100 Heads: Head #44

Another version of Michelangelo's statue Madonna and Child. Graphite over blue pastel.

100 Heads: Head #43

Angels we have heard on high.

I had fun experimenting with my Christmas cards this year. This angel is based on a photograph of a statue of an angel, but the final artwork doesn't look anything like the photograph. I started by applying blue pastel to a cream card and then spraying with matte fixative. I drew the angel using mechanical, 5B, 9B, and Ebony pencils. The surface was rough and hard to draw on, but the finished product has a unique look.

100 Heads: Head #42

Inspired by Michelangelo's statue Madonna and Child. Marker on card stock.

Happy Birthday, Mom

Happy Birthday to my mom, Esther, who is 79 years young today. She was born in 1929 in Kitchener, Ontario, and now lives in Vernon, New York.

This is a painting of a statuette named Angel of Faithfulness. The statuette is dressed in traditional Eastern European or Russian costume, carries a chicken and a basket of eggs, and has wings. My younger son Christopher saw her at a Hallmark store and begged me to buy her. I did, and she now sits on our kitchen table. Christopher insists that she face him while he eats.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day, to my dad and to all dads everywhere! This is the card I created for my father this year. It is colored pencil over watercolor and is based on a photograph of a sunflower from our garden. I used 140 lb cold pressed watercolor paper. This is the first time I applied colored pencil over watercolor, and I really like this technique. It really speeds up the colored pencil work. I learned about this technique in Colored Pencil Explorations by Janie Gildow. This book presents a number of multimedia approaches to colored pencil (e.g., combining colored pencil with watercolor, pastel, acrylic, ink). The book includes a large number of awesome, inspiring pieces of multimedia colored pencil artwork.

I enjoy experimenting with colors in Photoshop Elements. Here is one such experiment. I like the blue background as well as the green one.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day, to my mom in New York and to all moms everywhere.

This is a copy of the Mary Cassatt painting Sleepy Baby (1910), shown below. The original painting is in pastel; my copy is in watercolor. I thoroughly enjoyed painting this and learned a lot also.

• I love Cassatt's use of color. Look at the bright yellow in the baby's neck and hair, and the bright orange in the baby's hair and bottom. Where mother and child touch (cheek-to-cheek and hand-to-bottom), the colors are warm red-oranges, suggesting the love of a mother for her child. These colors probably were not present in reality. Rather, Cassatt added color to convey her interpretation of reality.
• Even though the colors in the mother and child are all light, there are still distinct value changes. For example, to clearly separate the child's arms from the mother's skin, the values of the child's arms need to be different from the values of the mother's chest and arm.
• Many of the cooler shadows are blue, which gave me a little trouble. I was using Yellow Ochre and Blue Cerulean, which mix to green (e.g., the baby' chest). A moldy baby is not good! I need to research how to use blue and yellow in watercolor without getting green.

I am going to do more master copies ... it is fun and educational.

Happy Birthday, Dad

Illustration Friday - Choose

It is almost time to choose your Valentine! This is a loose copy of an image on a 2001 Hershey Kiss Valentine's Day tin. Prismacolor colored pencil on 5" x 7" Canson greeting card, touched up using Photoshop Elements. The greeting card wasn't a good surface for colored pencil.

Birthday Greeting

Today is my brother's birthday. Happy Birthday, Tom!

Black Sharpie marker and Marriott black ball point pen on a Canson 5" x 7" greeting card.

O Tannenbaum

Merry Christmas!

It is 4:30 a.m. in Dallas and my family is still asleep. Once everyone wakes up, we'll open the presents. My younger son, Christopher, will look for evidence of Santa Claus, such as cookie crumbs. Will he notice that Santa uses the same wrapping paper and tags that his parents use? If you want to believe, you don't notice. My older son, Andrew, will make us French Toast for breakfast. We'll make phone calls to family, take a long walk, and bake homemade bread for dinner. Our Christmas dinner will be tomato and broccoli quiche, a salad, homemade bread, and homemade chocolate pudding for desert.

A few more handmade cards; this time using a Christmas tree stamp.

Angels We Have Heard On High

My Christmas vacation started on Saturday, December 22. I felt relaxed enough on Sunday to make cards. I always end up sending my cards out on Christmas Eve. As long as my cards reach their destination between Christmas and New Year's day, I am happy. I made a variety of angel cards using one rubber stamp; here is a selection. My materials included card stock, acetate, diamond glaze, glitter, a variety of inks, and double-side tape.