Abstract pieces made by me (Marit)

While watching the Tirreno-Adriatico cycling race on TV, I was captivated by the landscapes of Tuscany. I suddenly saw abstract areas of color in it… and took a few quick photos to work with.

Tuscany landscape – photo taken from the tv-screen.

Watercolour paint

Acrylic paint

Collage

Oil crayons

Abstract pieces made by Nout

Collage

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

Friday haiku

The photo was taken by my friend Lena Schreijenberg

I submit this haiku to Recuerda Mi Corazon where our lovely hostess Rebecca brings us all together to share a haiku on Friday: Haiku my Heart

Watercolor challenge

I was disrupted too last week… I found a watercolor challenge on Facebook and I thought it would be nice to try watercolour painting again. I meant to finish this painting before the due date (which was Wednesday.) I created the first pencil sketch but had to order new micro pens to finish the image I had in mind. I purchased those before the weekend but it took ’till Wednesday evening before the materials were delivered… so I could finish my painting only on Thursday and by that time I lost interest and ‘cut corners’ (is that the phrase?) finishing it… I’m not satisfied at all but I show you the challenge photo and my painting anyway.

The given photo

and my take on it

This is a lesson I needed to be reminded on: when you lose interest and cannot put on the concentration, you better not start at all.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today, enjoy your weekend!

Je t’embrasse

Do those words ring a bell? A famous painting is called that way. I love that painting but most of all, I love that title. Whenever I see a pink-purple sky, those words come to mind.
Lena Schreijenberg’s photo reminded me of that title.

I submit this haiku to Recuerda Mi Corazon where our lovely hostess Rebecca brings us all together to share a haiku on Friday: Haiku my Heart.

For those who have never seen the painting: here it is: “Rosy fingered dawn” by Willem de Kooning.

And it is just a coincidence that my last art journal spread also shows yellow and purple…

The Chronicles of Marit 2019 – Week 41

And that’s it for today… not a long blogpost ’cause my son and his girlfriend are coming over this weekend and there’s some things that need to be done this morning – some housekeeping (make the beds!) grocery shopping – and I’ve planned some atelier-me-time this afternoon before they arrive.

It looks like it’s going to be a nice weekend, I hope yours will be nice too.

Je t’embrasse

The photo is made by my friend Lena Schreijenberg

Friday haiku

I submit this haiku to Recuerda Mi Corazon where our lovely hostess Rebecca brings us all together to share a haiku on Friday: Haiku my Heart.

I finished two canvasses that lay waiting for the final touches. Old men with pale faces, wrinkles and bags under their eyes: it pleases me to put them on paper or canvas. I no longer wonder where they all come from or what the hidden message is, I just bring them into the world and let them exist.

I hope you look (and feel) better than these greenish men, have a beautiful weekend y’all!

Je t’embrasse.

Did I say that in my last post…?
Did I really…?
That was 10 days ago…

Oh. Oops.

But at least I did this during that time:

“Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I listened to music and read a good poem. That’s half of Goethe’s advise.
Did I see an exquisite picture?
Hmmm, not a painting but if photos count: I saw a wonderful photo of Jeff Beck yesterday-evening.

My beloved was watching and listening to concerts on Youtube and this photo caught my eye… (I don’t know who took this photo but I found it in the slideshow here)

And for the last part of the quote, did I speak sensible words ? I don’t know if what I said made sense, people I talked to will have to judge that, but I did speak in real live as well as on my art journal spreads. Here’s two weeks in my Chronicles: pictures ánd words.

The Chronicles of Marit 2017 – Week 30

The Chronicles of Marit 2017 – Week 31

I hope you have a lovely, creative and happy day and I leave you with these (sensible? at least inspirational…) words by Neil Young: “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World”

(If you’re not familiar with the concept: WOYWW it is a weekly event hosted by Julia from the UK. Artists from all over the world post a photo of their desk on their blog and leave a link at Julia’s blog. Wanna join us? More info here.)

