunities. Someone told me that I was very judgmental towards myself.

She was right. And so the subtitle for this spread came up: don't beat yourself up. Forgive yourself. You have tried with all the right intentions.

When I was working with these kind words, I felt that the word for 2011 would be Soul. Taking care of my inner feelings, taking care of my spirit, listening to my heart, allowing time to heal old wounds. Being kind to myself and forgiving myself. Soul would be the word that held all these kind of actions, feelings and intentions.

So Soul is my One Little Word for 2011.

I also felt that making spreads about these uplifting words felt good to me. So I did not stop here, I would use these inspiring words to make my art journal a kind of guide book for 2011.
No personal commandments, but soft and kind guides to remind me what I needed to do for myself in these changing times.

The spreads I made became more simpler than I ever worked. Just an inspiring image, a word, a small sentence, some journaling from the heart and a little border.

Heart

2011-02-12T14:00:00.003+01:00

The word Reposition was just not working for me. I wanted to explore the word Heart. I am not a cool thinking person when it comes to decision making, but I did use my reason a lot in making choices. Always asking what is the best choice. Second or third is the question: what would you want? And when faced with such a question, I have a hard time making a choice. Figuring out what I really want is not that easy for me.

Would I be able to make decisions based on feelings, on what feels good in my heart? Is 2011 the year for me to try this?

Reposition

2011-02-11T20:00:00.003+01:00

This word surfaced in my thoughts when I was making the spread with all the words I was considering. Reposition: to put in a new position; shift.
The word was nice. But just that: nice. Not something you would like to use as a guide for the next 12 months. I just wanted to start the next spread: Heart. That said a lot about Reposition, didn't it?

One Soothing Word: Heal

2011-02-10T14:00:00.004+01:00

When I finished the spread about Soul, I was in a much kinder and softer mood. The next word I took from my list was the word "Heal".
The year 2011 could be a time to heal the wounds of 2010. There was something comforting and soft about this word that I liked.
I decided that I would work out some other words in this book before making my choice.

How about "Spirit and Soul"?

2011-02-09T21:31:00.003+01:00

Back in December, when I was looking for that One Little Word for 2011, I decided to make a spread about the words that spoke to me the most.
This was the second spread I made: Spirit and Soul - be kind. The previous spread about Choice did not feel good. I thought it would be a good word for the new year, but somehow it felt like a 'command' instead of a soft guiding word. This one was so much softer: Soul.

Still doubting, I started working on the next spread and the next word.

Finding One Little Word, How About 'Choice'?

2011-01-24T13:54:00.002+01:00

As you can read in previous posts, I was in search of one word to use in 2011 as a guide. Instead of making resolutions, or goals for the new year, I prefer to choose one word and have that in my daily life to remind me.
The first word I came up with was 'Choice'.

Somebody said to me that I should choose and commit to the choice. I am a very intuitive person and I like to go with the flow, wherever it takes me. That is a good thing, but I am open way too much for new things to happen and change directions halfway. And in the end it leads to confusion or sometimes even nowhere...
In my art journal I made this spread about 'Choice' to ponder about it. I did not decide anything yet (!) and wanted to make more spreads about other words that inspired me.

I'll show you one in the next post.

The Search for that One Little Word

2011-01-23T22:23:00.003+01:00

To clear the mind, you have to let it flow freely. So the next step for me was to write the words down that came up in my mind.
On this spread, I wrote them, printed them, stamped them.

Every word that I came up with, seemed to be a good word. Something that I could use in this new year, in this new life of mine.
Oh boy, there are way too many words. And I keep finding new ones. I needed a way to make the selection easier!
I wanted to 'work' with a word. Make at least one simple spread and see what was happening while I worked at the spread.
Time to experiment, play and feel. I always like to find a reason to mess around with paint and glue, images and letters.

Another New Word

2011-01-20T18:23:00.002+01:00

Back in December, I was aware that the new year was approaching soon. I had to find another new word for 2011 that would guide me throughout 2011.

Since the word for 2010 had turned out to be so powerful, I decided that I should take great care in finding a new word that would guide me through 2011.
I took my art journal and started this spread, which turned out to be a big question mark. Decision making is definitly not my greatest asset. Working out my feelings on paper in paint, markers and pencils helps at least organise my thoughts and make them real.

This spread is simply about the search for that one Little Word.

One Little Word for One Year

2011-01-18T11:49:00.002+01:00

Instead of making resolutions for a the new year of 2010, I started with just one little word. Just one word that would be with me during the year and that would be my intention, my guide, my direction..

The word I had chosen for 2010 was CHANGE. This was something I desperately needed. My life was completely stuck and I noticed that with the New Year 2010, I stood at the same place in life as in 2009, which was almost the same as 2008. Can't remember how 2007 was, but it must have been pretty much the same as well.
So CHANGE seemed to be the right word for me in 2010.

And it was.

That little word changed my life in a way that I could never have expected. It did not happen in an easy way, absolutely not. It happened the tough way.
My marriage of over more than a quarter of a century - yeah, that long - dissolved in a divorce. Hard, but it was the only solution to end years of a very unhappy life. There were just no repairs possible any other way, I tried. I tried for too long..
Along with that, my weight dropped 3 dress sizes as well - which was a very welcome change! And for the very first time in my life, I started to live on my own.

These were the most apparent changes. But underneath the surface, more subtle changes happened, just because I allowed them to happen.

It has not been an easy year. I could honestly say that this was the hardest year of my life. But my life turned around when I opened myself up for change.

The power of one little word.

And now with 2011, it is about time that I find another word for the year to think about, meditate upon and dream about.I started thinking about it some weeks ago. There were several words that came to me and which appealed to me in different ways.

Since I felt that the influence of CHANGE was pretty strong in 2011, I feel that I need to be careful in my selection of the word for 2011. And the best way for me to ponder about things and work through them, is expressing them in an art journal. So I took out an empty sketchbook and started this first spread, a looking back at 2010.

One little word.

Just a Pretty Picture!

2011-01-16T19:45:00.001+01:00

Just a pretty picture of a tulip, way past it's date, but still looking good.

A Beautiful Mess

2010-12-12T22:30:00.002+01:00

Creativity needs to flow -and if it doesn't, you will have to get it moving.
The book: Mess, The Manual of Accidents and Mistakes from Kari Smith was for me the urge to get something going. And trying to loose my sense of perfectionism. The title really says it all!

