New blog!!

I decided to make a new blog and you can find me over here from now on: Anniek's Art.
Hope to see and hear from you soon!

Cover for Moleskine Art Journal

Finally made a cover for one of my 4 Moleskine Art Journals in which I started the more stylized faces from Suzi Blu's workshop the Goddess and the Poet.

I first collaged a copy of a painting made by Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy of the philosoper & poet Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) on the cover of my moleskine. I then collaged different new and vintage fabric and lace around the copy. I drew a face and body on some paper and colored and painted it. Collaged it on top of the fabric. Made some hair using modeling paste and painted it once it was fully dry. At last I added the rose, rub-ons, letters and heart.
The story is that the poet is in love with the goddess of love. He's thinking about her all the time and writes beautiful poems about how their souls are connected in total freedom! 

Here you can see the backside of the cover. 

Art journal page

Finished a new Art Journal page. I started this one a couple of weeks ago and liked the sketch so much that I first made the painting Dance for yourself using the same sketch. This time I left a message for myself: count your blessings every day. That will be one of my resolutions for 2011!!

Celebrate life!

Another angel with a message: celebrate life. I wish I could celebrate life every single day for the rest of my life! I try but sometimes it's hard when your body is tired and aching and you feel depressed. I thought I felt good enough to not take the Kira forte (natural anti-depressive) but I think I need some more time to get rid of those nasty depressing thoughts!!

Live now!!

I just love making these small paintings!! Finished yet another one! Very productive these days before Christmas!!

Love now!!

Just a cute angel on a small wooden box that says: LOVE NOW!!!
Merry Xmas everyone!

A new angel!!

Already finished a new painting!! The idea for this painting came up when I was drawing in my art journal. So now I have an unfinished sketch of the same angel in my art journal and I have to come up with something new!
Well, here she is my angel with a message! (PS Not in the mood to write, feeling very tired today!!)

Yeah I know ....

... haven't been here for a while! I have been busy with the removal of my parents to a home for elderly people! They both moved in on Wednesday November 24. I went to the rehab to travel together with my dad in a wheelchair cab back to his new home and his wife for 57 years. They have been living separated for almost 10 months due to his illness! My dad was very emotional when we arrived at his new home. I tried to take photos of him and my mother when they were reunited but my dad is crying on both photos. Besides that the photos are a bit blurry because I cried too!
Since they have moved to their new home I have been busy with cleaning up their old house. It has to be sold! I would have loved to buy it from my parents but I just don't have the money so I have to let it go!

In between the removal and cleaning up the house I have had some time to draw and practice the 3/4 faces from Suzi Blu's workshop La Sirena. I have to make a large painting on canvas with 3 figures. One of the faces I drew was too large for the painting and I used it to make an Art Journal page.

Angel of love

Finally finished the angel painting for my dad!!! He liked the small painting of the angel with a bird on a wing very much so I made him a larger version of that painting. Because there was much more space to fill I added some flowers. I hope he will like it!
For this painting I used techniques from Kelly Ray Roberts and Suzi Blu.
The vintage buttons are from a collection that my mother used to keep in an old box. The lace is from a flea market in Paris.

A new mermaid!

Just finished my latest mermaid from Suzi Blu's La Sirena workshop! You can still join this workshop over here and now even with a discount of 10 USD! Today I saw that student number 500 signed in for this class! 500!!!


My latest mermaid is a large one: 12x24 inches (30x60 cm.). For me this is large because I prefer to work on small surfaces. I think I did okay for a first time. At first I wanted to add a lot more stuff in the background but then decided that I wanted to be the tail the vocal point of the painting.

After I had put beeswax on the hair it looked a bit dull and that's why I put some golden accents in the hair.

If you look very close you can see some shimmery stars in the background (the middle sized ones). They were send to me from the USA by another student at Suzi's: Kimberly Ward. You really have to go and see her artwork in her Etsy shop over here. She's very talented!
Namasté.

A short visit to Belgium.

