Snow...almost

I painted these snowmen to get myself in the holiday mood! Today it looks and feels like snow. I haven't seen a flake yet but I hope we'll get a few. (Not too many, if I get my way!) After living in snow country for sixteen years, in the mountains east of Albuquerque, I really love the first snow. The house is so cozy and I always feel like painting.

I have a couple new gouache ATCs of snow that I'm going to post on my gouache blog. I hope you'll take a look there, too:

http://www.deborahsecor-gouache.blogspot.com/

Deborah

Contours and Christmas...

It's Blind Contour Friday over at Diahn Ott's blog. Hmmm, Friday fell on a Saturday this week for me. If you want to know more about blind contours, there's a link over on her blog page.

I used a pic of a model walking on a runway for the first one (that skirt was short) and one of Diahn blogging in a cafe for the second.

It's really refreshing to just let go and do a little quick squiggly expression of something, plus I believe it strengthens some kind of connection between eye and hand movement. Fun!

And after the rather laborious attempts to learn to paint figures (see entry below) it's just a delight to let go.

Now it's time to get out my Christmas stuff and do a little holiday decor. It may turn out to be more challenging than I thought, since in July we had a garage sale. I was not in a Christmasy mood, it was 100 degrees out, and I think a lot of the decorations were put out on the driveway. All I wanted was a place to park the car inside. (It never happened. Yet.) I recall someone being thrilled with the artificial tree, so I know it found a good home. The rest? If you don't hear from me for a few days you'll know why.

Or it could be that I'm just making more blind contour drawings...

Deborah

Figure in Gouache

I wanted to give this figure painting idea a try. Why is it that your brain can know just how you want it but your hand can't make it happen? Well, it's been a bumpy ride so far, but here's the result. It's a long road and I haven't even reached the first rest stop yet, but here you go!

This is 9x7" on Arches 300 lb. cold press paper using M. Graham gouache. It's a photo of my mom taken in the late 1940s with her often-indulged little Cocker, Duchess. I wanted to catch the sunny California afternoon feeling. I love the shadows on the shirt. That's probably what stopped me first.

Figures aren't easy to do! I've experimented with a couple over the years, but now I want to go a little deeper. So stay tuned, as I said, and let me know what you think.

Deborah