MHmakings

19/03/2026

These two portraits are made in my homebound 10x15cm sketchbook. the first one was a small study for a bigger painting. after finishing her I decided she needed a sister. They are made with Derwent Drawing pencils on MarpaJansen braun sketch paper.

16/03/2026

Week 5 of PyHaS2026 was a lesson with Donna Downey, she used AI to create a reference image of a hooded woman, I used an Image from unsplash (unsplash.com@apostolosv)
I skimmed through the lesson and then just did my own thing. About halfway I thought I might need to scrap this painting, but I'm glas I continued and brought it to a point where I'm happy with it.

13/03/2026

Page 23 in my Marabu Mixed Media Journal (Din A5)
"I'm not weird, I'm just limited edition"
This page started with bold stamped gears in black followed with a purple wash, of left over acrylic paint, and some stamped swirls with plum archival ink. With masking tape I made some rays and boxes for the quote and toned everything down with a white wash followed with some stenciling with very light blue. To finish the page off I added some gelly-roll in bright colors around the rays.

11/03/2026

Page 22 in my Marabu Mixed Media Journal (Din A5)
"Love your enemies. It makes them so damned mad."
This background started with peach and pink acrylic paint loosely painted in a diagonal on the page. On the sides I glued some dotted tissue paper. I added some red stamped hearts and splattered some purple acrylic paint. The hearts are tissue paper that I colored with spray inks and acrylic paints. When I glued these down I decided to cover the whole page in collage glue, it gives the page a glossy shine, but it also makes it a little sticky even when completely dry.

09/03/2026

Page 21 in my Marabu Mixed Media Journal (Din A5)
"Never test how deep the water is with both feet."
The first layer of this page is some stamping with wheat in black and honeycomb in red. Then I sprayed orange and yellow acrylic inks. I used paper strips to make some tiger like stripes that I painted black and teal. I cut some pre-painted papers with a honeycomb die and glued some of the pieces down. Because everything was very bright I used diluted purple acrylic paint to tone it down and splashed some leftover muted green. A focal point I usedsome purple circles and like most times I scribbled one of the words of the quoet around one of the circles. This time "deep". As finishing touches I made a purple boarder and used metallic jelly pens to add some details.

05/03/2026

The majority of this portrait is done with Pan Pastel chalk, for details I used charcoal and a white pastel pencil. The colorful hair is done with Rembrandt chalk pastels. All this on blue Strathmore Artagain 23x30.5cm paper. Thanks to Seeplus on Unsplash for the reference picture https://unsplash.com/, and thank you Mika Denny for the LFI2025 lesson last year, that made me buy black and white Pan Pastel :)

02/03/2026

This painting is very loosly inspired by Franz Marc. Week 3 of PyHaS was dedicated to him and I just looked at some of his paintings and tried to ad some of his style in a painting. I watched Pat Rios' lesson after I finished, if I had watched her paint first I could have incorporated more of Franz Marc's style. But I like how the chickens turned out. Acrylic paint on van Gogh acrylic paper 24x32cm.

26/02/2026

These are practice still-life paintings in oil. They are done with a method called Twisted Twenties that I got from Sarah Sedwick. You set up a still-life, mix the colors paint it in 20 minutes. Then you turn the stil-life, remix/adjust colors and paint it again in 20minutes and you do the same a third time. After the first session I painted an apple and then did the same principle again with a lemon.

23/02/2026

This was week 2 of PyHaS2026, a lesson by Joan Martin inspired by Käthe Kollwitz.
The bold black lines make it a little easier to keep it a bit looser. 35x28cm charcoal portrait with white gesso for highlights on Strathmore Toned Tan 300gsm Mixed Media paper

20/02/2026

19/02/2026

Here is the matching watercolor version of the clown. This time I used White nights watercolors on Boahong Academy Cold Press 18x12.5cm paper. And again I added some details with polychromos pencils