On this page an old German vintage picture of a beach was meant to be altered. Just a tiny bit. The assignment was to erase something. Boy, did I erase something! I erased almost everything. The picture was full of people in the see, little houses on the beach, big buildings in the sea. Not a beach that I would like to be. So I started to erase. And kept erasing. The only things left are the beach, sea, sky, dunes and those two figures in the foreground. A little bit of gesso and watercolor crayons did the magic.

One of my favorite assignments was on this page. Take a lot of little paper strips, add glue to the page, drop the paper strips in the wet glue from a distance.
Simple and messy. Just what I needed.

First I did one side of the spread with cut paper strips. Then I used the little circles from my puncher for the other side of the spread.
This simple act brings back childhood feelings of pleasure, fun and wonder. And the more mess you create, the better you will feel. Well, that is the way it works for me... :-)

This book is a relief to work in. You can do a scribble for 10 seconds, or take some more time for other assignments. Don't want to play with paints? Choose another spread and just find an assignment that you like. No need to start at page 1 and advance to the next page!

Want to get rid of a creativity block too? You can find the book here:
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781846144479/Mess
This is my favorite online bookstore because I don't have to worry about the shipping costs and/or order costs. Simple because you only pay for the books that you order - they have worldwide free shipping and no order costs.
Do you also like to play this way?

Be Happy

2010-11-09T19:40:00.006+01:00

Some good advice, captured on video.

To view the complete video, click this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&hl=en&v=GisHH2NXrYY&gl=US

Mess...

2010-10-17T20:08:00.000+02:00

Sometimes, you just need to let go of everything nice and beautiful and create a mess before you are able to create at all!
That was my idea when I lost my mojo and was unable to express any creativity. I came across the book "Mess" by Keri Smith and ordered it from the Bookdepository.
The idea behind the book is that you are not only allowed, but encourage d to make a mess of the book itself.

I started going to the pages and found this assignment: Fill in this 5 inch square by using all of the colours you have on hand.
That was an easy one! I just had taken out a tin with loads of pencils and started doodling in colour! The workspace became a beautiful mess as well. :-)

More pages from The Little Red Book (part 6)

2010-03-28T16:34:00.001+02:00

Working in a little book definitely has its advantages! Paint seems to dry quicker and the page is filled up quite easily with images, collage papers and stamps. But what I do like most of working in this little book is the freedom of expressing myself.

Normally I work in an altered book with a theme and want to express all kind of related thoughts and ideas about the theme in that one book. Sometimes that takes a bit of thinking and planning. In this Little Red Book there is no story line, no common theme. One page does not have to match the other page. I do not work in one style throughout the book. I just take each page as it comes and do whatever fits my mood. Don't you just love this kind of freedom? Well, I do!

A Little Red Book (part 5)

2010-03-23T22:34:00.001+01:00

Finally Spring has arrived - temperatures are rising and nature is waking up. The weeds in the garden take advantage of my waking up way too slowly from my winter sleep, and they start thriving already. The birds eagerly wait every morning for me to feed them. They have important things to do, gathering materials for their new nests.

The doves are courting, making moves with their heads, trying to please their partner. Swans and geese are flying over in pairs, falling in love the way only they can do. Buds from plants are growing and starting to change to the brightest green, ready to burst open. In short: life is starting up again.

Everything moves so quickly. Time seems so precious in spring and is moving forward quickly. It's hard to keep up and I feel the need to hasten my pace or I will fall behind. Luckily I have this art journal to express my thoughts and feelings - a way of capturing time and catch phrases before they are erased by the hectics of this beautiful month.

An Invitation to Join a Mother's Day Mail Art Project

2010-03-09T13:51:00.000+01:00

What do you get when you move an American artist to Europe? Not just Europe like 'chic Paris' or 'fashionable Milan', 'ancient Rome' or even 'wild and modern Amsterdam' but to just a small city in Germany? Well, with a bit of luck you might end up with a fun and expressive artist like TJ!

I met TJ in the ABEurope group and ever since she discovered blogging, she has been sharing all her fun, succesful (been published, been on a London show) and not so successful stories (like making hundreds of inchies which should have been square but weren't - inventing the new word ninchies - meaning non-inchies) with us. And I should not forget to mention her Pretzel obsession - that quirky German influence on her art.

Anyway, TJ has been asked to do a window display in a local store for Mother's Day. Since Mail Art is one of her specialities, she came up with the idea of stringing a collection of postcards from all over the world across the shop windows. Which means she needs loads of mail art and is inviting everyone to submit a handmade postcard themed 'Mother".

The only rule is that the cards need to be handmade (any size will do) and arrive through the post like any other regular postcard. Also leave some room at the top of the card, because holes will be punched to weave a ribbon through. You can send the card anonymously or with a special message.

This is not a swap, where you will receive mail art in return, but pictures of the display will be posted on TJ's blog and you'll enjoy the gratification of participating in an international art project - and helping out an artist with way too many fun ideas as well!

This is the link to TJ's blog with all the information you will need, in this post you will also find the snail mail address to send your card to:

http://studiomailbox.typepad.com/tales_from_studio_mailbox/2010/02/call-for-mothers-day-mail-art.html

The deadline to receive cards is Friday April 9 (2010). Generally speaking, postcards from the US can take a week to 9 days to be delivered, so please keep that in mind!

Want to do something different? Want to have a chance at fame (well, at least in Germany)? Want to impress the Germans with your art? Want to join an international art project? Then just jump in and get going!

A Little Red Book (part 4)

2010-03-04T13:30:00.001+01:00

More pages from the little Red Book, and these are not even the last ones! This little book is a joy to work in. I like the small pages and the idea that you do not need much time to finish a page.

Normally I like to work with a cohesive spread, but in this book I have let go most of the 'rules' (as if there were any, überhaupt) and elements I like to work with.

The only thing that is consistent throughout the book are the use of words.But even the words on the pages don't make up the complete story.

Some stories have no start and no ending - you just plunge into it and follow along. Or better still: make up your own story and fill in the blanks with your own imagination.

A Little Red Book (part 3)

2010-02-27T17:36:00.001+01:00

Two more pages from the little Red Book that I use like an art journal. I made the pages completely random, and kept it quite simple. Often it is no more than one sentence and some colour.

It is nice to work without overthinking the page. Normally I don't start with an idea of how the page will end, in this little book the words are often more important. And I tend to work quickly here, which is very nice for a change! Sometimes I come back to a page and don't like it at all. Then out comes the gesso and paint and I just start over again. Kind of free-style journaling!

