Adventskalender 2024 - 3

 

This is Schliersee in Bavaria. Here I started using self painted papers to provide more structure to the image. Also using different thickness of paper provides some depth. 

Adventskalender 2024 - 2

 

 Lina on the playground 

Adventskalender 2024 - 1

 

An orchid from life, one of my first collages in January 2022 

Collage Love

 My last post is more than three years ago! So actually, Noras age... A couple of weeks after her birth I felt such a big need for color, as if I needed to compensate for all the lack of color during pregnancy and the way I found that I immediately fell in love with was COLLAGE. 

Collage means cutting out pieces of coloured papers and pasting them. I had never tried that in my adult life and I really enjoy doing it since then. It is for me primarily a way of pushing the boundaries of my creativity and of abstracting subjects to their minimum. It's almost naive in a way but it brings so much joy. 

These are from February 2022 in Lanzarote. We spent a couple of weeks there and the light of this place touches and inspires me very much. 

Since then I have been doing collages as often as I can and I will share my Collage journey in an Adventskalender this year! 

Creativity and pregnancy

No single post this year and we are almost at year end!

Nevertheless, I am not giving up this blog... I am far more active on instagram lately but this blog contains a lot of myself and I still want to keep it. I just realized this blog is 10 years old since October 21st 2021 as my first post was from Ocotber 21st 2011! On this day I did a very important sketch which I want to share: the very first ink sketch of my daughter Nora who was just born one day before! 

December is approaching and I enjoyed a lot sharing one painting or sketch every day for the advent time in 2019 and 2020 as a ritual for myself and for the people who read this blog as above all as a review of what had happened during the year. 

This time there is a difference: I have almost nothing to share on the creative side, except a baby blanket I made and I am very proud of as I consider it as the most beautiful object I ever created. but this is not the subject matter of this blog... 

Why is that? How can a year be almost over and I have almost no sketchbooks or paintings, or at least no colorful ones to look at and  show? 

I was pregnant most of the year from February to October and as for Lina, my creativity was totally blocked this time as well. No inspiration, no patience, no energy to paint or draw, simply no interest. This is so awkward as drawing and color is and has always been my personal balance, my meditation, my own way of expression. But pregnancy is, as beautiful as it is, also very special and strange. At times you feel that you have another body and mind. The beautiful thing about pregnancy is that you are never alone and you walk around carrying two hearts. I really don't know if this is a common phenomenon or if it only happens to me, but painting and pregnancy do not seem compatible for me. 

However, I also had a wonderful opportunity to reflect about my life as an urban sketcher when Anne Taylor from Drawing Attention, the magazine of Urban Sketchers, sent me a couple of questions and interviewed me. I enjoyed so much sharing my story as part of the special edition of Germany Urban Sketchers. 

Here is it: Drawing Attention May 2021 by Drawing Attention - Issuu - page 32 is about my life full of colors. 

The fact that creativity and inspiration disappeared twice during my two pregnancies makes me think about what drawing means to me. I am abviously not a machine that can produce drawings all the time but  I need to be in a certain balance and state of mind and body to be able to draw and paint. 

The first time my inspiration came back at the last trimester of pregnancy in Eutin during the annual urban sketchers germany meeting in 2017 which was a real booster and I was able to carry on sketching here and there. This time I only managed quick, reduced ink sketches without color and I tried to draw as often as possible to remember my pregnancy, to understand my surroundings, to enjoy more intensively what I was living. 

Now that Nora was born, I feel it is slowly coming back, I am sketching her as often as I can as she changes so quickly. 

with 11 days... 

with a bit more than a month 

My Art Year 2020

Since I did not post regularly this year, I will look back at what 2020 brought to me in terms of Art Experience. 

In January I experimented some Gouache painting corners of Munich at home in order to prepare the exhibition planned for March. 

In February we did a great trip to Lanzarote and I was flashed by this island influenced by the artist Cesar Manrique, I loved to meet the Urban Sketchers of Lanzarote who were incredibly welcoming. 

This picture of our table during the meeting with the local USK Group in El Charco nicely summarises the time I spent there. 

In March I had an exhibition in the offices of the church here in Munich, the topic was Munich and Bavaria. I enjoyed preparing it and inaugurating it, however due to the lockdown that started shortly after, almost no one from my friends and family could visit it. I sold some paintings to the staff which was encouraging! 

Still in March, lockdown started... at the very beginning I enjoyed sketching outside which I did on one occasion, and then I realised this was not allowed. 

This first sketch was done in the morning before lockdown was announced in Bavaria around lunch time on March 20th. 

This one was two days later and the last sketch done outside during lockdown. 

In April, I sketched inside and the views outside from our windows, and I enjoyed that very much under the motto "USK at home"

In May, I sketched Linas friends 

In June, after the first lockdown I started a daily coffee series and I enjoyed so much my first Cappuccino outside. I realized how much I had missed that, my cappuccino moment in a café sitting outside, by myself  is something I enjoy endlessly. 

In July, we did a great USK Meetup at Schloß Blutenburg, it was so nice to see my fellow sketchers again! 

In August, I continued sketching things I own, like my beautiful oliv tree and fig tree... 

            

and I started taking notes of my daily walks and runs in the english garden. These were also really nice moments, with just a few coloured pencils and a tiny sketchbook that fits in a pocket. 

In September I spent one week end alone at Schliersee to walk and sketch with Neocolor 2, a technique I had discovered back in 2011 but that I did not use since then. 

Also in September we travelled by car to Northern Italy and it was great - much greater than we could expect in these Corona times. We were very careful, and nothing happened but we enjoyed a change so much, I only sketched very little as here in a little town between Meran and Bolzano. 

In October, I found a studio very close to my home and I enjoyed going there and painting from pictures remembering all the nice places I was missing, I started with a large series of Moroccan pictures and then moved on to Brazil, France, Italy and other beautiful places (see all the posts of my Adventskalender). 

I felt happy and released every time I went there, even if it was late a night for less than one hour! 

In November, I enjoyed some sketching activities with Lina in a co creation process. 

... and in December I ordered my calendar for 2021 for my family, with my favourite neocolor 2 paintings done in 2020 of places I visited or I would have loved to visit! 

If you want one, send me an email at: miriam.benmoussa@gmail.com, I am selling it for 30 EUR (+ shipping). 

Despite all the suffering around us and the difficulties we faced in 2020, I am thankful 

for what I learnt and for what I have. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2021! 

Adventskalender - 2020 - 24

 Last but not least, my daily coffee series of 2020. I started this little ritual of sketching my daily coffee in 2013. I love my cappuccino moment and it's a personal ritual for me. 

Thank you for following my Blog and all my best wishes of good health for 2021! 

Adventskalender - 2020 - 23

An inventory of my aquarelle palette, these are the colors that I currently use and that I newly put together  during the first lockdown : 

Adventskalender - 2020 - 22

 Today, something different... Lina's best buddy, named BILK. He looks a bit grumpy but he is really a companion for every hour. He travelled with us to many places. A birth gift from my friend Gwen.  

This was done with Lina (she was watching me paint Bilk) during the first lockdown in April. I painted a lot of her animals and she would pick a new one every day. We both enjoyed that a lot, she was quiet looking at how her animal would appear on paper step by step. 

Adventskalender - 2020 - 21

View from Lindau to Bregenz on Bodensee on a cloudy evening in summer...