A little update

Helga, I know you are very occupied outside of our creative blogging. I just wanted to tell you and use our blog to announce my new website and art things I made for sale on Etsy.

My new art website is simply my name. In creating this art website, I finally identified my three specifically identifiable art focus areas; wax and paint, hand-painted paper collage, and book arts. I have you to thank, Helga, for pushing me in all three areas.

My new book arts work is posted on my Etsy site . I am not sure these listings are any more tangible or understandable to people looking for stuff to buy on Etsy than were my other art objects. I made the first of these books to give as holiday gifts to family. A few friends bought books after seeing, touching, feeling the paper, and looking at each page of background watercolor paintings. The paper's texture has been a huge immediate reaction. The second from adults is that they "couldn't" cover the soft pastel-color paintings and marks already put on the pages and cover by me. One friend bought books for her nieces and here are a few photos of how they are making the books their own. I really like how very young children approach art with such joy, freedom, and no hesitation about how to use these books. They use - or not - the color brush strokes and other marks I put on the paper.

Please accept my deepest sympathy. I hope you will soon tap into your great creative resources during this time of great sadness and loss.

On the same wave length

Ah hah!! We are, at the same moment (separated by several time zones), both getting back to our blog. I was actually surprised to open it up and find your latest posting. Wonderfully surprised because your photos are so full of fun and adventure for your muse. She must be thrilled to find her virtual self in so many exciting locations and outside of the damn storefront window. Lucky her. I love them all - the location shots and your story of how you put her in those places is so full of your excitement and pleasure with you new iPad purchase. I wish I felt that those apps fit with my work better. But, that's ok that they don't. I love being away from the computer these days.

Still, I felt a need to get back to your comment about my artwork needing to be broken free from the constraining borders I put them in. So, I am posting a couple to float freely within your background photo and a couple with a tiny white border like the one you give your artwork.

First, totally free of any constraints:

Next, slightly contained with a tiny white border:

Now a little explanation of how I decide what parts of a larger painting to select for these special small artworks (I wrote the following in an email to my sister who asked the same question; so, I am cutting and pasting my reply here): 

A long time ago (2-5 years back) I was looking at my large paper paintings through a camera lens and "found" so many areas of wonderful colors and designs. I "wanted" them; but, I couldn't find exactly the same place when I went into the large paper to "cut them out." They were very precious; and, a lot of trouble to deal with. I started tearing the paper randomly for the waxed paper assemblages I used to make and discovered that it stopped me from getting caught up in the "precious" thinking. I found lots of small pieces that I loved and never did see in the whole piece and lots of them that I didn't like at all but they often looked great when added to an assemblage that covered up parts of it. It opened up a whole new world to let go of the preciousness of my artwork.   

From that waxed-paper assemblage period, I moved to tearing and cutting up (with an Exacto knife and ruler) large un-waxed paper paintings (often paintings that I hated) by turning the paper over so I can't see the artwork. I flipped over the small pieces (and sometimes they were very, very small - 1" x 1") and - surprise! - there were all kinds of wonderful small paintings in front of me. Lately, the tearing often goes like this: I fold the paper in half, take each half piece and tear it in half and keep doing that until I get a size I like or want. Lately, I've been painting BOTH sides of the paper and I have two sides to choose from. I might work in a color theme so I can put the pieces together in new, but complimentary ways.  I select the pieces I like best or some that look passable. Some of them get pasted on a larger sheet of paper as finished artwork in its own right (like the ones above). Others are pasted into a collage. Some are used to scale up into large paintings (usually with dismal results). Still others are torn even smaller to adorn a journal page or another mixed media painting. And, others sit in a box waiting to be chosen or, at least, taken out to test in one setting or another - like your manikin muses, Helga. 

You can guess that I have thousands of these little pieces of my art lying around. Maybe they really are my muses. They certainly inspire me; though I find I cannot replicate the design and colors in larger paintings like I wish I could. The large-paper approached, with no expectations of producing a perfect painting, end up so much freer, expressive, and looser than I can produce on panels, canvas, and other things I cannot tear apart. I tighten up, agonize, and fail. Is it a flaw in my artistic skills? Am I cheating? I try not to go down the road of answering these questions because I'm really loving the tearing-up-ugly (and beautiful)-paper-paintings process. 