The not so Nice and Neat part

2010-02-25T12:23:00.000+01:00

For the ABEurope Group I taped 2 movies about different techniques I like to use. One of the members commented on my box of water soluble crayons: neatly organised and not one of them was broken. She uploaded a picture of her broken crayons to the group's website. To give her, and the other member who watched the video, a real and honest view of my workspace, I took this picture. My box of crayons was definitly Nice and Neat, but that is just to counter balance the Not So Nice And Neat Worktable. LOL!

The video is zoomed in on a part of my table which I clear before taping. To make a good impression. Well, so far for this good impression. This is the real deal, girl!

A Little Red Book (part 2)

2010-02-22T19:23:00.000+01:00

As promised, a few more pages from the Little Red Book, a small altered art journal. In this little book I work occasionally, pages are made in random order. Because of the size I like to work quick, don't overthink and just paint, stamp and collage my thoughts and ideas.

The butterfly effect: when one butterfly moves his wings, the air is set in motion and in the end would be able to cause a storm somewhere else on earth. This theory was stated by Edward Lorenz in 1961. I am not sure that butterflies can do that - the air that we move would be causing storms everywhere on the earth!
I do believe though that small acts, can change the world we live in. For better or for worse...

Things change when you say 'yes' instead of 'no'. When you do one thing, instead of the opposite.
I may doubt the theory, but understand that one little thing can change everything.

Winner of the One World One Heart Blog Give Away

2010-02-16T12:12:00.000+01:00

There were 269 comments left on my blog for the post of the Give Away for the One World One Heart action. I had the Random Generator at Random.org calculate a winner for the two little books. The number that was generated was 146. Trying to count down the list, the number was matched with Marie S. She posted this:

Congratulations Marie! I will email you (found the email address already) and ask you for your snail mail address. Thanks to all the bloggers that participated in this event! Can you believe that over a thousand bloggers joined in? Wow, very impressive!

The Kuler Game of Colours

2010-02-07T19:22:00.001+01:00

I can't believe that many creatives don't know this colourful website yet! I am talking about the Kuler website.
In case you want to jump over right away, here is the link:
http://kuler.adobe.com
Since mentioning the website in one of my earlier posts ( http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2010/01/colour-combinations-from-photographs.html ) I received a few questions about how the site works.

First of all, it is free for anyone to use: no restrictions, no hidden costs, no nagging for contributions! This is a website for creative people where you can browse colour combinations, save the ones you like, create combinations according to the colour wheel rules, or, and this is the best part: create colour combinations from your own pictures (stored on your PC) or from the best photographs on Flickr.
I think I have your attention now!

To get an idea of how the website works, this video will show you some of the many possibilities:

To help you understand how you can bring the Kuler colours into your own Photoshop or Photoshop Elements program, I have written a short guide. You can download this guide in PDF format for free from this link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/193547437/67e3d493/Kuler_to_Photoshop.html

In this guide I also refer to the template that I made as a sort of inspiration reminder. It looks like this when you fill it up with the colours from the Kuler site:

The photograph is the image that I used on the Kuler site to extract a colour combintaion from. It is a photograph of hand dyed yarn from Scotland that I weaved in a little swatch. I loved these warm colours so much and wondered which colours would be found by Kuler.

If you want to make inspiration cards like this, you can download my template for free from this link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/193369666/22510360/5SwatchTempEmpty.html
It is a psd file (photoshop file) that you can open in Photoshop (Elements) and fill with the colours and pictures that you have found with Kuler.

If you want to save the colour combinations, you will have to sign up - again, for free. If you already have an Adobe ID, use this login name and password. You can browse the collection of colour combinations and save them in your own account. There are so many of them, that you will never find them again a few days later.

Here is the one I made today from a picture of three little books that I made for a swap.
OK, don't say that I did not warn you, but believe me, Kuler is highly addictive... So don't blame me for any burnt dinners, forgotten tasks, and missing kids! :D

One World One Heart

2010-01-25T17:08:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago I read about this event: One World, One Heart. An effort to try to connect bloggers from all around the world. And make some friends along the way as well.

One of the requirements to enter the event is to offer a blog giveaway, preferably handmade. So I found these 2 little books I made a while ago and since they are so small and wonderful - and handmade - I thought that they would appeal to a lot of people.

The books are very small! The size is 10.5 by 11 centimeters. One cover has only book linen, the other one is also decorated with book paper printed with the autographs of famous artists of the past. The books are filled with strong pastepapers which I also made, every page is unique. The backside of each paper has been lightly washed with acrylic paint. You can draw, collage, paint (acrylics), stamp and journal in these little books.

The only thing you have to do to get a chance to win these little books, is to leave a comment on this entry of this blog. Don't forget to leave your name and blog address or your email address.

If you leave your email address, be sensible and write it down in separate words. Don't use the @ sign so that bots can't find your address and use it for spam! So instead of me@gmail.com, use: me at gmail dot com.

The event will run until February 15th, and I will use a random generator to draw the winner. The winner will be announced on this blog, and I will contact you. Either by visiting your blog and commenting on your last entry, or using your email address.
This little pair of books will then be sent to you - worldwide - wherever you live. So join in the fun and leave a comment!

A Little Red Book (part 1)

2010-01-24T16:47:00.000+01:00

I can't resist wired little books - they are just begging to be altered, aren't they? This one was given out as a free gift by the post office. The papers were thin, but I glued several together so that they were thick and would not wrinkle.

Then I started painting the pages with the last paint on the palette left over from other projects. To be honest, I had no clue in what direction I wanted to go with this little book. Then I started to work on the cover, and wrote a message in the layer of gesso that I laid down first. From that moment on I knew that this was going to be a kind of journaling altered book.

I liked the idea of adding text to a page with a personal meaning to me, but not obvious for the reader. Leaving the reader the freedom to add his own meaning and interpertation to the page, the words and the images. While altering other books, I sometimes cut out a line of text. Something that triggered a memory, or a wise saying.

Or I tried finding poetry in a piece of torn text: found poetry. Like in this page (above) which I tore from an old book about a woman growing up in the previous century. The lines say:

finally

I would

meet
beneath an umbrella
the whole world

A little poem made up from almost one sentence alone. I like simplicity...

And sometimes I started with just glueing in images that I altered a bit and as serendipity occurred, within a day or so I would find a line of text that would just fit in.
Easy and simple. Not too much thinking. That is how I like it.

Trail of Inspiration

2010-01-21T20:22:00.000+01:00

This week I was challenged in a class on Inspiration to draw inspiration from a Beatrix Potter image. I did not grow up with these drawings, so the stories are not familiar to me. What struck me the most was the detailing and the amount of work in these paintings.

My first thought was: water colours (the paint, you know) and soft tones. It had been a while since I used water colour paints and I wanted to get started again with them! Even though I am not an experienced painter and certainly don't apply these classic rules, like you cannot use white opaque paint in a water colour...!

The mice in the drawing made me think of something I did years ago: making finger prints (with ink or paint on paper) and drawing a long tail and ears, eyes, add some whiskers, and there you have it: a little mouse!
With an inkpad I tried to make the prints - felt a bit like a criminal - but the ink did not transfer very well. So after three attempts - they looked more like cats than mice anyway - I stopped.

Then came the thought: I have water colour brushes in Photoshop, how can I use these in combination with photographs? I started stamping the marks of the brush down in Photoshop. Soon it resembled a sort of 'photo mask' and I put a picture of my daughter's dog in it.
What a coincidence: I took the picture the day the dog learned to swim in the river - again that water connection!

The next idea was developed when I came across the artwork of Stephanie Levy. She uses black to make line art illustrations of interiors and colours them in with paint. She then adds patterened papers as a simple collage. Very clean and modern.

This reminded me of the spread I did in Julie's Altered Book about Historical colours. For her book I made a drawing of a French antique chair and outlined it in markers in a suitable colour.
So some decorating magazines came out and I started to trace lamps and chairs. Using coloured or black thin markers to outline them, filling in the colours with water colour paint.

I can understand why Stephanie likes to make this kind of work, it is fun and quick to work with. And I would love to experiment with pictures of my own interior! Well, only the nice pieces of course. On the other hand, I can just leave out the cracks and the dust bunnies!

The water colour inspiration trail did not come to an end yet. The next idea that turned up was painting swatches with water colour and tearing them in simple shapes, like petals, to use in collages or turn them into an illustration. Maybe have these tall childlike flowers reaching out to the sun? (I must be longing for spring).
Or I could use tissue paper and paint those - that would crumple up the paper and make a nice texture too.

So this is just an example of how one image can trigger the imagination and inspiration, if you just try looking behind the image itself. Even when that image has no special meaning to you.
I think that concentrating on inspiration these last few weeks made me so much more aware of how the things I encounter in everyday life can trigger so many new ideas.
And all I need now is the time to try them all out!

Rainbow Colours

2010-01-11T20:46:00.002+01:00

I was looking for different objects around the house to photograph. The idea was to use objects in the colours of the rainbow. I did not have to look far: high up on the last shelf were some boxes with embridery floss that I have there for years - the dust on the lid poved it.
The colours in one of these boxes were somehow ordered in a rainbow sort of way: nice picture!

Then I selected some of thethreads and took seperate pictures, then placed them in one image. Maybe I should make a round shape with them? It will resemble a rainbow even better then.

Colour Combinations from Photographs

2010-01-08T21:05:00.003+01:00

At the moment I am using photographs literally as inspiration for colour combinations. One of the easiest ways to do that is with the Kuler website:

http://kuler.adobe.com/

You can let the website do it for you, but to be honest, I'd rather help the software to adjust it to the colours I like.

After working with these images of winter, I needed pictures with warmer colours:

Can you resist colours like this? Not me!
And a landscape photograph of Scotland in the autumn gave these colours to play with:

It is a highly addictive game to find these colours in your own photographs. But it is inspiring, so what other excuse do you need?

Happy New Year!

2010-01-03T14:46:00.000+01:00

Wishing you all a very happy New Year filled with the good things of life!

Days of September (part 5)

2009-12-18T20:12:00.003+01:00

Here are the last pictures of the pages of my 'September Journal' that I made following an online class at Shimelle.com. Everyday we were sent a prompt to think about and to record it with photographs and text.
After the first two prompts or so, I just noted down what happened that day, or captured a moment and made a page about it. I used to be such a good student when I went to school, but nowadays I might be the teacher's nightmare. Always going astray. And often getting lost. Well, the latter did not happen in this project.

This page is about the day Yoga classes started again. It seems so simple: breathe in, breathe out. Move slowly and concentrate.
Concentrate. Don't think about other things. Forget about the ToDo list. Better still, don't think at all. And that is hard. My brain does not like to be shut up. It loves to wonder off. And off. Again. It is December now and I think I am able to learn this. Give me another year or two!

We hate traffic jams, hubby and I. They are just plain boring. And annoying. So we kind of make it a sport to avoid them and use the smaller country roads to get back home. Hubby has a thing with ferries. And he knows most of them on the Rhine, Lek and Maas river. So here in land which is divided by many rivers, the solution is to use a small ferry instead a large bridge on the highway.
And as a bonus you get to step out of the car for a minute or two and enjoy the fresh air!

This is a page about just a horrible day. There is not much to tell about it. These kind of days are the days you just want to avoid. Way too stressfull. Too bad you can't avoid these awful days, they are just as much part of life as the happy ones!

Another way of relaxation for me is sewing by hand. Doing a bit of patchwork, or in this month, making a quilt. The soft texture of the cloth, the movement of the needle putting it all together. There is something magical about it. Or maybe it is not magical, but so simple, easy and relaxing. After all these years I am still trying to figure this out!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

2009-12-17T15:02:00.000+01:00

Yesterday the temperature dropped below zero (Celsius) and the cyclamen and winter pansies dropped their colourful heads.
This morning we woke up in a true Winter Wonder land with snow everywhere! And it doesn't even melt. Can you believe that? Melting snow is what we normally have here in the Netherlands.

So I went outside, cleaned out the bird feeding houses - the birds had quite some trouble getting to the feed, man they are sometimes fighting to get some seeds - and took some snapshots of objects covered in snow.

And the blue bistroset in front of the house (don't you love that splash of colour in winter?) seems to be totally out of place!

The garden, which is normally a big mess, looks even beautiful today! Snow covers all the flaws. And the mess... You've got to love snow!
Unless you have a perfectly manicured garden maybe?

The christmas tree is still outside and covered in snow as well. I was planning to take it inside and start looking for the boxes with the lights and ornaments. But I think I will delay the decoration for another while. No decoration can match that snow on its branches. Way too beautiful!

Days of September (part 4)

2009-12-08T20:48:00.000+01:00

More pictures of the little journal that I made during September. First I tried following the prompts of Shimelle.com, but life caught up and I decided to forget the prompts and make a page about my days.
Let's start with one of my addictions: book stores and art material stores.
I admit it - I am addicted to these stores. And when I enter, all my common sense is left by the door.

