When I finished, I send Pamela the photos with a guiding letter in which I explained my work and methods. To show you the process and results I guess I best translate that letter for you:

“

Hi Pamela,
After we met and agreed to do “something” creative together, you came up with the first prompt: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”. It didn’t take me long to agree on this theme for our first project because I immediately saw the potential of ‘old’. In my atelier, I keep a small box containing tiny scraps of old archive documents. At work, during restoration, I sometimes come across tiny pieces of paper whose origins are no longer clear. I do re-attach larger, torn pieces to the original in the right place, but these small pieces, sometimes with just a single letter visible, are untraceable and end up in the trash. Except when I find them, ’cause I take these orphaned pieces home with me and put them in a box.

Because the scraps are so small, I immediately thought about working on very small collages, and I had to make four of them. A ‘quadritch’. A few years ago, I made a few of those small collages and I always found it enjoyable and satisfying to create on such a small surface. Those collages often ended up in series of three and I felt like doing something similar for our first project. I had a nice, thick piece of watercolor paper lying around. I tore a strip from it, which I then divided into four pieces. Each piece is approximately 7,5 x 12 cm and these pieces served as the basic background. You can clearly see the torn edges…

I focused on “old, new, borrowed, and blue” in each collage. While working on each collage I deliberately didn’t think about the next one or the fact that I wanted them to be a series, because if I did, I might start thinking about a “procession” and immediately limit myself in material or color choices. I numbered the pieces of watercolor paper on the back so I would work in the correct order (that is: “correct tear edges in order”) and created them one by one. I thought that afterwards, when I’d finished them all, I would automatically find the coherence in the series.

Something OLD

I choose two tiny pieces of old archival material to start with (I’d guess the paper/parchment is from the 17th or 18th century) and then I delved into my boxes of scraps of paper; they had to be OLD scraps of paper. I found a lot of them. I finally created a composition with the following:

• A piece of parchment with some faint, old Dutch text still visible.
• A scrap of paper with some ink/parts of letters still visible.
• A larger piece of yellowish paper that is almost falling apart from its age and softness.
• A tiny piece of blue wallpaper from the hallway of my childhood home.
• A piece of torn cheesecloth, given to me by an artist friend I met when I had just moved back to Middelburg (2014).
• A red strip of paper cut from an old cigarette pack, from a box of empty cigarette packs my father collected as a teenager in the 1950s and which he gave me to use.

Something NEW

In December, I ordered a few square punches and two stamp punches. I used these for the first time to punch out the pieces of paper for this collage so it couldn’t be “newer”…

The clean squares have an architecturally “modern” feel, so I chose to punch plain coloured pieces of paper. I punched the pieces from a page of a Snoecks book/magazine. I have volumes of Snoecks issues and I chose to flip through the one from 2001 because that was the year that my beloved and I bought a house and moved in together.

A white line ran across a mainly black colored page and I punched out sections where the black area would move slightly while the white line continued.

Something BORROWED

I had to puzzle over the “borrowed” thing for a bit… who could I borrow something from, and what? I quickly came up with “tools,” which I could then also give back… but my beloved and I are two in our household, and everything is shared, so “borrowing” within the walls of our house doesn’t seem like “borrowing”… until I dove into his desk drawers! Look… I found an old toy car!

“Honey, can I borrow that?”

“Um, for what? OK, yes, but I do want it back.”

Exactly, that was the point!

I smeared some brown paint on my palette, drove the car through it, and then across my paper. Look… tire tracks!

Something BLUE

The ‘blue’ was quickly found. I love drawing ‘stones’ on that thick watercolor paper, I even have a special journal bound with thick watercolor paper to fill with paintings of ‘cairns’ (There is a lot to find and read about ‘cairns’, structures of stacked stones, on the internet. In principle: Cairn is a modern Scottish term, a corruption of carne, which was already used in the sixteenth century to indicate a prehistoric construction. Carne itself comes from the Gaelic carn = “heap of stones”).

The pile of three blue stones (or, if you prefer, eggs – because that’s what it looks like too) turned out well and to my liking, but the painting was still missing something… so I splashed and splattered some more with the paint which caused that ‘streamer of splatters’… oops!

This is the series as it lay on my desk, and I knew it wasn’t finished yet… although you can see from the tear lines that the four pieces fit together, the whole thing feels disjointed.

I left it as it was and only revisit it with a fresh eye a week later. I’d already figured I’d have to tie it all together by using the same color and/or technique throughout the collages, but how? It couldn’t be anything with color (too flashy and distracting). So, black. Stamps? No. Thin lines with a pen? No. I grabbed my trusty old sewing machine: black stitching would add extra shape and texture. I set the stitch to zigzag and sewed a line here and there.

For each piece, I looked for the right spot in the composition to add stitching, and—hooray!—I was also able to conceal that “splattered” string by stitching over it. I used the same size zigzag stitch on each collage. My intention was to pull all the end threads through to the back and weave them in, but when I placed the four pieces side by side with the threads still hanging out, I thought it looked fantastic so that I decided to let them hang.

Here’s the finished series.

“

I know Pamela was pleased with the outcome, and I know she herself created something completely different (which wasn’t surprising ’cause when two people create with a same theme, the outcome usually is quite different.) but she has to show that for herself if she wants to. You can find Pamela’s art on instagram.

