Made in Germany 36 - Advent in the Streets

Yesterday we celebrated the First of Advent.

Advent is a time that is quite important in Germany. Families have an advent wreath in their homes, and each Sunday a further candle will be lit until all four candles a glowing their beautiful warm light. The towns and cities are decorated festively. Some really go the extra mile, some have more basic little lights like this one here, in the Unterstadt ("lower town") of Tübingen. Christmas markets are making their appearances, the small local ones often much more beautiful than the big ones in Nürnberg or München. Children walk the streets singing Christmas carols. If we're lucky, there's even some snow to further add to this special atmosphere. There is Glühwein (spiced mulled wine) and gingerbread.

Wishing all of you a wonderful Advent.

The Creative Fruit of Black Friday

Okay, I'm not a big shopper. Crowds in malls make me scream and run. Long lines at the checkout can sometimes be interesting if there are nice people around you can talk to, however, most of the time it's just a drag. So it comes as no surprise that I comfortably spent Black Friday at home with my family. The Geek was doing his college homework, Kaefer created with clay and I made Christmas ornaments.

I found the paper mache stars at Michaels - with a huge sticker on the back that would hardly come off, why the heck do they do crap like this? -, gessoed them, covered them in sheet music (Händel's flute sonatas), put a thin glaze on top of that and then painted the girl angels. I'm learning to paint faces (via Christy Tomlinson's "The She Art Workshop No. 2") and tried it out here after I had practiced on paper. Hm, not quite sure about it. I think the girls all got their very own characteristic faces, but they are far from perfect.

See those eyes? I had a hard time painting them, and you can clearly see that they aren't good. Same here with the braid-girl:

However, despite their imperfections I grew fond of these girl angels. This one is my favorite:

whereas Kaefer favors this one:

She said she likes the bun.

I was thinking of selling some of them in my Etsy shop, but I am very uncertain because of their obvious imperfections. What do you think?

Linking to Art Every Day Month.

Tuscan Grapes

Bonnie asked for this week's Photo Art Friday that we show an edited photo that has been sitting around in our archives and never got any attention. For this, I chose the photo above - and I have no idea how I edited it because at that time (a couple years ago) I never wrote down the recipe. Since the original photo is a slide that I had scanned I suspect that I edited it in Lightroom.

Nevertheless, when I found this edited photo I couldn't resist to tweak it a little bit more, this time using PSE. I added the word, played around with levels and hue/saturation, and then added one of Bonnie's textures "notes to myself", blending mode linear burn at 57%.

This was the original photo, SOOC:

The photo was taken in Tuscany, near the medieval town of San Gimignano.

Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

I am so grateful for you, my readers and blogging buddies.

Without you, this site would be a bit lonely.

I hope those of you who are living in the US have a wonderful Thanksgiving with the people you love, delicious food and a lot that you can be grateful for.

Vision and Verb - Gratitude

Today I'm writing at Vision and Verb about gratitude - please come and join me.

Made in Germany 35 - Erntedankfest

Erntedankfest - Thanks for the Harvest.

The German term for what comes closest to the American Thanksgiving.

However, it is a completely different celebration. Most people don't celebrate it.

It's pretty much celebrated only in church, on the first Sunday in October. The churches are festively decorated with lots of harvest products, with the bread in the center - as in this picture in a small church on the isle of Sylt in the very North of Germany. The words on the bread mean "our daily bread". Well, you know we Germans eat tons of bread!

I wish we would show our thankfulness for a good harvest, for well filled pantries and refrigerators more like the Americans do, with a celebration that is not limited to the churches but is brought into every family. Or, to stay in the picture, where we break the bread and say thanks.

Wishing you all here in the States a lovely Thanksgiving week.

Rosehips

A week ago a friend of mine brought me some roses, rosehips and hydrangea beautifully put together. I was so touched by this little gesture, that I wanted to keep it forever and therefore took a whole bunch of pictures. When I looked at the photos on my computer I thought that it must be a lot of fun to play with them - and so I did, using my favorite technique which is adding texture.

Here's the "recipe":

levels adjustment

hue/saturation adjustment

Bonnie's texture "Bonjour ma douce", darker color at 100%

Bonnie's texture "Dersert Canvas", saturation at 100%

hue/saturation adjustment

levels adjustment.

I like the monochromatic look of it - first time that I try this.

I'm linking this to Photo Art Friday, which always challenges me to try something new. It's a good challenge.

This is also today's Art Every Day Month.