I really must make myself an apron!

I bought a piece of cotton a long time ago and planned to make an apron for my craft activities, but didn't really know - for which ones. I don't get very dirty when I knit or sew. But now, when I started to paint, it seems that an apron is a very good idea and it's not just a "painter's accessory" for the photos in front of an easel! *^v^*
Couple of days ago I put on a pair of freshly washed trousers and on the same day I had glue on one knee, and today I found a smear of white paint across my belly, on a black blouse. I am messy with my art and I just have to protect the clothes!
Thank Heavens I'm using acrylics, watercolours and crayons, not oils! *^v^*

I finished one painting yesterday - "Russia" from my "Women" series.

10x14" cotton canvas,
acrylics
watercolour pencils
scraps from the Russian fairytale
varnished

It will probably go on ebay soon, but I'm still considering this. ^^
I also started the next painting and I hope to finish it this weekend.

Some journal pages:
I invited my Muse for a cup of tea (I love tea! *^v^*).

I'm on a path to some places and I have to decide whether I want to make another step forward or go back.

Just a thought of the day. *^v^*

This weekend I'm painting and knitting. Have a great weekend, guys! *^v^*

Well, sometimes I'm... hm... unattentive.

To put it in a mild sort of way. ^^
I read that you can cover a surface with oil pastels and then smear it with some turpentine, so they become like the oil paints, all mixed together giving this dreamy looks. So I took my oil pastels, and covered the whole page with different colours, and then, very excited and anxious, I took a big cup of water - WATER?!... - and tried to make my oil pastels to run and smudge, and behave like paints. (Good I didn't rub a hole in a page, I rubbed the brush so desperately!...)

What was I thinking?!...

No, I obviously wasn't thinking, I had a moment of a blackout, my brain had a five minute coffee break or something...
Then I took some grocery sunflower oil on a piece of cloth and it smeared the oil pastels beautifully! I must buy turpentine for this purpose. *^v^*

I finished the sketching for the first painting of the "Women" series last night and today I'm working on the background, and generally moving on with my work.


I'll leave you with a quotation from an amazing colourful woman and a great artists,Violette:
"It's just art, folks, don't make a big deal out of it!"

Oh, and the photo at the beginning of the post? It's a chocolate I got last night from Robert, the dark one, my favourite! *^v^*

I'm fine!

Yes, I am. I went to the doctor this morning for a breast checkup (with this complicated machinery and a very very cold gel involved, you know...), and there is nothing alarming. Which is a relief! *^v^*
Go and have your breasts checked, girls, is there a better month to do this than October, the breast cancer awareness month?

Also this morning I received my latest art supplies order:
- the cutest colours ever, Aquamarine and Flamingo Pink, for my new painting about the shells and underwater creatures

- the oil pastels - I've never used these, only the dry pastels, so new experiences - here I come! ^^

- I also bought two cotton canvases, 10x14" by Windsor&Newton (for the first painting of the "Women" series I have in my mind) and 11x16,5" by Talens (for the Underwater painting), which has an amazing texture and this company may be my favourite!

I can also show you my first work that is very dear to me, being a housewife. I call it "Girl loves..." series, and for now I have the cooking girl in love with her cooking! ^^
(8x8", acrylics, scraps of paper, stamps, varnish, on painters board - a canvas stretched on a piece of MDF)

The last photo shows the painting I made for a friend, but it's a surprise and she's going to receive it in the mail some time soon (I hope), so I cannot reveal it yet! *^v^*

The process

I'm still knitting my Lucinda Cardigan, but you know, two fronts are nothing more than one back split in half, so there is nothing that much interesting and surprising about it. *^v^*
So, another post about making art (and listening to music! ^^).


I found something very interesting and mind stimulating on the blog by Deborah Gorr aka bee creative.
She writes about the interview with the artist Keri Smith, and she refers to her words:

"She writes about the process of creating as being important. This is one of the things that I work with everyday. Part of my work with one year old children is often to explain to parents that children this age have no sense of product, that it is all about process..."

That's what I partly seek in knitting and that's what I would like to understand about my painting. No sense of product, just the process. This is also connected with not judging myself and my work, because what's important is the process of making a drawing or a painting which should give me some pleasure or teach me something, not the final result that is a genius piece of art (who says so?) or a crap (again, who says so?).

