Dear Art Friends,
Happy New Year! I trust you had a good Christmas holiday and end of the year celebrations! It has been a good season for us. I was able to really dig into my art in this last couple weeks.
After painting the Chinese Pheasant earlier this month, I did a couple graphite studies of birds. The first was the Ural Owl. He was so much fun to watch develop as I added more and more graphite! The other bird is a Red Tail Hawk. I will definitely paint one of these hawks in the future!
Since we’re at the very beginning of winter, I wanted to practice some pictures with snow. I started with The Bell Hotel. This was a tutorial by Paul Clark. I really appreciate him as a teacher. He teaches so much about color mixing, perspective, wet-on-wet style, and techniques for getting the details right. He shares his outlines freely and tells you to add, subtract, or change anything you want. Unlike most online teachers, he does not require you to mention him in the credits. Just for that generosity on his part, I want to always give credit to him as my teacher for the paintings I do of his tutorials.
After that I did the Winter Landscape. This was a demo by Peter Sheeler. Unlike Paul Clark, there is no handholding with these demos. No outline to trace. No description of the technique. But I was pleased that I was able to do this with no major mess-ups! Wet-on-wet and snow didn’t scare me on this one.
Finally, one evening I decided to do a line and wash of one of our Christmas tree decorations. This little Five and Ten Cent Store was so much fun. I had to use a little ruler to keep the lines straight and get out my tiny brushes for the decorations. I hope you like it.
As we start the new year, have you got a plan for your devotional reading/Bible Study? I’m still open to suggestions. Whatever I do, I want to dig deeper in the Word of God so I can know My Father more to serve Him better.
May God truly bless you in this coming year. Please keep in touch as you have a chance to write. I love to hear from my friends!
Happy New Year!
Diane