Friday 3 February 2017

A new contest: magic light … and lots of animals!

February starts with a new art contest, with the 2017 "Minted x West Elm Art on the Big Stage". The contest is for art prints, theme and chosen medium are open.
Here's some of my entries, I hope you'll enjoy them! They pretty well reflect my fave media at the moment: photography, watercolour and handprinting. Please vote for them if you like them! You as well can have a look at all of my submissions on my voting page. Thank you so much! Voting ends on Wednesday, February 15, 2017.

(If you'd like to vote you'll have to open up an account on Minted, or log into it. Then you can rate the submissions from 1 (worst rate) up to 5 (best). Likes don't count as vote. Love them anyway though!)


Morning Bath Killarney Ireland


With the photographic collage of a scene at the Lakes of Killarney in Ireland, I was aiming for a storytelling print that feels like an entry into a diary and depicts a fleeting but treasured moment. The scene was shot against the light, which adds to the dreamy atmosphere of the beautiful landscape.




Deer Jump

Looking through my entries I realized that I included a lot of animals this time! Well they are very inspiring to me :-)
I did the "Deer Jump" as part of last year's Inktober challenge (you can read a bit more about it here if you like to). I love the way this simple painterly sketch captures movement and animal beauty as well as a magical mood.



Collecting Birds – Caffinch


"Collecting Birds" is an ongoing series of watercolour birds in their natural surroundings, painted to celebrate the beauty and diversity of nature. They are inspired by the illustrations you'll find in old books for identifying bird species, and I try to marry this inspiration with the loose painterly quality of watercolours. I submitted 3 of these – you can find the other 2 on my voting page.



Irish Sheep 2

Ok, I simply had to include this friendly chap! Travelling in Ireland these sheep are your constant companions, but I tried for long to do a good portrait as they tend to be wild and shy. This close up and upfront shoot now finally shows one of them in full beauty and pride :-)



Cow Parade

My "Cow Parade" is a digital collage of monoprints. The prints I used are all leftovers from an older commission – all the ones that went a bit wrong somewhere … I call them "odd prints", have been collecting them for quite some time, and love them for exactly that, for the mistakes and quirks. It was fun to do sthg with them finally – and I hope people will have fun with them too!

 
http://www.minted.com/design-rating/738155

http://www.minted.com/design-rating/738155



And here's two more landscapes!
In this shot of Dingle Harbour in Ireland below I captured clouds and sun playing on the ships and hills, reducing them to silhouettes and highlighting the importance of the elements – it's a small land floating between a vast sea and sky. The photograph is part of my Irish "Light on …" series. I submitted 3 of these – you can find the other 2 on my voting page.


Light on Dingle Harbour Ireland



http://www.minted.com/design-rating/724463


A Winter Walk

Finally here's a watercolour painted in Germany. It was inspired by a walk on a foggy day in early winter – I loved the reduced color palette and the way the forest and hills melted into the soft greys of the frosty sky. A painting that radiates a peaceful and meditative mood.

Want to see more? Just hop over to my voting page!
You as well can have a look at all submissions here. But beware – it might take quite a while, there's 6278 of them in the whole! Wish me luck!
And thank you for visiting and voting :-)