Some more art mail

I made another batch of collaged mail art. This is the last batch that still stems from my call for recipients a while back, so they are all taken already. It feels good to be able to send out a card to everybody who asked for it.

I'm not good at keeping up a regular correspondence with a few people, nor am I any good at doing those themed swaps that a lot of people are into. It's just too much like homework, haha

What I do love is to just make a batch of cards every now and then and have people to send them to. It makes me happy that people want to receive them and yes, sometimes they also send something back, but that's not the main reason I do it. I just love making these little collage pieces.

Here is each card seperately:

Now that all the original takers have a card I am thinking of a way to keep a sort of mailing list going where people will randomly receive a card from me if I make another batch. I will get back to you all on that when I have figured out how I want to do that.

I am curious though if anybody would be interested in such a thing. It would simply mean I put you on a list and in due time you would receive a card and at some point much later in time you would receive another one when it was your turn again. No promises on frequency or type of cards. Just kind of a surprise mail. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

For now I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day!

Mixed Media Bird

Sometimes, not very often, I get struck by the and-now-its-time-to-just-shove-acrylic-paint-around-and-see-what-happens bug. I don't work very often in acrylic. I love the paint, but it takes a bit more work than panned watercolours, coloured pencils, markers or gouache. It's...well...it's just a bit more messy. But sometimes you want messy.

So when the bug struck me this time I had no choice but to give in and here's what happened:

I didn't set out to paint a bird. I didn't set out to paint anything specific. I just took some old painted papers and collaged with them and added paint and this shape just appeared and then I knew I was painting a bird! I love how that happens.

Here's a few close ups, look at all the scrumptious layers!

I put the finishing touches in with acrylic markers and of course I had to sign my masterpiece. I had a blast doing this painting. I think it's important to play for play's sake, which is also for your own sake by the way. People have a way of forgetting that last bit, but I'm here to remind you. ;-)

This piece was done in my Canson XL Mixed Media Book and measures 11x14 inches.

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day!

Morning Paintings

My morning painting practice continues. I haven't shown some in a while because of vacations and birthdays but as this gets posted I have just finished my second sketchbook and done 80 of them! I'm pretty proud of that I can tell you!

Here are paintings number 51 to 60.

#51 - Monochromatic Town

#52 - Mail Order Catalogue Girl Reprise

# 53 - Hyacinthoides Hispanica

#54 - Yellow, Orange, Red, Ochre, Brown

#55 - Green and Blue Drops

#56 - Tree Silhouette

#57 - Dots on Yellow

#58 - Dots and Circles

#59 - Flower Pattern

#60 - Pattern

As always these were done in gouache and almost always in the morning. Sometimes practical things get in the way. For instance I did not do them on my vacation to Texel and sometimes there's just no time and I end up doing one later in the day, but that does not happen very often, so I'll just continue to call them morning paintings. I doubt the morning painting police will show up at my door anytime soon. ;-)

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day. 

Let's go to the zoo! - part two of two

Ready for some more zoo visiting? I know I am!

Here are the rest of the photographs of my visit to the zoo in Emmen last weekend. Now we get to the more dangerous and bigger animals. And some butterflies too! Don't worry they weren't put in the same space. ;-)

This is my absolute favorite shot of that weekend!

The big cats are my favorite animals. Those and wolves, but they don't have those in Emmen. I hope to one day get some wolf shots in another zoo (close to where my sister lives). I am always a bit dubious about how I feel about zoo's in general, but for me they are the only way to get close up shots of animals that don't live here naturally and there's always a kid in me that's just fascinated by the different species that walk this earth.

But for the coming days I think I will stick close to home. I've had so much going on, with birthday visitors, a vacation, and several trips and stuff, that a coworker recently said "Isn't it about time you just stayed home for a while?". She was joking of course, but she was not wrong. So for the coming weeks I hope to have some quality time on my island and in my studio.

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy week!

And the winner is...

Time to announce the birthday giveaway winner! Thank you all so much for your sweet birthday wishes both on the blog and on Facebook. It was fantastic!

I made a list of the commenters who wanted to win this:

I numbered the list and used a random number generator to pick the winner.

Drum rolls please...

The winner is....tatataaa.... Kelley! Here's what she had to say:

Congratulations Kelley! Please contact me on c.m.j.winkelman[at]home.nl with you snail mail address so I can have the book sent to you. I hope you enjoy it.
(Please also beware that if I don't hear from you before April 26 I will choose another winner, but I'm sure you want this book in your mailbox, haha.)

And so ends another giveaway. Thank you all for entering and wishing you a wonderful and artsy day!

Let's go to the zoo! - part one of two

So it was my birthday last Saturday and I gave myself a photography trip to the zoo to celebrate it. I had wanted to go forever, but since a day-trip from my island usually takes three days if you want to make a real day of it, I kept postponing it. But no more. I booked a hotel and off I went.

Above is my hotel. It is a lovely cosy family hotel right in the centre of the town of Emmen just a few hundred meters from the zoo.  Since I've moved to the island I've had to stay in a lot of hotels and often they are staffed with pretty young ladies in skirt suits looking all correct and perfect. Here I was attended by middle aged people in jeans and I loved it. Everything was very clean and comfortable and the people were nice. And my favorite part: they bake their own bread for breakfast! It was still warm when served. So delicious!

But I didn't come for bread did I? I came for the zoo! Let me take you on a two post trip along with me. The Emmen Zoo or as it is officially called "Noorder Dierenpark Emmen" is quite beautiful and was very modern in it's policies when they started many years ago, meaning they didn't want animals in small cages, but in much larger habitats. Now they are slowly running out of space and things are starting to age here and there, so they are making a brand new zoo outside of town. But as long as that's not finished I still got to see the 'old' zoo, which is in the middle of the town.

The entrance of the zoo.

I had come to take many pictures and I did, but it was harder than I expected. Because a lot of the habitats for the animals are bigger there are spots installed where people can look, but they are often seperated from the animals with glass and glass is not ideal to photographs through. Of course this was not the case with every animal, but the more dangerous ones (lions, tigers and bears, oh my) of course cannot be let out in the open. The glass meant a lot of reflection and sometimes hazy pictures, because the glass was not perfectly clean. Quite annoying. With a little help from a photo editing program and positioning myself more strategically than I would like to I have however been able to take some nice shots. And of course the zoo has plenty of open spaces where animals can roam moderately free. There are also many indoor 'gardens' themed after different continents where the animals can almost be touched (although I'm not sure I'd like to touch a crocodile for instance).

Anyway, I took over 300 pictures and have narrowed them down to a couple of dozen for your viewing pleasure.

So...let's go to the zoo!

I'll post the rest of the pictures on Sunday. Tomorrow I will post the winner of my birthday giveaway. There's still time to enter today, so if you haven't yet, go over there and comment.

Have a wonderful and artsy weekend all!