May is almost over. Since it has been pretty cold this year here in northern Germany, we are wistfully waiting for a warm June :)!!
I worked on some new card motives the last couple of weeks and would like to share some new landscapes with you (see my last Card Post here). My childhood friend said to the both first ones showing the poppies: “They remind me of Monet!” – what an honour! Here you go …
Wishing you a great (SUNNY and WARM!) weekend!
magdalenaarte
Finding the right time, motivation and mood to immerse in – it’s not only a question of time. I think you guys know well what I’m talking about.
The past weeks were pretty stressy, overcrowded with work and responsibility – concerning the business, but also concerning familiy issues. No relaxing atmosphere, no energy left to dive into any creative moment …
But, what the hey! We all know those feelings – that pressure wanting to be high-efficient and getting the best out of it. But life isn’t all about performing! There are more necessary things to do first sometimes – and it’s definitely okay to decide that way. Only important is to accept it! A little rest from art can make you feeling the hunger for it even more intensely. Today, after a long, long afternoon walk I said to my husband: “You know what – back at home, I’ll start to work on my painting again!” I felt it – and the timing was perfect!
Just updated my GALLERY with the new results from today’s “LILIES UNWANTED – Layer 5”. Behind this oil painting, there is a lovey story waiting be told. To be continued … 🙂
Wishing you a great relaxing Sunday and a nice start to the new week!
magdalenaarte
What you see is what you get? Not every time :)!! Especially furniture needs to be recovered or revalued from time to time – like our gem here. It’s an 200 years old massive wooden bench covered with hogskin. The grandparents of my father’s first wife (the mother of my four half sisters) were carpenters specialised in manufacture of anthroposophical furniture. Means, no nails, no glue – all sticked perfectly together.
My sister Karoline had the bench before me and it will always stay in this family. So, Karoline did the first makeover years ago – she bought two mattresses and coated them with a really 80’s-like fabric – cool but it had its days ;):
The pattern was so special (didn’t fit well to our home) that we did the worst thing ever – covered it completely with a white IKEA blanket:
A shame, isn’t it ;(? On our March-home-vacation this year, we decided to change it – finally!!! From the fotos above you can see a little impression of the new style – we thought about a mix of well-being, heartiness but also heat – CORD FABRIC – no, 70’s-like FOXY ORANGE CORD FABRIC would look amazing!
We were so happy having one of our first “click&collect” meetings during this second (long lasting) lockdown at my favourite drapery, the Stoffbox in Bremen’s Viertel. There, we found the perfect fabrics to work with: first – the desired foxy orange cord. Unfortunately, there were only 3 meters left (we needed 6 meters for both mattresses) – an individual item – but we went for it – no chance for switching ideas :). The polite sales lady from Stoffbox suggested to work with a second fabric – a canvas in a light beige or brown colour. Taken! But instead of a light beige tone, we chose a bright turquoise canvas, pretty robust and smooth. And best thing we noticed back at home: it fits perfectly to our new fancy side table :D!!
A three-day-work-marathon started. I never sewed such a big coat for a cushion before in my life :). I was really afraid to fail with the machine, therefore, I decided to sew all by hand (crazy, I know!!!). For me it worked well – I had full control and with every seam I got more confident. And what also helped a lot: we had one whole week of rain – so you didn’t miss out on anything staying at home and sewing for hours and hours ;). Put my favourite playlist on – Nick Waterhouse up and down – cannot get enough of his “Place Names” – very enjoyed the drive:
We had even enough fabric left to make two extra pillowcases out of it! We’re really pleased with our new 70’s-Love-Cave-Interpretation 😀 – our lambskin and fur pillow look awesome on it as well – groovey, Baby! Here comes the final result:
Wishing you a lot of inspiration and a fancy weekend!!
magdalenaarte
After three weeks of taking care of my husband’s health who struggled very bad with a pneumonia (no COVID-19 – incredible, but yes!!), I’m happy to be back with this little practice post :).
Issue of this one is: drawing hands! Seems simple, but drawing hands can really be a challenge – all those wrinkles, shadows in combination with movement and liveliness – not easy ;)!!
See here my practices from 2005 and 2006 in Udo Steinmann’s courses:
Watching those, my friend Natalie would say perhaps: “Try to avoid the lines. All things you see are separated either into light or into shadow – there aren’t existing any lines in the nature!”
As simple that sounds as difficult it makes it. I had a really comic-like style in the years between 2003 and 2005 – drawed a lot of Manga-infused stuff. BUT, Natalie, I have to note: I think it is a question of style and choice, maybe of proficiency, but no way of skills at all :). I understand the point that a more natural style requires less lines and more light/shadow convergence, BUT THE ARTIST DECIDES how the result has to look like. Always. Nevertheless, I think I changed a lot concerning my style in the past years. It is still recognisable, but a bit more elaborated … let’s see:
Important is to stay in training and try to catch the energy in any movement :).
Wishing you a great start to the new week!!
magdalenaarte
The last two weeks were pretty intense – a lot of work was waiting for me after our two weeks of vacation. Time went so fast, I’m happy to find this moment to meditate and bring my thoughts down for a second.
It’s fabulous how fast winter has changed with spring this year – a week ago, we had bad, cold, inclement weather and now birds are singing all over in the trees, bushes are foliating and yesterday was my first day wearing only a shirt outside (we had 21 degrees!!!) – incredible! I love spring so much 🎉!!
I would like to share another lost-&-found-story with you guys today – find the first one here. In February, I started jogging again (you know, during the pandemic you have to do something for yourselves to stay in training – in any kind of discipline 😉). So, one day on my morning round, I found this fancy side table:
We cleaned it and Thomas said straightaway: “That one will get a new design!”. In the first week of our vacation at the beginning of March, he started to sand the surface and to put the first layer of colour on it. We decided something blue would be nice 🤩:
We love to play with different styles in our home – something classic meets something edgy, gets mixed with something boho and strikes something clean.
