A Peek of Colourful Fairies

Hi again! As you might have noticed, I'm have taken a summer break from blogging and craft projects. But not entirely! Here's some technique experiments from June - I took my oil pastels out and sketched a couple of fairies.

With oil pastels I also used a lot of watercolour, and a bit of sparkling mists! This combination is all about colours, so I left black out completely.

Heippa taas! Olen ottanut vähän "omaa lomaa" askartelusta ja bloggaamisesta tänä kesänä. Ajattelin kuitenkin rikkoa hiljaisuuden tällä keijuprojektillani. :) Värikkäät kokeilut syntyivät öljypastelleilla luonnostellen ja vesiväreillä ja misteillä täydentäen. Musta väri oli helppo jättää pois, ja eivätpä nämä työt sitä kaipaakaan.

Kun kesä ja helteet vielä jatkuvat, jatkan minäkin vielä hiljaiseloa tovin, kaikenlaista tekemistä kun riittää. Mukavaa elokuuta jokaiselle! :-)

/ Thanks for reading this! I'll continue blogging little less frequently - got still a lot of summer things to do. Hope you'll have a great August! xx

Mixed Media Canvas - Summer Theme

This Sunday I went to a course held by Riikka. She showed us how to make a summer themed canvas from all sort of materials. I really enjoyed learning new technique with my own hands! :)
/ Oli todella mukavaa olla tänään mukana Riikan canvas-kurssilla Espoossa Askartelu Amaliassa. Aiheena oli tehdä canvas-taulu mixed media -tekniikalla kesäisestä neidosta.

Sattumalta aihe sopii Amalian kesähaasteeseen, joten tulenpa minäkin mukaan kesäkuun haasteeseen. :)

I got my work almost done in the four hours! This course was first of its' type and I'd say Riikka did great job in scheduling. :) At home I added some small decorations and white paint as well as finished the face area.
/ Yllätyin itse siitä, miten pitkälle sain oman työni tehtyä. Tuppaan tekemään tosi hitaasti uusia asioita. Onneksi en ollut ainut, kaksi muutakin askartelijaa mainitsivat samasta asiasta. :) Ohjeistukset olivat siis selkeät ja aikaa riittävästi, koska kellään ei tainnut tulla kiire.

Here's where I got during the course / taulu kurssin jäljiltä:

And here's the canvas after I re-painted the face at home/ ...ja kotona puurtamani lopputulos:

It always a challenge to change colours in a middle of a work - I really struggled to mix good skin tones from my own colours. So this resulted in re-painting the hole area.
/Omat akryylivärini eivät sisällä valmiita ihonsävyjä, joten sekoittelin uusia sävyjä otsa hiessä. ;) Halusin muuttaa ilmettä, minusta tuo alkuperäinen oli jotenkin omahyväinen. Uusi ilme on ainakin erilainen, vaikkei niin luonteva, mitä toivoisin. Kesäneito on kuitenkin nyt valmis!

Art Journaling: Happiness

My first Art Journal got a second page lately. It's about reminding myself of steps to increase my happiness.

I take part to Inspiration Avenue's challenge with this page as it fits surprisingly well to the theme "Hearts and Trees".

I strongly link happiness and heart together. The heart shape was the starting point of my first drawing. The final shape with barely visible outlines is important. I wanted to leave out any barriers. The leaves came along in middle of the process. They say to me to go on, something good is going to grow out of listening yourself... :-)

And if you wonder - the main quotation is from a song (Secret) of Madonna, :) Started to listen her record after many years and somehow that line stroke me!

As for technique: I continued the earlier ink drawing with water-based acrylic colours. I'm surprised that the golden flower stamping seems to work! Took some risks with it...
The white gel pen was really useful when writing and finishing the page.

Mixed Technique Drawing - Metallic Details

I think I finally did something worth framing - this is almost finished so it's safe say it out loud. ;)

As a part of home decoration project I have gone through my drawings and paintings. Most of the finished pieces are soon 10 years old! I'm sad to admit but they don't inspire me as they used to. And I find more mistakes from them... Maybe you know the feeling?

Well it was obviously time to get something new and fresh done! I'm really interested of mixed techniques right now, but have only little experience of it. With this work I wanted to push myself to that direction.

As a subject I chose Tribal Fusion Belly Dance as it also inspires my imagination right now.

Oh and I'm taking part to Paint Party Friday with this piece. :)

I found out that the stamping inks go well together with watercolour pens. And the water based inks are a lot of fun with wet paper!

Some textures in the picture are made with stamps as well as some details (such as keys and dragonfly). I think I really got a better hold of metallic gel pens I have.

Here are some details:

Going to take a small break from this before I frame it. Maybe that will help to find anything worth fixing.

Thanks for visiting! Hope you have a very inspiring New Year!

More Sketches of a Fairy Painting

Hello again! Last October was quite a stressful month in work so I've rested a lot and let blogging wait. Now was as good time as any to break the silence.

The only craft project I worked on was a painting for a Finnish drawing competition. I hope I have a chance to win some quality drawing products. ;-) I actually sketched a lot for it. Here's two pretty advanced sketches - one that is in my art journal, the other on a single sheet.