I would like you all to meet the works two talented artists:
- my artistic friend Marti - Marti presents. She paints the incredibly beautiful women and dolls (she loves the Japanese and Korean dolls and owns a few). She is the one who went through a process of looking for the favourite media and style, and she still evolves. She is a great inspiration for me, so go to her site and have a look, if you have a moment. ^^
- the second artist is Paulette Insall - you may know her from YouTube art videos, she is painting beautiful women in my favourite technique - many layers, glued and painted. I love her paintings!


And one more thing - I'm listening to jazz! *^v^*
That's something new in my life, about a year ago I discovered Jamie Cullum and now I'm writing this and listening to the latest cd of Stacey Kent. I know, these are not the great classics, but I feel they will come to me eventually.
I need to jazz up my life a bit! *^v^*

Journal

Thank you for your compassion for my living place crisis, I really am aware that there are millions of positive things to find here and the planned renovation will change a lot, and there is always the possibility of some life changes that may turn our situation 180 degrees for better, and I just had a bad day. ^^

No, on to my art journal.

What I learnt while using my new Talens watercolours?
That the best tools are essential. By this I mean, the brush I got together with the set of paints. I have a mug full of brushes bought on a supermarket sale, and they are okay. But they loose their hair (which can be an interesting feature while creating the backgrounds, but still...), behave unpredictable and often leave the lines where I wanted a clean page. It may be fine, it may add to the artistic flavour of the page, but more often it is annoying, because it spoils the effect I wanted to achieve. I would even risk a statement that for an inexperienced painter like myself the more professional brush - the better, because it could help my untrained hand to paint what I envisioned in my head.
The Talens brush is perfect - smooth, wide but with a tip that can lead a precise 0,5 mm line, it's a pleasure to work with. And I'm not saying that I'm suddenly buying a whole set of highly professional, expensive brushes, but next time I'm buying some art supplies, a brush or two are definitely on my list!

Some pages from my journal:
Here I played with letters.

What a nice statement! ^^

Talens watercolours at work plus crayons - it's all about the stork, and how it could become the symbol of Poland (just as the moose is in Sweden, for example, you can see it everywhere!). I scanned it beyond the side of the page because I wanted to show you what I stapled onto it, just to be able to quickly find the next page.
Self portrait in watercolour crayons and pencil crayons, with some stamped border in acrylic paint.

My 1+1+1 response to Kal's challenge. I found this funny tape around the flat (Robert bought it some time ago), that you put into a pistol-like device and press out the letters in it, fun! ^^

Robert will laugh at this page, as he laughed at my habit - in my family we all loved broth and we had it every Saturday for dinner! *^v^*

I would like to walk along this street.

Some positive things about myself in a letter stapled onto a page, with me on a top! ^^
Watercolours practice - just wanted to see all the colours and then I didn't want to get rid of it, so I incorporated this page into my journal. Is there a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow?... ^^

I realized I love the fact that my art journal puts on weight and volume, I'd like it to be half-full already! ^^

Baby got back ^^

I finished the back of my Lucinda cardigan.
Yes, I changed the name. It was supposed to be a huge loose cardigan, with a belt, but it's turning out short and fitted. Which is great, but it's a different design that I had in mind, hence the change of a name. *^v^*
As I wrote last time, I skipped the bobbles and I'm happy with it. Today I'm casting on for the fronts while anxiously waiting for the oil pastels I had ordered on Tuesday to arrive, yikes! *^v^*
BTW, I did some watercolour tests last Saturday with my trophy Talens paints, beautiful colours, I will show you the results along with some pages from my art journal tomorrow. ^^

Yeah, yeah, I'm knitting, I'm knitting!

I'm having a small nervous breakdown today. You can skip this part and go straight to the knitting content below.

I so hate the place where we live...
It's very small (hallway-kitchen-diner in one plus bedroom-office-craftroom in one, 42 square meters).
It hasn't been properly renovated for over 20 years so you can imagine the state of the kitchen and bathroom... (we did some renovation on the bathroom when we moved in about 7 years ago but it needs a thorough redecoration).
It's on the ground floor, with a cold beaming from the basement (permanently cold floors), with millions of trees on one side blocking the light, and millions of people walking in front of our windows on the other.
It's close to the main door to the building and almost opposite the lift, so there are legions of people marching in and out, opening and shutting doors, with yapping dogs, kids shouting, ect, all day long.
It's not ours, but Robert's mother's, so we cannot just sell it and move somewhere else.
And now - not far from our balcony there is a small building and there used to be a grocery shop, but now somebody bought it and decided to install there games machines/flippers/whatever you call them, and there is a sign saying "Open 24 hours". How about that?...

