I just finished my latest mixed media art painting for the Suzi Blu class LaLaLa!
This is also a painting I loved to make!! There had to be a bike and a fence in this painting and you had to use a sentence from a children's book.
I used a sentence from the book Harry, the Wild West Horse. Because it was about a boy and his horse I had to change the sentence: "Thomas loved to feel the wind blow through his hair" into "I love to feel the wind blow through my hair" Sara said. From another book I cut out the name Sara.
I made the fence myself (couldn't find the fence Suzi used over here in my country) from some white card board and thin wire. After I finished making the fence I painted all of it with white gesso.
This painting is about me when I was a child. I loved to feel the wind blow through my hair when I was riding my bike! Red and blue were my favorite colors growing up.
Here's a detail of the painting where you can see the glitter paint I used:
Today I picked up my first paper bag with organic vegetables. I have the Holland bag for 2 persons with only veggies from my country. This week there are 6 different kind of veggies in the bag. You can't choose upfront what kind of veggies you would like to have, so it's always a bit of a surprise. Of course all vegetables are from the season!
Here's a photo of my bag:
Starting on top left and going clockwise: savoy cabbage, little gem, chard, tomatoes, carrots (in 3 colors!) and fennel.
I already have eaten some of the savoy cabbage, the little gem and the tomatoes. It tasted delicious!!! There's plenty of vegetables for a whole week for 2 persons and even more and it costs cheap (€7,95) in comparison to the vegetables you can buy at the organic food store. All vegetables are freshly picked the day before you can pick up the bag at one of the many points of sales.
For Dutchies look over here for more information about the bag and where you can get it!
I finished a new painting for the Suzi Blu class LaLaLa. I already gave it away to a bee-keeper in my village who was very kind giving me a big chunk of raw beeswax a couple of weeks ago. More about that later on!
This is the painting I especially made for him:
I used a shadow box without the glass. I first put a thin layer of modeling paste on certain parts of the frame and than used a small piece of a thin sheet of pure beeswax with a honeycomb motif as a stamp. Let it dry and then put gesso over it. Let it dry again and cover with yellow paint (glazed) mixed with some gold Mica powder. Let it dry and finish with burnt umber (glazed).
For the painting I used a small wooden box. I covered the back with pieces from a page of Winnie the Poeh (where he climbs a tree and flies with a blue balloon to get some honey).
This is a detail of the frame I decorated myself.
And here you can see more clearly that I've used a shadow box.
The bee-keeper was very surprised and he liked the painting very much. He gave me a big hug and told me that if I'm in need for some more beeswax I can stop by anytime!
So this is my story about how I got in touch with this bee-keeper and how I made the raw beeswax suitable for using on my paintings:
On August 1st I went for a bike ride in the afternoon because the weather was finally warm and sunny again (we've had a horrible Summer this year in my country!). In the next village I saw a sign near a house that they were selling home made honey. The bee-keeper was mawing his lawn and I asked him if he also sold beeswax. He told me he had just given away all of his beeswax to a befriended bee-keeper who happened to live in my village. I had a little chat with him, thanked him for the information and bought a pot of honey. When I arrived back in my village I went to see this other bee-keeper and he gave me a chunk of filthy/raw beeswax for free!
So this is how my chunk of beeswax looked like before I cleaned it:
With a knife I scraped away a lot of the brown stuff. The bee keeper told me
that it's crystallized honey.
I then put the chunk of beeswax in a small casserole which I then put in a large casserole with water. I slowly heated the water without letting it come to boil.
I put a nylon stocking on top of a square plastic container and pored the melted beeswax through the stocking. All the filthy parts in the beeswax
stayed behind on top of the stocking.
I let the beeswax in the container rest for about an hour and then used a knife to cut it loose from the container and ... voila : a clean chunk of beeswax ready to be used for one of my next projects!
A couple of weeks ago I started a new class at Suzi Blu's Les Petit Academy and I managed to make a couple of the assignments.
At first I made a meditating bunny. The new technique I learned was to make scratches in the beeswax and then rub on oil paint and wipe off most of it. Some of the oil paint (I used brown) will stay behind in the scratches.
The next assignment was making a dark colored petite doll. I loved making this painting! Again I used the same technique with making scratches, only this time I used a braider. The flower trim at the bottom costs a fortune at Pippoos but I think it's worth it!
After the second assignment I made a very small painting on wood of Suzi Blu and her pets.
And today I finished a similar painting on canvas of Suzi and her 2 doggies.
I'm not sure yet what my next project will be because I'm also still a member of Natalie's class: Woman and their Unicorns. She hasn't been very active for the last couple of months due to her final exams but is now ready to finish this class.