After I took the workshop SoulCollage last Thursday I spend all weekend collecting and organizing my clippings. I had all kinds of cut out images laying around everywhere in my atelier… some in a box in my closet, some in files in a drawer, some on a shelf… to be honest, it was a pretty chaotic ‘collage situation’. After the workshop I found it time to organize all those images and store them in categorized folders… those are on my desk (and a lot more too…) Take a look

WOYWW #326

I did make a few other ‘Soul-cards’ yesterday (you can see one standing in the window sill) but I’ll show you those some other time maybe.

What I do want to show you is the progress I am making on the intuitive painting I showed you last week.

Photo #1 is the one I showed you last week, and it was the result of an ‘intuitive painting session. Now the intuitive phase is over and at the moment I am working to ‘get out’ the figures and find a balance. I add a little paint and change a bit almost every day. In the late afternoon, I put the painting in the living room on the sideboard so I can look at it in the changing light. When it gets dark outside, and the lamps go on, the painting looks different and I usually can see what is missing or wrong with it still, and find out if the balance is right.

#4 is not yet the final piece, but I have the feeling I am almost there.

That’s it for now sweeties… just one more thing before I sign off for the day.

The online art journal workshop Mixed Emotions,  which I teach with Michelle Rydell, started last Monday but you can still join. Registration stays open until September 20.

WOYWW #232

Regular desk-visitors will miss my table to the left… it moved to the working room of my beloved who needed more worktable (is that the right word?) and I figured I had enough without the little table. I still need to re-arrange my stuff though and that shows on my desk (the left part…)

You may also notice the overflowing paper bin… there’s two ways to look at that.
1. I created up a storm in my atelier and was in the flow – no time to empty the bin OR
2. nothing would work and I everything I created ended up in the bin.

(It was the first one, but I DO need to empty the paper basket.)

There’s also this canvas on the other side of my atelier… a painting in progress.

I will tell some more about this piece in a later post.

Now on to the NEWS and the GIVEAWAY!!

Mixed Emotions is coming back!!

Mixed Emotions is a six-week online Art Journaling Workshop taught by me and Michelle Rydell. Lessons start on August 31 and I GIVE AWAY ONE SPOT

What do you have to do to win a spot in this workshop?

• Well… for one, leave a comment at this post. But you were already going to, so that is easy, right?

BUT THERE A FEW MORE WAYS TO SHARE THE BUZZ AND INCREASE YOUR CHANCE OF WINNING…

• Share the announcement with a link to the Mixed Emotions workshop info: www.maritspaperworld.com/shop/product/mixed-emotions/
  and/or our video trailer

• Share about this new course and giveaway on your blog
• Share the message on your Facebook page.
• Share on Twitter – with @MaritPaperWorld
• Pin the video trailer to Pinterest
• Share on Instagram
• any other way you wish to share

When you share announcement of this online workshop, just come back and let me know in comments below how and where you shared.

ONE WINNER will be selected on Friday, August 21 and announced on my blog (I will notify the winner via email)

THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED. THE WINNER IS KELLY HENKINS.
CONGRATULATIONS KELLY!

If you already registered for this workshop, you can still join the giveaway. When you win, I will refund you the money.

I haven’t been working in my atelier much last week and I have the photo to prove that 😉

Yep, it’s that time of the week again, “What’s On Your Workdesk. Wednesday.”
Come on in and see my full desk…

… a full desk indeed! Because I was busy being handy(wo)man in the living room (see further in this post) I just layed everything that had to do with creativity aside on my desk… like the beautiful scarf that Anne* knitted for me. It came in the mail last Saturday. That day I also received a ‘surprise enveloppe’… there was no name on it and no card or letter inside, just presents! But when I saw the plastic bags with Bister I immediately knew it came from Elvy from Elvy tales, who is a blogfriend on whose blog I left a comment the other day about Bister pigment (or Bistre, as it is called also.)