My sweetheart and I went for a short visit to Belgium last weekend. We rented a small studio in Blankenberge with a nice view on the sea and the beach from Friday 15.00 hrs. till Monday 11.00 hrs..
On Saturday we visited Brugge which is one of the oldest cities of Belgium. Lots of old houses and canals. We even didn't have the time to visit one of the many museums because there was so much to see in the old centre of the city.

We were both exhausted when we returned to the studio and went to bed very early.

On Sunday we woke up very early and went for a walk along the beach to see the sun rise. I took some really cool photos.

After breakfast we went for a car ride along the Belgian coast. We stopped several times to take a walk on the beach. We even went to France to have a drink in the first village au bord de la mer: Bray-Dunes.

After we had returned to Blankenberge there were still some shops open and we went to a small shop where they sold all kind of products from Indonesia, Bali, Thailand and Nepal. I bought a sarong with batik motifs from Java. The lady who ownes the shop told us that she and her family used to live on Bali for about 8 years before they returned to Belgium 6 years ago. They still go there to buy the products they sell in their shop from the local people.

On Monday we went back home, but not before I bought my quilt-iron in Turnhout. I'm going to use it for waxing my paintings. I had been looking for the quilt-iron in my country but it was very expensive. In Belgium I payed half the prize!!

Latest projects from La Sirena class

I have finished 2 new projects from Suzi Blu's La Sirena class!
The first one is a folk art mermaid which I wood-burned on an old cigarbox. This was a fun project although the wood was very dry and hard to work on. Next time I'll use clear gesso and sandpaper to make the surface smoother and easier to work on! But I like it anyways and it's a great box for keeping my pencils.

The cigarbox before I started.

The wood burned mermaid with her face and body colored with pencils.

She's finished!! Added a little star-fish as a knob.

The inside of the box, painted and collaged with paper.

The second project is a painting of a folk art mermaid. I'll show you a couple of the stages it went through before I liked it and started with bees waxing it. It was my very first time to use bees wax on a painting and I LOVE it. I used an ordinary old iron (with no holes in it) which I bought for just a couple of Euros at a fleesmarket. The 100% bees wax I use is in thin sheets and are normally used for making candles. This is very handy because I don't need to melt the bees wax first. Next thing I'm going to buy is a small quilt iron!!

Just the background and the mermaid figure made of paper.

Here I added modeling paste on the hair and star-fish. I used self-made masks for making the dolphins and plants.

Here I added some blue sand and made more depth in the painting by making shadows with a purple pencil.

I wasn't pleased with the first color of the tail and experimented a bit with different colors. I ended up with a purple tail with pink scales.

This was the mermaid before I started with the waxing.

And voila here she is!! I ended up covering the dolphin at the bottom because I wasn't pleased with it. IRL she looks even better!

She got lost

Finished my first Suzi Blu mermaid painting in my art journal a couple of days ago. I had so much fun making this!!

It is not difficult at all to make. Just make a background in the art journal with alohol inks and spray paint. Add water and dab with a tissue, add alcohol drops and dab again. Add some drops of bleech and let it rest for a while. Draw a mermaid on another page of the art journal and take that page out of the journal. Cut out the mermaid, color and paint it. Put some green seaweed made of thin paper on the bottom of the left and right page. Glue down the mermaid and add some more seaweed on top of her. Add some fish and seahorses and glue down some small crystals as air bubbles. Put a flower in the hair of the mermaid and also some crystal stars. I made green pearly lines in her hair with 3D fabric paint from Tulip.
The title of my page is: She got lost. It's about losing your own spirit growing up. You can loose your own true self in so many ways and get lost. But can you see that my mermaid is swimming out of the seaweed? Soon she'll be in the open water and free to move around as she pleases! That's where I'm heading too!!

Fairy jar

A couple of days ago I made this fairy jar.

It's a project I saw at Suzi Blu's Les petit Academy. Just watch the video here for the instructions.

Mermaid background techniques

This is what I made thusfar for Suzi's mermaid workshop! It's so much fun playing with paints, water, alcohol inks and spray paint. I love it!!!

I made a collage with arcsoft collage creator of several techniques I worked on yesterday. (click on the photo for a better look)

Today I made this one using sea salt.

And on this background I used several of Suzi's techniques. 

I'm going to use this one for my first mermaid painting.