Thursday Theme: Medieval Fantasy

Hello Pocketeers!  It's been a while.  I've been reading more than I've been arting lately, so I hadn't built up much to show.  I guess I could've shown one project here or there, but I've been so wrapped up in my books that I've forgotten to blog.  For a while, I wasn't even checking other people's blogs.  But finally I've got enough art to fill a theme post, so I'm finally going to share some of what I'm doing.  And most of what I've been doing has been inspired by my reading.  I've really dived (dove?) into fantasy novels again, after a long time of reading mostly mystery and Star Wars books.  Oh man.  I forgot how much I love fantasy.  Maybe it's that most fantasy worlds (real fantasy, not this urban fantasy nonsense that's so popular now) are medievalish, or that fantasy worlds, even the ones that are engulfed in war, are more appealing than ours is sometimes.  There's magic, and mystical creatures, and faeries and elves and stuff.  Maybe it's the medieval flavor, though.  You know I love the medieval sauce.

So, since I have many seasonings for the medieval sauce, I've been blending that with the sort of colors and motifs that stick in my head when I'm reading fantasy.  And here is what I've come up with:

Suddenly I realize that this is before I finished the piece, and I didn't take a picture of the finished piece.  But this is nearly finished, so I'm not going to take another picture right now.  The background, btw, is a gorgeous handmade paper I got at the Queen's Ink.

Also not quite finished, but the composition is done.  It ended up being the lid on a jewelry box.  More on that later.

A couple of ATCs I did because I wanted to play around with Seedless Preserves and Scattered Twigs Distress Inks and white stamping.

Really just an excuse to use that awesome shield stamp.

I didn't photograph these finished until I had them hanging up on my wall at work, hence the unsightly thumbtacks.  The one on the left was originally going to feature my hand-carved mushroom stamps but I didn't like how it came together, so I Finnabair-ed it.  New word!  The one on the right was an experiment with embossing resist over a watercolory background, with Distress Ink rubbed on over it. 

 

I guess it's probably not all that obvious how this stuff relates to fantasy, but it works with the images in my head when I'm reading.  A lot of the stories take place in worlds where the people are close to nature, and the surroundings are beautiful.  Things like roses and herbs and mushrooms take on magical qualities and appear in sometimes impossible places.  These are worlds that are wonderful to get lost in.  And when I come back, I've always got a head full of beautiful images to try to capture.  You may see more of such things soon.

 

Are you avid readers, Pocketeers?  Is  your art often inspired by what you read?  Are there particular worlds you like to lose yourself in?  Please comment and tell me.  I love to have conversations with people about books :)

Thursday Theme: Schnippy Schnappy

Bunch of small projects this time, and a really short post because I'm exhausted.  While we were in Germany, Mr. Pocket's youngest uncle showed us (and let us taste) his homemade schnapps, and then explained that it's not that hard to do.  No need to set up a still, you just use fruit and sugar and store-bought clear grain alcohol that's not too strong.  So with the abundance of delicious Summer fruit around, we've been experimenting with different flavors, and it's been a delicious experience.  But of course, we need some way to tell all the bottles apart.  So I've been making little tags as labels.  Here's the tour of the fruits of our labors... :)

 

Strawberry on the left, and red currant on the right.  Both fruits from my mother-in-law's garden.

Wild raspberry... mmm...

 

Blackberry, made with blackberries from a local farm stand.

More of some of the same flavors - red currant, wild raspberry, and blackberry - portioned out for my parents.

For flavors that aren't ready yet:  peach, plum, and more strawberry.

Thursday Theme: Close Encounters

Wow, has it really been almost a month?  Time flies.  Like a spaceship.  And unlike most times when I miss Thursday posts because I don't have anything to post, this time I haven't posted because I've been beset by UFOs.  UnFinished Objects. 

See, I've started several projects and haven't finished them.  Until this week, I'd finished one project, and it's a contest entry.  So I'll just show you the UFOs that have been hovering over my head, and hopefully that'll kickstart me to get them finished.

I may have shown part of this project before, but it's getting along.  I still need to draw the vines around the rose window, and paint the rest of the vines. 

 

This one will remain unfinished.  I have to start over, because I didn't really think through the logistics of putting it all together.  I'll share what it is when I'm done re-doing it.  I think it's going to be cool, though :)

 

These are made with leftovers from a first attempt at my contest entry that I mentioned above.  RWBY is a new original animated webseries from RoosterTeeth Productions.  It's also my new favorite thing in the world!  You should check it out, right here:  RWBY, created by Monty Oum.  It'll load the most recent episode first, so scroll down slightly to find the full selection of episodes and start with episode one, or even better, start with the Red trailer and work your way through White, Black, and Yellow before starting the series.  And if you want to see it, here's my poster contest entry:  ta-daa!

