Now that I’m back to blogging I of course am back on Wednesdays too with a ‘Tale from the Studio’ – including a photo of my workdesk (hello WOYWW-ers – good to see you again!!!) In this case, even two photos! Come on in and I’ll take you for a tour…

I told you already: my blogbreak did not mean that I took a ‘creating break’ also… I kept on working in my “Chronicles” (I will show you the new journal that I bound for 2014 and its first pages next Monday, I also plan to write a blogpost about my ‘One Little World for 2014″ then… have you choosen a word for this year? Do you think about it still… live by it even? I’d like to know your word!!!)

My desk today shows the latest project I’m working on: a small book for Project Mailart Books. (I see only now that I shuffled the words of that title on my desk-photo…) I joined the project a while ago and I received a cute little book from the founder/owner Ed to work in. When I saw that booklet, an idea came to mind right away because I’d recently seen my neighbour making monoprints with oil paint on thin paper. The paper that the booklet was made of, was very thin so I decided to go for it! I went to my neighbour-friend, who gave me a short ‘private workshop’ on how to make monoprints with oil paint. I made some test-pages first (see photo) and when those were to my satisfaction, I cut up the booklet and started the ‘real work’ on those pages. I even added an extra ‘tool’ in my studio (see second woyww-photo) to hang the pages to dry and help me work efficient…

That was a while ago. The monoprints fully dried and this week, I started on putting the pages together. My desk looks like this today:

WOYWW #245  (Click the link to see what WOYWW stands for…)

Here’s a second ph0to, showing the other corner and desk in my studio. You can see how I stretched a line to hang the monoprints to dry (oil paint takes ages to fully dry! The first test with oil paint mono prints failed miserable because I took the prints off the line too soon…the images smeared and made stains all over! Lesson learned: I left the final pages to dry 2 weeks, to make sure they would not stain!)

I cannot leave you without any art today, so here’s a Mixed Media piece I made last week.

We Practiced Intimacy

I love that title – a sentence I found in a magazine – and that’s not the only thing I love about this piece… the surface shows such beautiful details when you look up close… here’s a detail photo. This is what gesso does when you put a heatgun on it… bubbles!

The sun is shining in the Netherlands, it looks a bit like Spring is coming (lilac crocusses in the garden!) but it’s still cold… I hope you “Brits” are safe and dry. If you’re under water… hang in there, better times will come!

See you all Friday with a found poem.