Art Bead Scene Blog: Balthasar van der Ast

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Art Bead Scene Editors Take the Challenge

Still Life with Shells 1640 by Balthasar van der Ast
This month's challenge painting is so evocative and reverberates a time past era when painting was how we saw parts of the world we would never know otherwise. All these shells have a story to tell of beaches in far away lands and tropical havens.
This month several of the Art Bead Scene editors were inspired to take the challenge of this painting so I have put together a blog hop for you to visit to see how this exotic still life of seashells inspired them. What creative fellow team members I have!!! Enjoy feasting your eyes on what they have made.
The links to their blogs follow:
Mary Harding
Claire Lockwood
Michelle Ann McCarthy
Heather Powers

Thanks so much for stopping by.
Mary

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Etsy Picks

I'm getting in early this month with the Etsy picks. Just in case you haven't seen this month's challenge image - or if you need a remindered, here it is.

One thing that really attracts me to this image is the range of indistinct neutrals: the greys, grey blues, olives, and ochre. So, I thought that today I'd focus on that range of colours, along with the patterns and textures of the shells. You might want to make a feature of these shades in your designs or you may want to combine them with hits of bright red, orange or yellow. In either case, I hope you'll see something here that catches your interest or your imagination.