I truly need that marker, or that colour paint is exactly what I am looking for. And does one ever has enough paper? Of course not!
Books? You need books cause they make you smarter, isn't that so? And if it turn out to be a boring one, I can always alter it anyway...

Dyeing fabric yourself is a fun process: you can never predict the outcome of the results. I like that. Well, at least sometimes: not knowing where you are going. Untill I am lost, but that is a different story.
Back to the fabrics!
Patience was what I really needed when I started rinsing the fabric. You have to rinse it untill the water runs clear. Several times, after hours of rinsing, I thought the pieces of fabric were ready. But by laying them aside, they started to loose more dye. Arrrggghhh.

The Lesson I learned? I like dyeing the fabric - just not the rinsing... I don't have that kind of patience.

This day a small miracle happened. Nothing that changed the world though, but something ordinary turned this normal day into a great day. My mother said my name out loud.
I know, most mothers talk to their daughters. But this was special.
Very special.
Two weeks after the major CVA which left her even more handicapped than before, my mother knew who I was. Not just a stranger next to her bed, but her daughter.
When she said it, I realised that saying that one word meant the world to me.

Driving around in the Netherlands can sometimes be a great and boring adventure. In September lots of roadwork was going on and we sneaked to Breda using smaller roads and thinking we were so smart to duck the traffic jams.
We managed to escape two major traffic jams but in the end we drove into other (smaller though) traffic jams. It was a hot day and I was frustrated. I did not want to spend the whole day in the car.
I got a bit irritated. Especially when we were so close to the end point and drove right in another one. I looked in the rear window and saw Ashley enjoying the ride and being relaxed as one (dog) can be.
Sigh, sometimes I wish I was a dog.

I think this page needs no explanation. Under pressure: these two words say it all.

Days of September (part 3)

2009-12-03T17:55:00.002+01:00

As promised, more pictures of the little art journal that I made about my life in September. This page was about the spiders that I scared away (in other words plainly killed) when cleaning the shutters outside. I know, spiders do a good job by catching all kind of insects. But I needed to do my job too!

I don't know why I was so upset when someone said that I was a chaotic. Maybe because I do my best to organise and structure life in my family. So for this page I rescued some of my ToDo lists from the waste basket and tacked them messy on this page. As proof that I am not? Convincing myself? Anyway, every time I see that page I have to smile!

Painting class started again in September and I was eager to get some serious painting done. But starting up again after a long summer was not that easy. I started with a painting of flowers, then changed my mind, covered it in gesso and started on a bird in the sky. And changed my mind again... And to this day the painting is still not finished! :D

I enjoyed the warm and glowing days of September so much that I did not notice the changing colours untill I went out with Ashley, our dog, to one of our favorite places! Time really flies.

I captured Coco in a crazy, lazy position on the couch. She was not feeling well and I took her to the vet (miauwing all the way down there). One shot of antibiotics was needed, because Coco does not do pills!
I have tried several times before getting her to take tablets: wrapped in liver, grounded and wrapped in ham. But whatever trick I try, it always ends with me being scratched by a very determined cat to spit out tablets as soon as possible. So now instead of getting scratched by her every day, the lady gets one (expensive) shot of the vet... Well, at least I don't get caught in her nails!
Special cat food should prevent more trouble...

On this day a telephone call that seemed so unreal. My mother had a cerebrovascular accident: a severe haemorrhage in the brain. I was told that she was blind according to the doctor and her blood pressure over the top. It seemed impossible to get well and we prepared for the worse.
But against all odds she did survive! Later that day she reacted on my hands in front of her face - her (poor) sight came back. And the next day she could take her medication again because the 'swallow reflex' came back. She did not recover fully and I feel like I am loosing her bit by bit.
On this day I learned that letting go was harder than I ever thought.

Days of September (Part 2)

2009-11-15T18:19:00.000+01:00

At last, after 3 weeks my computer is back from the repairshop. Next time a fuse is blown, I will check the electric appliances in the house right away! My DH casually announced that he had blown a fuse but there was nothing to worry about.
The computer had been turned on when the fuse went down, but since it was protected by a power surge I never expected to smell something burned when I came back in my room. Sniffing like a dog I went around the outlets. The scent came from the corner where my computer stands. At that moment my heart skipped a beat. I turned on the monitor but that seemed OK. I just assumed that the computer was all right as well and that the burning smell came from the socket which DH had used.

A few hours later I turned on the computer. No way. It did not turn on. I had enough hope though that only the power unit had been burned. Since I also had problems starting up Windows Vista, I saw this as a good opportunity to have these problems fixed as well.
But one setback after the other followed. Like: power units not available for this casing, new casing needed, start problems due to bad memory chip.
To make the story short, it took 3 weeks to get the computer back.

But I was happy as a kid when I picked up the computer and gladly payed the bill. The joy did not last long. After two days the old start up problem accured again... I phoned the store and asked them to fish out the 'old' memory chip from the bin - which they did - and asked for assistance in solving this mystery.

Now the problem seems to be in my anti-virus software... You know, that piece of software you can't use without cause it protects the computer. Well, only if it works smoothly with Vista, it is. For now I try to solve this problem with the people of Kaspersky.

So here at last, are, as promised, some more pages of the journal that I made in September. Well, better late then never... :-)
Since I had extra time left when the computer was in repair, I reworked most of the pages during these past weeks. I will need to shoot new pictures to show you how they really look. So I only upload two pages today. Hopefully the rest will follow later this week. If I can keep that *#@!*&* computer running!

These pages were made when I enjoyed the last warm days of September: quilting in the sun, taking pictures of butterflies and enjoying the many birds in the garden. Life's little pleasures...

The Days of September (part 1)

2009-10-19T17:34:00.002+02:00

Last month I tried to keep up with the online class from Shimelle.com. But I ended up making most of the daily pages in October. With more free time and without the pressure it was easier to make new pages and work on the earlier pages that were 'finished'.

On a sunny day in September I managed to dye the fabric that I got as a gift. The dye solutions were made several weeks before and should have been used as soon as possible, but that did not keep me from trying weeks later.
Several pieces were tied with elastic bands, a few were hand-stitched in some fantasy forms and the rest was scrunched up before dipping them in the dye.
I learned that I made too much dye solution! There is still enough left to dye another batch of fabric.

The page about Healing was made after a visit to a massage therapist who managed to relax the tied-up muscles in my neck. The result: finally being able to sleep after weeks of interrupted nights. What a luxury!

