Hydrangea flowers

 During my Open Studio last Friday I had fun trying to handprint some Hydrangea flowers. I carved the stamps first, and then printed them with acrylic paint. It was messy because of the very small stamps, but also a lot of fun! This time I made the blue purple variety, but I will also try to make the whitepink ones.

This picture shows my practice paper :). I already sold two of the cards, and will be making more for a Castle fair in September.

Hands where I can see them

 We've completed putting up the exhibition with the topic Hands. More than 20 drawings and two paintings made by me are on display. I hope the visitors will enjoy them.

The display is in our local church, open on Saturdays 11-16 pm.

I find it difficult to draw Hands, so in order to get a grip on it and to improve my skills I started making drawings. And along the way you start to notice dimensions, emotions and so on. Interesting and still a bit difficult, so I keep on drawing.

Shoreline

The shores of this lake were right in front of our tent so of course I took several pictures. I like the lines in the landscape and decided to use this picture as a reference for a little drawing with watersoluble crayons. It did not need to be an exact version, so I blended some colours, made some layers, practicing with the crayons.

This week I am busy for an exhibition in a church. With a group we are organising an exhibition around the theme HANDS. All the finishing touches on details take quite some time... so the challenge is now to put all that hard work into an attractive and accessible expo.

Recharged

 We've been away for a holiday in Sweden, and feel recharged. Hiking, touring through the landscape, enjoying different food, trying to learn about the Swedish culture: it all shifts your focus for a while. And hey: no to do-lists! One of our visits was to the small city of Mariestad, a pretty quiet city with a large church and a small old center. The enjoyment is in the small details, for instance this simple beautiful door in one of the streets.

And now we're home and are re-focusing on work, organizing for an exhibition, looking into new regulations for my Etsy-shop and so on... wishing you a good week!

The Garden

 Just a short Hello from the Garden, where it is bursting and blooming:

I am just finishing off some things on my to-do-list, before we go away on holiday.

See you when I get back!

Zorn palette

Anders Zorn was a Swedish painter who was known for his limited colour palette. There is a softness in his paintings. He was known to use often only black, white, ochre and cadmium red. So I used these colours for a little portrait painting of a man. It is interesting to practise this. I missed a blue colour and have not yet found how to make it. But that is okay, for another time... 

In Mora, Sweden, there is a museum on the paintings and life of Anders Zorn. I have been there and it was the best to see his paintings up close.

Hello paper play

Some colours that spoke to me in a magazine, I made them into snippets and then happily started glueing them in my sketchbook. Not overthinking it but in the same time there is a sort of landscape composition. What would the red do? How to make layers? I just had fun :).