Theme of the day, Antlers

A reindeer from one of my Christmas cards. I have a soft spot for deer, except when they eat my tulips.

Theme of the day, Antlers

It's that time of year. Took these in the city yesterday...

I'm Lucky

Well it's monday morning and I'm off to work. I get to make a voice over today. I love voice acting! Yay

Inspiration from an old source, Ledøje Church, Denmark

My eighty five year old Mother-in-law grew up in Ledøje, Denmark. Yesterday we took a short road trip with her to her childhood village. The church there is special in that it's the only two level church in Denmark including a second altar upstairs. I had heard this before and imagined the church to be quite big. In reality the church which was built in the 1200's is itty bitty small, but BIG on charm. I was really inspired by the chalk paintings inside the church, so I took loads of photos while the choir was practicing their Christmas carols. Beautiful.

Inspiration from Walton Ford, Louisiana Workshop

This is the result of my last class at the Louisiana Workshop, 2010. We studied the paintings of Walton Ford. The key to most of his work is what he calls attraction-repulsion, which is at first you are attracted by something very beautiful and then repulsed by a closer look when you see what's really going on with the story in the painting.

There wasn't time to complete my painting in class, but when I can bring it home I'll finish the trap for the male Icebird (Isfulen). I'll have to find out what they are called in English too!

Archiving your children's art

I have a six year old son who LOVES to draw. He is at school right now and my husband is scanning a gigantic pile of his latest work. We have to weed through some of it today before the piles get out of hand and before he gets home. Here are some ideas on what you can do with your children's art projects.

1. Scan the drawings, pick a couple favorites to keep, send the rest to family living far away. We are keeping these this week. I'll send some of the others to my parents in the States the others may end in the circular file. The scanned drawings can also be used as a screensaver. We have Apple TV, and like to listen to music while looking at our own homemade screensavers when friends come by.

surfing scene

I love these reindeer, might become a Christmas card

music

2. Frame it. Below is my son's first figure drawing and it happened to be of Wall-E.

3. Keep chosen artwork in a portfolio book. I like to use these spiral bound, plastic pocket, filing books from Ordning & Reda in Sweden. 

Here is their online shop Ordning & Reda

4. Have your child give drawings as gifts. 

Painting workshop at Louisiana with inspiration from Anselm Kiefer's landscapes

This is the outcome of my landscape, or maybe it should be called a harborscape. It's painted in sand and chalk with paint to hold it together like glue. After studying Kiefer's landscapes in the exhibition we went back to the workshop to finish out "masterpiece" in 1 1/2 hours, which can be really hard sometimes! I kept it simple tonight. As usual I started with one idea and it transformed in a whole other idea. My inspiration came from this afternoon I was down at the harbor today helping my husband wrap up the boat for winter. Looking out at the boats still left in the water made me feel so melancholy. Another season over, the boats sit still in the water, waiting, lifeless. Well it was that or the weather it was extremely grey today. In Denmark it's called "grey in grey".

More inspiration from Anselm Kiefer - Louisiana Workshop

Filled with inspiration from Anselm Kiefer's paintings we went back to the workshop and began "painting". We used the materials and techniques as Kiefer does. We started with paint and added ashes, chalk, straw, and sunflower seeds to our canvas'. We skipped the lead (Kiefer uses a lot of lead) as it's poisonous to humans. I felt very free and expressive with these techniques and quickly dropped the palette knife and finished the painting just using my hands.  At first glance his paintings made me feel depressed and I only thought about how heavy they were. After a closer look and learning more about him and his art his paintings are not just heavy, but light as well and not only symbolize death, but also rebirth. Kiefer is known to use poetry, written words, number classification and constellations in his work. Looking forward to the workshop tomorrow night. We will be inspired by Kiefer's landscape paintings.

The Picasso Story, Berlin

We just spent a week in Berlin for Fall Break, the first school holiday for our family. We go to Berlin three times a year on average and when we go to Berlin we like to visit as many museums as possible with our son. He is only six years old, so we need to go to kid friendly museums. The first day we were there we stopped by The Picasso Story which is a permanent exhibit of the photographer Edward Quinn who took . It was a small exhibition, but kid friendly, making it a winner in my book. Christian and I got to see the work of Quinn and Picasso and Julian learned a little and had fun. I call it "home schooling" for fun.

This was a wall in the exhibition where you could leave a few thoughts behind after getting inspired by Picasso's peace doves. 

Julian and I left our mark using one of the dove Post-it notes.

Cool idea. Peace!

Sculptural Books - Kiefer Style

I just came home from my art class tonight. We used old books to make something new, tell a new story, inspired by Anselm Kiefer. The class is at the Louisiana Museum for Modern Art. We start each session in the museum looking at specific works, we talk about it, then return to the workshop to produce our own work using the techniques that we just learned about. We have to work rather fast only having about 1 1/2 hours from start to finish. It's really taught me to work faster. Next week is Anselm Kiefer's landscape paintings.