Thursday

My Creative Space


Another pretty productive week in my studio and even more so outside of it. I had almost no translation projects to work at (makes me a bit nervous about paying the bills, but I really appreciate the time & energy I can spend with my creative explorations) and no classes at school. 

First of all, we got a new assignment in the CAPI course with Milliande. It was quite a challenge for me, as I'm used to work intuitively and not to know, what I'm actually creating until the last part of the process. For this assignment, we had to stay with one shape (or a combination of them) discovered on a sheet full of scribbles. And we were encouraged to use techniques not so usual to us. So I played with one figure on repurposed pieces of card board and restricted me to 4 materials: white gesso, black water soluble pencil, burnt umber acrylic paint and graphite pencil. And these are my results so far. And, honestly, I was pretty surprised about the development.

Another collection I have started to create are silhouettes of naked trees around my village. It's all covered and pretty dark here, so the image quality isn't the best, but they are good enough for me as a reference or maybe for some transfers. The unique pattern of each tree has always fascinated me, and this little collection makes me really happy, although to get a good silhouette of one tree is quite a challenge, as none of the trees is standing separately in a plain field here. These are the most expressive ones from the images I have gathered so far.

Another series/collection is emerging from my experiments with what's left in my coffee cup after I've had my coffee.  I really love this process for so many reasons:
* the result is pretty much unpredictable, although, after more than 10 sheets, I have found some regularities & the right tool and refined my technique
* I don't "waste" expensive art supplies to play and explore, actually, I recycle, what I always love to do
* no hazardous fumes, the whole house smells like a coffee shop :)
etc. etc.
After the first layer is dry, the sheets look somewhat like this.

This one has the layer number 4 on it and isn't completely dry yet.

As you can see, I was all in shades of grey and brown last week. The only excerpt was this dramatic sunrise yesterday morning.

To see more creative spaces visit this site and be inspired

Or join us for 
A Piece A Week or Creative Every Day

5 comments:

Jennifer McGee said...

Love your blog today! I couldn't decide which part I liked best actually, so I won't pick. But I could relate to each one. I used pastels last week to sketch something intuitively and a nun popped out similar to your sketches. Then, I've been staring at the lines and curves of the trees outside a lot today while working and thinking of grabbing a pencil to "record" the different lines, but I like how you captured it in your pics. Last, i love the coffee work. I've got some old wine (sounds funny)and beet juice in my fridge that I used in some paintings. Now I have an idea of something to do with them after seeing your work. THANK YOU!

Gina said...

Your paintings are so beautiful...and I too love seeing trees in winter against the sky. natures sculptures :D XXX

Steph Jordan said...

Love your style!

Unknown said...

I love this blog and your work very much . Me too love to make pictures of trees. And I started with Capi. My english is ofcourse not as good. I live in the netherlands. this is my blog http://codiart.blogspot.com
Greetings I will follow You

Ginny Huber said...

Hi Rita: I go in and out of reading (and posting) on blogs but am glad I checked back in and saw your very impressive work and photos! it would be a challenge for me to stay with one image, I think..but what a good exercise!