Cats in (my) art - for a challenge

 

The March challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' is about animals in art. 

In my art animals are mostly cats, so I recycled some old sketches to a new 'collage' of cats and made the painting. After that I added some parts of silhouettes using a line marker.

The whole idea was that it would be sketch-like, no real portraits of the cats, those were made earlier.

This is a very small tribute to the cats that I was allowed to paint thin the last years.

The information about the materials I have used, the size and availability of this work and my contact information can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Walking! - collage and Conté drawing

 

The March challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' is 'In our family...' the theme of the Books Week that is happening each month of March in The Netherlands.

In our family we like to go for a nice walk, preferably a forest walk.

For my contribution I have made a collage of walking maps, the legenda of these maps, some titles of the walks, a bit of a description and of course the icon for a restaurant (coffee cup) from old magazines on tinted cardboard and sprayed that with fixative for Conté Crayons. 

On that layer I started drawing a forest path with the Conté Sketching Crayons, but I had to use more layers of fixative before the crayons really did 'hold' on the magazine paper. For this I was prepared, I did read about it somewhere in the past.

After some layers I found that there was a difference in paper quality that could not be covered up with fixative so I let that be part of the experiment's results.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this work and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

The Letter

 

The past months are all about Johannes Vermeer and the exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, so it was no surprise at all that the March challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' was about the letters in  many of the paintings of Vermeer.

We are challenged to imagine what the women depicted are reading or writing.

For my contribution I decided to imagine what 'the woman writing a letter' could be writing about.

The translation of the text is here:

Dear Godmother,

Thank you very much for your beautiful wedding gift.

My happiness knows no bounds, now that I have received such a beautiful present from your Silver City.

Receiving your gift was a highlight of the day, which could only have been surpassed by your own presence. Your covering letter made it clear that only a very unfortunate set of circumstances prevented you from handing over your gift in person.

I hope that your husband has since recovered from the unfortunate incident.

My husband is also very pleased with your gift and also sends his thanks.

Dear godmother, thank you for the salt and pepper set.

Yours,

Janneke

Added to the text I made a graphite drawing of an antique Silver pepper and salt set, using images from the internet as my inspiration. 

Our Silver city is Schoonhoven, not far from where I live. For the text I supposed that the lady writing (the newly wed one) lived in Delft, the city of Johannes Vermeer and her godmother lives in Schoonhoven.

The last line of the text is a hint to a comic scene/song that was popular in The Netherlands when I was much younger. I hope the other members of the association will understand.

The information about the materials I have used and the size of this work can all be found in my Tumblr blog.  If you are interested in my work, please contact me.

When I smell spring...

 

New month, new challenge by 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' with a nice spring theme . 

As there are several writers in our amateur art association, that do not paint or draw,  in this challenge we had to include some text so the writers could also participate in one of the challenges.

My text is in Dutch of course, but the English translation (according to Google Translate) is:

When I smell spring...

Do I want to go out

looking for the flowers

the tender leaves on the trees

and shrubs.

Back home I go to my studio

drawing and painting

delicate shapes   delicate colours

It's a party outside and inside.

Of course I had to draw and paint, so I added some daffodils, using white gouache, watercolour paints and some watercolour pencils. The text is written with a Calli Brush pen and the flowers are added later, hiding some of the writing. This is what I wanted to achieve, so the result is my submission for this challenge.

Maybe I will experiment more with written text and painting in the future, I really liked working on this one.

The information about all the materials I have used in this work, its size and availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

Step by step

The March challenge of 'Goed Gezien - Goed Bekeken' is 'Step by step' and I did not want to do the obvious thing.
So I started thinking - what goes step by step? The making of a painting of course and how a child learns to walk, but also the elderly people behind their walkers go step by step, not certain of their balance anymore.
I wanted to make a painting with several walkers parked outside a building where people were having fun with.... something I had to find yet.

For the walkers I made some reference pictures and then I had to find a theme.
Dancing lessons are also step by step, why not combining the walkers with the dancing lessons?  The idea was born, now I had to make a sketch and ask what dance would be the most unexpected to be taught to people that need walkers. The choice was Salsa or Samba and I chose the latter, maybe because salsa is also a name of a sauce ( in cooking).

I have not tried to make a true masterpiece but the scene speaks for itself - I hope.

The details about the materials I used, availability and contact information can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com