This mini journal is part of a round robin I do with my Mom and my sister at the moment. It is made with mono printed rice paper, that I tear into pieces for a collage, and then add stamped images or embellishments. This is my idea of the colours of summer!
With that, I am going to "pull the plug" for a bit, go to the sea, eat icecream and read easy books and generally enjoy my summer.
See you all again in the third week of July.
Have a great summer, where ever you are!
My parents and my sister with her kids are going to Canada! I wish them Bon Voyage!
[Hav en rigtig god rejse til Canada, hils Kjeld og Nan og hele familien. Pas på bjørnene!]
Hunting for objects to draw, I looked at my fathers vast collection of old camera's. I nearly did not pick the one shown above, because as I held it in my hand, the front piece of leather covering came off. But I still wanted to draw precisely THAT camera and took it up into the light. When my father later saw the drawing in my sketch book, he asked, if I wanted to have an old camera? (Off Course! I would LOVE one!) He went and talked with my mother, then he got one from his collection and came to me: I thought you would like to have your grandma's old camera, here it is! The very same camera I had been drawing! A coincidence?
The spinning wheel also belonged to my grandma. But the little old lady on the left is not a drawing of my grandmother, even though I quite like that kindly look of hers!
I just got hold of my trusty watercolour journal from 2006. In that period I had just discovered the fabulous water brush together with a watersoluble ink pen, so I took those three items everywhere, and here are a few of the results.
Here, I had been experimenting with vegetable paper, and how to preserve it. Sheet gelatine seemed a good idea, but even though it dried nicely, it soon grew brittle and perished. But I have other ideas to try some time.
I used to live near these channels on Christianshavn in Copenhagen. I love that place! Always something hapening on the water, people tending their old wooden boats and coming and going. I never went to this little cafe, though... maybe next time!
Now I know not everyone of you read danish, so in the picture above, I am writing what a nice day I had in town, visiting a beautiful, old graveyard for a little picnic (Assistens kirkegaarden) and then sailing on the water with my boheme friend Bente!
Other than that, it is just notes on my waterbrush technique, and how I made the gelatine and vegetable paper project.
Tuesday evening was the last nude model drawing before the summer period... sigh! I am going to miss it!
A small group of artists and creative people meet up in my friend Tina's studio and enjoy good company and draw beautiful models.
If you need teaching, she is very good at seeing your potential, and if you just need a little push away from old drawing habits, she has lots of ideas, how to challenge you, get you off the known path and let you try something new.
Even though I have been drawing for quite some years now, I never feel, I am "quite there" yet... I constantly try to better my style and often end up in the "perfection trap". Nothing against the perfect drawing, I would love to do it! But what I mean is when the line gets stiff and you look at the drawing instead of the model, while you are working.
So I took the example from one of my fellow artist and started doing monoprints instead. The point being, that you can't quite see what you are doing, because you draw with a stick or a pen with no ink. But if the paper is thin enough, you may still follow your line enough to stay on the paper. It shakes you out of your comfortable working MO you have to be "honest" and let the "wrong" lines stay, because there is no way to erase them. This means I am working much faster and more carefree - and it is a lot of FUN!
This monoprint was made in a only a couple of minutes.
I am soo lucky! I won Street Team crusade number 20!
Michelle is more than a great artist, she is also an inspiration and an enabler! Every month she comes up with awesome themes for the crusades and inspiring techniques, that you just have to try - or try again!
Michelle, thank you so much! xoxo!
Nothing is sacred in this house, when I get the creative bug. Except maybe my husband and the cat (if only I had a cat...!) So I have pushed buttons and brooches and pendants into modelling clay and raided my stash for brass pendants... and basically anything with an interesting structure or pattern, that was sturdy enough to make a mold from.
In order to make molds for paper casting I used "Fimo" clay. It does not dry out easily, so I boiled the molds in water for 10 minutes, until hard.
When I cast over the first metal leaves, I noticed a small dot of rust on one of them. I liked the effect and repititiously sprayed the metal leaf shown above with vinegar and water for a couple of days. I think it acquired a nice amount of rust. The cast took on a little of the rust, but to get a really rusty cast, I think I need some seriously rusted metal.
And here is the first metal leaf and its cast. Underneath you see the cast I made on bubbleplast.
Crusade number 20 is paper casting.
I had been casting paper before I went to Denmark, and had the pulp all ready for use, so I agreed with Michelle, that this was going to be an easy one... HA! Only if you know when to stop!
I have a lot to show, but you'll have to come back for more, because my scanner really can't capture those pure white casts very well, so I'll make some photos instead.
Above are some casts in the making, the scan is made through a glass plate, so you are really seeing them from underneath. The one with red paint is no more... I could not wait and started picking at it too early... Well, if it is not quite dry, it crumbles!
I was inspired by another crusader, who used a Duplo or Lego building plate to cast on. I did not have any plates, so I used what you see above instead.
And I made the classic mistake with the letter stencil, casting on the wrong side, so now I have mirrored letters... I'll just pretend to be inspired by Da Vinci!
The little chinese Luck "coin" on the right was not quite finished, so learning by my mistakes I left it to dry a little longer.
And now to the post I have been trying to upload for some days...
Living in Germany, we often get totally undeserved brownie-points, just because we are danish. A lot of Germans go to Denmark on holidays, because Germany has only a small stretch of coastline, the rest is inland. Denmark is surrounded by the ocean and even if it is just a tiny country with five million people ( total: 43094 sq km
which is slightly less than twice the size of Massachusetts), it amounts to a long stretch of beach (
7314 km ).
Funfact: Among the people still smoking, pipe-smoking is more common for the danish male than in many other european countries. (You may have to enlarge the picture to see, that the guy on the swan sculpture is smoking a pipe).
I could easily kill the myth about a fairytale country, telling about problems that are common in Scandinavia... but in this case I will not!
I so enjoy going back to the place where I grew up and join the easygoing mentality of the danish people, that I choose to ignore the downsides when I am there.
I shall be going back for a slightly longer period very soon, and I promise (Jo Anne) to make more photos and show and tell more about one of my favorite places on earth.
Have a look at the little cottage on the riverside. Wouldn't you just love to have an artists studio there?
Funfact: In Denmark there are no rivers, only smaller ones which are called å. The danish name for an island is ø.