As you might guess I started with acrylic colours. It required a gesso-based background paper. I really wanted to work little details more. and enjoy some drawing, so I changed the medium.

This one is less dramatic but more interesting on details. I added some of them with oil pastels and watersoluble metallic pens. This paper is 200 g/m2 and recommended for mixed media but it couldn't absorb all the water. In nature the background colour actually looks as dull as in here. I'm glad I tested it so I knew the final work would require more heavier stuff.

I think I'll show the final work later. I'm not sure when I hear how the competition went, but I tell as soon as I can. :-)

Art Journal Tryouts

After last months intensive face painting & drawing I decided to take few days break from artist stuff.

But I have to confess that the break did not last long. ;) I have been trying out some new stuff on my art journal...
The gesso based pages are not made for watercolours but the effect looks fun!
The upper one has a thick gesso base and the lower a thin layer.

And I'm also preparing for Halloween-time... :)

29 Faces #8

I planned to make something bigger with a harder medium last weekend, and on Sunday got started.

I chose the acrylic colours because the oil colours are nowhere to be found... (Must have packed and carried them to storage some time ago.)
I don't normally do the hole work with acrylic colours, rather just fix background or details.

I had this sketch from Friday as my starting point. I really liked it and wanted make more out of it.

And there was a little twist... At the time there came a documentary about Incas which gave an idea how to move on! Tonight after work and cooking I finally got finish this piece:

Unfortunately the scanner left the dress too red and bananas way too yellow. Anyway I must admit I'm surprised that this looks as good as it does! :-)

After working so long with one piece, I gave myself permission to relax the rest of this evening. I'm getting on with the challenge tomorrow. (Starting fresh with no plans!)

Fairy Painting in Frames

I'm glad to finally present my latest bigger project: fairy painting in frames. I had such a fun time with it. :) I made this for a "secret fairy" friend swap and this is the first time I get to tell about it here.

I'd like to take part to following challenges:
Lexi's Creations: "Anything but a card"
Inspire Me Fridays 119: "Anything goes!"
Southern Girls Challenge: "Make Believe"

I wanted to use same theme for the painting and the frames. I decided to go for a "Summer in river bank" -theme based on my fairy sketch.
Last Spring I went to a course of Emmo. There I learned using gesso, stamps and acrylic colours all together. It helped to make the frames since I have never done those before. The gesso was great base for stamping and painting colours. To make the result water resistant I brushed two lyers of decoupage finish.

Materials of the painting:

Watercolour pans & pencils
watercolour paper 200g/m2

Materials for the frames:

Gesso
Dragonfly board stamp
Water resistant green ink pad
Acrylic paints
Decoupage finish

29 Faces: The 1st.

I have been hoping I could get a chance to take part to 29 faces -challenge. Now I noticed the challenge is running in this September, yay! :) Since a little I've enjoyed drawing faces. They are so challenging and yet intriguing. Nowadays I don't draw them as often - but this is a good reason to continue.

To the point! Here's the 1st face of September:

This is actually an ATC card sized picture. I used black ink and watercolour pencils to make it.

ATC - Beach Life

Hi! Time to bring something new to this blog too. The springtime has been busy, but I found time to learn some new techniques to use in paper crafting.

The new challenge of Fun with ATCs, "Texture", was a great topic to test what to do with them. Can't wait to tell about it! But maybe you'd like to see first the ATC:

"Beach Life"

The new material I started with is gesso. It was great for making uneven, wavy background. I coloured the result with acrylic colours. I mixed them with gel medium and that helped to colour the water area without covering too much of the white background. Usually I would use water to dilute those colours, but that makes the mixture too liquid.

As you might have guessed, the gel medium is the second new material of mine. It also helped to secure the bits of sand, seashells and the hat to the background.

The shining of water was made with gloss varnish. Luckily my boyfriend had some! It worked surprisingly well. I rarely take photos with camera flash on, but now it actually helped to get a glimpse of that shining. :)

Thanks for watching, x

My favourite: Beautiful Vasilisa

Collage Obsession challenged us to present our favourite fairy tale.
I have loved ever since a little girl fairy tales and their beautiful pictures, so it was a hard choice to pick just one of those.

I ended up with a tale from a book of Russian folk stories: Beautiful Vasilisa.

Creating a piece of art from this topic was a long process, but this evening I got it finished. Rather than making a card I chose to make a spread of this to my scrap book.

The story is about a brave, dutiful and - of course - beautiful young woman, who's mother dies. In her dying bed mother gives her a small doll, which eventually helps her with cruel stepmother, stepsisters and evil witch Baba Jaga. At the end she needs no more help from the doll to get married with a tsar! :)

In left page I used watercolour pencils and white acrylic colour. The background of right page is made with acrylic colours. To the middle I actually copied a page of text with ornamental frames from the book and coloured and stamped it. The figure of the girl I drew with ink and watercolours.

Thanks for reading :) Have a nice weekend!

Edit: 16th of March 12:30... Took a better picture in daylight and updated it here.