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.

After a few weeks of the blues I am starting to feel more hopeful again. Must be spring approaching. Or perhaps I simply resigned myself to what was inevitable and am ready to move on and make the most of the rest.

Hope has returned and I have decided to capture it into a collage

Now I have a few ideas and projects I want to sink my teeth into. Wish me luck.