Art Journal - Page 4

I am on a roll, people!! Another page from my new art journal - again painted over a not-so-good image transfer. Again, quite different for me, but then I love change. I had to chuckle at myself though - as soon as I made that comment about missing the women I paint, I'm on to other things. I need to stop making statements like that!

I'm glad you liked my last painting as much as I did. Thanks for all your comments and naming suggestions. It was fun to read what you all saw! Did any of you discover the two flowers in it?

Wishing you a fantastic day!!

"Echos from Times Past"

Echos from Times Past

14 x 18 inch mixed media painting on canvas

Another new favorite of mine! She turned out so differently from what I had originally planned, but I love all her layers - and there are many of them: molding paste, collage papers, acrylic paints, tissue paper, an image transfer of a graveyard photo Daniel took in Ireland, and pieces of a letter written by my favorite great uncle. He was a Franciscan priest and married Daniel and me in Germany 20 years ago this week.

As I get ready to visit my family in Germany later this month, I find myself thinking often about those "times past," and I am sure this painting was much influenced by that.

"Echos from Times Past" is available as a 5 x 7 inch print in my Etsy Shop.

"Fear No More"

Fear No More

6 x 8 inch mixed media painting on canvas

I really like my latest painting! It amazes me how I am returning to my old loves working in textures, layers, collage, image transfers - and how they have a totally different feel from my earlier work.

On this background, I transferred a beautiful photo Daniel and I had taken in Ireland a couple of years ago. I love how it ended up being very abstract, but you can see some of the branches at the top.

"Fear No More" is available as a 5 x 7 inch print in my Etsy Shop.

P.S. The crow is from Milliande's Printable Blog, and the butterfly the lovely Anne shared with me! Thank you!!

Illustration Friday - Ahead

Go ahead! Spread your wings and fly!

Tag (5.25" x 2.625") - front & back

Collage, image transfer, stamps, stencils, & acrylic paint.

I hope you all had a great weekend. Ours was rainy both Saturday and Sunday with visions of the summer's humidity awaiting us...

Because of the rain, I did get to work on my art a good bit, and am almost done with another women's portrait. It just needs some background work. I hope I can show it to you tomorrow!

In the meantime, I wish you a great start to your week!

Kayaking & Painting My First Tag

On Sunday, Daniel went kayaking with a small group of local kayakers.
They left from Tybee Island and paddled over to Little Tybee, which is completely uninhabited and actually much larger than Tybee.
Once on Little Tybee, they walked around and explored the vast beaches and natural beauty of the island.



This was the little dog that came along in one of the kayaks!

Daniel had a wonderful time and I think next time I might go with them all...
Now, the other day at the craft store, I saw a package of tags and decided to grab it and try my hand at painting a tag. I had such fun!! I used some torn papers, and some image transfers I had lying around.
And then, for good measure, I painted the back side as well.
I painted a few other things as well, which I still have to scan and will show you later this week. Make sure you stop by for tomorrow Wordless Wednesday - it's a great photo Daniel took in Mississippi last year!

Wishing you all a most wonderful day! You certainly always add sparkle to mine Thank you for that!!

Finished! I think...

(Painted on 15 x 22 inch, 140 lb cold press rough watercolor paper.)

Well, this is what my busy background (click here to view) and my image transfers (click here to see) turned into. It was a long process and so delicious - for the most part!

Every step along the way, I just stare at what I have without a clue as to what to do next. And then, suddenly inspiration hits, I have a thought and off I go to apply another layer. At the end, Daniel had some suggestions, which made me grumble at first (I thought I was done), but then when I worked them into the painting, it looked so much better! After all, unlike me, he's been doing this such a long time... Thank you, Daniel!

P.S. Speaking of Daniel, he's got a new post up on his blog ... don't miss it - it made me laugh!

Image Transfers

I've been having lots of fun with image transfers on the larger painting I am working on. I hadn't played with image transfers in a while and really missed it. The process is fairly simple. You apply gel medium (I use Golden soft gel medium - matte) to both the surface you want the image transferred to and the image itself. Then you position the image on the surface, use your brayer to get it really glued on. When it's all dry, spray a little water on the paper and start rubbing off the layer of paper. What you are left with is the image transferred to the gel medium.

Click on images to see them larger.

Now, this works best with an image on regular paper rather than a photo on photo paper. I think there are different techniques for that. Here I used some pretty scrap book papers. If you transfer an image to a smooth and solid-colored background, it's easy to know what you'll end up with. In this case, however, all bets were off. My background was multi-colored and very textured. But it turned out really well!

If you click on the images you can see the faint picture of an old postcard on the first one, an old map on the second one, and a border of a pretty vine and flowers on the this image. It's all coming together nicely!
On another note, yesterday Daniel called me outside because we had a whole flock of cedar waxwing birds in our ornamental pear tree eating the tiny fruit. They migrate through here and it was so much fun watching them through our binoculars (the neighbors probably thought we were spying on them...). What gorgeous birds!

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Wishing you all a most wonderful Tuesday! I'll be by your blogs later on!

Illustration Friday - Tango

She wished that, just once, someone would ask her to dance the Tango...