This is the page with a picture that I took back in August, leaving the train after standing still for 2 hours while firemen and the technical service of the railway company cleaned up the train: someone had jumped in front of the train on purpose.
The idea that when the train hit the breaks so suddenly, someone lost his or her life kept me haunting for such a long time. People with plastic bags searching for the remains, checking the undercarriage with flashlights...
A few weeks after the incident I was meant to go the same route with the train. But that night I woke up around 2 a.m. and could not go back to sleep anymore. I did not travel that day.

It was not the first time that it happened - earlier this year my train was late and someone jumped before the oncoming train. We also had to wait in our train for two hours before the track was cleared and it was back then that the conductor explained about the procedures. The first priority is to find all the parts of the body...

A week after the sleepless night, I found my common sense back and boarded the train again for that same trip.

Luckily there were some very special enjoyable moments in September too. This day I was sitting in the garden, ignoring the usuable weeds and the work that had to be done.
The sun shone and I just love the sun in the autumn: warm and inviting but not so overpowering as in summer. The garden was filled with birds, bees and even butterflies enjoyed the weather.
This one probably thought I was a flower and landed on my shoulder while I was sewing a quilt. I did not move and could see him so well: his eyes, the long tongue that he rolled up. What a little miracle it was to have him near me.
Eventually he flew away, but stopped by every now and then to sit on the little table next to me to warm up his wings. It was then that I was able to take a picture of him - he was asking for it!

A New Month, a Better Month?

2009-10-10T19:54:00.001+02:00

September has not been the best month of the year for me. The weather was umbelievably wonderful and kind, and did its best to cheer me up. But most of the month felt like being in a storm of little and big life events. At one point my hubby and I looked at each other and asked the same question: What is going on?
Where is this all coming from?

Anyway, I had started the month with good intentions: Doing an online class from Shimelle.com and trying to make a small page about the things you can learn from that day. It seemed such a good way of getting myself in the habit of actually being creative every day. But boy, did I overestimate my ability.
What I learned most, is that I can't make a page every day! Sometimes I can make 3 pages on one day, but most of the time I had to push all the ideas forward (I did make notes though). And this means that up to today I have finished 17 pages, including the cover, which BTW might need some extra work, and makes me probably the slowest student of the class.
Is there an award for that?
Or maybe I should say that I just prolong the fun?

Here are the first two actual pages that I made. The other pages will get a place on this blog as well. Even though I did not follow all the prompts and ideas. In retrospect, I might have skipped all the prompts after the first week...

More photographs processed

2009-09-10T22:33:00.007+02:00

It seems that the holiday in Norfolk is my most productive holiday photograph wise! I took so many (different) photographs and still have not all images processed! I shoot always in RAW, a digital format which you could see as a digital negative that has to be processed (adjust colour, colour balance, contrast etc.) before you have the final picture that can be shown on the web or be printed out.
Creake Abbey was a wonderful place to be. I liked the tranquility of the place, these old crumbled down buildings, still standing as a testament for the people who lived here and tried to make life easier for the older people.
The abbey was built in as a home for several old men who needed care. The building was extended over 300 years till a plague killed all the inhabitants except the abbot, who was the only survivor.
How devasting this must have been. The abbey was abandent and left to fall apart.
This goes not so quick with these old buildings with those thick walls.
Lucky for us that they are still there - to enjoy them.

Since there were hardly any people visiting here, I had loads of opportunities to take pictures from all angles. This one was taken with me lying on the freshly mowed grass, a lovely experiece!
A perfect afternoon: feeling the spirit of time, beautiful structures with such a beauty, ever changing weather with gloomy skies and rays of sunlight spreading out.
How do you capture the essence of such a wonderful place?

Well, this is one of my efforts!

Altered Book: Artistic Expression

2009-09-03T22:12:00.005+02:00

This was the last book of the Altered Books Round Robin from our ABEurope (Yahoo) group that I received to work in.
Serena had chosen the theme: "Artistic Expression under Pressure"

I did not manage to get all the text into one spread, so I added another spread to finish the sentence:
Expres your inner vision - no fear - without limitations.
I just hope that the English words that I used these way were correct! Anyway, Serena is an Italian artist, so with a bit of luck she will not notice any problems with the grammar! :-)

For these spreads I tried to use much layering and different techniques, trying to get rid of some old habits and developing new ways of communicating ideas.
I have been using acrylic inks, paint, paintsticks, stencils, alphabeth stamps, spraying, hand made stamps and embellishements and drawings in pencil!
The book will be send to the US, since Serena recently moved away from Germany. (Normally we keep the Round Robins limited to Europe because of the cost and time of snail mail).

My own book "Truth, Secrets and Lies" came back homely. I thought there would be loads of pages to work in, but the book is filled with artwork from our members. Quite a treasure!

Evening at Cromer Pier

2009-07-25T23:32:00.007+02:00

While we were in Norfolk, John from the EPZ website organised a mini EPZmeet with EPZers Kathy, Vince and me with hubbie in Norwich. Not the first EPZ ers we met on our holiday - on our first sunset at the beach of Hunstanton we had also met Jules by chance!
Since we could not get enough of EPZ members, we also had a mini - mini - meet with Kathy and Vince at the Pier of Cromer the last week of the holiday.

The Pier was much smaller than I thought, but had wonderful features. I liked these old benches. The sunset was obscured by clouds, so we had hardly any colour in the sky. At home I decided that I could add my own colours to the image! I opted for these soft colours and a pinhole effect.

Before the sunset, there was enough light to just walk around and take pictures of the Pier without our tripods - the unused tripods were worth a shot as well!

And guess what? The girls were wandering around with the biggest tripods...! :-)

Peaceful Place

2009-07-19T00:27:00.005+02:00

While in Norfolk, we went out to the Broads because my hubbie wanted to photograph the mills there. During our search for these mills, we came across this little church and overgrown old graveyard.
It was late afternoon, the sun was just coming over the top of the trees which surrounded the church yard.
The white flowers of the weeds were catching the light, swinging on the light breeze. The old tombstones were scattered around the yard. Some were still standing up, others were leaning over. The stones were quite old, often covered in patterns of lychen.
I stood in the shadow of the old trees and overlooked the scene. It was such a peaceful moment, the light, the breeze and the mood of the yard. Untouched for such a long time, undisturbed for years.
Despite all the photographic rules, I took this shot into the sunlight, hoping to capture that peaceful moment.
When I look at this photograph, I still remember that feeling, the peace and the quiet.

