Zentangle - an experiment in watercolours

 Michele C

Most of youu are doing it, or have done it: 'doodle'! While you are on the phone, in a meeting, having a lecture - you make simple little drawings. A very 'right half of the brain' thing, very personal and often looking surprisingly good. That doodling now has a name and a lot of official websites, classes, youtube channels and blogs!! It's called 'Zentangle': Creating beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. 

The Aquarellistas gave it their own swing: we start on a base of colour. As you can see we love doing it - and we love the results, they are so original!  It is a good thing to do when you are fed up with copying from photo's or other paintings, but don't exactly know what to do instead....

NB: if you want so see the lines and patterns in their full glory - click on the picture to make it bigger!

 Vanessa created 3 Christmas cards, the first a delightful one with zentangle baubles

Judith finished her fantastic version. It is inspiring to look at it -you keep discovering new stuff!

Katherine did an absolutely awesome job on her first zentangle set! Not finished yet, more later!

This amazing work is done by Ilse- in the real zentangle, the green is darker and more varied, but it works even without that...

Celina's zentangle feather is so delicate and dreamy... Could be a successful series...

Marie-Claire has filled her Zentangle in a much more open way. Very original, it is as if the objects float. Next one with an even thinner fineliner!

Diana's wonderful Zentangle with such interesting patterns... love it.

The Café Culture Cinéma of 21 March 2012

This is what you MISSED...

A very very good documentary movie about Annie Leibovitz, the great photographer who worked for the magazine 'Rolling Stone' and photographed John Lennon 5 hours before he was shot, the Stones, Leonardo di Caprio, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Demi Moore and did mega creative photoshoots for Vanity Fair and Vogue, well - you name it. And a lovely person, a true artist...

And then of course around all that the interesting and highly appreciated exhibition of the Aquarellistas work on the 'Carnival de Venice'... We showed that the Hangar can be changed in a very attractive gallery! And we showed that the quality of our work is high. Such a shame that there were only 20 visitors!! So - for all of you who couldn't make it, here are a couple of pictures of the 'exposette'... (click to enlarge)

The Carnival paintings

The 'Stripey Nudes'

Other Aquarelles

 Before the movie...

Drinkees after the movie

Aquarellistast Edith Alborni, Monique Randazzo and last -but certainly not least- Agnès McLaughlin, thank you so very much for your support, clever ideas and help with the hanging and the taking down of all the paintings!!

Swapping in 2011

In the summertime the aquarellista's always embark on something we call 'Swapping'...

Basically it is just a lot of fun and meant to 'free us up' but despite the low expectations, the results are sometimes stunning!! As you can see above and below...

The principle of 'swapping' is that everybody creates a background, on a middle- or large sized board, and then chooses a background of somebody else to work further with... This can be repeated more than once (on one of the paintings Cathie did the background, then Beverly worked on it and it is being finished by yours truly - unless somebody else will take it tomorrow)

More to come, because we are not finished! Swapping is best served in the sun - and we have plenty of that here in the South of France!

Other projects, like 'le Village' and 'Roses without Thorns' etc. continued as well, more about them in later posts...

Merry Christmas to all of you!

*)

THE

AQUARELLISTAS

WISH

YOU

A

VERY

MERRY

CHRISTMAS

!!!!

*) These are the first results of our "Chinese Whispers" project... I'll explain about that in the new year...

The Watercolour Class - Marina Kulik

On Tuesday afternoons from 2PM until 4.30PM, the "aquarellistas" use the atelier Le Hangar... Like all groups in the Hangar, the paricipants come from all over the world and all bring something of their own, in style and in culture - and they inspire each other that way. The pack leader is Marina Kulik (yours truly) who takes care of the materials (paper, paint, brushes), the subjects, new ideas and projects and last but not least - the tea!

'Hands' by Marina Teding van Berkhout

Some call the class "the Zen afternoon" - and it is, no stress, just fun - but nevertheless there is a lot of hard work and creativity going on on the Tuesdays!  We have just started with a couple of Christmas themes and a project - more about them in the coming weeks, yet next to that, all participants are always working on their own ideas... Here's some work in progress:

'Winter landscape' by Cathie van der Stel - halfway finished

'Wild Water' by Sandra Seymour-Dale - the yellow shiny stuff is masking fluid, that will in a later stage be the (white) foam...

Helene van der Kroft's 'little pelicans' - we all love them so much!!