Beauty in the garden

One step outside my studio and I am in the vegetable garden, which has turned into a wild garden due to lack of time. But nature does not mind, it goes on and on, welcoming the insects and lots of butterflies.

I just enjoy it every time. 

The palette of Zorn

 A couple of years ago we made a journey through Sweden and in the small city of Mora we visited the Zorn Museum, see info here.

Anders Zorn was a painter in Sweden (1860-1920) and because he lived a long time around Mora, the Museum has a large collection of his paintings and other works.

Some of his paintings have a sort of balance and harmony in colour, someone called it: the Zorn palette. This means that he used 4 colours to make his palette: titanium white, yellow ocre, ivory black and vermilion (red).

I made a note of this and in my studio I played around with this to see the possibilities:

I think this is only the beginning, but I do recognize the sandy soft colours he used in his paintings.

The museum is worth a visit, I liked to stand up close to his paintings, seeing the technique and enjoying the paintings as a whole. Next to paintings he has made etches, and other small works. I hope to be back again.

When nature gives you buntings

 Sometimes you see something special, like for instance on this September morning. The rain brought a water pearl bunting on our blackberry bush.

I like these silent parties in nature...

Pigments of a mill

 There is a mill near the city of Amsterdam which still functions as a mill to make paint pigments. It is called Paintmill De Kat (the Cat), see more information here. They are able to duplicate the pigments which were used on paintings of the Dutch masters.

I visited the museum and bought two pigments and some handmade paper. I have never worked with pigments before and two colours is of course very limited but... I want to try. Luckily there are some instructions and recipes on their website.

Colouring

 A bunch of colourpencils, some designs on paper and just start colouring!

I love making things, and customizing your own decoration. So I designed a little project to make your own Christmas decoration by colouring. It is a small set of 6 circles which you have to colour yourself. I found it quite calming to do, and enjoyed picking and combining colours.

I have made three designs which I put in my Etsy-shop, I hope lots of people will enjoy this project:

Paper play

 Paper in all types, coloured, used, folded keeps inspiring me. I was in need of some mindless making without thinking of results. I started with tearing up some coloured paper, added some other colours until I had a nice combination and then started to glue them in a composition. With the radio playing in the background it was a good meditative thing to do. And I like the result anyway ;). I made some other colour combinations and I have an idea what to do with them.

Starting with bits and pieces:

This is an in between picture:

Summer colours

 Summer weather and bright colours, enjoying these beautiful views! I did not alter the picture and I feel so much energy coming of this picture, I hope you feel it too.

I used colour pencils to draw the combination of colours: