Winter Sparkle

winter sparkle

After a fresh snow, an icy snow or blizzard, the day is filled with sparkles when you look against the sky.  In photography, it’s easy to capture – line up the sun, the light, move around, and you get it.  In painting, though, it’s a totally different thing.  How to express that sparkle?  I tried to capture it in the upper left corner by dabbing in colors of blue and black and bits of ink – did it work?  I don’t know.  On the bits of snow in the lower left, small dots of blue to represent shadows on the white snow.  Perhaps that is a bit more successful.

Pen, ink, watercolor, limited palette.  Wet on dry.  Ink on paper.  Ink on painted paper.  Wet into wet.  A morning mish-mash, but every day I am trying to do something with ink or watercolor.  Not always successful, but an everyday activity from which a lot can be learned!

Poinsettia

Another morning with sewing ahead of me – but not too much!  Just a touch here and then, thread trimming, ironing, and finally wrapping.

To start my day – after coffee, breakfast, a review, and the news – I decided to use my watercolor pencils, InkTense blocks, and Neocolor II by Caran d’Arche to draw the classical Christmas / holiday poinsettia, and some permanent black ink.

Did you know the red is really the leaf and the little yellow dots in the center are the flowers?  Poinsettias are not only crimson, but come in pale pinks and whites.  And, they are easy to grow – just take a cutting, let it dry out until hollow, and stick in some dirt, and you may be ready for next year!  I think they may also be poisonous . . .

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Shorelines

This morning I saw a photo of a shoreline at dawn.  A lake.  A sunrise.  Twigs.  Grasses.  Mountains.

I have spent the last two weeks making Christmas presents, sewing mostly, but also baking fruit cakes (brandied and bourboned), and shopping for this or that.  Today I have more sewing scheduled, and a few “must do” things.

The fact is, while I love sewing, I love other things as well.  I have done little if any drawing or painting.

Why do we get caught up in the “must do” so easily, so easily that the simple pleasure of an hour spent with paper, pen, and ink becomes something of a crime, one so self-indulgent that our Puritan ancestors shake their fingers at us?  Pleasure?  Nay!

But, I gave in!  I’m happier for it!