Artists Christmas Cards

This was the final version of one of my cards.

Below are links to those who designed their own and left links in the comments for me:

Maree had the lovely idea of raising money for an animal charity with one of her card designs.

Jeanette did this lovely and very different card

Billie wondered what would happen if Santa's cat, who was scared of heights, hitched a ride :>)

and then designed another funny one - how many Persian cats have I seen with faces like that!

Gesa produced this elegantly minimalist card

Sarah produced this lovely Advent Calendar that opens a new window each day
and a Winter Solstice card

Ronell produced this delicate arrangement

Maggie made a 3D celebration!


A creative and inventive lot I'm sure you'll agree

Katherine did an interesting round up of free online art cards from various galleries

and don't forget the fun snowflake cutting programme for the child in you at Christmas :>)

if you made your own card and I haven't listed you, just send me a link and I'll add you to the list :>)

Dawn: Lavender, Viridian and Amber, acrylic on 12 inch canvas

Dawn: Lavender, Viridian and Amber. 12 inch canvas. Acrylic. Vivien Blackburn

Still in Christmas present mode! This is a present for my eldest daughter. She's moved into a new home and decided she wanted white walls and seascapes ..... a hint?????

I did this one from references you've seen before but decided to combine elements from several.

detail

detail

detail

The colours aren't showing up quite right in the complete image. There is more of that viridian/eau de nil green in the water. The clouds are a slightly more subtle colour.

Unusually for me, it's done entirely in acrylic - acrylic paint with some acrylic ink.

I may yet add small touches of white oil paint with a palette knife to improve the sparkle on the water and the waves. What do you think?

Instant Christmas cards - well almost!

card layout for printing on paper

What happens if at 7am you realise you've forgotten to organise cards for your class (who are lovely so not what I'd want!) - I like to give them one I've designed but I hadn't yet done it - and today was the last class of term and we were going out for Christmas lunch afterwards. 8>O

Publisher to the rescue :>)

I used on of the Sam illustrations and as I had no card left, printed it on paper and folded it twice. It worked ok :>)

Folded and signed as they came off the printer and done in time :>)

You can use word but it's not quite so easy to get the spacings right - it's really easy with Publisher. You can see the blue guidelines I set - these don't print.

I am so disorganised at the moment and juggling so many things. Juggling is not one of my talents. Hospital visiting ends today though with the patient getting parole - I'm off to collect him in a couple of hours. That should take some of the pressure off.

I bet you are more organised?

Christmas things update

I've just designed a mug for my son-in-law for Christmas with zazzle, featuring thjs digital image of my daughter.

I originally created a couple of versions of this image - one in colour and one in a limited palette. I mixed a photograph of my daughter and her belongings (much manipulated) with a section of a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting. You can see the coloured version below. She is the one on the left.

I continued the mirror image theme, with 3 repetitions, the middle one flipped, so that it wraps around the mug.

And .... to go with his snowman book that I wrote/illustrated for Christmas, I've put illustrations from it onto an apron that Sam can wear for painting and a Tshirt.



Let's hope we like them all! I haven't ordered anything like this before - if I'm happy with the quality I may think of opening a Zazzle shop.

Sorry I've been absent for a while - family health problems cropped up again with a lot of hospital visiting - hopefully ok for now, though parole isn't until Monday :>) The cats will be very happy then :>)

old tree and rocks with added colour

the tree with added colour

I worked further on the tree - and it's a little bigger now at nearly 14 inches.

I kept the colour range limited but added Pitt pencil in a warm sienna colour and a touch of icy blue mixed into the white.

Better? or should have been left alone! ?

Old tree and rocks

Old tree growing in amongst rocks and a drystone wall, charcoal, carbon pencil and chinagraph pencil

I painted this tree in ink and watercolour a few years ago and decided to do a slightly larger version in charcoal. I added carbon pencil for the darkest and most calligraphic marks and white chinagraph pencil for the highlights, on a soft beige pastel paper.

I liked the way it merged into the rocks, almost part of them. The tree itself makes me think of Japanese prints, something about the gnarled branches and the pine needles.

