Paint Party Friday: More animal watercolors

Hello everyone! Seems that I lost my painting mojo over the last weeks, but now I'm back with some more watercolor animals for Paint Party Friday. Just in time for the 10th Anniversary! Since Easter is approaching, you can see a lot of hares and chicken on social media. Paintings, drawings, lino prints etc. Lovely art out there!

I decided to try my hand on a hare, too. Here is the postcard sized version.

I then sketched a hen and painted both, hare and hen, in A5 size. Love them and think about displaying them in frames for Easter. I think the postcard sized hare will get a hen companion, too.

There are also two more garden birds this week. The first is a Goldcrest, a tiny bird (weighing only 9 grams) native to my area. I made this quick watercolor sketch during lunch break in office with my travelling watercolor set. That's exactly what I bought it for. :)
 

Then I finally finished the litte Marsh Tit. It sat unfinished for several weeks now, as I was afraid to ruin it. Loved the first layer of color so much. *LOL* But I love how it turned out. So cute!

 

 Sharing these post with Paint Party Friday! Come on over and have a look at all the beautiful art shared there.

Thursday Art Date with Rain: Diagonal

 I really need to learn to NOT always focus on painting and drawing, when it comes to the themes for Thursday Art Date with Rain. *LOL* I was thinkiing so hard about what to draw for "Diagonal". 

I'm doing lots of crossstitch lately and finished some items during the two lockdowns we had in Germany so far due to Covid. My latest piece is a small tablecloth I had in my stash unfinished for several years now. The edging was sooooo time consuming, but now I'm on the homestretch with just two corner motifs to go. That tablecloth is even double diagonal: Celtic knotwork and cross stitch.

That's the center motif, designed by German embroidery designer Ellen Moschitz.

And since I wanted smaller corner motifs, I downsized the knot myself.

This tea towel is another lockdown finish. It sat in my stash for several years, too. This will not go into the kitchen , but be used as a tablecloth for one of my smaller tables I have in my apartment.

This table cloth was also finished some weeks ago. I started this during a vacation in Italy in 2000 (!) and ran out of embroidery thread. A friend, who lives there, helped me hunting for the correct colors of thread at several markets and small shops and we managed to get all the correct colors.Love how this one turned out. Smells like summer. And reminds me to make some jars of lemon curd. :)

And last but not least I finished these little framed pictures with half cross stitch. They will look great in my new kitchen. :)

Sharing with Thursday Art Date with Rain!

Thursday Art Date with Rain: Space

 Space! What a fun theme and so close to my heart! Not only do DH and I love to watch SF series like Star Trek, but once worked for a firm building satellite communication equipment (Dad worked for them and DH still does). How much would I love to travel to foreign planets! And since I can't do that, I created these beaded planet pendants and earrings about ten years ago, when I was more into beading.

The first is Pluto. The clay faces and cabs were also made by me and I still love them so much.

The beautiful Venus! That's one I still wear now and then. Beautiful soft colors.

These are Phobos and Deimos (fear and terror), the two  moons of Mars.

And this is Mars himself.

And here's beautiful Mother Earth, our home planet. For now. :)

And here's the sun. Bright and beautiful colors!

The plan was to create all the phases of the moon, but I only made two. Full moon....

....and new moon.

And last but not least this beautiful pendant with the Space Shuttle in it. Since I was a child, I watched every new start of the Space Shuttle with my Dad, bringing new satellites and equipment to space, to the Mir and to the ISS. We were horrified about the accidents iin 1986 and 2003 with the loss of so many lives. And then the end of the Space Shuttle programme. :( The space shuttle you can see in this pendant, was once a stamp of the German post. I glued it to a glass cab and made a beaded bezel, backed with leather. One of my favorites in this series.

Sharing this post with Thursday Art Date with Rain!

Paint Party Friday: Time is running!

 Hey everyone! I missed out on all the art posts over the last weeks completely. But this week I'm back with many new things to share: sketches, paintings, art challenges, spring greeting cards!

First quick sketch is is the Frauenkirche in Dresden. From February 13th to February 15th 1944 Dresden was bombed by British and US air force bombers and approx. 25'000 people lost their lives. The church burnt down completely in these days, but was rebuilt from 1996 to 2005 and reconsecrated in the same year. Every year on February 13th we remember these days and we say: NEVER AGAIN!

The brown paper, you can see in these two sketches, was rescued from the recycling bin in office. I thought it looked like cool stuff and I tried some sketches on it. And it really is cool stuff. The snow owl with white and graphite pencil turned out really nice. It was my entry for a Twitter art challenge.

