blob monsters

While Norway in sunshine is a beautiful thing, it does rain a lot. But for my friend Heidi and I these rainy days are exciting because then there's ample reason to stay in doors and paint all day. And we're both really enjoying the creative energy that flows when there's someone to share ideas with.

For the last week one of the things we've been creating is monsters. They were meant to be a warm up to more 'serious' painting, and they have been. But they've also taken on a life of their own and I, for one, cannot stop.

Here's how we started...

We each had a piece of paper which we passed back and forth, creating random watercolour paint blobs and splatters.

Painting watercolour blobs with Heidi

Then we looked for monsters in the shapes, each completing a monster on the page before passing it over to the other person to find another one. Here are the 2 completed sheets after about 2 hours of non-stop monster hunting.

Dragon's Nightmare - Renee Walden and Heidi Spets

Kubbert Jon and The Moose go for a walk - Renee Walden and Heidi Spets

Next rainy day we decided that many of the monsters we created would look better on their own. So we each made 4 blobs on individual pieces of paper to give to the other. We thought it better not to work from our own blobs, so that we didn't try to get too precious in the painting stage and start influencing the drawing.

Here are Heidi's 4 monsters created from my blobs...

Clockwise from top left : Bird with Umbrella, Sun Salutations on Stingray, Dragon with Suit and Kitten, Lemon Anteater

We found the naming of our drawings as much fun as creating them.

Here are mine from Heidi's blobs...

Aladdin's Genie before being pacified by disney

Orangeomecium. 50x magnification. (Squashed by coverslip)

Patrick the Timid Dragon

Now it's clear that Heidi and I aren't always going to be able to swap blobs. So I'm attempting to go solo creating my own blobs and then drawing from them. Here is the first one...

What comes out of a sea urchin when no one is looking

I've been getting such great feedback on Facebook and Instagram with these. Thanks everyone! You've inspired me to keep going. Expect more strange creatures, for sure. Here is a blob waiting for it's monster. And I'm super excited to see that's it's just started raining and there's no good reason to go outside!

Watercolour blobs waiting for monster. What do you see?

Follow me on Instagram if you want to keep up to date with more monsters. instagram.com/art.scatterlings/

exploring the fjords in norway

We're in beautiful Norway again. Camping in the van, climbing by the sea, swimming in alpine lakes. It's hard to beat Norway in the sunshine for beauty.

Beach time, Lysefjord, Norway

Climbing by the sea, Lysefjord, Norway

Van life, Lysefjord, Norway

Fossmork, Lysefjord, Norway

Quick watercolour sketch of Fossmork, Lysefjord, Norway

summertime flowers

Wildflowers in Europe in summertime!

Its hard to take a walk without spending most of the time crawling on your knees and taking photos on macro setting. I find myself sketching one tiny flower while everyone else is in awe of the majestic mountains and hills around. It can be difficult to concentrate on the bigger picture with all that detail in front of you. Life's like that too I suppose :-)