Anne* is the cousin of my mum, and I’m not sure what she’s to me then… it’s hard in Dutch even… is she an Aunt? Second Cousin? But whatever the family relation is; to me she’s just Anne, a beautiful lady who performs miracles with textiles. See Anne’s Textiel

OK, that’s enough information allright… here’s my desk

WOYWW #281

WOYWW stands for “What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday.” It is a weekly blogseries, hosted by Julia from Stamping Ground. Hop on over to Julia’s blog to find the list of participants and visit crafty desks all around the world…

Sooo… not much play in the atelier, what DID I do then?
As you may know, we moved last April and although we put work in our new appartment from then there still was this HUGE object in the living room that needed to be done: the cabinets wall…

… for it was yellow! NOT our colour.
(this photo was taken during the move, but you get the picture of the yellow cabinet)

Last week, our friend Lieke came over for the weekend and she and I decided to tackle the cabinets wall… Lieke grabbed the sander and protected her mouth, nose and hair from dust with a scarf.. she looked like a bedouin!

After sanding, we painted the cabinet with primer and we still had time left for a walk on the beach. It was a fantastic weekend!

I finished painting the cabinets yesterday and this is how it looks now.

It’s a big difference compared to the former yellow wall. It will look even better when the open closet gets its shelves, the door is put back on the right  and the furniture is moved to its right place. But painting the cabinets is quite an achievement already, don’t you think?!

Hope your house is all warm and cosy and ready for winter, ’cause X-mas is just around the corner (and my Top 2000 musical blogparty, YAY!!! Looking forward to it already! More about that in November…) Thanks for stopping by, have a great day. Paint a closet.

Hop on over to the Daily Paper Prompt Posts at Daisy Yellow to see my guest prompt and join the daily fun – Oh, and when you visit Daily Yellow, I advise you look a bit further than just the prompt I came up with and take a look at all the colourful gorgeousness and major inspiration Daily Yellow brings!

The Daily Paper Prompt I came up with is about getting inspired by the rhythm of music. I took photos during my creating process that make a little tutorial. Are you in for that? Come on in then…

DPP #61 – Create to the Rhythm of the music

First, I taped a big piece of blank paper onto cardboard and placed it on my easel.

I then put some paint on my palet. At this point, I did not know what music would be my inspiration, so I choose random colours that spoke to me at that moment.

I decided to work with a palet-knife but you can choose whatever material or tool you like:
brush and paint, pencils, crayons, pens and so on…

Now that my materials were in place, I was ready to go so I turned on the radio.
I had no idea what music would be on. The radio played a song I never heard before
and I just went with it. I started to smear paint on the paper to the rhythm of the song.

This is the image I ended up with… created to the tune with paint and a palet knife.

The fun thing about this way of creating is, that the song does not need to have lyrics.
You can even put on a cd with classical music – or hiphop, or house music… anything goes.

After I’d created this background, I got curious to what the song had been all about… so I looked on the internet and found the playlist of the radio station. The song was Waves by Mr. Probz, a Dutch rapper/artist I did not know. I had not thought he was a rapper, as the song does not sound like ‘rap’ to me – I kinda like it even!

I also found the lyrics of the song here and was surprised when I read those… I had used just the right ‘watery’ colours! Then, I saw an image of a lighthouse and a boat (sail) popping out to me from the background, so I scribbled with a crayon and did some machine stitching to bring those shapes out.

The lighthouse deserved more attention, so I cut out the shape from old dictionary pages, sprayed a bit of ink on it and glued it onto the page. I added a moon (0r is it a sun?) and I journaled part of the lyrics on top of it.

Here’s the final piece.

Now it is your turn. Go grab your materials and turn on the radio…

…but before you do, one last request

I NEED YOUR HELP!!!

If you follow me, then you know I am the founder of FEATURING magazine.

FEATURING released four issues but we notice that still a lot of people haven’t heard of this magazine… and in order to keep this awesome art publication alive and going, we have to spread the word and get more brand awareness so we can reach more customers. The release of the next issue depends on that.

Therefore, we’ve partnered with Thunderclap to promote the magazine and I ask all my friends and fans to help promote the magazine.