I hope this post answers your questions about my process and why I might put paintings into constraining borders. 

i've got it!!!

yes, i really did it .... went out and bought the new iPad Pro with the amazing Apple Pencil......
this stuff is so awesome, it will take my art to a whole different level, my images will be so much easier to transform and manipulate, it is mind-blowing....!!!!

i immediately went to work, starting with one of my recent iphone shots, taken in my favorite shopping street

my new iphone 6S has a much better camera with a 12MP (instead of my 5S's 8 MP) resolution, so the quality of the images i use as a starting point for my artwork has increased accordingly, such a wonderful improvement!

it was an absolute joy to lift the manikin from its background on my new ipad pro, loads of extra screen 'real estate' to work on, the pencil felt and performed just like a real one, incredibly accurate, by zooming in i was able to erase the background almost pixel-by-pixel.....

and then searching for new scenes and adventures for my manikin.....

barking up the wrong tree

invoking my inner artist

forever chasing rainbows

first one: nature scene from my daily dog-walk; added written text (part of the song: "Elephant Talk" by King Crimson i was listening to at that time) in Procreate 

second one: Lianne LaHavas performing in Utrecht, viewed from the balcony; added the birds with Distress FX and the Bacon-like vertical lines in Procreate

third one: shot a beautiful rainbow from the bridge, after having dragged the dogs through a rainy, muddy marsh; added some painterly effects with Impresso and ToonCamera and a bit of texture and a wavy line in Procreate

so many creative possibilities, such a great source of new inspiration, i'm already completely addicted to my new toys....:-)

some really sad news too, we had to say goodbye to our little dog BiBi, she'd been with us for 16 years, she had a stroke which left her hind legs paralysed, so we could no longer keep her with us.

after she died i was transferring my latest Olympus shots to my Macbook and found this image of her reflection in a puddle, already fading away, it felt like a last goodbye; while shooting the puddle i hadn't noticed her coming back and quietly waiting for me, like she always did..... not anymore now....

mixing my media

hi there,

this is a 'catching-up' post, about an experiment i performed at the beginning of this month, with a little help from my big brotherly friend G......

i chose a couple of images i had printed on canvas, they had been dumped somewhere in my new studio because i found them to be rather sterile and uninspiring, i guess that's what happens when you mix your media the wrong way lol! canvas is for painting, or maybe collaging, but covered with the flat colored 'coat' of a photograph it looks incredibly boring, as i found out. have been tinkering with the idea of painting and collaging over them, trying to add some layers of depth and interest, but somehow i never felt brave enough to apply the first stroke.

instead i decided to take them on a creative journey, to place them in different surroundings in order to literally broaden their horizons...:-) chose 2 canvases with manikins in them and decided to add one of my earlier prints on brushed metal (the one titled: 'eye of the beholder') just to find out what that one would look like, if seen from a more 'natural' viewpoint.

so there we went, on that sunny morning, G and i, accompanied by our 'props' instead of the dogs...:-)) (i also took along a large mirror, inspired as i was/have always been by Anish Kapoor's amazing work with reflections)

here are the 6 most interesting images i created that day by mixing my media:

this one is about the burnt/torn diagonal of the image connecting with the tracks in the grass, created by my electric scooter, crossing the shadow the canvas casts to the left, leading out of the frame

this one was done with the mirror, cropped to a different, more appropriate format than my usual 16x9. also all about diagonal and triangular lines and shapes.

this is a vertical close-up, connecting and contrasting the trail of rust in the image with the burnt remains of a barbecue party. in summer our little 'peninsula' is littered with them....

here is the same image (the brushed metal print) with some more context and contrasts, provided by the blurred blue lake and its horizon in the background, and the slightly tilted/elevated position of the object. (i had to literally bend over backwards to manage this POV lol!)

and finally two scenes with my favorite Muse

this one is soft focused, with the vertical lines of the grasses crossing the diagonal shadow lines of the blinds on the canvas and the grass plumes and sprigs almost blending in with the shadow branches (original iphone shot taken in the same area....) of the image. 

this one completely different, the canvas at the left side of the image, taking up two horizontal thirds of the frame, and the grasses in front, occupying one horizontal third of the frame, with one blade in the middle reaching up toward the manikin's throat.

ps inspired by your latest post i tried to 'frame' my images by adding borders (small and large ones) , but i don't really like the way they create distance between the image and the viewer. and besides, i have already 'framed' the canvases naturally, lol! for now, a 1px border seems more than enough to lift the images from their background. 

Small watercolors

Hi, Helga. I hope you are still having or did have a great vacation. Show us what you sketched out for ideas and/or put together in photo collages.  I also want to know more about your book arts workshop and how you came - at the same time as I did! - to an interest in making handmade books.

Here are photos of a few small watercolors I mounted to mat and frame into 8" x 8" square art. I took them from large, very free form paintings (typical of me now) and decided to isolate them for their own sake. What do you think of them matted in white, framed maybe in matte silver metal?

