paint, butterflies & magical moments

any art, when you love it, can be magical

painting with watercolour is like that for me

here is a whimsical scene I've been playing with 

I could endlessly add little details

{it is one of the funnest parts}

{I hope you can get magically lost in something you love}

Silvia

tiny landscapes

One of my all-time favourite words is

'serendipity'

It's fun to say,

it makes me feel happy,

and I love that is speaks of unpredictability.

I love to go on serendipitous vacations with my family

{where we don't have every detail planned out.}

I love to discover new things together,

especially when it was unexpected,

unplanned.

Here is my connection to art:

I love watercolours.

I love how they move across the page,

I love their unpredictability

I love that they can take me on a 

serendipitous journey.

This week, I saw an artist post about how she used watercolour paintings

that didn't work out very well

to make new artwork.
{check out: Elvie Studio}

So, I gave it a try with my own twist...

I masked a few little areas for fun. 

{Masking fluid shields the paper from the paint until it is removed}.

And then I just played with streaks and blobs of colour:

After that, I cut out a 1" square, 

a 1 1/2" square and a 1"x2" rectangle 

from another sheet of paper

and I used them as frames

to see what I could find in my painting:

My mind is often on nature a lot these days

and I couldn't help but see it through that filter. 

Do you see as many landscapes as I did?
{I loved elvis studio's frames, 
so borrowed them for my mini pics}

This was fun little serendipitous project.

It forced me to look beyond the streaks and blobs

to find art.

Silvia

you cannot keep spring from coming

Around here we haven't seen too many signs of spring.  This is pretty much how things look in eastern Ontario:

Piles of dirty, brown-grey snow. We even had 6" of snowfall this past  Sunday. 

{Nooooo!}

This is not the scene we all expect 

{and desire} 

to see when April finally enters the scene!

I'm going to share a funny little bit about myself:

I have a daily reminder on my iPhone to "Notice Nature."

Yup. I remind myself each day to look up, look out, to see. 

I remind myself each day to 

notice 

the glory of creation.

It is a soul-soothing discipline/habit/love.

However, I have to admit that lately it has felt like there isn't too much to notice.

Today, with the weather above freezing, I took my two youngest kids out, 

and we out to look for

spring.

Amidst all that grey-brown, dirty snow, this is what we found:

  

 

 

 

Budding trees, dirty puddles of melting dirty snow, gooey, squishy mud, bits of grass trying to awaken, flowers pushing their way up through the snow 

... beautiful, hopeful signs of spring.

{Welcome Spring. We have all been waiting for you}

 Pablo Neruda once said, "You can cut the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming."

After last Sunday's six inches of snow, 

I used my sketchbook to remind myself that spring was indeed 

still coming...

Happy Spring to you!

Silvia
follow me on instagram at silviaklassen