I've been really tied up with work and family health issues so it was good to be drawing again :>)

sketchbook exchange

some of my contributions to the Flying Pictures Project

Remember our Flying Pictures Project, sketchbook exchange?

Lindsay has just shown an exhibition, in the US, of our completed books (sent off on a wing and a prayer for safe return) and given a talk.

She sent us the printout of her words and we would all have loved to have been there - she summed it up beautifully and got across how much fun it had been, the underlying worry of each of us working in books containing such gorgeous work by the others, how we learned from each other, enjoyed discussions on our blog and privately. the buzz - and that we want to do another project together.

Lindsay has shown her contributions on her blog - as it was such a good idea, I thought I'd do the same :>)

Have you taken part in an exchange?

Working plein air - the hazards

Norfolk, changing seasons, some past plein air oil paintings, Vivien Blackburn

I'm up to my eyes in work at the moment and so paintings are going slowly. I have to wrestle with a printer in a minute - it insists there is a paper jam - and there isn't. I want to print Sam's book.

As I'm not managing to get out to sketch I thought I'd write today about the downside to console myself.

Like ...................

• - the winter trip to sketch when the wind howled straight off the sea, usually we could shelter in the dunes and somewhere we'd be able to get out of the wind. Not that day. The top right hand sketch was done in a tiny 6inch square sketch book in oils. It was the only thing I could hold still enough - a larger book just kept flipping in the wind and my hand with it, every time I got the paintbrush near. It's about the only thing I managed that day for a long day out, 200 mile round trip and hypothermia.

• - a bitterly cold day with uninteresting light, working on one beach, moving to another to get some shelter, realising mobile phone was missing on first beach (and stupidly switched off - so no simple matter of ringing it on friends phone to find it :>( ) - returning to original beach as darkness fell, searching miles of identical looking dunes by torchlight until the battery went - friend realising she had now lost her handbag somewhere amongst the dunes whilst searching - walking a mile along the beach to the home of the warden of the nature reserve - him helping seach - finding handbag but not phone - arriving back home in the early hours of the morning (it's 100 miles away) and finding my phone in friends bag 8>O, she'd scooped it up by mistake - and no decent paintings to show for a long, cold, frustrating day.

• - driving away at the end of a day painting only to hear a clatter as we drove onto the main road - yes, the paintings I'd left on the roof as we loaded up - we did rescue them unharmed :>)

• -spectators - running commentary from behind when a family, with miles and miles of dunes on an empty beach to choose from, chose to sit just above us. 'Look she's using her fingers now' - 'what bit is she painting?' - 'she's using a knife now' - ' you could do that ....'

• -a bossy bossy grandmother directing every move of her grandchildren building a sandcastle - no artistic input from them, the poor kids were just the labourers! 'no, no we don't want that - fetch one of those.....' etc etc Until finally she spotted us sketching. 'Go and look what those ladies are painting' they were directed - no polite request - I'd taken such a dislike to her that I just looked her in the eye and deliberately shut my book! She moved off, still directing those poor kids every move :>(
  
  
• - sitting working wrapped up like Mrs Michelin in layers and layers of - ok not very smart painting clothes - in our little igloo tents for shelter and being asked by passing walkers if we'd 'been there all night'????? bag ladies????? tramps and hoboes?????

• - being told by another passing walker that they run classes at the local community centre if we wanted to learn to paint ....

• - trying to stop midges committing suicide and gaining immortality by landing in my wet oil painting

• carrying heavy bags of paints etc long distances along dry sand at the top of the beach - oh how I hate that dry sand for walking in, and the scrambling up the dunes - give me Cornwall where the tide comes in properly and sand is decently firm and there are rocks!

Now I feel a bit less deprived :>)

Sam builds a snowman slideshow of illustrations and text

I;ve only had a very little time this week for painting and I haven't photographed it yet.

Here for the time being is a slide show of Sam's Christmas present book - the cover and illustrations in order.

As before, the blue lines and dotted lines are publishers guidelines and text boxes, which won't print or show in the final. My printer is having a nervous breakdown and I haven't been able to print it yet.

update on the snowman book

front and back cover design for Sam's book

NB It's a screenprint, the guidelines and text boxes obviously aren't in the final print

I've been working further on 'the book' - sheesh it takes some time - scanning and then building it in Publisher - and the working out with a little torn pages mock up just how the pages work and what number is opposite/on the back of which. A definite left brained activity and not my strongest point!



The writing is provisional and needs polishing - I definitely need some more practice at this.

centre pages

I decided to only show Sam. their cat and the snowman, Mum and Dad feature as off stage voices only. It kept a simplicity to it and concentrated on the main characters. What do you think?

I used the font that I created from my handwriting on a fun programme and the snowflakes from the fun snowflake-cutter-programme - nothing is ever wasted is it? :>)

I might have another go at a font - a little less higgledy piggledy and easier for a child to read? is it worth it? By the time he's reading the book will be too young for him ........

I used the snowflakes to decorate each page of text but kept the illustration pages clean and simple.


This one is a screenprint of the print preview - no guide lines or text boxes but no colour either - it gives more of an idea of how the page will actually look.

c&c?

snowmen - the book!

Sam ready to go out in the snow, illustration in pencil, watercolour, coloured pencil and with a digital border.

I've been working on the illustrations for the book for Sam for Christmas. I had to wait an hour at hospital yesterday and made a start on the line drawings, adding some more this morning and adding colour this afternoon, after scanning them (in case I made a pigs ear of them when adding the colour :>) ).

line drawing done whilst waiting at hospital

and watercolour + coloured pencil + digital border - ready to add to book

Their cat weaves in and out of the action throughout.

Now I have to start assembling them and brushing up on the storyline in Publisher. After this I may get the current painting finished - I hope.

c&c welcome :>) and any advice

more snowman ideas .....

I've thought of a couple more ideas for Sam for Christmas to extend the snowman theme

• an illustrated story about him building a snowman
• fuzzy felt snowmen (- and cats and dogs)

I bought a little travel fuzzy felt set off ebay and the felt shapes aren't particularly exciting (it was cheap so no problem) - the tin and board are nice though. So, I thought with some felt pieces I have somewhere in the deep dark recesses of some cupboard or other ( where????) I could cut some snowmen shapes and hats and scarfs and stuff and some cat and dog shapes to go with them. Interchangeables ears and eyes and bodies?

Now off to finish a painting ......

snowmen

These are the snowmen blanks painted.

They are only just above an inch tall and I don't 'do' neat! It wasn't easy - coloured pencils didn't work well on this wood. They worked brilliantly on the Russian Doll blanks last year. It's a very different, coarser grain.

I used acrylic and felt pen and I'll give them a few coats of varnish for protection.

I hope Sam likes them. They will match his Christmas card.


The blank shapes from ebay:


Now back to finishing 2 paintings in progress :>) and heaps of marking and paperwork :>(

Dawn, work in progress, finished

detail

Dawn, the 40 inch canvas is finished but is proving a nightmare to photograph. Natural light was terrible, bleaching out the subtle yellows and ambers in the clouds. The best results were under the flourescent light in the kitchen but even then, the balance isn't quite right :>(

details

There is more colour in the foreground rocks - which shows ok in the detail but is lost in the photo of the whole painting - and the same with the loss of subtlety in the clouds which have a variety of yellows and amber, which is lost when photographing the whole.

This is the best impression of it I can get I'm afraid.

paper dolls snowmen card and Dawn finished and delivered :>)

Zig Zag card - 'paper dolls' snowmen

I played with the 'paper dolls' cut out idea for the snowmen and did the rough design above for a card for my grandson - it looks quite cute standing up, zig zagged, and hopefully should appeal to a 2 year old.


Dawn, work in progress: Finished :>)

Dawn is finished and delivered for the exhibition but the photos I took (in daylight) are hopeless :>(.

The warm colour of the clouds is totally bleached out and the blues aren't coming out right :>( I'll have another go with flash at the exhibition and see if it works out better. No amount of photoshopping will make the current ones show it anything like it is :>(


And remember the Russian Dolls I did? Well this year I've bought some little wooden snowmen to work on - I'll give them to Sam along with his card and he can add them to their Christmas tree.

I plan to decorate them rather like the card - flowing stripey scarf and carrot noses.

I found the blanks quite by chance on ebay.