I am back

Sorry to have been absent so long. Too many things, no access to the computer where I keep my photos to upload, etc., etc.

I couldn't keep up with the Paint & Pixel class. During the middle of it I took a real-life workshop called Painting and Writing in Pieces. I was more intrigued by that one, even though I liked learning to use the Procreate and other art apps.

Here are some photos of work I made that came out of that real-life workshop.

The three photos below are of the first book I made: 1) Resource Book Vol 1 with custom case, 2) detail shot of the binding for Vol 1, and 3) a page from Vol 1 where the torn pieces are attached to the page with the tiniest brads I've ever seen (I love the colors and shapes in each of these 4 small sections of painting. The color palette was muted (all 9 of us students used the same colors): ochre acrylic paint thinned with sizing and diluted sumi ink. All object photos were taken on top of a sheet of marked paper that became some of the pages of Vol 2 below.

I used a brighter palette of watercolor paints (3 primary colors) for Vol 2, which I created at home from large sheets of marked and painted paper brought back from the workshop and new sheets I created over a couple of weeks before I made the book as shown below: 1) Resource Book Vol 2 inside its case, 2) Vol 2 unsheathed showing a different style of binding (using waxed linen threads as in Vol 1), 3) an example page from Vol 2 (I love the inserted watercolor painting torn from the larger sheet).

Below is an image showing four sections of of large sheets of fine 100% cotton paper used for pages (a little lighter weight than the cover paper, still 100% cotton) that I marked and painted over several days, including days at the 5-day workshop.

After marking and painting and writing on the large sheets of paper, we folded and tore the sheets in half over and over again until we had the size of one folded section of the book (I forgot what you call that one piece that is sewn together with 4 or 5 others to create a 'signature' and 4 or more signatures are stitched together to create the book. It was darn fun. 

The point of making a bound and cased Resource Book in the workshop was for each of us to leave with a handmade book that includes many techniques for using paint and writing (including 'invisible' writing using white china markers) to make art. I took that idea to the next level and wrote with china markers (white, black, and red) on some of my paintings and I created new watercolor paintings after finding so many wonderful art hidden inside the one large, not-so-great painting. Here is a photo of one of those large paintings - it is the one I used to make the cover of the book and the case.

I've done the tearing up of larger paintings on paper to make smaller artwork over and over again during the past several years; but, I hadn't really tried it in quite this way before. I was tremendously inspired by the orange-red painting of a rose hip - the nature item I chose as my object focus for the week-long workshop (seen in the bottom right photo of the 2-by-2 collage above).   

MORE about the next-step artwork in the next blog!! 

P.S. I love the work you posted while I was 'away'. I like what you did with the Procreate, too. Have you done anything more with that? I'll show you in another blog post one of the few pixel paintings I did for that online course that I liked; but, it deviated SOOOOO far off from those 'cute' and romantic face paintings everyone else (not you) was doing, I didn't post it. 

procreations

have had almost no time and energy to work on the paint & pixels assignments, fortunately we have been granted life time access :-) 

did you manage to create anything new recently?

i did find some time to try out procreate tho'.....

here's the result

the bare threads of existence

this video shows how the image was created.

did you know you can create videos of all your work in procreate? i love this feature!

and here's a screenshot of my layers-panel

still, i prefer to blend in 'natural' textures, using my own photographs

this is me, standing on the bank of the lake, casting my shadow over the water, with the sun coming from behind, illuminating the undulating water.

i used it to blend in one of my muses

shielded by the shadow of the sun

so how have you been doing? would love to see some of your (pro)creations...!

a muse in every port....

we went on a very short vacation in the east of our country, just to relax and refresh our (creative) energy. a change of scenery can do wonders for your spirit, especially during those last days of summer.

on our first day we visited Deventer, a trading city on the bank of the river IJssel that used to belong to the Hanseatic League. wonderful historic atmosphere, lots of interesting photographic opportunities.

although  i missed my three muses, i very soon found a new one gazing at me through a shop window.

like a siren she drew me in and put her spell on me, there was no way i could resist her...... 

on the second day we went for a short walk through the woods and stumbled upon this incredible impressionist view

decided to blend these two shots into a new image

recognise some of your own work in the background?

we also went to Zutphen, another Hanseatic city, where i literally ran into a brand new muse when i rounded a corner in a narrow alley

there was no way i could get around her, so i obeyed her command and took out my iphone.....

at the end of the day i managed to capture the last rays of sun bouncing off the top windows in one of Zutphen's ancient cobbled streets

merged together, these two shots produced this rather dramatic scene

i felt like a sailor instead of a tourist: a (new) muse in every port

and it is true, they can be found everywhere! they surface in the most unlikely places, sometimes only leaving some subtle traces of their presence....

