for the love of cupcakes

final version

doing some bookkeeping

Being a good girl doing my bookkeeping, not lagging behind too much. (but inside I'm screaming)

pointless

trying different faces

I just had to

... not that it has anything to do with the simplicity I've been trying to achieve in my painting lately, But it made me laugh.

more fun

playing some more

slaughter and having fun

Now I'm starting to loosen up. Scissors, knives and paintings that didn't really do (but still had something). I felt a bit paralysed after finishing my polyptych the other day ... and almost forgot that I was supposed to do whatever and just have fun in my studio this autumn - to see where that would lead me. This morning when I went for a run I suddenly knew what to do. (I'm painting parallel to this as well)

too much

too much cake?

I wish.
But no, I'm in the middle of figuring out how to squeeze 3 months of work into 2 months. 

weekend monster

A monster is much more entertaining than a photo of my paperwork.
Have a nice weekend!

time for vacation

a cut out made as a sketch for the Happy Family card game (didn't go for this one though). As always it is based on one of my sons abstract paintings with a minimum of addition from me - I just cut out what I find.

Last night our son came home after a week of vacation with his grandma and aunt, which is the explanation to my absence here; you will do something else than blogging at night when you're child-free.

My 4 weeks of vacation starts tomorrow, but I will still pop in here now and then and share images from our summer fun.

I wish you all a great July!

paper cuts for mural

Part of a larger image I made today to show the schoolchildren how you can think (took me almost an hour)

It's been almost 5 weeks since I worked with the schoolchildren (age 15) on the longer mural project. But tomorrow it's time again. The tricky things with this project is that we have so very little time; I have 5 lessons (1 hour each lesson) per school class to help them develop ideas, make sketches and prepare for painting the mural. (They are supposed to work without me as well, but just twice) And then just ONE day to execute the murals together with some of the children in FOUR different places in their school.

So the big challenges for me is to manage to help them achieve something good and something that won't take too much time to execute (and that they'll manage to work on without my constant help - I can not divide into four!).

My idea: We cut out human figures from newspapers and magazines as bases for coloured silhouettes (in a limited number of colours) which can be used in any creative way to make larger images. They first worked individually to get the idea and will now work in groups of 3 on a suggestion in scale 1:5.

The question: will they manage to come up with a finished suggestion in just 3 hours (3 lessons)? 3 hours is not very much time, is it?

They didn't finish the individual suggestions in 2 hours...

WEEKWORD | sorrow

Hanna-Happenings gave the weekword sorrow. I haven't played this game for a while; but now I couldn't resist. The reason for this will be explained in my next post ...

- check Hanna's blog for the other participants!

cutting papers

today I was trying a new approach for the fishes and birds. In the end they all died ... and then there was suddenly also a little dead mammal - smiling. I'm not working the papers - they are working me!

I still really like Adam Saks, especially his water colours

could it be love?

no more snow ...

what to do with your sleigh?

Picasso

I call it Picasso ...

A sudden thought: maybe it could become a bird print for the Of Fishes and Birds Project?

how do you do?

Overwhelmed by work - and commitments - I can't be much present here this week either (no Art as Business until next weekend). But I can promise you a playful cut out every day until Friday!

I made these cut outs when playing around with ideas for the Happy Family card game.

What a happy family!

Some time ago I was invited by Esti to participate in her playful collaborative project: a children's card game entitled "Happy Family". The card game includes works by the following creative people: Sarajo Frieden, Thereza Rowe, Estibaliz Hernandez, Lotte Andkilde, Aris Moore, Kimberley Di Laurenti and Lady Desidia. (see belove some of their cards too.) All the proceedings are going to the charity organization Doctors without Borders. It is to be published in Spain soon - and I can barely wait to see the whole deck of cards! you can have a sneak peek of all of Sarajo's cards here and here you can see Thereza's Info on how to get your very own cards will come soon!

but today I suddenly noticed that when I sent Esti my second version of card F3 I deleted the poor girl's food by mistake ... (i.e. the layer in photoshop) That's what happens when you fix important things around midnight. But maybe she is better off without the peas?

a drink

not a good studio day

I sucked big time in the studio today. I don't know what I was trying to achieve - but the painting was not only not good - it was really bad. No talent, no skills ... have I just been lucky the other times?

So I post a sketch made for a playful project instead.