Bird with Attitude

2009-07-11T21:10:00.003+02:00

Normally a photographer won't take a picture of a bird who has turned his back to the lens. Because without the head, the eyes, there is often not much to look at.
But this was not true for this bird. Look at him, can you see how he is walking? Like a model on a catwalk. This is a bird with attitude, I'll tell you!
I was working at this image while the radio played the song: "I am walking away from the troubles in my life" by Craig David.
The perfect title for this image.

The Hunger Book

2009-07-09T22:12:00.011+02:00

TJ, an American artist from Studiomailbox and member/moderator of the ABEurope Group made a book from brown shopping bags for the Round Robin by stitching them together.
Adding gesso and glueing food wrappers in the book to make a statement after seeing people in Berlin begging for food.

One out of 6 people in the world is hungry. Not just having a craving for food, but really hungry because they are too poor or live in a place where no food is available.

Here in the West we have lots of food to choose from, every day again. We often eat more than 3 times a day. We snack in between meals, we drive through 'drive-ins' to get our fast food even faster. In the meantime we are faced with a generation that is overeating or eating unhealthy food.

On the other side, commercial ads and fashion shows models with size 0 on the catwalk and in fashion magazines. Girls growing up are faced everyday with these images and long to look like these so-called role models. The diet market worldwide is worth billions of dollars and a market that is still growing every year.

Looks like we live in a world that's upside down...
In the spread that I made, I used a pizza box to make the super model. Behind the title, my view on the subject is written. Tags with the calory overviews (now mandatory in the Netherlands) of different foods hang from the top of the page.
Tip-ins of the boxes of different foods that I like, are added too.
And yes, I am a vegetarian. I can choose to be this because I can afford to eat every day and have a choice from different vegatarian products.

Pictures from Norfolk

2009-06-25T13:05:00.006+02:00

I haven't started yet to process all my pictures from our recent holiday to Norfolk, England. As usual I am wrapped up in paperwork which seems to reduce my creative energy by the day.
Here are a few that I managed to do.
The first one was at our first evening in Hunstanton. We went to the beach, hoping for a beautiful sunset but the clouds were hiding the setting sun. Still trying to get the most of the evening I tried several positions, but one other photographer was also on the beach and kept his place, keeping showing up in my frame. So I picked up the tripod and bag and splashed through the water past him to set up the camera again.
While passing him, the man asks: "Are you by any chance an EPZer?" Yeah, of course I am! What a coincidence to meet another photographer from the EPZ website while spending an evening on the beach! What a small place the world can be!

This shot was taken the next evening on that same beach. The wind was blowing pretty hard and the waves were quite high. Since the tide was in, it was not easy to take pictures while fiddling with the filters and in the meantime escaping the bigger waves, jumping from rock to rock, or running away.
Soon one of my boots was filled with water! No time though to do something about it since we had some colour in the sky and the light changed by the minute, so pressing the button on that camera and trying different positions and compositions was more important.
Too bad that I did not know about this 'salt spray' thing at the seaside. I managed to keep the filters dry, but did not notice that the salty air was polluting the filters anyway. So in the end most of the shots of that evening were ruined by the tiny specks of salt which were sprayed into the air...
This one had the least spray on it.

The Norfolk coast is filled with little creecks and tiny harbours. We found this wreck near one of the nature reserves. Just a little boat, left behind for years and neglected. Though I took a nice picture of the wreck with good evening light, I found that combining it with different shots and elimanating the colours the image was much stronger.
Hope to get more time to process the other pictures too!

Last Painting of the Course

2009-06-17T14:52:00.007+02:00

This month we had our last lesson of the painting class I started in January. I managed to finish this painting of exotic fish. The photograph of this painting is a bit different from the reality - I took the shot in the garden on an overcast day - which should have worked, but did not...

I used acrylics on a canvas that was primed with gesso first. The source of inspiration were some poor photographs of fish in the Burger's Zoo (Arnhem).
I took those photographs despite knowing that the use of the high ISO and the camerashake caused by the long exposure time would be of low quality. What I did not know, was that some of them would turn out to be quite mysterious and eerie - often because of the movement of the fish.
The green, blue and yellow colours in the images also added to the atmosphere.
So these pictures became the inspiration for the painting. I started with the fish in the middle, and later added the second at the left hand - just peeking around the corner.

The course will start again in September. Hope though that I am still able to do some more painting this summer. But I will surely miss the help from the artist who teaches us!

Holiday in Norfolk

2009-06-08T22:37:00.006+02:00

This year we had the luxury of going on a holiday for two weeks, instead of the ususal one week getaways.
I felt that I needed to take all my artmaterials with me, hoping that I would be able to spend time painting. But I was too restless.
Luckily, I also brought my photographic gear with me, including my macro lens. This one is kept usually at home because of the extra weight to carry around and the lack of space in my photobag.
I took the time to capture the last of the bluebells growing near the cottage we had rented - at the edge of a grand estate.
There were also some 'Columbines' growing - I like these flowers for their complicated shapes and wonderful colours. This shot is one of my favorite - I like the warm hot colours! Too bad that the weather was a bit chilly. But it provided some dramatic skies to include in the landscape photograpy, and that is always a bonus!

Altered Book: Illustrated Poems

2009-05-30T17:00:00.014+02:00

Eileen from the ABEurope Group started the book 'Illustrated Poems' for the current Round Robin. Before it arrived I was on the lookout for English poems that I liked. But there was one that I could not get out of my head.
I did not want to use it because it is such a sad poem, even though it is so powerful and written from the heart. It is the poem called: I Am, written by John Clare (1793 - 1864) while being admitted to Northampton Asylum. Certainly not the best place to write happy or light hearted poetry!
In the end I could not find another poem that I would love to use. Despite his despair, the last three lines are probably appealing to everyone at certain moments in life: safe and without any troubles.
I wrote out the poem on a harmonica folded paper and glued it to one page. On the other page I tried to transfer a digital collage. Despite using a transparancy, the image did not transfer well and was not recognisable.
So I gessoed over it, leaving the title of the poem uncovered, and added a transparancy with the collage over it using eyelets. It does not photograph very well because of the reflection of the plastic.

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am - I live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

John Clare

On YouTube you will find the poem being used with the software 'Crazy Talk' which makes it possible to move parts of a picture to make them 'talk'.

Painting Classes

2009-04-30T22:23:00.003+02:00

I gave up on New Year's resolutions a long, long time ago. But for 2009 I was serious about finally taking up painting again. Since planning time for myself is so difficult in our family, a painting class seemed the answer. This would force me to go out, away from all the other distractions at home.
The class I joined, was a group of women who had been painting together for years, but they made me feel very welcome right from the beginning. The teacher, Alexandra Steen, is also very well known around here.