I never seem to get my act together to create artwork for the weekly Illustration Friday topic, so this week I made an extra effort.

This was something new I tried and I just love how she turned out! I worked on a 5 x 7 clayboard, did an image transfer all in greens as a background, which is all but painted over now. I then covered the whole board with molding paste and gave it texture before painting the image with acrylic paints. I love the color palate I used (very different for me) and the texture of the finished piece.

I have to say, I am always surprised with my paintings, especially when I paint people - their facial expressions sort of happen while I paint and I never know what they will look like when finished, but they always touch me in some way. The same with this woman - she tugs at my heartstrings!

And if she tugs at yours, she is available in my little Etsy shop.

Snapshots from the Road

It is pouring rain and thundering right now in Niagara Falls, so I thought I'd load a few snapshots from the first leg of our trip for you. On Thursday, we drove from Savannah to Pittsburgh to meet up with Daniel's sister and her two grown sons. It was a 12-hour drive through some of the prettiest countryside! I constantly snap photos from the car and some of them even turn out pretty good. (You can click on any of them to see them bigger.)


Right after Daniel took the picture above, we went into a tunnel and when we emerged, this was the view we had of Pittsburgh!
Stunning!! Daniel lived here for a year 20-some years ago, when he studied at the Art Institute. Much had changed, but he still recognized many buildings and was happy he could finally share that part of his life with me. I found Pittsburgh to be an attractive and vibrant city and will have some more photos in my next post.

The rain is starting to clear up, which is good. Our niece's wedding is going to take place outside this afternoon. She has a plan B, but we are all hoping that the weather is going to cooperate for her!

Yesterday, when I was able to check my e-mail, I saw all your wonderful comments, which made me feel so good. I miss checking in with you all daily! For now, I hope that you are all having a relaxing weekend!

Illustration Friday - Drifting

As she was being photographed by the man she loved, she found her mind drifting and caught a glimpse of a happy future together.

Yesterday, I was looking through some old photographs and came across these two of my grandmother - as a young woman and then on her wedding day with my grandfather. I did an image transfer with the wedding photo to make it a little less prominent.

For the dark blue background, I took her engagement dress, which I am lucky enough to have here, made of dark blue lace, and scanned a section of it. The pink square under the photo in the foreground, is a scan of lace she crocheted herself - so pretty!

And because it really made me think about her, her life and the impact she had on me, I will tell you all more about her and show you some more old photos in a later post!

I hope you are all having a marvelous Sunday and to all you dad's out there: Happy Father's Day!

Art Again - Finally!

Well, here's a collage that I can finally post! I had made it right after my friend's visit and mailed it to her. The package arrived yesterday and now I can show it to all of you. I did two image transfers on a collage/acrylic paint background, one picture of us when we were 10 and one from her visit a few weeks ago. I really like the way it looks! (And it really looked great framed - forgot to take a picture.)

I have to share something else with you that is so fun, especially if you are into unusual creatures and knitting! I first came across the octopus on Madly Creative and was in love! I clicked from there to the Etsy site with the patterns - just wonderful! I am trying to decide which one I'd like to knit first - the praying mantis is really beckoning to me... Wouldn't they make fun gifts?

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend!!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today is my dad's birthday! He is 70 years young -- and when I say "young," I mean it! He's great and I am lucky in that we are really close. We talk on the phone several times a week, we skype, we e-mail, we are interested in many of the same things, and he is probably the biggest fan of my blog and my art - in short, we aren't "only" father and daughter, but also good friends, and that is something all too rare.

Here are some photos of him I just adore. In the picture above, he is the eager student in the middle row on the right. And below, with his VW bug! (Incidentally, when Daniel picked me up in an orange VW Beetle for our first date some 24 years ago, I instantly had a good feeling about him...)
And finally I can show you the piece of art I made for my dad for his birthday. I've been dying to post it, but had to wait for the proper time (patience is not always one of my virtues). It's a mixture of acrylic paint, paper collage and image transfers on an 8x8 canvas. My mom took the photo of me and my dad and captured a moment of connection, which has remained unbroken all these years!
Fast forward 42 years... It was our first day back on a visit to Germany and my dad immediately took Daniel and me for the biggest and best ice cream sundaes in town! He knows what makes us happy...
We wish we could celebrate with him today, but I know we'll do so in style when we see each other next! (There is a rumor that he is coming to visit us in the fall and we can't wait!!)

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag, Papa!!

Taking Flight

Here she is and I am so excited about her. This again was born out of a process that is so entirely new and fascinating to me. I did the background rather quickly and then let it sit overnight. I had it propped up on a chair in my little studio and when I went upstairs later in the evening and turned on the light in the hallway, I saw this lovely woman in the background. At first I thought that she looked too difficult for me to paint (especially the face), but once I got started I loved seeing her blossom...
The painting is on an 8x24 in. canvas and a mixture of paper collage, image transfer and acrylic paint.
I still need to tweak a couple of little things, paint the sides and varnish it, but I just had to post her already. I'll add another photo once she's all the way done!
I just entered this in the Mix It Up With Melange weekly mixed media challenge, which this week is "fly."