And this one is going to be a gift.  If I ever get it finished.  This, too, is one of several attempts, all but this one being unsatisfactory false starts.  Here, though, I finally feel like I'm onto something.

 

This week I'm back on a roll, though.  Stay tuned, because I will gather my thoughts and soon post about the awesome workshops that Mom and I took from Finnabair this week.  Totally awesome.  Til then, though, I'm off to try and finish some of these projects...

Thursday Theme: Medieval Sauce

Wie geht's, Pocketeers?  That means what's up in German :)  Not surprisingly, my work recently has revolved around a particular theme of medieval awesomeness.  We'll be like Tenacious D and call it "sauce."  Medieval sauce.  And it's flavoring everything I work on.  Because being in Germany and seeing all the medieval sights at medieval sites (see what I did there?) brought back my taste for the medieval pretty strongly.  As soon as we got back, with my head bursting with ideas, I ordered a whole bunch of Michelle Ward's Gothic Collection stencils.  If you ever do anything with stencils or stamps ever, and you haven't seen them yet, click right there on the words "Gothic Collection" and take a look.  Go ahead.  I'll wait.

So they're gorgeous, right?  And super medieval, which is kind of the idea.  And perfect for many of my German-castle-and-monastery-inspired ideas.  And very fun to play with.  So here are a few things that I've been working on, with a hearty helping of the medieval sauce.

This panel was the result of me playing with the stencils applied one after the other in layers with heavy body gesso.  



I had so much fun with the layered panel that I decided to do little ones, with a coordinating shadow box.

And this is how they look now.  Still not finished, the moss isn't secured, there will be more in the shadow box, but I liked the layers of color.

Closeup of the treatment on the textured ones.

I went to experiment with some offprints that I did with the gesso-y stencils from those two projects onto cardstock, and had some misfires.  But those misfires led me to end up doing this:

Regular gesso and homemade ink spray using a Distress Ink reinker, on watercolor paper.

 

I loved playing with the sprays and letting them run all over the paper and between the gessoed areas and over the gesso and then wiping it off the gesso and seeing the reverse-windows I ended up with.  So these experiments are now destined to become individual paintings for our bedroom.  But first, they need some detail.  Remember this pic from last week?

I love the vines painted around the arch.  So I copied that style and cross-referenced it with some motifs in an old medieval manuscripts textbook of mine, and tested it out a bit, and then bit the bullet and went for it:

Detail painting is hard!  I have trouble making accurate brushstrokes, even with a tiny brush.

 

 

So far I've only done one side of one window.  But all three windows will be surrounded by the time I'm finished.  I want to add some shade and highlight to the vines as well.  But at this stage I'm pleased with how they're coming out.  I'm hoping that when they're finished and trimmed up, I'll have something that will remind me of our time in Germany but with my own personal seasoning.  Some modern seasoning in the medieval sauce.  

Thursday Theme: Deutschland!

Wow, did I lose track of the weeks or what?  We've been surprisingly busy since getting back from vacation in Germany, with family visiting from Germany (yes, you read that right) and trying to get settled back in.  But I haven't forgotten the blog, or you.  And I realized finally that it's Thursday, which means it's time for a theme!  Until last night I hadn't done much art in the last few weeks, but even though I now have some pieces that relate to each other that I could show, I'll hold on to those and instead show you some of the inspiring sights I saw in Germany.  It's a beautiful place, and I saw stuff all over that inspired me, from the landscape to the wildflowers to the castles to the floor tiles.  So here we go.  I'll mostly let the photos speak for themselves.

 

(This is the view from my first castle.  Real castle!  The next few photos are from there.)

(There happened to be an equestrian tournament in town while we were there, in the park on the grounds of a palace.  Sweet!)

(This castle just happens to be chillin' in the middle of the park.)

(These next few pictures are from the monastery where The Name of the Rose was filmed.  Awesome!)

(Germania says:  "Come at me, bro!")

(We spent a weekend in a castle hotel as a wedding gift from the family.  Best thing ever!  The castle ruins were amazing and overrun by nature.)

(These last pictures are from the cathedral in Mainz.)

It was an amazing trip, and this is only a tiny few of the photos we took.  But they're a decent sampling of settings and patterns that got my creative mind going, so maybe they'll do the same for you.  Bis später!  (See you later!)

Thursday Theme: Background Check

More backgrounds for my tagebuch! I've done some on Kraft paper tags now, too. More efficient photos this time - the second photo is the same tags as the first photo, but flipped over. Same techniques as last week, but with some stamps this week.