I also played with watercolors. Trying a robin with a less detail and lighter color application. Really like the look of this one.

Then there are my usual quick sketches with pencils. I went through my stash of all kinds of pencils and found the Kooh-I-Noor Progresso graphite pencils. They are wood free pencils and I really like to draw with them. Little Marsh Tit here.

Another art challenge on Twitter is #1hour1sketch. You usually get a photo or an other inspirational picture and then redraw it in less than 1 hour. Last week's challenge was a macaw.

I also sketched out more garden birds to eventually use for watercolor paintings. A Goldcrest,....

....a European Green Woodpecker,....

....a Nuthatch and....

....a Bullfinch, that seems to be very angry.

I also drew some crocus to try out different brands of colored pencils. Made these two beauties into greeting cards, perfect for sending spring greetings.

Sharing this with Paint Party Friday!

Thursday Art Date with Rain: Creases

 Hey everyone! I hope you are all safe and healthy and already felt a bit of spring in your part of the world. Here we had some very warm days (after some freezing cold ones) and are now back to normal temps. But spring is just around the corner.

So when I read this week's theme "creases", it made me think of freshly hatched butterflies, which are all crinkled and creased, when they come out of the pupa. Peacock butterflies are very common in my area and I love them. But we had so few butterflies last summer, that I only saw cabbage whites. So sad! Need to put more flowers in my garden (more than I laready have *LOL*).

 

 

Peacock butterfly, 6B pencil on 90 grams sketching paper.

Sharing this post with the lovely artists at Thursday Art Date with Rain! Thanks for hosting, Rain!

 

T stands for....fresh apple juice!

 Hello there, T gang! How are you? I missed out the last weeks, but am back now. Was not feeling like posting over the last two weeks. But here I am back to posting, hopefully regularly again.

So what was I up to the last weeks? I pulled out some more WIPs from my stash. For example this beautiful hexagon "blanket". I made 144 hexagons in 2016 (yes, that long ago!). So far I got 40 crocheted together. Took me a while to find a joining method I like.

I was translating the Frida's Flowers Blanket CAL for Stylecraft Yarns into German, together with a dear blogging friend, but had no intention to crochet the whole blanket. So I made only single flower hexagons in my own colorway to make a mathing cushion for the hexagon blanket.

These are all old photos, when I thought about how to join the hexies.

Also I did some gardening over the last weeks, harvesting what's left of the winter veggies, looking for signs of spring. My potted willow is showing its first catskins, being only two years old. I'm growing several bushes to built a stock for a hedgerow in our new garden. I have a bout 16 more potted, from maples over willows to privet and cherries and privet.

Here's a small maple, grown from a seed. Just put it into soil on Monday.

 I had another harvest of green kale. Yum!

Also due to the high temps the first of the solitary bees hatched.

We have a local farm, which sells veggies, fruit, beef and the most delicious apple juice in 5 litre containers. We just wento ver and bought another bag. A tasty treat!

Paint Party Friday: Birds, Badgers and a Manx Loaghtan

 Hello and welcome back for Paint Party Friday! I hope you all had a great week with some time for creativity. Besides a lot of knitting (still in lockdown here) I have some sketches and paintings to share with you.

First there is this song thrush. Not completely happy with this painting, as all these dots and markings in its feathers were a nightmare to paint. *LOL*

 

Last week I saw a nice motif in one of my FB drawing groups with a badger trying to reach an apple. Did a quick pencil sketch.

 

Then I decided to finally start my miniature watercolor sketchbook. I'd like to say a quick hello to my friend Soma from Ink Torrents. :)

 

 I liked the motif so much, that I had to paint a bigger version and start another attempt at fur. Fur is my weak point and I still need a lot of practice to get it right. But slowly getting better.

 

 Another attempt to draw fur with colored pencils. Ugh! I follow a lady on Twitter who breeds Manx Loaghtan sheep on the Isle of Man. Love how this rare breed looks. Even the ewes can have up to six horns. She allowed me to use one of her beautiful photos for my drawing. So much to learn about layering and blending with colored pencils.

 

Then I did another garden bird painting. It's a male blackbird and I really like how this one turned out. It's "only" a black bird, but getting all these shades of black right was challenging.

 

 

And since I almost ran out of sketches for garden birds I did another one, a redstart.

 

 

 

Have a nice weekend and enjoy bloghopping with Paint Party Friday!