A pair of Ukrainian Easter eggs I've made. My designs are not especially traditional and are instead inspired by old wood cut art. The first egg features a musician playing a bandura and the second has 4 pictures, fish, forest, wheat and mountains. The eggs are made using beeswax applied with a metal tool called a Kistka (heated via a candle or electricity) you draw on the egg wherever you want to preserve its current colour before putting it into a dye bath working from the lightest colours to the darkest. When you have finished you remove the wax using a candle a paper towel and a little patience. heating and wiping away. then you can blow out your egg by making a hole in its top and bottom, smashing the yolk with a needle and blowing. These eggs are a couple of years old but we've pulled them out for easter last weekend.
After completing “Moody Pumpkins” the foreground looked interesting so I removed the pumpkins modified the remaining foreground and added the trees and sky. Tree colors were selected from the foreground and other palettes.
Done mostly with oil bar, this is more akin to a sketch than a painting. It's great when you can get loose with the process and end up with something that looks like a finished work.
Here is one of 3 illustrations I made for customizable postcards, available for purchase at @cava.galeria
I wanted to use this green/bluish colour, plants, and a very curious human in this case.
What do you think the person is saying?
*The size is 15,5 cm by 11 cm
Limited number of postcards
Meadhbh standing in front of a green wall. Simplified her hair and the leaves in the background a bit. Charcoal and pastel pencils on 9” x 12” Strathmore archival sketchbook paper, scanned into Photoshop. Model: Meadhbh
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver