Gallery wall

Still missing Motte's portrait but it will take some time until I get this done. Don't have many photographs of him.

I'm not thrilled with the two small scale watercolors which I added recently.
They picture Linda and Opa.

Linda's shape is okay but the painting looks a little pale and powerless.

Opa... well, I did him twice and never got the proportions right. Not a big deal to try them again. They are very small and I can change them out in the frames easily.

If you look closely you'll see a tiny stick-figure-like birdie, in the little square frame above the cat.

This is a scribbling my friend did and I thought it was super cute, so I kept it for many years. Now it's between the others.

Wasn't easy to take a good photo from the paintings hanging in my corridor. Here is one showing a little more of the environment so you can see, they are all really very small.

Tilly

Not sure if I mentioned this before,

I'm creating a small gallery wall in my hallway. It will be from paintings and drawings of my deceased pets and perhaps I will add some photos too.

I had some problems to find a nice way to arrange the pictures on the wall because three of them already hung and it's quite difficult to add something without re-arranging everything completely new, which means pulling all (or most of) the nails and hammering new ones into the wall. I absolutely dislike unused nail holes in the wall!
But I think I got it now. Will show a photo when it's complete. Still three birds to go.

This is Tilly.

Although I liked all of my birds, he was probably the most special one to me.

He was such a kindly and gentle soul. I still miss him a lot. He always went away from any fight. Now, when I think about his personality I like to think that he might have been the reincarnation of a Buddhist ;-)


The above photo shows the water colour painting before I darkend Tilly and the background a bit. The light version surprisingly looks better on the screen but absolutely got lost on the wall beside the other paintings.
This is the end result! Don't you just love the ornate frame?!! It's from plastic but you really don't see it. I have a small mirror with nearly the same frame from wood!

I actually love a more loose style of painting. And in this technique I made the very first version of Tilly, seen below.
Wasn't so happy with it in the end so I started new for the more realistic version.
I have to practise loose style painting a lot and perhaps I never will like my results, while I absolutely love it when I see it from others.

Doesn't look all that bad on the screen though... that's what always happens...

Painting a little here and there

After a break I got the paints out and did some small paintings.



Sitting between two chairs is a German expression, similar to the English "sitting on the fence" I guess. Actually the girl looked lost on the canvas so I thought about what I could add and choose the chairs.

This is a very small one.
I bought a book a few weeks ago and wanted to try out the techniques from it.



And here is what I finished today.
I'm not too happy with it but will let it like it is and maybe learn to love it ;-)



It's one with a former life. It first showed a ridiculous chinless lady before I over-painted it.



Seems like I'm the master of over-painting. You can save so much money for new canvases this way! ha, ha...
Actually all these were painted on old book covers. I like painting on book covers and do constantly look out for them in the wastepaper. Especially the linen covered ones make a nice base for painting.
Two of the shown paintings are on my highschool chemistry book. Don't tell my teacher ;-)

Painting this girly style stuff embarrasses me if I have to show it to people, yet it does make me happy when hanging on my wall. I think that's what counts...

Blackbird

Finally, after struggling a lot with my muse, I painted something. It's a blackbird from a photo which my friend Inge has taken some time ago. I kind of like it although it didn't turn out like I expected...

Framing

One thing I found out is, no matter how humble the painting, a good frame can turn it into a piece of art.

I can't remember when I was drawing this house. It was to try out some different pencils.
When we found this frame on the fleamarket, and didn't have a use for it yet, I looked through the pile of scribblings and thought this one looks nice in it.






This one is another example and also a collaborative work by my friend and mine.





He made the background using water colors. After some months I looked at it again and suddenly discovered the person in the left. Then I clearly could see the tree and the bird.
I actually didn't see the teepee but thought the person looks like a shaman and something was missing in the center ;-)
I was just kidding around and it looked absolutely boring before it was in the frame. Now I love it!


You have seen this painting before. This is the way it is hanging on the wall now.



Once again I was just kidding, but then I thought it makes the painting interesting and turns it into an installation.

Partygirls

I always was interested in redwork and stitchery designs. Although I found it difficult to realize a line drawing in a style I like.

Sometime ago I scribbled these two girls in an old book and yesterday thought they might make a nice stitchery pattern.


So here they are!


Let's party!!! Have a great weekend!

Metamorphosis

This is a pretty weird still life!

I think I overrated my skills a little too much with this project!
Well, I can blame it on the very cheap oilpaints from an 1-Euro store. Nobody would have been able to paint with these. They were more oil than paint actually.


So now I overpainted the vase and transformed it to this.



More interesting to look at.
I better don't tell that I painted acrylic paints over oil here and sealed it with something like mod podge in the end.
Maybe it will show cracks one day, maybe not. It's looking ok at the moment.
The oil paint was well dried for about a year or so.