Since it had been quite some time since I painted, I decided to take up an old painting that I never finished. That did not work out very well, there was a very good reason that I never finished that painting!
Still unsure about myself I thought that painting an abstract would be easy. Abstracts don't have to look like anything, don't they? Just throw some paint in strange shapes on a canvas and you have an abstract, right? Well, it seems that it is not the case, painting an interesting abstract is quite difficult actually!

So the next try was painting one of my own photographs in a different scene. A painting that I wanted to do for a long time and could not get out of my head.
It took 2 lessons and some encouragement of my art teacher to paint the little girl lost on an empty beach on the canvas.
At last a painting I felt good about! I am still looking for a good way to handle my brushstrokes and painting styles, so I am sure that I will experiment in the next few paintings. In a few years time I might paint a completely different version of this scene, but for now, I am quite happy about it.
In the meantime I started painted a fish, but am still working on that one!

Celebrating Spring

2009-03-22T17:58:00.004+01:00

At last - spring has arrived! We had a week with lots of sun, such a welcome change from the normal grey skies.
And here, just a simple picture of a tulip from the bunch which my daughter bought for me.

Aboriginal inspired paintings

2009-03-18T18:50:00.005+01:00

My sister is an expert at interior decorating on a budget. She has all the patience and persistence to find the perfect fabrics, affordable furniture, coordinate colours of fabrics and paint. And she even upholsters some of her own furniture as well!

So when the giraffe fabric finally gave up on her lounge chairs - thanks to her cat's claws - she was in the market for a new couch. Since she also sews her own curtains she felt it was time to invest in a major makeover of the living room.
Within a few weeks she had found everything she needed - except something for the wall. We were exchanging ideas over the phone about painting the wall. But then I got a call from her after she had visited an art gallery where she had seen Aboriginal paintings.

To make a long story short: I got three canvasses from her, a piece of the curtain fabric for the colours and some pictures of the paintings that she loved.
I decided not to copy the designs of the paintings, copying is just not my style, but to design different patterns. I felt that the Aboriginal paintings looked like simplified bird views of different landscapes and used that as a guide for the design.
Every coloured part of the painting has been lined with little dots - how I did that will remain a secret, well - more or less...
By using gesso, sand and loads of layering of paint, the pieces have a visible texture when you view it up close. This often makes people wonder whether it was made from leather or fabric.
Anyway, she loves her new art in the living room. And I am glad that I do not have to paint her walls, even though it would have been so much quicker...

Altered book: Historical colours

2009-03-15T19:26:00.004+01:00

Last month I received Julie's altered book from England. She had found an old book with the title: A tint book of historical colours suitable for decorative work.
The book is divided into chapters that refer to different cultures, ceramics and textiles, and their colour schemes. What also makes the book special, is the handpainted colour chips that show different colour schemes 'suitable for decorative work'.
Julie asked us not to cover the colour chips completely, so that the original part of the book still remains visible.
I chose to work in the spread with the Beauvais Tapestry colour scheme. I would have loved to add some tapestry stitches to the pages too, but that would have destroyed the back pages and their colour chips.
The book has been wrapped now and is ready for shipping to Germany.

Altered Book "Doors"

2009-02-22T16:59:00.005+01:00

This month I received two books for the current Round Robin (from the ABEurope Group - Yahoo Groups) to work in. First on the list was Maijkens book: Doors.

I was thinking of making layers of doors in her spread, so when you open a door, a new one would appear which you will have to open, only to find another door.
I browsed through my collection of photographs that I took of doors (and windows) in France, Norway, UK and Spain (yes, I have a complete folder dedicated to those pictures) and started to combine some of them in Photoshop.
Viewing the results, I changed my mind and printed out the digital collages. I blended the images in the book with paint and added stamped words.

The book has arrived in Germany now and an Italian and Amercain artist will work in the book before it leaves for England and Scotland. In a few months it will be back in Danmark!

Intruiging Novel

2009-02-20T20:39:00.007+01:00

"Families have secrets they hide even from themselves."

It is my habit to read good books very quickly, sometimes ignoring all my chores to read the book within a day or so.
The book I just finished reading: 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter' , written by Kim Edwards, had just the opposite effect. The story is so fascinating and the way the lives of the characters are described is so well done that after each chapter I had to lie down the book and try to absorb all that I had read. I felt like I was becoming really involved with the book's characters.

The book unfolds the lives of one family affected by one big secret, even without knowing about this secret for years.

The author knows very well how to describe the feelings, thoughts and emotions of the people. Showing that by keeping a secret, one influences his life and that of those around him without even realising the impact.

I bought this book while we were on a city trip to Stavanger, Norway, last August. My husband had won the trip as a prize. Since we had several days to spend in that little town, and because I get bored easily, we bought some English books that I found in a bookstore.

Stavanger: the old part of the town.

But it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I picked up this book to read. Soon I was mesmerised by the author's art of storytelling. This book really draws you into the story of the two families and the secret that shapes the lives of each individual.

This is the cover text on the back:

"It should have been an ordinary birth, the start of
an ordinary happy family. But the night Dr. David
Henry delivers his wife's twins is a night that will
haunt five lives for ever.

"For though David's son is a healthy boy, his daughter
has Down's syndrome. And, in a shocking act of
betrayal whose concequenses only time will reveal,
he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly
entrusting her care to a nurse.

"As grief quietly tears apart David's family, so a
little girl must make her own way in the world
as best she can."

My favorite books are "The Mermaid Chair" by Sue Monk Kidd, "Something Migh Happen" by Julie Myerson and the books of author Barbara Ewing. Seems that this book will join the ranks of this list!

Three Wise Owls

2009-02-10T11:16:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I uploaded this image that I made from my photographs to Ephotozine.com and it was awarded with one of the EPZ awards: the HC!
Quite an honour! This is only the third HC I received on the site for my photography (and digital manipulation).

The first HC I received was back in 2006 when I mainly photographed flowers with a macro lens.
The second HC was for my (reworked) version of the waterfalls of the Buachaille Etive Mor (Glencoe, Scotland). It was only after removing some branches that the picture was awarded the HC...
It took quite a while to clone away the branches in Photoshop without any traces. You can find that picture in my blog in the entry of 1 december 2008:
http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html
Scroll down the page to view the picture.

So these owls have received my third HC award. Now I even have to work harder to achieve the Premier Award, the highest award on the site. It might take a couple of years or so to achieve that top award!