Thunderclap is an app that updates the Facebook status, Tumblr or Twitter feed from every person who clicks the link on the FEATURING thunderclap page. Thunderclap allows a single message to be mass-shared, flash mob-style. It only happens once and won’t spam your friends, but the end result is that if we reach the goal of 500 supporters, massive amounts of people are reached and the name of FEATURING magazine will be heard. We have only two weeks left to reach our goal of 500 people that click the link and support FEATURING…

Are you a friend and fan of me and FEATURING? Then please visit the FEATURING Thunderclap page and donate a tweet or Facebook status update to help us promote the magazine.

Thanx!!!!

Wednesday… WOYWW day… and I owe all woyww-participants an apology – I did not visit one of your blogs last week! I planned to blog-hop but the weather got very nice during the week, warm even and because of that temperatures raise real high in the office space. There are more ‘machines’ in that room and it gets really hot as they all work like little heaters! So I turned off my computer as soon as the necessarily work was done. I know a lot of you woyww-hoppers are from the UK – and you must have had the same weather on your isle – so I hope you understand and forgive me. I try to do better this week – I promise!

Here’s the Wednesday golden oldie scrapbook layout – lifted from one of my old scrapbook albums.

(I don’t create ‘traditional scrapbook layouts’ anymore but every Wednesday I dive into my albums and lift a ‘golden oldie.’ The layouts I pick are random, YOU – blog readers – name the number of the album and layout to show. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open next week – find the list to choose ‘golden oldies’ from here)

NOTE: I have been doing this for a while now and I notice that the risk that you name layouts that have already been requested is high… therefore I made a list showing the ‘free’ numbers and the ones that have been requested/shown already.

This week’s request came from Margaret – from Glitter & Glue
Ali asked me to open album 3 and show layout #5

Here it is… BFFs {click on the image to enlarge}

This is me with my BFF Lena. We are friends since primary school so that is indeed ‘forever’ 😉
I think this photo was taken in 2005 (is that correct Lena?) and the layout must be created somewhere around 2007… I never dated my layouts and kinda regret that now! And EEECKKK… we’re both smoking there! Lena quit a long time ago (when?) and as you might remember, I stopped smoking last March (and – although I still miss smoking A LOT – I concider myself a non-smoker now.)

Anyway, Lena is a talented painter and her work can be viewed on her blog  Six Lilies Studio
(I tell ya – it’s worth a visit!)

Because of the heat ánd the “Tour de France” (I am watching the report of this big bicycle race on TV every afternoon) I didn’t spend much time in the studio last week, but here are my latest index cards. (submitting to ICAD and Glue it Tuesday.)

Good morning.

Good night.

Here’s how my desk looks like this morning… SUMMER INDEED!

WOYWW #214

The WOYWW headquarters can be found over at The Stamping Ground from where the lovely lady Julia hosts the biggest weekly blog hop. Thanks Julia.

Bright sunshine through the window shining on my little table (as a result, the big desk in the corner behind this table is standing in deep, dark shadow and invisible on the picture)

There’s not much going on here, but I want you to have a better look on the art that Jana from Tangled Pen send me.

For the WOYWW 4th anniversary swap I made some extra ATCs and Jana emailed me that she would love to swap my little card with work of hers. She told me it would take her a while before she would ‘answer’ my ATC but I didn’t mind that, and last weekend I received an envelope from Sweden. It was worth while the wait!!!

Jana is also creating on index card – she send this one to me.

If you know Jana, you know that she is a talented painter and I especially admire the way she paints birds! Jana knows I have blackbirds in my garden who wake me in the morning, singing in the pergola beneath my bedroom window, so she painted this blackbird for me. Isn’t that the most sweet and precious painting?

Thank you so much Jana!

The blackbirds (and jackdaws, we have a lot of those lads visiting our garden too!) had their beaks wide open from the heat over the last days but today it cooled down a bit. Just enough to call it a nice Summer day. A bearable one – yay!!! Hope you all have a great day too!