Touching the Past

Another experiment with paper, color and and image transfer. I called it "Touching the Past" because it looks like the glamorous woman is catching a glimpse of herself when she was little and is reaching out her hand as if to connect again with her past.
I also scanned this in gray tones and like it, so have decided to post that version as well. It's been interesting working with image transfers onto patterned backgrounds. If you click on the images to see them larger, you'll notice that you can see the writing of the paper through the little girl's face, which looks a somewhat odd until you realize what it is.

By the way, I've read numerous times that you need laser printouts or photocopies, not ink jet printouts, to use for a gel medium transfer. Because we only have an ink jet printer, I decided to try using those printouts and they actually work very well for me. If any of you are as fascinated by image transfers as I am, let me know how you do yours!

Have I said lately how much I love all your comments?!? I had never expected the level of community and support I have experienced since I started this blog and making art. It's only been a couple of months, but somehow it feels like an amazing lifetime already! Thank you!!

Mushroom Art

Ok, so maybe this isn't mushroom art (don't quite know what that might be), but this piece definitely has a mushroom on it. I made this background with cuttings from a catalog we got in the mail, and the colors turned out much deeper and richer than I had expected. I immediately saw the mushroom in the image and just sort of brought it out a little bit more strongly. It has a good bit of gold on it, which unfortunately is hard to see on this photo. These are very different colors for me and I really love the richness of it.

As an aside, we are having weather that is so unusual for us - today we barely made it above 60 degrees and it's been gray, windy and rainy all day. We keep joking that my friend brought the weather with her from Germany... But truly, we are enjoying the late cool days as we usually are well in the 80's by now! Having had my friend here has been wonderful! We can't believe a week has almost passed and she leaves again tomorrow. Although we are both sad her vacation is coming to an end, we truly made every minute count!

Image Transfer Background

A couple of days ago, I did another image transfer background, which turned out different from what I had imagined. I had cut out color swatches from a clothing catalog and just pasted them on with gel medium. When I removed the paper, I ended up with very deeply colored stripes. I went over it with an acrylic wash and ended up with this background that has a certain wood grain. As I turned it around in my hands, I saw a figure in the pattern just waiting to be painted. So, stay tuned...

In other news...my friend arrived from Germany and it's sooooo much fun having her here. A week of girl time -- nice!! Last time I had that was when my good friend Beth of Beth's Take on Life visited from Maine. Connecting with girlfriends is so wonderful and I intend to enjoy every minute of it!

And last but certainly not least, two wonderful bloggers each gave me an award today! I feel so honored and will do it real justice in my next post!! This is an amazingly supportive community!

P.S. Beth just let me know that she's been unable to leave a comment on my posts the last couple of days. If you have the same problem, could you just e-mail me at powers-studio.silke@comcast.net to let me know? I love all your comments and don't want to miss out on any of them...

Wings and Flowers

Ok, so when I started painting, I did not think I'd be painting angels. I thought of birds, butterflies, old photos as images, but not angels. And here's my second one! Funny how that happens... Well, with this one, I was looking at the background below and she suddenly jumped out at me and I just sort of colored her in. I was going to give her long hair (shouldn't an angel have long locks?!), but then she ended up with a stylish hair cut. This was my first face at a little bit of a profile angle and I am pleased with how it turned out, complete with a dreamy look in her eyes...
On to the next painting...

Art in Progress...finally!

Here is another background for a painting that wouldn't come together at first, but suddenly it all fell into place and something is emerging from it. (By the way, you can see all my images larger if you click on them.) I started out by doing image transfers with magazine images on a white clay board. When it was done, I distressed it a bit and didn't like the colors at all. So, I painted over it, blended the colors and ended up with a green and red background that still didn't speak to me.

Then, while talking with my good friend, Raina, I just mixed some colors and - without thinking much - painted over the whole piece and all at once it felt "right" to me. I think it helped that my brain was occupied talking on the phone and couldn't get in the way with thinking too much while painting!

OK, my plan had been to paint a black crow on this background (birds fascinate me!), but as I was turning the clay board around in my hands to figure out where to position the crow, I suddenly saw a figure emerging from the background, clear as day! Can you see it as well? I've been working on it and hope to have it done by tomorrow to show you all. Stay tuned...

Egret Preening

This is my second painting in the egret series. If you want to take a look at the first one, you can do that here. This one is preening and I think he turned out quite well. It's definitely more challenging for me to paint the image rather than doing an image transfer, but it's also immensely satisfying! I did use image transfer for the background, which you can check out here.

Yesterday I spotted some pieces of wood in the garage and am thinking of using one for another bird painting. I have never painted on wood before and am quite eager to try.

Last, but not least, I want to thank all of you wonderful readers for your kind and encouraging comments! It means the world to me!!

Never Alone

I love this picture of my dad and his sister when they were young. There's another version of it where they are smiling, but I really like this one! They were close growing up and have remained friends all these years. Actually, we are all really close and I feel extremely lucky in that.

Here again, I did an image transfer (can you tell I am enamored by those?), but this time onto a sample pad of Strathmore paper for acrylics. This was my first time working on an absorbent surface, which brought with it some surprises. The final piece makes me smile...