It’s incredible how different the colour looks with the second layer – we used some wall colour remained 😊. The fine-tuning was my part then. For that clear Scandinavian design I thought some geometric décor would be great – a golden hummingbird would fit well!!!
After having sketched the motive, I started to work the gold in using a special acrylic paint (Champagner Gold) – here comes the result:
Thomas varnished it with a special wood lacquer at the end so that beverage and cleanser cannot harm it in any way.
It’s always a joy to give thrown away things a new purpose – we love that!!
Wishing you a sunny, inspiring rest of the week and stay save!!!
magdalenaarte
Last week, I ordered some new material for my different drawing projects – e.g. new pencils from type 7B up to 14B (really exciting! I didn’t ever use a stronger B type than 8B before, thought that’s the ultimate before it comes to charcoal :D!!) and a natural paper sketch book from SMLT Art.
Then, I tried some new soft pastels from TOISON D’OR by Amazon for under 13 Euros. I didn’t expect them to be high-quality concerning that price level – only wanted to get started after 15 years out of practise (see may Monday-me post to compare ;)). I have to say I’m really impressed by the results and will definitely give those pastels a try again, especially the oil variant!! Wanna see my first trial? It’s called FOR TOMY cause my husband loves squirrels (we would have one as a pet if that would be possible ;)):
I posted that in my facebook story on last Wednesday and soon got a request from our family friend Natalie Thomkins who is a great artist living in Italy. She asked me to participate in a 10-picture-challange some artists started with on facebook, twitter and co. With or without topic – all in; you create 10 works in a very short time – at least one a day. I accepted – here you go with the other nine:
I think WILD LIFE goes pretty well to sum up my little experiment. The challenge was fun – thank you so much for having invited me, Natalie <3!!!!
So, guys, and what’s your next challenge like? 🙂
Wishing you a great start to the new week!!!
magdalenaarte
The last two weekends a couple of friends and I spent time again on our retirement-home project. There are three more homes waiting to be served with handmade presents and cards – a great achievement in Corona times. This makes us really glad!!
Here a little selection of the 18 cards I made, let’s have a look:
To have some more card-art impressions, see also:
A piece of think-about
AFTER WORK CARD ART
Lockdown Post
Wishing you a great new week and a lot of creativity!!! Stay save!!!
magdalenaarte
Winter 2006 – 2007. It was my last semester at the art-college-prep class before school leaving examination. Our teacher Udo Steinmann told us that an exposition has been organized by the Freie Kunstschule Bremen (unfortunately, the school has been closed in 2017, so I can’t share a good link with you 😦 – the closing story can be reviewed here).
That exposition took place at the World Trade Center Bremen and showed all the works created by the students of the Freie Kunstschule Bremen in the last two semesters (summer 2006 and winter 2006/2007). There were a section for portraits as well where my “Lady with the hat” has been picked to be one of 10 portraits to be represented:
It’s a defamiliarised work based on Lucas Cranach the Elder’s “Portrait of a young woman” from 1525.
magdalenaarte
Last Sunday – I have to iterate, I’m not a fan of using video conferences or WHATSAPP etc., to get in drawing interaction with others (see my DRAW’N TALK post to know why I write that) – my friend Daniel invited me again to join his Zoom-drawing-group, and I said “YES OK!” again (finally – I know, Daniel :))!!
This time, it was different. I felt different. After 12 months of pandemic, we are tired out and starved of having no real contacts, no possibilities to meet more than one person at once – even reluctantly cause you do that every time with a hint of anxiety for health, on both sides 😦 …
So, I really enjoyed that Sunday-Zoom-meeting with Daniel and some other friends who love to paint and draw as well. We laughed and talked and made the best of those two hours together – and had a really great time and a deep, deep (!!!) talk!!! The first hour, I worked on my “Lilies” (have a look at that 3rd layer of oil of LILIES UNWANTED in my GALLERY) and the second one on a drawing involving that meeting’s issue “Draw a scene from your daily routine”. I can be badly scatty sometimes – it gets worse more tired or stressed (or both!) I am … I instantly knew: some broken dish or sort of accident it would be – or an accident just at the happening 😀 …
Here you go:
Thanks, Daniel, for having “forced” me to be in that day :D!!!
magdalenaarte
Do you know those days you come home, totally stressed from work and think: First, I need a glass of wine, then my jogging pants and then some good old “Friends” or another non-demanding mainstream TV series to calm down, to find myself back in the middle again?? Thursday 11th of February 2021 was such a day – a crowded, stressy one – shouting for relaxation!
Then, I saw my new sketch book there, lying on the floor and containing my KNEIPENTOUR-drawing solely. I thought by myself: “It’s a pity – you bought that nearly a month ago and used it once only!” … I’ve told you some posts before how much I really, really would like to get where I was in my late teens when preparing for art college. My drawing was skilled and jaunty – no over-thinking, no too-much-worries – that sleaziness it’s all about!! See my NUDESIDE-DOWN-memory to get an idea of it.
ONLY WAY TO GET WHERE YOU WANT IS TO GET STARTED!!! So, I turned Netflix on (ok, instead of “Friends” it was a documentary about Diana’s life – cause we had finished “The Crown” that weekend before and I was so fascinated from “Lady Di“‘s life cause she died when I was 9 years old) and made my Pinterest-research parallely. Something containing movement would be great – moves, dance – dancers! Ok, dancers … Lady Di loved to dance, too by the way ;). Here my drawing results from that evening:
Have a good week, stay creative and first of all: stay safe!!!
magdalenaarte
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