The #CreativeLife 2021 A to Z Blog Challenge: G is for...

Gouache

A painting medium popular with designers before computer software became the first choice. It is water based and opaque. It has the odd characteristic that it can be reactivated even after it's dry.

This makes is also highly useful for paints (tempera) for children since it can be washed out of clothing or from other surfaces.

Here is a monochrome gouache painting I did on gouache paper, of the Edinburgh train station.  I used a photograph taken by my husband as the reference.

Gouache painting on white gouache paper

Comments are most welcome on Twitter, thank you for visiting my blog today.

💙 Linzé 

The #CreativeLife 2021 A to Z Blog Challenge: F is for...

Fixative

Fixative is used to prevent changes to a painting after it is completed. But, there are fixatives that can be removed should you need it.

Using fixative is choice, because the colour and values of dry mediums like pastels and pencils can be affected by the application of fixatives.

Fixatives can be applied with a brush (typical for oil paintings) or as a  spray (airbrushing or spray can).

If you want to preserve a painting made with pencils or pastels, rather have it framed behind glass then it will remain beautiful for years.

Your comments are most welcome on Twitter, thank you for visiting my blog today.

💗 Linzé 

The #CreativeLife 2021 A to Z Blog Challenge: E is for...

 Encaustic painting

Encaustic is a wax medium applied after melting the wax. You can either use a brush or other tools, but it is not a medium suited for children because of the hot wax.

I have not used this medium but I love seeing what others have done, although it is not commonly used today. Check out these YouTube artists for more techniques and tips to use encaustic wax in mixed media projects.

Comments are most welcome on Twitter, and thank you for visiting my blog today!

Until tomorrow!

💜 Linzé 

The #CreativeLife 2021 A to Z Blog Challenge: D is for...

Drawing

The most basic skill needed for creating art is drawing. And anyone can learn how to draw. I am not going to jump on that soap box again, so I will just share a drawing I did for the first SA Drawing Guild challenge and a link to the website of an excellent online art teacher.

Enjoy!

Shells and ropes - a graphite drawing on white paper

Comments are most welcome on Twitter, thank you for visiting my blog today.

💗 Linzé 

The #CreativeLife 2021 A to Z Blog Challenge: C is for...

 Colour pencil

Sharing another drawing today. This is a colour pencil drawing of a moth that my art group and I did last week.

The "underpainting" if I can call it that, was done with two Chameleon alcohol markers. The dark areas were done with a warm grey (WG3) and the light (areas not left white) were done with the sand (NU0) marker.

I used Faber Castell polychromos pencils for the details on the moth.

Moth in coloured pencil and alcohol marker

Comments are most welcome on Twitter, thank you for visiting my blog today.

Until Monday!

💜 Linzé 

The #CreativeLife 2021 A to Z Blog Challenge: B is for...

 Brush care

While it's fun to paint with all kinds of mediums, we should not forget to take good care of the brushes after we finished. Most mediums, like watercolour and acrylics, are water-based so it takes only a few minutes to clean them.

Oil-based mediums will require a solvent, but it is still a good idea to clean the brushes as soon as possible to ensure the quality of the bristles.

It does not require expensive brushes to produce a painting, but not taking care of them will be a waste of money.

Using ink with a paintbrush can be a particular pain since the ink will not only stain the bristles but can also cause damage if the ink becomes dry. If you paint with ink, like I sometimes do, it is a good idea to have a brush or two specifically for use with ink and to rinse it really well after use.

Comments are most welcome on Twitter, thank you for visiting my blog today.

💙 Linzé 

The #CreativeLife 2021 A to Z Blog Challenge: A is for...

Alcohol markers

An interesting and surprisingly useful medium to use in mixed media projects with other mediums such as colour pencils.

Below is a drawing I did in January.

These posts will also be shared on Twitter, where you are most welcome to leave a comment.

Please share your own experiences with alcohol markers. Which brand is your favourite?

Until tomorrow!

💙Linzé

The #CreativeLife 2021 - review of week 9

  April is blog challenge month, and today the participants are revealing their themes for their 26 days of blogging. I am taking part as well, and my posts will following my blog theme for 2021: aspects of the #CreativeLife. But instead of boring you with 26 posts of my daily life, I will be sharing some of my artwork, as well as a few bits and pieces of info about the things influencing the creation of art projects.

For more info and seeing what other bloggers will be up to >> Twitter #AtoZChallenge or @AprilA2Z

Now back to the usual week-in-review news for week 9 of 2021

On Wednesday I took my car in for its annual service. I found a dealership close to the lab and decided to take my car to them since my husband, who usually takes my car to a dealer close to his place of work, working from home for two days. Not an unusual thing to do, I grant you, but that it was not a usual service day for me.

