Winter Magic! A new Painting

"Winter Magic"

This is my newest painting that I finished last night!  A magical goddess of winter whipping up some snowy weather.  :)

I love how she turned out!  She's definitely a favorite that I've done in a while.  The tree actually took the longest to do, but in the end it was worth it to add the snow on the branches.  I'd contemplated just leaving them bare, but it really gave it some extra depth.

It's 11 x 14" Watercolor and white gouache.  Prints and the original painting are available on my website HERE

And also an update on my kittens! They are 9 weeks old now and crazy and adorable!!  We've decided to keep all of them.  We've gotten way too attached to them to give them away!  :)  Here are a few more recent pics:

Storm hiding in my hoodie

Bear, named for her large polydactyl paws

Loki

And a very content Mama!

Snowy Weekend!

Wow, has it been snowing a lot this weekend! Friday morning we had a bad storm and got 10 or 11 inches dumped on us, and now it is snowing again this morning! I'm already sick of winter! :(

I've started an ACEO painting. This is another one that has a dragon in it, sort of like my last ACEO, "Moonlit Companions." Only the dragon is a little bigger in this one, but it's still a pretty small dragon. I like the little ones; they're cute! lol Anyway, I'm really trying to use some different colors that I haven't used lately. So definately no blue or green. It's looking pretty so far, but I won't tell what colors I've settled on. ;) Hopefully, I'll get that done sometime this week. Maybe I'll make a series out of these ACEO dragons. :)

I'm thrilled about the response to my newest painting, Enchanted Evening! I thank everyone very much! When I first began to sketch that out, I was thinking of doing a tutorial about sketching from a reference and showing how I went about it. But I lost some enthusiasm for the idea as I went along. I did take a bunch of pictures of the process though, which can be seen to the right. I've noticed that I sketch completely different now than I did just a few years ago. I used to always start first with the eyes and then work my way around that. I don't know exactly when that changed, but now I always start with a rough outline of the figure and then go back and keep refining and detailing. I think that this has helped get the proportions more accurate and with getting things positioned better on the page. I use a sort of point to point measurement system to get things as accurate as I can. You can see that in the sketch progress from the faint lines. :)

That is about all for now. Happy Holidays everyone!!