I’ve finished working  on some holiday themed paintings.  I decided that this was a great time to try out my sparkly paint… it works great on snow. The paint gives a subtle sheen that I think evokes the impression of a sun lit snow covered field.   Have you seen a field in sunlight, how is glistens and sparkles?  I think it’s one of the most stunning sights in the world.

I did a ton of research on different non-denominational holiday symbols and found it exceedingly difficult to do something that I associate with the holidays yet isn’t directly associated with Christmas.  For me the holidays is Christmas or to be more accurate, the Christmas spirit.  I love the idea of giving and the spirit of generosity that is often associated with Christmas.  The odd part of it was that I started thinking about this stuff in..OCTOBER!   but I guess that is the life of commercial stuff.

My ideas so far have ranged across the board; someone hauling trees, a snowman (finished-see below), and a snowflake.  I want to do the snowflake in the puddling style but I’m not sure how it will work.  I would really like to do the snowflake with the sparkly paints… cause that is way more fun, but they don’t seem to flow as well as the regular watercolors, which means using them in a puddle isn’t the best idea.

so… I have the snowman completed.

Oh and I added a Season’s Greeting’s to it.  Let me know if you like it.  You may be able to see here how I used the puddling technique and the area below is all flowey.  I like this piece but don’t love it… I think the snowman is a bit awkward and I’d like to redo the foreground.  That being said, I think it’ll look great on a card… and that’s why I painted the piece.

the next piece will be based on the below sketch… A snowflake.

I’m going to use resist to protect the snowflake design and then paint a puddled passionate background.  Maybe in a green?  Or maybe I’ll do a red background with a green snowflake.  I would like to keep the colors contrasting yet christmasy.   I think that the combo will make for a fun card.   The trick is to keep the design simple enough that it will reduce in size for printing very well.

I finished the painting, let me know what you think!

Off to create some cards!

Liz

The first piece is a watercolor landscape done in the puddling style.  The painting is based on my travels through Bhutan, a small country in the Himalaya’s.  While traveling through Bhutan I noticed that the air was incredibly clear, wonderful and it was some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever experienced.   The country itself was very safe, the people were lovely and the food not so lovely.  We knew we had problems when the dogs (which were everywhere) couldn’t eat food that we had leftover (read the meat was so tough I couldn’t eat it).  The painting isn’t finished, I am going to add a river flowing through the piece and some light colored mountains.  I am going to strive to achieve a sense of distance.  Grey out the colors in the distance so that you feel like you’re looking far away.

This other piece is something that came to me while standing in our backyard on a cloudy night.  Out here, we get these amazing cloudy nights, where the light filters through the clouds and silhouettes trees.   As I stood in our backyard appreciating the night I started to dream about how to translate it onto paper.  I’m trying two translations, one is watercolor and one is in oil.   Although I almost always work in water based media I thought this would be interesting in oil… so I’m starting.   I finished the sky in both the oil in the watercolor.

In the oil I love the flow and movement of the colors in the oil painting.   It’s very different than my usual style and I am interested to see what happens for the rest of the piece.  We’ll see if I love it, hate it or screw it up .   As in the watercolor I will add in tree silhouettes to really develop the composition.

In the watercolor piece I didn’t go as dark as I often do but it may still be too dark for my vision.  I’ve yet to decide if I love this night sky yet but I thought I’d put it out there so you could see the artistic process.   I would like to hear any thoughts.   I plan on putting in pine tree silhouettes in the next few days.

I would love any comments or ideas.