Inspiration from Kandinsky

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky is my all-time favorite abstract painter. He was an influential Russian painter and art theorist and is credited with painting the first purely abstract works.
At Artful Mail Groupies I set up an ATC swap entitled Kandinsky with Jazz and a Twist. The idea behind it was to put on some jazz and start groovin' to the tunes and get busy making magic. The twist, well, it was a resist. They had to use a resist as part of their creation.

Lordy, mercy me, you would think I asked them all to jump off a cliff! Ha!  Seriously, abstract art is difficult for some people. And all abstract really is - is the absence of similarity to any real object. Period. Myself, I find nothing hard about that concept. A Kandinsky I shall never be. But I still love his art and his use of color. And of course, the geometic shapes.

The thing with Kandinsky is that he was clearly enamored with geometry and geometric shapes. It is evident in so much of his work. He was a prolific artist, and not everything he did was in abstract. 

This journal page in my "everyday" journal was made from what was leftover from the art I created using watercolor, with white crayon as the resist and black acrylic paint. I cut all my ATC's from this piece and have sent them out into the world to my assigned swap partners. I hope they enjoy my trading cards as much as I enjoyed groovin' to some Quentin Marsalis and playing with my paints. ~~bgr

Spring Is In the Air

Don't you just love spring?  Everything comes alive again--the flowers blooming, the grass is growing, the birds are singing.  A rebirth of life.  And that is the subject of my spring ATC's (Artist Trading Cards) made for a swap at Artful Mail Groupies.  I love making these little miniatures. They are always challenging and fun to make and to receive.

I recently came into a goodly supply of baseball cards and enjoy altering them for our ATC swaps.  Sometimes they are more challenging than others, depending on the mediums used.

This particular set of cards was made using a scanned and printed vintage card, sized down for the ATC and then embellished with a Signo Uniball and Sakura Gelly pen.  I felt the image surely didn't need too much embellishment as it is just too cute on its own.  I hope the intended recipients enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.

Following along with the goodness of spring, I made the attached greeting card, also for a swap in Artful Mail Groupies.  Our challenge/theme was 'friendship" - opening up a whole world of possibilities, quotes and emotions.  What would our lives be like if we didn't have friends?  Sad, indeed.  I have certainly been blessed to have many friends in my life and have made many lasting friendships through the internet and social media.



The base card was created on 140 pound press watercolor paper using Dylusions Spray Inks, some candy wrappers, buttons and scrapbooking paper cut outs for the stems and leaves.  These were embellished with Sakura Gelly pen.  The inside sentiment was hand lettered with my new Scarlet Lime pen and Sakura Glaze pens.  I then mounted the front to white Bristol paper and used a handy-dandy corner punch to round them out.  I hope that the intended recipient enjoys it.  I had lots of fun creating this one.