New painting and collage

Humor

was the painting subject that was chosen this time

 

Humor, mostly spoken words;

 but how to paint it in acrylic? that was the question

 

we discussed and discussed and in the end it was deducted to:

 

if it makes one smile a little

 

 

I found an illustrator whose work made me smile,

her name is Sara-Jane Szikora

 

and I made my own version of 'Self raising flower'

I now consider it finished!

 

 

One of my goals is to be able to paint without an example;

there is still a long way to go!

 

 This probably made me compose the digital collage above.

 The picture of the acrylic painting was layered 4 times over itself, in each layer adjusting the filters and highlighting another part of the first picture

 

Two versions of  'self raising flower'

by me

 

Thanks for visiting,

 

Regina



Hot summer days

Hot Summer
dyptich, 


This dyptich says it all: it is hot here in Spain...

Not my kind of weather to make art, I seem to get no further than some storyboard composing with my photo-editing programm

But that's not bad at all, since some practising and skill improvement is highly desirable.

Wishing you lovely summer days too,

***

Regina

Painting summer

 

 

No need to say more...

 

Regina

On being inspired

 

Hi!

 

 

Restless Mind

digital collage

 

This is not a time for making art... Not for me, now all things 'summer' are needing my attention.

 

The yard is in full bloom, with our Jacaranda tree in a leading role with its purple-blueish flowers, so lovely!

Reminds me to take pictures today, because very soon it will be over again. Furthermore we have two old rose plants, one in a old fashioned pink color (which I absolutely do not like), the other one bright red. Both plants have been trimmed heavily by me and that seems to do the trick: fully in bloom for the first time since we live here.

 

The garden is a big mess on the backside of our house. We are making new terrasses and a summer house there, where we can have dinners in a comfy setting. It could also be a place for painting, when the weather is too hot inside. But first the mess, inevitable.

 

Our son has been visiting and of course that means quality time with him. Not a time to sit in my studio all alone like a hermit (which I normally love...)

 

But like always there is Inspiration galore!

I found two very inspiring paintings when I was preparing our painting theme of Nothing. The first one was with asemic writing and the second one I was attracted to by its colorscheme.

 

So yesterday, in a lost moment, I managed to combine these pics and compose the above digitial collage.

 

I have called it Restless Mind

for that is somewhat how I feel these days...

 

Thanks for reading, enjoy your day,

 

Regina

 



From paper to digital

Hi!

 

(click)

 

A quiet day in the studio. This week I finished three paintings!

 

Two of them are of someone's grandchildren and

 the third is our painting club's topic: a nude

 

I was not too eager to paint in a naturalistic way, but in the end I am happy with the results. I will show a pic in a near future post, promised.

 

Meanwhile I played a little with my huge collection of pictures and chose three of my paper collages to work with. Mixing these in Photoshop resulted in the above digital collage. Please let me know in a comment if you are interested to see the source images...

 

Now out and about for lunch in one of the many fish-restaurants in our lovely neighborhood.

 

Enjoy your Sunday!

 

Regina

Brochures from the past

 

 

 

Happy New Year!

 

 And that creativity and artistic activity may be

 a big part of the new year.

 That's my wish for all of you.

 The world needs more handmade things, art, whatever, at least the world does not need more screen time, imho

 

 

 

In 2012 we made our last motorhome trip in the USA

 and like the years before I gathered much tourist brochures and summer festival material. Many of these were turned into collages and the above digital one is, again, made up by layering in Photoshop one of these paper collages.

 

It says: connect with the unexpected. Wise words if you want to grow, as a human but also as an artist. Don't we often hear a variation of this: what if?

 

Food for thought, plenty, always,

 

Regina

 



Paper to digital

Playtime in the studio!

 

 Though I am no expert at all, I thought it would be nice to give you a peek inside my digital collage 'kitchen'.

 

 

 

For the above digital collage I used the paper collage below.

This is clearly visible, isn't it?

The paper collage was made by me some years ago when we were living on a Caribbean island...

 

 

 

This paper collage speaks to me, because it embodies

some very specific Caribbean ingredients:

 the ocean and sea, the coastal shores as can be seen while

sailing and from an airplane, and of course its colours

 

To change the paper one into the first, digital collage I layered it three times 'over itself' in PS; the second time I rotated the picture because I also wanted to have yellow in the lower right corner.
For each layer I changed the blending mode and when I was satisfied a boost filter and my 'signature' (turquoise native indian sign below right) were added.

 

The digital one shows that layers add so much more depth than the with the paper one.

 

However, I must say I love them equally much...

 

Thanks for reading and yes,
if you liked this post I would love your comment

 

Regina



Swallows

 

 

Hi!

 

Though the swallows in Spain have moved to warmer surroundings now, I had to think of them today...

 

We sing a lovely English ballad with our choir that mentions these birds and like often I keep humming the songs during the day after our meeting.

