Happy Friday + Peter Vos

I shall wrap up for this week with the enchanting work of Peter Vos a painter based in Amsterdam. He paints animals and birds with special focus on the eyes. Unfortunately, I couldn't find much detail on his work. If you have any information on his work then please let me know by leaving a comment below, would love to learn about his technique behind these pieces. 

Have a beautiful weekend,

xoxo

Shivani

via

Easy Tutorial to Carve an Owl

This is a wonderful tutorial on how to carve wood to make an handmade owl figurine. On the website Wood Carving, Paul Bignell shares an easy as well as quick instructions to carve an owl! Even if you have no experience in wood carving, this tutorial seems simple enough to follow. Go to the link given above for the complete steps, you'll be surprised to find out there are only a few steps to the process. There is a template that you can print and transfer onto your wood piece before you get to carving! Have fun!

Printable Color-In Owl Bookmarks

Our today's freebie is these adorable bookmarks designed by Sarah to share on Organize & Decorate Everything. The bookmarks feature owl in three designs with the words: "Books are a Hoot!", "This Summer Owl be Reading", and "Don't Worry Owl Keep Your Spot". The kids can customize the bookmarks by coloring-in their favorite colors. Simply print, color, punch a hole and add a little string to it, and you have fun bookmarks for kids to use for their book reading time. To download the printable, go here.

Animal Box: 100 Postcards by 10 Artists

'Animal Box' curated by Brooklyn based artist and illustrator Happy Menocal, consists of one hundred postcards featuring creatures from our beloved animal kingdom - owl, dog, cats, zebra, birds and many more. The illustrations on the postcards are by some of the talented and well-known artists such as  Katharine Barnwell, Ben Giles, David Howell, Charlotte Linton, Geoffrey Martin, Menocal, Alice Pattullo, Sirichai (artist of the geometric owls above), Adrien Vermont, and Kazumi Yoshida. Each artist contributed 10 artwork in their own unique style.

The lovely box has 100 full-color postcards that are separated by artist by little dividers, and a booklet about the artists' creative processes, influences, and favorite creatures. This will be great for corresponding and will make a perfect gift for those who love to send postcards! Available from here.

Birds Graffiti by L7M from Brazil

Brazilian street artist Luis Seven Martins who goes by the name L7M was born in São Paulo, in 1988. Since he was a little boy he had a wonderful relationship with art, he participated in many contests and won awards. He got introduced to spray paint when he was 13 years old which opened up a whole new world for him. Ever since he has been experimenting with different techniques and materials like china ink, latex, pastel and acrylic.

"Everything generates the chaos, since the mixture of outlooks and feelings to the materials and medias utilized. The revolt by the human sorrow, the beauty of life, the city's disarray, the neglect and the surroundings, all this things transposed and influencing the works of this artist, who evolved with all his feelings focused in the street art." 

L7M has a distinctive style that can be identified with the splash of colors and geometric patterns. His bird series is beautiful, formed with dark lines and bold color used to fill in the detail. Each bird is a combination of urban art and nature. I am in awe by how expressive these feathered friends are, I mean look at those faces and eyes. They appear so real! Some of the pieces shown here where photographed on the streets and some are works on canvas. 

Desert Spirit by Sakroots

Spirit Desert is a collection of practical accessories designed by Valentina Ramos for Sakroots artist circle gallery of prints. The range is influenced by Southwest, tribal and Aztec art featuring owl, signifying scared knowledge and wisdom, against a neutral background in bright and fun color scheme. There are bags in several styles, iPhone case, umbrella, shoes and flip flops offered by the range that are perfect to go with your summer outfit! The following is the list of only a few of the products I hand-picked to share with you, for more go here.

1. Sakroots Echo Critter Slip On
2. Artist Circle 3 Piece Cosmetic Set
3. Artist Circle Large Cosmetic Bag
4. Artist Circle iPhone Case
5. Artist Circle Umbrella
6. Artist Circle Smartphone Wristlet
7. Artist Circle Drawstring Tote
8. Artist Circle Smartphone Crossbody
9. Sakroots Eudora Flip Flop
10. Sakroots Encore Flip Flop

Animal Masks Made With Tiny Pieces Of Paper

French illustrator and paper designer Mlle Hipolyte created these intricate animal paper masks that people can actually wear. Layers and layers of hand-cut paper triangles are layered on top of one another that resemble fur. The whimsical masks in gorgeous colors feature woodland friends such as owls, tiger, foxes and raccoon. 

"I like working on animalistic designs, because they are very inspiring in their diversity. I also like to work on nature-inspired backgrounds, because I want to place the animals in their natural habitat." - via.

Hipolyte also makes two dimension art, free standing paper sculptures, and lamps. Check out their profile on Behance and Facebook for updates on new work.

"Wood Sculptures" by Merijn Hos

Good morning friends! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. What better way to start a brand new week than some delightful art. Dutch illustrator and graphic artist Merijn Hos creates detailed hand painted wooden sculptures that are colorful and playful in nature. The very first collection of wooden sculptures was made for an exhibition entitled, “Grenzeloos” translated as “Boundless” at the Stedelijk Museum Kampen in the Netherlands, which consisted of 109 pieces in total varying in size between 5 and 14 inches.

"The pieces found their origin from series of line drawings that I had been doing for a while. I wanted to take these line drawings a step further and make paintings based on them but I found out that it did not work. They were not spontaneous enough like the drawings, there was no energy in them and so I put this on hold. When I was asked to participate in a group show at the Stedelijk Museum in Kampen in the spring of 2012, I started thinking again about how to work out my drawings in paint and spontaneously came up with the idea to cut silhouettes out of wood and paint them very loosely to avoid the urge to hold on to an outline. Also I had been watching some old documentaries about folk art and was so inspired by the spontaneity of it, just painting without thinking too much about what you are doing. I painted a few and liked the result." That was the beginning where his paintings were becoming three dimensional objects. And to make them he used about 24 colors and a uniform brush family.

You can view all the pieces from the series and more projects at www.woodsculptures.eu.