Winter

 

I'm in a winter mood, I love snow and we've got a bunch of it.  On top of that this weekend's wetcanvas weekend drawing event included a barn that's here in Michigan so it seemed a good thing to paint.  That's the orange one on a hill; the other barn is from the image library on the wetcanvas site.  Getting anything any bigger than these 2x2 images done during the holidays just isn't happening.  I've got some tasks  to complete for the gallery today and then tomorrow we head north to ski in the New Year.  While we're there I'll be working on goals for 2010 and maybe some sketching but most of the time we'll be on the slopes.

I hope everyone else had a happy Christmas, we sure did!

An Angel for Christmas

Once a week I get together with three artist friends, Annie Morgan, Brenda Mattson and Patricia Dee, in Annie's studio to make art.  All three of these artists are inspiring, especially Annie.  This month Annie, Brenda and I have been making the wine glass tea lights I told you about in my last post.  I've also been working on an angel for my grand niece, Makayla, with a lot of instruction from Annie.  It's another adventure in doll making but this time a copper doll.  Now all kinds of ideas are running through my head; more dolls in my future perhaps. 

Some Old Works & Some Christmas

I haven't been painting, Christmas gifts are in the works and that has taken up painting time.   But first, some old works... My son has been remodeling their house and they are now in and decorating.  There were a couple of  paintings from my own collection that they wanted so I framed them and gave them to them.  Here they are, you can see boats is not a new theme for me, these are oils that I did when I first tried painting back in the 60's.

and while going through old works I came across this one that I did of my mother-in-law several years back.  I think I'd like to do more people.

And getting ready for Christmas...

My friend Annie Morgan gets credit for the idea here... we put some trinkets, beads, buttons and game pieces in wine glasses and covered them with resin which gave a flat surface to put a tea light on.  Then we wrapped the tea light hold in brass... the result....

Still more in the works and I'll try to post before Friday.  If I don't, I hope you have a Blessed Christmas

Christmas

Last week I showed you the White Doves painting.  That image is from a wetcanvas.com weekend drawing event photo by my wetcanvas friend, Connie van Winsson.  Connie is an artist in the Netherlands and I love her colorful work and thought you might enjoy it too; here's a link  http://home.kpn.nl/henni107/_sgg/m2_1.htm

This week I want to share a decorating idea.  We recently held the annual Christmas by Candle Light Program at our church.  It's for the women in our church and consists of a program in our sanctuary, this year we heard the very talented Grand Haven High School Choral Ensemble, followed by dessert in our reception center where several of us act as hostesses. 

Usually two host a table.  In my case, for the past 30 years it's been one of my dearest friends who co-hosts with me, I do the table and she does dessert.  This year she is going through chemo so my dear husband made the dessert for us.  Our table theme was gumdrops.  I found some gumdrop ornaments at the Muskegon Museum of Art last year and that was my inspiration.  This summer I dipped a zillion gum drops in acrylic, let them dry and screwed in an eye so they could hang from trees I sprayed white.  Another zillion gum drops went into styrofoam balls with toothpicks.  Here's the result.

and the inspiring ornament