A COLLECTION OF CHALLENGES

The abstract watercolour painting above is my entry for this week's theme of BIRDS for Inspiration Avenue.  I was pleased when the blobs and dabs I dropped onto the paper turned into mythical bird shapes, and so I'm happy with it.

Jenn has chosen the unusual theme of BIZARRE for Artist's Play Room this week.  An interesting challenge that cried out to be a collage, so I let my mind go free and assembled a collage from torn and cut magazine pages.  The pages containing the mask and the words were collected and stored in collage stash years ago, so I apologise for not crediting the particular magazines.

What I find bizarre about collage is the way the pieces we choose suddenly combine themselves into an image we would never have thought of, which was certainly the case with the 'I want ... I don't want' collage above.

As the theme for Sunday Postcard Art is A JOURNAL PAGE, I'm also linking the 'Bizarre' collage above to Sunday Postcard Art.

For Take a Word this week we were challenged to use COOL COLOURS, and I chose blue and green - with a touch of red and yellow to add a little zing.  I find that painting watercolour abstracts with a free mind and no planning produces a painting in a fairly short time, and as with the 'Bizarre' collage above, it produces something really unexpected.  Don't ask me what this one means, I'm only the artist!

Click on the image to enlarge it so that you can read the words

I enjoyed searching my box of old photos for something connected with my family.  I have only about half a dozen family photos because sadly my parents destroyed everything except those I had filched from time to time without their knowing.  So I'm glad I was naughty enough to do that.

The theme for the Collage Obsession challenge is SISTERS AND BROTHERS, and I concentrated on sisters - my sister and me.  I realise for the first time that we never had a photo of all the children in our family together.

The photo above was taken when my sister was 7 and I was 3, 75 years ago, and was lightly tinted by hand by the photographer, though it doesn't show up too well on the scan.

The words round the edge were inspired by the old Beverley Sisters' song 'Sisters', adapted fairly loosely.  For overseas readers, the Beverley Sisters were a 1950s and '60s singing group of three real sisters, Bev, Babs and Teddie, who modelled themselves on the Andrews Sisters.

I wrote:   Sisters, sisters, there were never more devoted sisters,
               I am here to keep my eye on her
               She is here to keep her eye on me,
               Many folk have tried to split us up, but no-one can, nobody can .....

She did have to look after me while my mother looked after the younger children and worked to keep us when my father was missing and then a POW in WW2.  I was very mischievous so I was always getting into scrapes and falling from trees or fences, and my sister had to make me hide any bumps and bruises from mum.

Hope you like some of these pictures - I enjoyed making every one.  I'm so glad I found these challenge blogs - thank you to all those who put in the time and effort to run them.


I shall also be linking to Paper Saturdays and Paint Party Friday