One hour after I fetched the car again, thanks to one of my colleagues who took me to collect it after the service, I got a call from the service manager from the dealership with an offer to purchase my car. I turned him down. Not because the offer was not good enough, but the one model of vehicle that would tempt me right now to sell is not available in South Africa. And it is apparently unlikely to be made available. Welcome to my world.

The challenge for our art group last week was to draw dead leaves lying on concrete blocks. I took the picture at one of the local malls and challenged the group to take the almost monotone photograph and turn it into an abstract/impressionistic project. And here was the true challenge: we had to do it using watercolour pencils.

I think all of us had a learning experience, ranging from colour combinations that don't work, applying the pencils on paper not suited to the media, and practising freehand drawing using the grid method. Was it worth the effort?

Learning about a medium or a technique only happens when you sit down and experiment with it. So I would say it was definitely worth the effort (or aggravation?) to learn more about the mediums we own.

Sleep deprivation due to a Netflix story happened again, but at least this time I waited for the weekend so I could catch up a bit on Sunday.

So here is to a new week, new work challenges, and a whole lot of trying to avoid procrastination (aka Netflix) until I finished my todo list for the week.

Stay healthy, and live creatively until Thursday!

︙ Linzé  🇿🇦💚

A to Z Challenge: Day 26 - Z

Zucchini flower by Linzé

Not one of my favourite vegetables, but I have to say that I do like eating the flowers. But here is a gouache painting (using it like watercolour paint) on watercolour paper.
 

And with this painting, I have to say goodbye to the #AtoZChallenge for 2020. I hope you enjoyed all the creative posts and that you will remember to pop around in future for more posts about my creative life and those of other authors and artists.

Until next time!

💜Linzé 
  

A to Z Challenge: Day 29 - Y

Yellow Fungus by Linzé

This yellow fungus appeared after a few days of rain in September 2017. It grew out of the wooden structure supporting one of our rainwater tanks. I have only seen it that once and never again.
Drawing done with Caran D'Ache museum aquarelle pencils on white paper.

A to Z Challenge: Day 24 - X

X-stitch by Linzé

I found this little cross-stitch kit in a magazine. I cannot remember when or which magazine, sorry. I did think that it would be a good project (and appropriate) for this time of isolation and it is small enough that it can be completed in a few hours.

So I stitched it, made the background as per the instructions and now it is hanging on my pin board right next to my table in my workshop where I spend my time drawing or painting.

A to Z Challenge: Day 23 - W

WAIT by Michelle Kemp

Life is busy and stressful. Even during this time of lock down when we are forced to sit at home all day, we remain busy. 

Personally, I find it very hard to do nothing. Often, I will be doing at least two tasks, even when binge watching a series. I think this is true for many of us. Gone are the days of standing in a line, doing nothing except possibly striking up a conversation with a stranger.

Now we are constantly entertained and kept busy; millions of activities at our fingertips. This is not to say that it is a bad thing,  we just do not know how to be still. We are living in a world of instants; we demand gratification at the click of a button; we cannot stand to be bored.

The very act of being so busy and stressed is prized; the black circles under our jumpy eyes are seen as some sort of twisted trophy that says we are successful. In this period of uncertainty and our rush to digitise in order to remain productive, I feel we are missing a vital message. WAIT.

The world is telling us to stop for a moment and breathe. This message is clear that we need to un-busy ourselves and try to capture the time we are losing to our so-called productivity. Wait, while the Earth recovers. Wait, while we look around and appreciate the silence that has descended. Wait and then wait a moment more.

The world is literally forcing us to take a breath, to reset and to reconsider what we are actually achieving. We need to reassess our priorities: is that email really so urgent that you miss the sunset, the work call more important than listening to your child sing, no matter how terrible they are. We are being called to WAIT.

We are too afraid to do nothing, to be alone with ourselves and our own thoughts. How terrible that we have been using the constant stream of busy noise to muffle our quiet inner voices. If we could just take this time, as it is, and wait.

Wait and see if that little voice actually has some vital things to say. Wait and listen to the silence until it feels comfortable. Wait and just be, be with ourselves and learn to the love the people we are, not the polished products we show the world.

Wait, until waiting becomes a state of being, a place where we can thrive instead of fear.

Wait, just wait.

A to Z Challenge: Day 22 - V

VIOLET by Linzé

Violet is one of my all time favourite colours. For the letter V I decided to play with pencils that I have that do not belong to a set. Most of them are purple or violet - no surprise! 😂

I found two Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer pencils and one Caran D'Ache Supracolor II in my pencil cabinet and decided to use them. The CD pencil was still in its plastic package. Mixing colour pencils from different manufacturers are usually not a good idea since the pigmentation and lightfastness will not be the same.

