Link Love Friday (11)

If you are interested in painting, especially in painting BIG, and art journaling, chances are you know Connie of Dirty Footprints Studio. And if you know Connie, you must know her beloved Hansel. This is his Link Love Friday.

I think this was the first time we got to see Hansel, at the end of this video:


And then there was this one:



Hansel is an amazing self-taught photographer, who has a great eye for the beauty in the city as well as in nature. His work is so full of colour you can almost taste it!


If you want to see more of Hansel's work, go to his Flickr page or his website where you can purchase his works.

Happy Friday, Hansel!

Water colour Wednesday (9)

Today, I played with masking fluid.I got it for my birthday, but had not really had a chance to use it yet.


So I started off with making a few shapes on the paper:


Then I let it dry completely (long live the fan) before adding the first colour:


Then I made some shapes within the rectangle and the squares.



I let it dry completely again before adding a second colour and then some more doodles in masking fluid:


After letting that all dry again, I painted all the shapes black:


Then I let it dry for one last time before pulling off all the masking fluid:


So there you have it, three layers of paint and three lots of masking fluid:


It was a lot of fun and I like the results. The only thing I had not thought of was how long it would take for the masking fluid to actually dry. It does take quite a bit of time, depending on how thick you put it on. The thicker the layer of fluid the easier it is to peel it off, though.

One thing before you try this: do not use your best brushes. The masking fluid when dry does really mess up your brush. Or you could wash them out immediately afterwards, of course... but, yeah... umm... nevermind..

Puppy fix

Remember how tiny she was?


Now look at her!




This is not the most charming picture, but you can see the markings on her back:


And she loves to poke through your legs and then look up at you:


Isn't it amazing how much she's grown? She's got tons of energy and loves her walks now, but it's difficult to take pictures or even video when I'm on my own so next time Tye goes with me I'll take some video or pictures or both.

Speaking of Art Journals...

Here are some of my latest pages. I've been doing a lot of faces lately, don't ask me why because I haven't got a clue.

I stuck some sweetie wrappers on the page and painted a face on top of it:


Here I layered a lot of paint and then saw this little face:



This one started of the same: layers of paint and then finding a face shape in the paint. But I added more charcoal than in the pervious one, and some white pastel pencil:


I'm almost half way through my book. I think I'll do a half way flip through, because it's such a thick book. Watch this space!

Art journals caught on film

The lovely Rhomany recently wrote two blogposts about art journals in TV-shows.

I have to say, I always get excited when I spot someone in a TV-series or film with an art journal or even a cool looking notebook. Unfortunately it's usually the loonies or baddies that keep a journal with lots of paint, scary pictures or thoughts dripping off the page, but still, I love it when I spot one!

And then I remembered Elisabethtown, with Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. I thought the film itself was rather boring, I watched it a year or so ago and can't even tell you exactly what the film is about (thank the Internet gods for IMDB, "During an outrageous memorial for a Southern patriarch, an unexpected romance blooms between a young woman and man.") but what I do remember is the journal Kirsten Dunst's character makes for Orlando Bloom's character in the film.

It's a visual journal come road map kind of thing, and from what I remember it was packed with pictures, actual maps and little notes and it even had a 'mixed tape' CD in it for him to listen to while taking a road trip. A travel guide but much, much cooler.

I tried to look for images online, but could not find any.
So here are the only two I took from Youtube clips, no copyright infringement intended:

Keesha's first walk

Little Miss Pup (13.5 weeks) had a problem (or rather, we did): she refused to walk on a collar and lead. No matter how much we tried to 'bribe' her with nice food, with toys or how much we tried to let her follow us, she stayed put. She refused to even move a toe while on collar and lead...

When her food was running out, we went to Pets at home, a huge place which is also where our vets is, so there's always people with their pets in the shop. We got to talking to a man walking a huge GSD, who said he'd had them for 40 yrs and every now and again there was one that refused to walk on a collar and lead. Funny enough, the one he was walking then was on a body harness.

Then Tye remembered that Suzy, the shepherd mix his parents adopted years ago, used to walk on a harness too. When they adopted her she was covered in bite marks and could not walk on a collar because it was too painful. His mum had actually kept the harness!

We adjusted it to Keesha, and guess what: she walked! In the harness, lead attached and everything! After a few walks around the house, we decided it was time to cross the road and go to the park.


She had a brilliant time sniffing all the new smells. She even got to meet a few other dogs, played with a tiny fluffy white thing on a pink lead, got to meet other people and saw some on bikes and loved it all.

I'm so glad she's finally figured out that the lead is not a bad thing and that is leads (ha!) to all the fun stuff outside!

Water colour Wednesday, a day late

Yes I know, Watercolour Wednesday is a day late. I have been using my water colours a lot lately, but more as a colouring in kind of thing than to use it in actual water colouring. That may sound confusing, but water colour as a medium is different than using it as a way to just add some colour to a page.

And I have to be honest, I was running out of ideas of what to try.
So last night, I was having a look around on Youtube to see if I could find some easy techniques to try.

I found this video:

and decided try it, using the colours suggested in the video.



It's so fun seeing the colours mixing right there on the page!



then I tried out this one:

but I used cadmium yellow instead of cadmium orange. (I messed up, alright?)





Tye, being the ever loving and supportive sweetheart that he is, said he was suddenly craving broccoli and cheese for dinner tonight.......

Sketch Tuesday (8)

Because I liked the ink and water colour work I did last week, I decided to do it again this week. The theme this week seems to have been food... Well, goodies really.

Link Love Friday (6)

When I first stumbled across The Main Meal's Youtube channel, I could not help but laugh. Guy Francis, as his real name is, does 'Tourette's Karaoke', singing songs while letting his tics get the best of him. This was one of the first videos I saw of him, and needless to say, if you are in a work environment right now or are sensitive when it comes to swearing, do not click play:



Lately, Guy has been doing some more serious videos. He's still ticing away, but answering questions any viewers might have about the Tourette's and Asperger's syndrom from which he suffers, and if you try to not listen to all the swearing and not look at the movements, he's actually a real funny guy who is making the most of a rather poo situation.

Here he is talking about his tic cycles:


And here is THE question: can you still have sex when you've got Tourettes or do the tics get in the way of it all?


I think Guy is doing a wonderful job in being open and honest about his syndroms, and has a great sense of humour about it as well. I hope he keeps up the videos not only for entertainment value, but also to make people understand what his tics are all about.

Water colour Wednesday (7)

It's Watercolour Wednesday again!

As I'm in Teddy mode, let's see if I can do one starting off without any outlining.




an cotton bud to soak up some of the water and pigment:


Letting it all dry:


And then adding some coloured pencil details:


I liked the effect and I carried on going, now with water coloured pencil.


Did I take it too far? Yeah, maybe. The purple did not come out as nice as I thougth it would.. but hey, if you don't do, you'll never learn, right? I guess I need to figure out when to stop...



(And also... how come my teddy is now a doggy? You'd almost think I've got puppies on the brain! *LOL*)