I am not terribly good at bold colours. My preference goes to neutrals, earth tones or muted pinks and blues. Which of course made the Mixed Media Monday challenge all the more challenging.

Bold colours are a child’s play (not)

I did manage in the end though. Going against all my deep-seated instincts I chose a palette of bright pink (poster paint on white cardboard, sanded) with touches of orange and yellow (a digital collage) and that, in turn, dictated the choice of art and focus image. It spoke of a warm afternoon, a small girl playing, fun. So I finished the piece off with some torn fuchsia muslin, a deep pink ribbon and an old picture of me at three or four, caught wondering which toy to fish out of my treasure box. Which, incidentally, was a pale muted green. I guess I wasn’t much into bold colours even at that age!

Oh and just for fun, here is a little colour poll. I am curious to find out which colours you like, so vote now!

The latest theme for Mixed Media Monday is men, and as soon as I saw it I had no doubt. It was time to unearth the photographs of my grandfather, his father and his grandfather and do something with them.

The piece evolved naturally—painted and sanded cardboard for the base, a scrap of muslin rubbed with distress ink, a collage background paper made by scanning and juxtaposing vintage ephemera with a sienna canvas I painted a while ago, and, drawing the eye, the pictures of my ancestors.

Mixed media take on my ancestors for the Mixed Media Monday Men challenge

It is funny how they really looked like one another and yet I know their personalities were very different. Ferdinando, my great-great-grandfather, was a one-time soldier (a bad one, by his own account) and a fencing master who gave up the sword to become a civil servant and thus please my great-great-grandmother, Angela, a concrete, practical type who rather preferred him to have a steadier job. He had a quirky sense of humour and loved to journal—many of his entries are on the back of old military papers, or on photographs and are addressed to the descendants he would one day have.

Armando, his son, was an elegant, quiet type who died at 33, leaving behind a young, penniless wife and four children, who all went to live with different relatives. Nando, my grandfather, was brought up by Ferdinando and Angela, but none of Angela’s practical streak rubbed on to him. Despite a successful banking career, he remained a naive dreamer all his life—to the point that people occasionally took advantage of him. He was incredibly fond of children and animals and a really really good man. I still miss him—and I even miss the other two, even though I never met them.

I have long been tempted by the idea of homeschooling. My only restraint is that I know I’d spend hours on literature, art and crafts, and about half a minute on math and science. So I do what my husband calls “homeschooling after schooling.” It is nothing of the sort, of course—it’s just a set of loosely themed activities to stimulate Niccolo while we play together.

Watercolour background paper for my Leonardo project

Now, spurred by his newfound passion for Laurence Anholt’s Leonardo and the Flying Boy, I have started introducing him to the Italian Renaissance. On a weekend trip to Milan, we went to the local Science Museum, which has a model gallery showcasing Leonardo’s inventions—we are going to try and make his hydrometer at home with a straw and some nails.

But, more importantly, we have begun looking at Leonardo’s art—Mona Lisa, The Lady with the Ermine. And this prompted me to create a zine for Niccolo, a sort of visually rich minibook full of stories from the Renaissance days, paintings by Leonardo, historical characters…

Just now, I am playing with the colour palette, and those vermilions, golds and ochres are making my mouth water. I hope to put together a fanciful feast with folds, pull-outs and enough rich colours to keep him intrigued. And I fully intend to have plenty of fun while making the zine, of course!