I know people live in worse conditions, and I sympathize with them truly, and I don't know why it all just struck me today - a beautiful sunny not too cold day like this - but I feel down about our living space. Yes, we are planning to take a big renovation credit sometime in February or March 2008 and radically redecorate the whole flat, but it won't change the location, it won't change the size, the ground floor.
I so wish we could start somewhere new, the place we would choose and that would please us both. And yes, we could probably afford a two bedroom flat somewhere on the very far outskirts of Warsaw, with a 40 or 50 year mortgage...
I'm just not happy here.
(I'm sorry, I had to vent it somewhere, and Robert is already sick of listening to my ranting about it.)

Knitting
The new issue of Ulla, the Finnish knitting magazine is on and there are several great patterns to make, for cardigans, socks and gloves, and first of all, beautiful designs by Tuulia. Oh, I wish I knew Finnish!
Anyway, I bookmarked some of the patterns and I'll try to decipher them or at least be inspired by the pretty cables and colors! Tuulia, thank you for your offer of help in translating the patterns! *^v^*

I'm knitting my coral cardigan according to the design from Sandra Oct'07, but I've changed the pattern a bit - I don't like bobbles so I'll skip them and knit the stockinette or pearl stitch instead. I may also knit it a bit longer than the original. I named my cardi - Lucy - in honor of the cardigan Lucy Liu wore in the movie Lucky Number Slevin. It's knitting up fairly quickly (6 mm needles), but I wonder whether I have enough yarn for the whole sweater, it seems to magically disappear (one out of 10 balls is already in this piece)... I may have to skip the hood, we'll see.
I also have the Secret of Chrysopolis Stole on the needles (and didn't add much since the last time I showed you the photo), and I thought I'd start the Secret of the Stole stole last Friday, but... after seeing some photos of the finished hint 1 I'm not so sure I like it. There is a lot of a stole and not much of a lace in it, just several single holes here and there. I'll wait and see what's it going to look like after the second clue this Friday. Even if it's not for me (a Christmas gift for some woman in the family), I don't want to knit and give something I don't like, it wouldn't be fair.

Painting
Thank you so much for all the nice words about my painting for Anna, she liked it a lot and I really appreciate your positive comments! (I think I need them so much because I didn't get them when I was a child...).
Anyway, I've been working on some new paintings, one of which is a surprise for somebody so I'll show it to you later. *^v^*


Have you seen this movie - Big Fish? I highly recommend it. It tells the story of a man with so much determination that he lives his life the way he really wants, he makes choices and sticks to them. The story about the man who perceives his life as a fairytale and it becomes one! ^^
And there's cute Ewan McGregor and Jessica Lange, and Helena Bonham Carter (all my favorites ^^), and many more.

I am a painter

This can look as a very bold and brave statement, after just one painting finished, but I believe in the magic of the words, and if the words are spoken and set out into the Universe - they become true and start a whole machinery of happenings to justify what was said.
I knit so I am a knitter and I paint - so I am a painter (among millions of other things I am! *^v^*).


My painting adventure started in my teenage years, when I got a box of oils and a canvas from my father for Christmas. He even constructed me an easel. ^^ I had no idea what I was doing, but I painted a picture - a person standing on the beach, looking over the stormy sea.
It was a crap.
I know you are not supposed to judge your creations like this, but from the technical point of view - it was terrible. I had no knowledge of the way to use oils, how to draw human figure, how to place shades on water and the sky... It didn't want to get dry (now I know the oil paints can dry even for 6 months, but then I was just getting more and more impatient with them... ^^).
The painting landed on a closet and I didn't bother myself with oils anymore.

When I've started to create an art journal recently, I thought about coming back to painting. I didn't choose oils, but watercolours and acrylics, as the easier media (for me).
For my birthday present for my best friend I started with an idea in my head, about Anna being so much into Gothic climates, and her beloved dog, and how I'd like to present them both, and what techniques I'd like to use.

I made a sketch first, then shaded the face and the body with watercolour crayons and did all the first layers - the floor, the curtains, the green wall. Then I started to add more layers with stamps and scraps of paper and a piece of lace, and work on the detailing.

