Painting

Lene Maria — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:37:15 +0000

For as long I can remember I’ve been mesmerized with painting and drawing. I have attended numerous art classes and even gone to art school here in Copenhagen. But after starting my own company and working hard to make it as self employed the process of drawing with real colours and real brushes, not just digital, has been set aside. That was until I saw Beth Nicholls and Flora Bowley online course “Brave intuitive you” — something really resonated and I had to try it out. It’s unlike any art class I have ever attended — usually words like disciplined, realistic and self critic would apply to my creative process and a creative course with focus on words like fun, intuition, bravery gave me a few ticks in the eyes which was a huge clue that I probably would benefit quite a bit from attending. Well I could write much more about this process, Beth Nicholle & Flora Bowley methods, and I will later on, but for now I just felt like sharing a few of the paintings I’ve finished so far. They are a lot more colourful and spontaneous then anything I ever painted before especially the first one.

Working with larger scale images has been a challenge and a revelation to me (this one is about 120x100 cm — to me at the moment that’s huge).

A little more quiet and graphic — I feel this is more me. The gold and silver colours in the picture unfortunately does not render very well. In real life they look fantastic especially when the light hits them.

Hello again

Lene Maria — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:52:57 +0000

I’ve been a little quiet here on Viola Brun lately. The reason being that besides Viola Brun, which is dedicated to my personal prints, illustrations & musings over things that inspire and delight me, I also make visual identities and websites for other companies. So during the last two months I’ve been busy making five websites pertaining to very different areas + developing on different artistic projects for myself. Some of the sites, like this one for Alecto I program in WordPress myself, others like the one for Fusentasterne (see image below) I layout in Photoshop and then the templates are “shipped” off to India where the site gets programmed from scratch by very talented programmers. At the moment I’m working on a site for a Body Self Development therapist and I think it’s coming together very well — it’s going to be based on very big high resolution images and we got an amazing photographer, Kristian Holm, to shoot them. Can’t wait to see the result.

Wonderful video

Lene Maria — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:22:55 +0000

Isn’t this a wonderful video? — love that the animation is made with watercolur. You can se more of the artist work on Vimeo.

YANOYA from shishi yamazaki on Vimeo.

Baby it’s cold outside

Lene Maria — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:05:02 +0000

It’s freezing here in Copenhagen. Even though, with the frost, I’m a little challenged at the studio I just LOVE winter (love winter more than summer actually). Two of my favourite products to keep the cold in check are from the delicious Danish brand Karmameju. I use the balm on my face before the 8.5 km bicycle ride across the city in minus 8 degrees to the studio. When I come home I put on the fantastic and well designed soft robe (it’s the best robe I’ve ever owned and I would wear it to work but I’m afraid pepole might find it a tad strange).

Working on a new site

Lene Maria — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:05:23 +0000

Uhuu…started working on a new project for myself. Took the first few steps toward a new visual identity for my interior design consultancy site today — trying to find that perfect balance between feminine and masculine elements on the site — a very important balance in my design universe. Right now the weight it’s more to feminine side.

HI I’M NOT A CAKE

Lene Maria — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:03:26 +0000

Today I’ve been working on some cake posters — playing around with text that matches the personality of the cakes. Fun — had to censor myself a little bit though. I’m quite happy with number one — the others need some more working on and I don’t know about the font in “HI…” maybe it looks a bit to much like the H&M logo?

New logo for Farmorfabrikken

Lene Maria — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:16:34 +0000

I’ve made this new logo for the very popular Danish blog called Farmorfabrikken (that would be The Granny Factory in English I think). It’s a fantastic blog about all things sewing, knitting and crocheting, where the two lovely ladies behind it (by the way not granny like at all) share their best tips and tricks. The blog, for now, is in Danish but maybe in time it will advance to English. We had a very exciting and fun time finding the perfect look for the blog and went through many different styles from hand drawn retro to clean cut vector graphics before arriving at that magic place where everything falls to place and you fell like it was written in the stars to look this way.

Lene Maria — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:29:44 +0000

In December I followed this amazing online course called “The art and business of surface pattern design” created by surface pattern designer Rachael Taylor and visionary entrepreneur Beth Nicholls. One of the (many) great discoveries this course let me to was Pinterest a virtual pinbord. Pinterest is free and you can sign up here, it takes a couple of days before you receive your login, in the meantime you can check out my pinboards here. Let me give you a little warning — pinning can become quite a time consuming activity, I’m completely addicted to it.

The Snowman

Lene Maria — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:46:20 +0000

It’s not really Christmas before you’ve watched The Snowman.

Notebooks

Lene Maria — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:24:58 +0000

Went to Ordning&Reda the other day to get some new notebooks. A diary, a notebook for words and a A4 sketchbook for cut-outs and sketching. It must be the librarian in me that just loves to keep things nice & tidy and in their right place. I carry them around almost everywhere.