I  work all year with this still life (photo)

I got out my gelli plate this time and made several mono prints. I first cut out the shapes and made templates that way. It was quite a puzzle to get the right order of printing, with the one shape behind the other, and I made several mistakes but it sure was fun and I learned a lot. The prints may not be perfect but I like them anyway.

I cutted one gelli print, that I found rather boring, into pieces and pasted the pieces on a black background.

Nout picked his bike to use as an object to work with (photo)

My son Nout and his beloved Guus came to stay with us last weekend and having seen my prints of the still life, they both wanted to try gelli printing. Guus (left) created some marvelous prints using all kinds of colors and templates.

Nout choose to make some prints for the project so he choose a bike to picture. The following print he created by using an oil crayon drawing on the gelli plate

Getting the hang of it, he tried to ‘draw’ a bike with a thread…

… and did it come out nice!!!

And here’s the second (‘ghost’) print.

Having all the paint tubes on the table, Nout saw the hardened paint around the openings and since some of those pieces are round, he saw wheels in it… so he pulled the hardened paint from the tubes and created a 3D mini bike which he glued onto aquarel paper. Ain’t that a sweet little bike?

We all had a wonderful time and we all have new inspiraton to investigate more possibilities, take things further and create more pieces. Each time we both created some new art works I will publish it on my blog. Thanks for stopping by and if you like what we’re doing, leave us a comment. We’d like that!

The idea came when I read in a newsletter from Julie Balzer that she decided to work on one and the same object 100 times for her ‘100 Day Project’, using different materials and techniques. Both my son Nout and I thought that is a nice idea, but we decided to limit it to 50 art pieces and give ourselves time for that… until the end of the year.

*** Why so many work-outs of one object you might think… the thing is: if you choose one object, the first ways to work out the chosen object come to mind quickly: drawing, painting, collage and a few other possibilities. The trick is to see what is still possible when you have used the most obvious materials and played with the most logical techniques. What will then emerge? What strange things will happen? I am curious!***

First we had to choose what we were going to work with this year. I chose a still life (a number of objects of different color and shape, so that I could also rearrange them. I consider myself very clever *grin*)

Marit chose to work with this still life (photo)

Here are the first 5 pieces I created

Nout picked his bike to use as an object to work with (photo)

Here are his 5 pieces of art

Each time we both created five more pieces I will publish it on my blog.

Thanks for stopping by and if you like what we’re doing, leave us a comment. We’d like that!

Here’s the results

Draw a plant.

Marit’s take on it: (click to enlarge)

Nout’s take on it:

Draw your nose, a friend’s or a strangers. Or a pet’s.

Marit’s take on it (the debate in the Dutch ‘congress’ on tv):

Nout’s take on it (his girlfriend):

Go on a nature walk, pick up items, draw what you find.

Marit’s take on it:

Nout’s take on it:

Draw a grouping of 2 or more of similar objects.

Marit’s take on it:

Nout’s take on it:

Draw a hat, cap or other headgear.

Marit’s take on it:

Nout’s take on it:

Thanks for stopping by, we do appreciate your comments!

I remembered my dad used to make drawings with a lot of shading when they went on holidays to France. I asked him about it and took some pictures, so this blogposts contains pictures of (grand)father – daughter/mother – son… ain’t that special?

Drawings made by my father Henk

Drawings made by me (Marit)

Drawings made by Nout

Thanks for stopping by, we do appreciate your comments!

Postcards altered by me (Marit)

Altered postcards by Nout

Thanks for stopping by, we do appreciate your comments!

Art made by me (Marit)

I myself decided to focus on painting simple shapes and mixing and blending the colors; go ‘back to basics.’

Art made by Nout

My son was visiting me when we decided on this new theme. He never worked with water color paint before (although I gave him a watercolor paint box for his birthday last year) so I took out mine and he played with it a little…. look what he made without having a photo or example as reference…. it appears he has a real talent for working with watercolor paint!

Later on, back home he painted these…

We haven’t decided on a new theme yet… any ideas?

Thanks for stopping by. We’d like it when you leave us a comment.

Now you must know my son went to Slovenia last year and he visited a castle in Bled. There was a printing shop (I found these photos on the internet, ohmy, wouldn’t you love to visit that?!)  and he bought wonderful, handmade paper there. I got a piece of paper as a present for my birthday and I found it so beautiful, I never dared to use it…. until now, because Nout brought up the theme ‘use it!’

Here’s what we created with that special piece of paper

Art made by me (Marit)

Life filters

algorithm

Art made by Nout

Papercut Castle

Collage – work in progress

Collage – finished piece

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I didn’t know any of the songs Nout send to me and it was fun to listen to and read the lyrics. (I will link the songs to youtube so you can listen/see them too if you like.) I created three art journal pages with the songs I was given.

Art made by me (Marit)

Hiss Golden Messenger – Call Him Daylight

Cassandra Jenkins – Hard Drive

Strand of Oaks – Galacticana

Art made by Nout

These are the songs I gave to my son to work with, he created two collage pieces.

Muse – Knights of Cydonia

Jefferson Airplane – White rabbit

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Digital pieces made by me (Marit)

Family

Dad on a shell
(background photo: Lena Schreijenberg)

Say cheese
(background photo: Lena Schreijenberg)

Digital pieces made by Nout

Digital city

Herbie Hancock distorted

Juliana van Stolberg

Silhouette collage

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