June challenge wrap up

So June is nearly over. Thanks to Kimbu and Nina for taking up the red challenge. I hope you enjoyed it and got something out of it.

I learned a lot by doing this, mainly that in exploring red, I was exploring other colours just as much. Also, the quality of colours change depending on what colours they are next to.

Will be posting the July challenge soon.

still life with red cup

For Na...cos she adores still lifes!!

hello...i'm back!

Had a gorgeous lovely time and will be posting more photos on my other blog soon...

Off to Italy....

I'm off to Italy tomorrow to visit my friend shadowsandclouds. See you in a week or so!

some more red

scared kitty

This is how I found Lottie, hiding behind the sofa during the thunderstorm this morning...

Pastels on black card

secret dream for IF and "red"

Rejection is what you make it. You can let it defeat you; you can use it to sow the seeds of bitterness, hatred, revenge and destruction, or you can use it to nurture a secret dream that will one day blossom. You can let it kill you, or you can let it make you stronger. The choice is yours.

Acrylic on black card

some recent mandalas

a flock of dreams for "red"

Here is my second piece for my red challenge. It is again inspired by Paul Klee's work. The idea was sparked off by his painting, Twittering, and the topic of mystical for Monday Artday gave me the idea of using coloured triangles on a black background. I didn't have much of an aim while I was doing this apart from that I wanted the red to stand out. Hope you like it.

cat dreaming suit

Where do cats go when they have their dreaming suits on?

Pastels & ink in a book of fairytales

some pages from my diary

damascus, for inspire me thursday

Because of my father's job, we were nomads for two decades, living in a new country every few years, going to new schools, saying goodbye to old friends and making new ones. Home was wherever we ended up, and after many years of living this way, maybe we'll always be nomads at heart.

We lived mostly in the Middle East, and the place that sticks in my mind the most is Damascus. We lived there for four years in a house with a garden that had orange trees and jasmine bushes in it. This is a Klee-inspired piece of my memory of Damascus, seeing spires of mosques amidst the dusty hills, hearing the muslim call to prayer several times a day, it's all mixed in with my memories of going to an American school, having a Dutch best friend, being kicked out of the school production of Annie for bunking rehearsals, and being selected to represent my school in a geeky inter-school brain box competition in Egypt.

Remembering Damascus brought back good memories. And now they're mixed in with this drawing too.

Pastels on craft paper

after klee, for "red"

So this is my first piece of work for "red". It's an attempted almost copy of Paul Klee's oil painting entitled New Harmony. To see the original, click here. Klee said to his students at the Bauhaus that painting well was simply a matter of putting the right colour in the right place. This lesson however, is something most painters could spend a lifetime learning.

The reason I chose this to try to recreate is because I love Klee's work, he's an absolute master with colour, and also, even though there is very little red in it, it is the red that stands out. I really love this painting and I wanted to try to learn a little about how Klee put it together. I couldn't get the colour hues and tones quite right, and although the red here looks more like orange, it is poppy red that I used. I decided to recreate this using pastel rather than paint for now. My ability with paint and colour mixing is nowhere near good enough to attempt painting this. But I'm sure that will be a challenge for another day.

I did change two squares, deliberately making them blue instead of the pinkish colour that he used originally. I wanted to see how using blue would change the balance of the overall picture. It does make a difference, the red is less pronounced, there is less of a "harmony" so to speak. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed doing this! But I think my next piece ought to be in paint.

the heartful challenge

This is something new I'm starting. Although I do enjoy participating in illustration friday and the other weekly art challenges that are out there, I sometimes feel a week is too short to explore a topic if it's really interesting. I also feel the need to do my own thing, something that is more personal to me. So, to complement my painting studies and to give me a bit of focus and direction, I'm going to set myself monthly creative challenges, picking a new topic each month to explore. I will post the topic on the sidebar of this blog. An important part of the challenge will be to learn from the work of other artists. This is really intended for me, but if you wanna join in, please feel free! If you do, leave me a comment with a link to your piece of work and I promise to come have a look. Enjoy!

paradise is in your point of view

"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour."

- William Blake, from Auguries of Innocence