 

And then I browsed my picture gallery and came across a picture I made some years ago in a Starbucks coffeeshop in the USA. Some playing with Photoshop gave this result. Layers of a USA map, the swallow picture and one of flying birds over a lake in  Upstate New York.

 

Happy to have made at least something nice today!

 

Till next time, thanks for visiting,

 

Regina

The beach, the sea

 

 

Hi!

 

You take: a Photo editing programm, pictures of a coconut tree, a country-guitar player and the Caribbean Sea

 

and there you have it: reflection of a grey Monday in Spain

 

Regina

Studying the possibilities

Hi!

 

After having made the viewfinder this morning, I decided to take the upper left

part of yesterday's picture. First I cropped it in my favorite photo editing program

to 'get away' from the other 3 designs

 

 

This already looks more interesting to me...

Then I rotated the picture 90 degrees and layered it on top of the above picture,

after which the real fun started!

 

 

I then cropped it somewhat, used various blending styles and a palet style filter,

 and this all ended up

like this picture

 

 

Finally a gradient color layer was added on top of the above design and then rotated once again 90 degrees CCW

 

I am not sure yet if this will be my definitive design, it looks like it is possible to translate it into acrylics. But maybe I first make a second design by strictly using black and white.

Ahhh, endless options

 

Enjoy the weekend!

 

Regina



Digital collage

It has been a quiet week for me. I have installed my serger after a long period of inactivity in that field; in fact I don't even sew as much as I used to do. With so many charity shops in the area that offer cloths that often are almost new, and also a shopping center not too far away, there seems to be no need to sew fashion myself. But, there must be a very large fabric store in an old factory in one of the other villages, and now that I have the address it is one of my goals for next week.

Other than one would expect, there is no fabric being sold at the many markets here, just upholstery stuff. So you will understand that I am happy to now know at least one address at least and hopefully I will not be disappointed...

 

But with the serger I made two duvet covers with fabric that was in my stock, and I felt happy that I managed to get the pretty complicated machine working again...

 

Then I have been painting, of course.

This time the subject is Africa, a very broad area with lots of painting possibilities. I chose a mask, surrounded with Kuba cloth, The painting is almost finished, but there are some challenges ahead, I will show this work asap

 

 

 

And since only text is not 'done' these days, I made the above digital collage this evening.

 It is composed by layering two images. First a detail of one of my paintings, on that the second picture which shows a wooden bird standing in our windowsill. If you look closely you will discover our neighbor's house on the other side of the street! I love how the yellow bird, which is a reflection of the brown one has taken over the colour of the underlying painting.

Just a little playing here in Spain

 

Thanks for visiting and a happy weekend,

 

Regina

Roadtrek trip!

Finally! After over three years we made our first camper trip in

Spain.

 

It was a test to see if the necessary changes to the electrical system worked out fine. Well, they did!

 

We went into the mountain range that runs parallel to the coast.

A complete different world it is, over there. Sleepy villages with very tiny streets. Many tints of terra and ocre, no frills, hardly romantic.

Yet the country is charming, but unlike France not idyllic. I love the no-nonsense atmosphere here, and above all I love the very gentle people.

 

Always willing to help, being friendly and subtly improving my sometimes poor pronunciation of Spanish

 

 

 

 

Back home I put the photographs on the computer and even started to edit a few. The one above is a mix of two pictures, one of a field with grasses and tiny flowers, the other of harvest baskets

It is a start, more will follow.

 

See you next time!

 

Regina

New digital collage

 

La belle Epoque

digital collage

 

Sometimes, when there is some time left between activities, I use that time for playing on the computer.

While browsing my inspiration picture map, I came across this shell picture. It is beautiful as is, but I layered and blended it with a picture of a brochure of a well-known Saint Martin restaurant in Marigot (FWI) and this is the result: a digital collage like I have made many before, in my colours and my style.

 I could as well have named it Mostly Turquoise Shell, don't you think?

 

Ah, whatever, I am glad that not all my digital collage skills have left.

Note to self: keep on playing (exercising)Regien...

 

 

Have a playful day!

 

Regina

Finished

Hi!

 

Last week my latest painting was hung in the club where we are members. This club of Dutch speaking people in Moraira (Dutch and Flemish members) offers a large variety of activities, one of them painting. After a long time of working with fabrics only, I could no longer resist the paint and joined the group of paint lovers that get together every Thursday.

Usually there is a specific theme that we all try to work with, changing every six weeks or so. This time it was sports. In this post I already wrote something about that.

 

 

After printing my digital design I transferred the basic lines with charcoal,

 using a raster (still slightly visible when clicking the above image)

 

 

Since I am only a beginning painter without a formal art training,

 it is an extra challenge to get results that look somewhat like the original digital design!

 

 

it was difficult to get the effect of splashing water...

 

 

but I am happy with the results!!