This time I just played a bit to see how they would look when activated with water especially since I don't have any more of them to do a multicolour drawing. I found a stencil in my collection and used that instead of drawing from scratch. I think the end result looks rather nice.

I used Monte Marte Premium watercolour paper, and a Monte Marte 16/0 brush to activate the pigments since my watercolour brushes are too big for the fine detail in the ropes.

A to Z Challenge: Day 21 - U

UMBRELLA by Linzé

I did this all ink umbrella frame for a miniature art exhibition last year. It is a card 7 x 7 cm made from fine art paper with its own envelope.

A to Z Challenge: Day 20 - T

TIME by Linzé

My next art journal entry in my Stoicism series this year of #JournalArt2020. It was done with Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils and a Faber-Castell PITT marker for the text. The size of the leaf is 100% since I picked up the leaf and then traced it directly on the journal's pages before colouring it.

A to Z Challenge: Day 19 - S

Shilpa Suraj on Love, Marriage, and Other Disasters

(a guest post)

‘Divorced,’ ‘Ice Queen,’ ‘Snob,’ ‘Homewrecker,’ ‘Damaged’ – These are just some of the labels applied to Alisha, the heroine of Love, Marriage, and Other Disasters. Whether they are deserved, true or even just required, labels are less about who the person truly is and more about how people wish to slot them.

When I was growing up, relatives would often tell my parents to stop giving me ‘ideas.’ Because a girl having actual ideas would be the worst thing in the world, wouldn’t it? And my parents telling me that I could study as much as I want and grow up to be whoever and whatever I want were the worst possible ideas they could give me.

What society called giving me ideas, my parents called allowing me to dream. To reach higher, to aim further and to aspire for the world, if that’s what I wanted. No matter how far fetched my goal, their answer to every ambition I espoused was ‘Why not?’ 

And so, I grew up without worrying about societal prejudices and familial judgements. Unfortunately, I also grew up. And when you step out of the comfortable cocoon of your childhood and your parents home, you realise just how difficult it is to escape, to ignore or to deny the rest of the world’s opinion on you and how you should live your life. 

Difficult but not impossible. And that’s why I faced the world with the same bravado that Alisha does in Love, Marriage, and Other Disasters. For when your loved ones have your back, it’s easy to face forward with confidence. 

When my protagonist, Alisha, walks out on an abusive relationship, she doesn’t feel the need to justify her decisions to the world. And for that, she is labeled arrogant, snooty and in the eyes of men ‘available.’ 

Labels – Not true, not required, not deserved. 

If only, we could learn to be humans first, to view others as humans first. People often say, “Children are a blank slate. It’s what the world writes on them that then defines who they become.”

I think it’s true of each one of us. We are a blank slate. And we should write our own stories. Not the stories that the others would like us to script. 

Just like Alisha eventually did. It’s only then that we truly own our happy-ever-afters.

Book Links:  Goodreads * Amazon

Follow the author:  Website * Facebook * Twitter * Instagram

A to Z Challenge: Day 18 - R

Red by Linzé

My first colour drawing for the Intober52 challenge was a bit of a fluke - I didn't want to draw something similar that I have been drawing since the start of the challenge in January. In April the prompts are colours because of a sponsor of the event, and the illuminated letters were born. I have always loved old books and these really old books were copied and decorated by hand.
   So I have continued with the theme of the illuminated letters for both RED and BLUE. They are both featured here today for the letter R in the #AtoZChallenge.

A to Z Challenge: Day 17 - Q

QUIRKY bird by Linzé

I did an online Sketchbook Workshop while in isolation and one of the lessons was this quirky bird. The artist/presenter of this lesson was Tamara Laporte (https://www.willowing.org). I loved the concept and shared it with the artists in my writers' group who also made their own quirky birds. But here is mine. Enjoy! 💜

PS: Thank you for visiting my blog today. I love reading your comments, but I am still having difficulties replying. I do apologise and hope I can get this sorted out very soon. 💜 Linzé

A to Z Challenge: Day 16 - P

POT by Linzé

One day I was itching to draw something a little more challenging, so I decided to compose a still life. I photographed the greyish pot standing on a draped piece of black fabric I found in Francois' studio. I used my phone to capture the still life.

It was done with Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils on black paper.

A to Z Challenge: Day 15 - O

Oryx by Linzé

A drawing I did a while back - white pencil on black paper. The photograph was taken by an ex-colleague who kindly gave his permission for me to use it.