December Monthly Challenge

Winter Landscape by Wassily Kandinsky, 1909

Oil on cardboard 75.5 cm × 97.5 cm

The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

About the Art

Colour played a major role in Kandinsky’s progress towards abstract art. It is said that he once saw one of his paintings standing upside down against a wall and thought it ‘indescribably and overwhelmingly beautiful’ … it represented no recognizable object, it was exclusively composed of luminous patches of colour …’. The extreme colour contrasts and vertical and horizontal lines in this painting emphasise the work’s two-dimensional character. The yellow house in the centre stands out sharply against its dark surroundings. The blue, yellow and green brushstrokes in the sky are echoed in the foreground.

About the Artist

Kandinsky was a Russian-born artist, one of the first creators of pure abstraction in modern painting and is regarded as one of the originators of abstract painting, or abstract expressionism. His forms evolved from fluid and organic to geometric and, finally, to pictographic. Kandinsky, an accomplished musician, once said `Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

In 1909 (the year in which he was one of the founders of the Neue Künstlervereinigung) Kandinsky began a series of Improvisations, in 1910 of Compositions, and in 1911 of Impressions; in these he eliminated all representational content to arrive—in about 1910—at pure abstraction. The choice of names, deriving from musical terminology, was significant, for like the Symbolists he was interested in analogies between colours and sounds (a great lover of music, he played the cello and piano and was a friend of Arnold Schoenberg, whose revolutionary atonality he equated with his own experiments). Kandinsky himself described how he came to recognize that colour and line in themselves could be sufficient vehicles for the expression of emotions; he returned to his studio one evening and failed to recognize one of his own paintings that was lying on its side, seeing in it a picture ‘of extraordinary beauty glowing with an inner radiance…Now I knew for certain that the subject-matter was detrimental for my paintings.’

Our Sponsors

Our Sponsors this month are Jewelry By Jeannie and BeadSwede.

Please visit us tomorrow to see the prizes!

Monthly Challenge Recap

• Please post at least one single shot of your creation in the Flickr pool. This will be used to make a collage for the Monthly Challenge Gallery. Every creation will be added to the collage, regardless of a blog post. So everyone gets included!
• Be sure to share with us the name of the art bead artist in the description of your photo so that if you are selected for the weekly Perfect Pairings on Mondays, both you as the designer and the art bead artist can get the credit you both deserve!
• An InLinkz button will be added to the bottom of the Monthly Challenge Recap post. Here you will be able to link up your blog post if you have one. It is no longer necessary to add your blog post URL to the description unless you want to. Be sure to hop around and see all the great inspiration and leave some comment love!
• The Monthly Challenge Recap with Blog Tour will be posted on December 31st.

Monthly Challenge Winners
• One prize winner will be selected at random from all pictures posted on the Flickr pool.
• One prize winner will be selected at random from all blog posts added to the hop for the Monthly Challenge Recap post. So if you want to be in the pool for the second prize, be sure to use the InLinkz code at the bottom of the post to share your process and inspirations!
• Winners will be randomly chosen from all the qualifying entries on December 1st.

Perfect Pairings :: Designer + Art Bead Artist
• Formerly the Featured Designer of the Week, our new Perfect Pairings will now focus on both the jewelry designer and the art bead artist. Be sure to point out all the art bead artists in your work in the description of the photo in the Flickr pool. Links to their website or shop are appreciated. That way we can all find new art beads to love!
• From all the entries during the month, an editor will pick their favorite design to be featured every Monday here on ABS, so get those entries in soon.

How to enter the Monthly Challenge:

1. Create something using an art bead that fits within our monthly theme. We post the art to be used as your inspiration to create. This challenge is open to jewelry-makers, fiber artists, collage artist, etc. The art bead can be created by you or someone else. The challenge is to inspire those who use art beads and to see all the different ways art beads can be incorporated into your handiwork. 

An Art Bead must be used in your piece to qualify for the monthly challenge.

***Beads strung on a chain, by themselves and beads simply added to wire or cord will not be accepted.***

2. Upload your photo to our flickr group. Detailed instructions can be found here and click here for a tutorial for sending your picture to the group.

Please add the tag or title DEC ABS to your photos. Include a short description, who created the art beads and a link to your blog, if you have one.

Deadline is December 31st. Photos are approved by our moderators, if a photo hasn't followed the guidelines it will not be approved. You may upload 2 photos a day.

What is an Art Bead?

An art bead is a bead, charm, button or finding made by an independent artist. Art beads are the vision and handiwork of an individual artist. You can read more about art beads here.

***A bead that is handmade is not necessarily an art bead. Hill Tribe Silver, Kazuri ceramic beads or lampwork beads made in factories are examples of handmade beads that are not considered art beads.

Beaded beads, stamped metal pendants or wire-wrapped components are not considered art beads for our challenge.***

p.s. If you have a blog, post your entry and a link to the ABS challenge to spread the beady goodness.