On Vacation in Spain

I have been on vacation in Spain, gathering inspiration around every turn. I spent a week in Barcelona, then a weekend in Cadaques, and now I'm in Madrid. For the first two days in Madrid I was ill, but I have made a full recovery and yesterday I was up for exploring Madrid.

While in Madrid, my husband and I are staying with a wonderful Icelandic couple who are here for the same reason we are. He is going to the meetings with Chris, and she and I are having fun exploring. Yesterday we had breakfast at a cafe by the metro stop nearest to our apartment. The fresh squeezed orange juice was divine, as always! Then we wandered around Parque de el Retiro and paused to sit on the grass and draw and paint el Palacio de Cristal as she read a book (1984 in Icelandic). It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon!

 

Then we went to Reina Sofia, the modern art museum, where I nourished my soul visiting Calder and Rothko and Picasso and van Gogh and Klee, etc. etc. ...  I met a new favorite, Lumière, through the hand-colored 1899 silent films called Serpentine Dance. I found a video online. If you don't want to hear someone talking about it and just want to appreciate the beauty, mute it. :)

Shot and hand-colored - frame by frame - at the end of the 19th Century. Still captivating today, but just imagine what it must have been like to watch an image move and transform like this in 1899! A beautiful example of the earliest cinematic ART.

I watched this over and over as it looped on the wall of the gallery. The collection had to do with visual art as poetry, and I understood it so well as I watched her twirl. Also, I want a dress like that. :)

Hope you have a great day! Remember to twirl! :)

April Project: Day 9

Hello, friends! Today I had some more fun with gouache. I decided to paint a little scene that would incorporate a lot of things I love, like hedgehogs, birds, mushrooms, inchworms, moss, berries, greenery and flowers. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I used a pretty small brush, but not my smallest brush, and I was able to get quite a bit of detail into it. The painting is just a wee bit over two inches in diameter, which somehow makes it seem even more precious to me.

Because my scanner is not working very well at the moment, and my nice camera is en route to Iceland after being fixed abroad, my phone's photos will have to suffice. :)

Tomorrow I will have something new to share, though I don't yet know what it will be, so check back soon. Thanks for stopping by! :)

Time for Ornaments

I decided to enter another competition, and this time it is for wrapping paper. With the season of gift giving and wrapping just around the corner, it was fun to work on. Right now in Reykjavik, the city is preparing for Christmas and putting up the garland and lights along the main street. I love how cosy this city gets. I'll share photos when it's up and ready for me to photograph.

So, the theme this time was ornaments, and I decided to go eclectic and crafty, with a rougher watercolor paper texture and a hand-done look. I had a very hard time deciding what color to have the background be. Perhaps you could help me decide? I like the brown, but I thought some other colors looked good, too.