 

(in real life the upper right corner is less yellow..)

 

Thanks for visiting, enjoy the weekend!

 

Regina



Dots...

 

 

There is not much happening here in our little Spanish fisherman's village on the Medittarenean coast. Now the weather is moving into more 'fallish' temperatures, there is more enthusiasm with me to make long walks and also spend more time inside the house.

 

I look back on a September month with, for me finally, a lot of blogging. It feels as a good decision to make my rentree in the blogosphere, all be it alone for my own pleasure, to record my creative/artistic accomplishments and more general things that take place. And I am more than happy and grateful that a handful of faithful followers have made comments on my posts, thank you so much!

 

Today I started my new painting of the sailing ship, it is in its first stages and will require lots of more paint until I will show it here, but it will come soon I guess.

 

That's it for now, as I already told, not much news but just a little hello from  me here with some details of a photocollage full of dots that I recently made

 

As always, thanks for visiting my blog,

 

Regina

Inspiration

 

I'm preparing a new painting. The subject has to be sport.

The only sport I find attractive enough to paint is sailing. I looked up images of sailing boats and- ships on Pinterest. Most have very strong diagonal lines, which I don't like in a painting. After a lot of excercising in PS, the most likely design is the image above. I like the flow of the sails, the slight aspect of water and the colours.

Looks like quite a challenge to paint, but I am gonna try it..!

What do you think?? Feedback is very welcome...

 

Thanks for visiting, as always

 

Enjoy the weekend,

 

Regina

Playing with pictures

 

Yesterday I showed a picture of an old branch that I saw during my walk.

 

Looking in my pictures library for a future post about my painting exercises, I was inspired to play a little with some of these pictures. Here they are:

 

 

Yesterday's branch after rotation

 

 

detail of a painting that I will show soon...

 

 

...combined into this digital collage

 I love the visible texture of the canvas!

 

Thanks for visiting, enjoy the weekend!

 

Regina

Morning walk

Now temperatures in Spain are more pleasant, after a very hot summer, I have resumed my daily walks

 

I must confess that the Mediterranean life is very attractive, with so much wine, tapas and siesta, so daily walks are one thing I can do to increase my condition...

 

 So let me show you some vistas from this morning, it is funny how much details can be seen when you simply walk!

 

 

My walk started along the vineyards, where the grapes

are ready to be harvested

They make a sweet dessertwine with these, called Mistela

 

 

Then I passed a big carob tree. Its leaves are a good replacement

 for Eucalyptus in bouquets!

We don't have fresh flowers here (just imported), neither have I seen Eucalyptus,

 but

silk flowers and carob tree leaves are a good follow up for me...

 

fruits of the carob tree

During WW II it was an alternative for cocoa,

but I believe nowadays it is only being used in

the health food section of our food

industry

 

 

the artist in me got excited when I discovered this tree trunk,

in fact it was a hole of an old branch that has weathered over the years

...pure beauty...

 

 

some more eye candy

 

 

the tree that can be seen all along the Mediterranean coast:

the pine tree

it is protected nowadays, for there have been removed way

too many trees during the house building boom of

some decades ago

 

 

and finally, on my way back  home, the sea!

It never ceases to make me happy

 

This was it for today, I hope you enjoyed this impression of

my morning walk

 

Bye 4 now!

 

Regina



Nature's rhythm

Yesterday we pruned the seeds from our two big palm trees. Once bundled to put them outside the fence where they will be picked up by the municipality truck, they were pure eyecandy for me.

 

 Do you notice the rhythm and order of the stems and seeds?

 

 

It is a miracle how the trees have been able to grow so many seeds,

it hasn't been raining for months now in coastal Spain!

 

 

This picture was a candidate to play with in Photoshop, but did not make it eventually...

 

 

My digital collage skills have to be revived, I think. A little practising every day...another pro of taking up blogging again!

 

Thanks for visiting!

 

Regina

Our Jacaranda tree

 

 

When we bought our house in Spain one year ago, we were very surprised that one of the trees in the garden appeared to be a Jacaranda tree. Allthough there were not many, the lovely purple flowers made me quite happy. When autumn came, I collected the pods and made this picture tryptich. Like the pods of the tropical flamboyant tree, the shells are of a hard, wooden material.

 

 

When we spotted the neighbors pruning their tree, we did ours too, for we did not have any experience with this kind of tree nor did we live before in this mediterranean climate...

 

Until today it looked like our tree had not survived this operation, for the branches are still completely bare despite the soft winter and many other trees that have already blossomed. But, upon a very close look, I discovered one (ONE) tiny pair of leaves and maybe it will have a happy end.

 

Though this Jacaranda is growing on the very spot of our future pool, I will do my utmost to get it back in a healthy shape, starting with watering as of tomorrow!

 

That's the latest, I will get back with a renovation update one of these days.

Have a great evening!

 

Regina