Featured Artist: Kristen

Hello everyone. Finally the visitors have all left and me and my family are a little bit less busy. I can finally concentrate on getting the big lads back to school in a few weeks and getting their school books in order and also my little ones will be starting playschool in September. How the time has flown, it feels like only yesterday they were little babies learning to crawl...

But enough about me, today I wanted to share somebody elses art for a change. I am trading art and artist trading cards with a girl over in Texas, her name is Kristen. In my opinion she was so good I had no possible chance of getting her to trade with me ever! By now our trades are a monthly event, and the plan (haha) was to trade two atcs every month. Of course we didn't stick to this limitation for long and I am happy and proud to say that we are trading solidly every month now for over a year!! I have asked her permission to feature her art on my blog and she has kindly obliged. I wanted to write this post in our 1 year anniversary month, but alas life got the better of me, our anniversary was in April.

For me it all started off when I noticed some wonderful art pieces she had created and posted on atcsforall.com, she had done a series called "start with a blob". I loved every single piece she came up with and I am a lucky owner of some of them. I think my favourite of these is the grumpy Octopus...

He could be right out of a seacreature version of Taxi Driver "Are you talking to ME?"

Here are the first trades we did, even before the monthly trade started up. You can see some more of her awesome blob creations on the top left.

I love how she creates facial expressions, a lot of the time it seems to me like her animals look like I feel. Grumpy, irritated, tired, all seems to describe me quite well...

I am also a great fan of her birds and the weirdness of the bubble animals above...

Another month she sent me a toadstool series, complete with a canvas extra goodie. I keep thinking the tall shroom on the left is so high it grows into the clouds.

As I said, I am a great fan of her birds. And as to facial expressions, What could ever beat the following three in the middle?

I think another feature of her art is that she uses "stained" paper for arting on. I have to admit I haven't tried that technique yet but it sure adds so much visual interest to a drawing, not to mention the colour variations you would get when painting over these coloured backgrounds. Note to self: try adding colour splatters to cards before drawing on them...

I think the big lipped caterpillar is great. And the walrus remonds me of a walrus that one of the german state owned tv stations had as mascot. I have to ask my parents what the walruses name was, I can only remember it was a girl. 

I think the Flamingo evolution is magnificent, who would have thought that pink long legged birds and snails have a common ancestor?

The whale you see on the top right on the next picture is a drawing of Fred the Fish. Kristen made Fred the Fish for me as a shelf sitting sculpture.

And to me it seems as if I could see the elephants eyelids twitch with a nervous tick anytime now... wait for it... wait for it... just a little longer and it will twitch

This is only part one of my Kristen Collection. She is such a wonderful artist, sometimes she decorates her envelopes, or her letters, and then, of course, there are her mixed media art pieces and sculptures. They all deserve to be shown here, but I am going to make that a second post, depending on the amount of pictures involved maybe there will even be a third post ;)