The battle with pastels...

I've tried pastels before, but this time decided to give them a serious go, to really get used to the medium and become comfortable with it. After each artwork I would post on Facebook stating "how I hate pastels", getting encouraging comments from friends to carry on and just get through the stage of mastering new medium. I was curious myself to see whether I really hate pastels or am I just frightened by the new experience. I tried to listen to my thoughts and my heart through the process of creating, determined to see where the problem lies. I discovered that my main "hatred" lies in the uncomfortable scratchy sound pastel make, all the chalky dust they create, that feels so unpleasant on my fingers, and the constant feeling of missing meditative quality of acrylics, that gliding and flow and caress of the brush on canvas. Just to make me doubt my hatred, pastels loved me unconditionally, and the artworks took forms in the glowing soulful faces staring down at me with the question in their eyes: "What is the problem?"  So, here they are, born from the love-hate relationship:

Did me and pastels reconcile our differences? I can't tell. For now, I am giving pastels a cold shoulder and move to my old love - acrylics. And as if struggle within myself is not big enough, I just ordered more pastels from DickBlick. The divorce is not final, so it seems.

Mixed-media and acrylics: soulful art

Been busy with two Misty Mawn workshops online and simultaneously created few large artworks, if not directly related to, but definitely inspired by these workshops. Some of these works are available in my Etsy shop. If you do not see an artwork in the Etsy shop, please inquire about it. Anna. Resignation, acrylics on paper, 20'X28'. Available:

The furthest I have been from home. Acrylics and mixed media on paper, 21'X29'. Sold:

Harvest II, acrylics and mixed media on paper, 24'X28'. Sold:

Moon persuasion, acrylics and white sharpie on canvas board, 16'X20'. Available:

Collage and ink art with my toddler

Today I gave my 3 year old baby Tallulah her first art journal. I made these books from a good quality 300lbs watercolor paper, so she got one, and I got one. Gave her a photo of a girl's face from a magazine and explained the concept of "reference image". I was in doubts whether my lecture is age-appropriate, but she listened intently. I drew an oval on her page and asked her to collage pieces inside it. I prepared pieces in advance, mostly pink, purple, blue and other happy colors, thinking that as a child she would want them. No ways. She scratched for some black an white and neutral tones and started to glue. -Tallulah, what about all these lovely pinks and purples?

She looked at me like I was stupid and replied:

- The reference image is in black and white, mama.

I think  she added couple of purples just to make me happy, :-/  After she done gluing, I gave her calligraphy nib pen and black acrylic ink and suggested to draw a face over it. Surprisingly she kept looking at the reference image throughout her drawing and concentrated intently.

I made one drawing too in my art journal, and we ended up having the same color palette, since she refused the "childish" one and and went for my collage pieces.

Here is Tallulah's:

And here is mine:

Our brand new hand-made journals made with Coptic binding technique:

Some available recent artworks

Few mixed media works that I did in the last month or so, mainly acrylics, with addition of collage. I just put some of them in my Etsy shop. If you do not see an artwork in my Etsy shop, please inquire. All below listed are still available (update 12/6/2015). Picasso inspired, acrylics on canvas. "Childhood Dream".

Collage and acrylics, "Desert Sun":

Gesso, stabilo pencil on watercolor paper, "Full moon":

Acrylics and photo transfers on canvas, "In m heart":

Alexej von Yawlensky inspired, acrylics on watercolor paper, "Shooting star. Painting of Frida":

Klimt inspired, ink and acrylics on watercolor paper, "Unnoticed":

Art Journal - Shapes and Compositions

Here is a cute 8'X8' art journal I made on Misty Mawn new workshop, using collage, acrylics and stabilo pencil. Backgrounds were created with paynes gray, titanium buff and raw umber, using scraper, then added collage, stamps, stencils, washi tapes, and drawings. It took 2 hours of preparation and 8 of execution and was lots of fun. 16 pages of yummy ideas on what to paint on a large scale next. And yay - I discovered I can paint a whimsical face! I thought I can only do realistic ones, and just look at these!

Some hand-carved stamps I used in this project:

Here is some backgrounds before I added collage. Feel free to use them for your collages or digital work:

These two look like landscapes: