Russian Art - originally posted 1st May

My clearing out it about half way through - I now have to sort through the boxes of things to go and order them into things for charity, family and things to sell (i.e. books). I also have my boxes of coursework from uni to sort through and to streamline my collection of toiletries LOL

My mum has offered to swap rooms with me so that I have more space to have a table up permanently for my craft work - seriously, even after clearing out half of my belongings I still didn't have room to fit them in the room I am currently in!! But this, of course, means even more re-arranging *sigh*

Hopefully, in the next few days, I'll be able to finally start making some prototypes of my designs and see if they work :o)

This nearing of my clearing project got me to thinking about the things I have made in the past - the cross stitch kits I designed for my Design and Technology GCSE, the artwork I did for my art GCSE all those years ago, and most importantly - the trinket box and cheeseboard I painted in Russia!!

Though an incredibly difficult time for me, I learnt an awful lot in Russia, including how to paint effectively on wood! I'm nowhere near achieving the standard of work I saw whilst over there but I am very proud of what I did achieve.

Here is a picture of my cheeseboard - my first attempt at painting on wood. With the helpful instruction of my Russian tutor I learnt about the best way to design and then paint what I wanted to. She was very impressed with my work and thought I had painted before - I had, but not on wood LOL

I painted a second piece - based on the design of the following church in Yaroslavl'. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of it just yet! This little box has had all sorts of "unfortunatelys" attributed to it - the biggest one being that due to the varnish being put on too close to our flight home the lid is now "unfortunately" well and truly stuck on to the base! It is now just a showpiece in my parents' living room!

We had a great time creating our own "art" on the coast of the Black Sea during out two week break whilst there too. After spending 40 hours on a train (see the picture below to see our seating/sleeping arrangements!) we arrived at our destination to find a very stoney beach!

The stones were great for making pictures and statues:

We even made a short film of my friend knocking the statue down by throwing other stones at it - we decided it was worthy of a modern art prize - the downfall of society portrayed in stone - or something to that effect! Perhaps the sea air got to us LOL

Or maybe it was simply being able to sit at night listening to the waves pounding and watching the sun go down - Ahhhh!

p.s. sorry about the quality of the photos - I can't find the disk with my original files on so had to scan the prints!