My sister-in-law requested hand-painted cards for a Christmas present. She’s getting them! Out of all of these, 6 were from exercises I did following Peter Sheeler’s YouTube painting tutorials. What made them particularly useful, to me, was that many of them had a lot of white space in them, such as white snow or flowers. The other thing was the simplicity of composition – a few trees, a stream, some flowers. While they look easy, I did need to focus on the videos to follow the sequence of painting, as well as to focus on what I was seeing. Of all of them, I think the stream was the most challenging.
From using Peter’s videos to practice with, and to create cards, I went on to do two based upon photos I have taken. One is a prickly pear which really does sit on a heart-shaped paddle, and the California poppy fields at the State Preserve. The latter made me think of Monet’s painting of a woman in a poppy field – the brilliant colors against a sea of green. Our poppies in California are orange and yellow, so no reds, but mixed in with these colors are blues and whites and so many other colors it is hard to imagine that much of California once looked like that in the springtime!
Below are the different cards I did. Click on one of them to start the slide show.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 