Mother's Day Gift

I made this cup for my mother in law this mother's day. I waited to post it because I mailed it to her and didn't want to ruin the surprise. :)

You've bees in your tea.

I painted these silly little cups for a friend of mine.


One honey bee and one bumble bee. Each painted pretty much to scale.

Alistair: 3 months

I can't believe he's nearly 3 months old! Yesterday we put him in the little round play seat at my parent's house and he seemed to really dig it. Thanks to ma and Janice for holding him while I finished this little portrait. :)

collaborative works:

Painted with Edward today. Actually, it was more a matter of me painting, while he swept the five brushes he had in each fist over and over across my work. Here is a few images of what remained.

Resurrection Sunday Breakfast

This is something I just finished up for my Church. I really enjoyed doing the lettering. Especially the display caps with flowers inside.

China Painting

Every Thursday I go to my Grandma's to paint. Sometimes we watercolor, but lately we've been china painting. It's kind of a dying art as far as I can tell. Grandma got into it...well, before I was born. She paints anniversary plates for her children, and piggie banks and tea cups for her grandchildren. She has shared her art with us grandkids with great generosity over the years, not only making us sweet little delicately hand painted pieces over the years, but also allowing us to try our hand at it from a surprisingly young age. When other kids were given finger paints and play-dough at grandma's house, we were given a rabbit hair paintbrush and a teacup. I think I painted my first hot plate when I was maybe seven or eight. It's an orchid, and is rather ugly (my mom still has it). Thankfully, a few years, and bit of art training has improved my painting skills a bit. My content, however, has become rather more...childish.





I'll be posting more projects as I finish them.

Drawing with my boys

Initially I drew the boys without hats, but Edward, who is rather obsessed with his hat at the moment, insisted I add hats to the drawing.

Facebook

One of the perks (or perils, depending on how you look at it) of Facebook is that you can become "friends" with all sorts of people. You can engage on an elementary level with social circles you may never have been allowed to breech prior to the age of the social network.

Take Adam, for instance. He is a prime example. He is my brother, Caleb's friend. I've met him a handful of times. Played Catan with him. But if not for the wonder of Facebook I would not have been exposed to the sheer teenage brillianceand this magnificent drawing would never have come into existence.

Thank you Facebook.

Newest Addition

Well, I'm finally feeling rested up enough to make my way back into the blogging world.

What kept me away?

Well, as of the 25th of January I am the mother of two darling little boys. Alistair joined us at 10:10 in the evening, after 30 some odd hours of labor. He was born at home, as planned, with the help of my wonderful husband, our midwife, Charlotte, and her two assistants, Michelle and Ronna.

Laundry Adventure

Some friends came to stay with us for a week over the new year. A few items remained behind when they left....this is their story.

Gloves

Got my craft on last night and finished a pair of gloves I've been working on for the 'Dward. I stitched "L" and "R" on them instead of his initials so they are nicely hand-me-down-able as well as educational. :)

He thought they were great for waving "bu-bye".

Chicken

One of Edward's first words after Mama, Dada and Cat was "Chicken" it comes out more like "Chi-en" or "Chi-ee" but we can forgive his 17 month old enunciation. This is a little painting of a chicken I did yesterday. It's graphite and guache in my moleskin sketchbook. It's kinda silly, but I like it, and so does Edward. :)

Olivia

This past weekend was spent visiting some family in Idaho. One member of which is my three-year old niece, Olivia. A sweet little hurricane. I had the chance to do a little caricature of her before we left. She didn't hold still for even a moment of the 15-20 minutes I worked on this, but I think it may have captured a little something of her personality if not entirely her likeness.

Edward's First Watercolor

Yesterday I let my son Edward try his hand at watercolor painting for the first time.

He's 16 months old.

More lovelies from painting class...

Having a busy little 15 month old doesn't leave much time to just sit and paint. So the two day painting class I took last weekend was a marvelous opportunity for me to really immerse myself in something. Sadly, I didn't finish either of the two large paintings I started during our two 5 hour sessions. But here are a few little things I did while waiting for one thing or another, paint drying, project lecture, coffee break, etc.
This is our teacher,
Jacqueline DeGavia











I also did a quick little portrait of her daughter, Anne.

















Finally, I did a portrait of my Grandma, who hosted the class.

I’m really very pleased with it. Perhaps not so much how it looks aesthetically, (although I am rather pleased with that as well) but more because of what it means to me as a record of a place and time and a relationship. As long as I can remember, I have memories of painting with my Grandma. She has always been generous with her time and creativity. She taught me how to sew, china paint, make dolls and even let me try my hand at making lamp shades, finishing my shade after I lost interest halfway through. She has encouraged me in every artistic endeavor I have ever taken on. To me, this portrait reminds me of the hundreds of hours spent with grandma, painting, eating, listening to music and talking about life, God and art, and to me, that is a precious thing. I love you Grandma.

Let me count the reasons why....

I love watercolor. I love it’s simplicity. I love it’s transparent luminosity. It’s just so beautiful and mysterious.

When mixing colors, especially if one or more of the pigments are made from natural substances (as opposed to synthetic dyes), the colors will partially separate as the binding medium sinks into the paper and evaporates. You can’t control a lot of this process. By experimentation you can have a good idea what the colors will do when mixed and applied in a certain way, but it’s like a chemical reaction. You wind it up, let it go, and the end result is a splendid surprise!

Over the weekend I took a watercolor class, below are a few selected swatches that I found particularly pleasing and exemplary of what I’m talking about. You’ll see a lot of cerulean blue, yellow and violets (made by mixing cad red or crimson with the cerulean), I think I was just in a mood and loving those colors together. Enjoy!