Here is the final version:


I learned a lot while working on this painting - how acrylics behave with added water and without it, what I can do with a crayon, how different surfaces show the paints and the crayons, that a varnish does not smear the painting (this was my biggest fear! ^^).
The painting has been done on a canvas stretched over the wooden frame, so I painted also the sides of it.
Details:
- cotton canvas on a wooden frame 35 cm x 45 cm
- a piece of watercolour paper glued on the canvas for the hight effect
- watercolour crayons
- acrylic paints (Renesans)
- scraps from the short story "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe
- white lace
- self-made rubber stamps for the pattern effects
- date stamp
- acrylic varnish I like the hight effect of the thick watercolour paper I placed over the canvas and I think I'll use it in the future paintings, too. Also the difference between the super smooth surface of the paper and the bumpy surface of the canvas is almost sculptural.
There are lots of colours and patterns, and that's what I like about this painting - it's so vibrant and heterogeneous, being me - I couldn't make anything else. ^^ And I'm really happy to send it away from home because I can feel more to come, so when handing it to Anna tomorrow I won't regret seeing it go.
And yes, I said "future paintings", because I want to paint more, and I even started another piece already. *^v^*


This morning a postman brought me my prize from the art shop - a small box of watercolours - they are too cute!...
They are called a pocket box paints because they really are a pocket size, plus a paper pad and a water bag - how cool is that?!... *^v^*
Now I'll just have to fight my "I'm so scared to start using this because it's so professional and new, and..." fear! *^v^*

Patterns, patterns...

I bought the October issue of the Sandra knitting magazine (which is a German mag in Polish), and I must admit I am nicely surprised again! ^^ (Last time it was September 2006). There are some really tempting designs.

I like the size and coziness of this cardigan, but it has some very simple cables, too simple for my taste, I'd knit something more elaborate here. ^^

This one has a nice waist part that differs from the upper and lower parts.

This one is a strong contender for the coral wool I bought this week! *^v^*

This one I'm knitting next month, irrespective of anything! ^^ I love it in this colour!

This one has a nice shape, fitted at the waist, with bell sleeves. In white preferably.

Very stylish, in white for me.

I have almost finished my painting for Anna, just giving it an overnight break to check whether I want to add anything to it or not, and then the coat of varnish...
I hope to take photos tomorrow or on Saturday, on Sunday is Anna's birthday and she's coming to our place for diner, so she'll receive her gift. *^v^*

It's still a knitting blog after all!

I'm painting. *^v^*
That's a very weird but pleasant feeling. ^^ I try not to judge every line and splash of paint I place on the canvas, just go with the flow and add more and more colours and textures. I am about half way down and I'll show you the final result as well as the in between stages soon.
It's a birthday present for my best friend Anna (her birthday is on Sunday), and I have some patterns to add, some words, and a coat of varnish. Keep your fingers crossed because varnish is the stage I'm unsure of, I've never ever used it!... I bought an acrylic varnish but I'm using acrylic paints plus watercolour crayons and glued scraps in my painting, so I did some tests on those other media and it seemed to work fine. But you know, I'm a bit worried about putting it on my finished painting, I'd be most unhappy if the varnish destroyed several days of my work.
It's good I have this blog and all of you who can listen to my worries!... *^v^*

I also bought another plastic container because it seems my art supplies are multiplying. ^^ The bigger one is for all the paints (watercolours, acrylics, temperas, oils and others), the smaller one for the crayons/pastels/pencils and office supplies.
And, Coral-seas, thank you for your advice on a journal! *^v^* I was also thinking about buying paper for watercolours and binding it into a form of a book. Shannon, it's true that sometimes it's better to hold our judgment if it's not encouraging/constructive. From early childhood up till now I get comments from my mom on everything I create in a form of "Nice." said in an uninterested tone of voice, well...

And, and!... I won something! *^v^*

I bought the canvas and some paints online last week and the shop awarded 10 buyers with a set 12 Van Gogh watercolours by Talens and a paper pad for watercolours, me being one of those 10 happy campers! *^v^*
I was planning to buy some proper watercolours but now I can try those out for free, tralla la la! *^v^*



Okay, because it's still a knitting blog after all, here is some knitting content! *^v^*

Here is the beginning of the first clue of Secret of Chrysopolis Stole:

Here are the Zebra socks I finished last week:
And the yarn I bought yesterday:

It's a Czech yarn, 100% soft wool. At first I wanted to use it for the Starsky cardigan. But then I had doubts about this pattern in this colour and in my mind I saw that coral wool turned into some chunky cables. So, I'm knitting something similar to Starsky, but with cables! ^^ More to come.