Online classes

are you creating anything in Procreate yet? I haven't seen any of your postings on Pinterest or Facebook. Here is something I just did to explore the app and all of its many fun tools and colors. COLOR palettes we can create ourselves. Tooooo much fun.

I guess I have to find that photo from my desktop computer instead of this iPad. I'll be back.

Coming up for air

I love your last post and, despite a long list of weekend tasks that includes WORK work, I have to respond, react, and comment.
First, your studio is shaping up into an amazing space for you. The light...oh, yes. Everything is so fresh and clean and illuminated by the sun. Your manikins look so happy where you've put them, standing like ancient goddess statues waiting for you to put them into wild, mysterious, or scary photo collages. I'll get to that work in a minute. I also like your little gallery of "old" and inspiring artwork. Of course I am attracted to the bloody red you used in three of the four pieces. So dramatic. Did you see the mobile phone collage work that Ivy Newport posted in her email? Nice, huh? I wonder if we will actually meet those artists in our virtual paint & pixels course, which begins Tuesday here --> Paint and Pixels

Thanks for all the links to books and artwork you've explored lately. I looked at the collagraphy art book on Amazon and was intrigued. I think I sent you photos of some collagraphic work I made last fall. I have the best framed and hanging in a gallery "room" in our vacation rental house and one in our house temporarily. The other books you referenced told me why and how you have such knowledge about art styles and leading artists. I admire your focus and see how it helps you - and me! - think about our artwork. I haven't had the patience to stick with reading those kinds of books long enough to obtain the knowledge you have. Go get 'em!

The link to the paper vase products is interesting and I can see how clever the design is for moving a 2-D paper product into a 3-D vessel with limited prints that could easily be expanded to endless flat artwork images. Personally, I'm done with that idea. My experiment left me cold to the idea - for now. I put those pieces aside.

Altering old books. I have watched some videos on that recently and it does look like a fun thing to try. You have a nice encyclopedia set to try it on. I hope you will post your experiments on our blog.

Ok, now to your new mobile artwork with your manikins. I don't usually resonate with artwork featuring words, but I really like what you did with the images of writing in your photo collages, especially the one where the writing looks like a wall in perspective. The manikin appears to be leaning in to walk through the wall, through the words toward a deeper meaning...or am I reading too much psychology into this image? The "special" manikin peeking within the fading poisonous jack-in-the-pulpit plant (I didn't know it is poisonous!) (I've never seen this plant at this life stage!) has that combination of scary and mysterious. I love the deep, dark colors against the pale (innocent?) complexion of the manikin. What deep psychological story is told in this image?

Ok. I've got to get this day going and come back with some photos of my work so we keep this going at a faster pace now that it is cooling down (at least here in Midwestern US) and I am inside more.

Later...

a happy reunion

last week i got my three manikins back from storage and welcomed them into my new studio. 

while re-assembling them i found their arms and hands were missing, probably stored in a separate box somewhere in a huge pile leaning to the storage wall......lol! so i'm afraid they will have to stay like this for some more weeks. i must admit i actually quite like them this way.

some of my old work has also been hung/positioned. i really love the way these images are grouped together. i 'see' them every time i descend the stairs.

the reunion with my three muses immediately sparked my creative fire.....

this last one is kinda special, a blend of my favourite manikin with a very poisonous plant called

arum maculatum. it is not very common here but in the park near the shopping mall their clusters of red berries appear every year at the end of summer, poking out from under layers of wet withered leaves surrounding the huge trees. apparently this plant has a range of very interesting names, such as 'lords and ladies', 'snakeshead', 'friar's cowl' and 'jack in the pulpit'..... i remember that last one as a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe, but she painted it in a different season, with the spadix still intact, and with no sign yet of the bright red berries emerging from within the spathe.

still no time to work in my studio, but already lots of ideas, almost too many to process...
just ordered a book on collagraphy, bought a dutch version of Art in Time, (a world history of styles and movements) and am currently reading Michael Wilson's 'How to read Contemporary Art'.
also discovered this workshop on mixed media and digital printing by Loek de la Haye. i would very much like to register, it seems to be just what i've been looking for.....  but i have no idea if can go, lots of previous arrangements and tasks to reorganise..... well, we'll see what can be done, no doubt this guy will offer more of this stuff next year, i now know how to contact him.