neglect not the gift

Guess what?!  I've been painting!  A little.
I've also realized, with all of this moving and packing and unpacking, that I've got a lot of stuff that I've never posted, a lot of student/older work.  So I'll put some of that up in the next post.
For now, let's do some post-student work...
My husband, Aaron wrote a poem on his mission that I wanted to illustrate for his birthday one year.  These are all watercolors, after Vereshchagin, Walter Rane, and Carl Bloch.

"I often ponder the solemnity of that cold and lonesome hill
that stands as a witness of the Father's call and our Captain's reply "I will."

"But is it enough alone to know that we must follow where'er he goes
For in the great halls of eternity echoes his call, "Come follow me,"
But who will follow where our Captain calls,
When at the gate he asks, "Watch with me,"
It was easy to follow when he gave sight to the blind,
"But please, dear Captain, not now, not me."

And who will follow to King Herod's court, where scourged he fell to his knees.
The pathway seemed clear as he taught on the shore
Oh Captain, let us return to Galilee.
Yet his love pulls me onward when my faith begins to flee
No matter where my Captain leads, that echo resounds, "Come follow me."

So who will follow to Calvary, though cold and lonesome the hill
To stand as a witness of our Captain's call, and our humble reply, "I will."

He's pretty great.

Here's a sketch I did of little Aaronie when he was a babe...

And here's a tiny little oil sketch that I never finished.  I'd like to though.

This is what's on the easel right now.  I started some portraits of my sister's kiddos several years ago, and I'm finally getting to this one, of Neve.  It's almost done!
Here are some shots of the various stages, in backward order:

You know you've got a good painting when your palette looks like this!  I LOVE color!!

A little one I did for my favorite Sandy Foutz...

This is a larger collaborative piece I did with the primary-aged children in South Dakota.

And I was asked to do something for a Christmas event with a fine art exhibit and concert, also in South Dakota.  I had VERY little time to do it, so it's really not a great piece.  I'm not even going to show you the whole thing.  But here are some details.

The face of the baby Jesus is very small, about the size of my fingernail.  He is looking up at the attending angel while Joseph and Mary are sleeping.

Joseph is trying to stay awake, but he's worn out, man!

And the angel, watching over them, giving them rest. 

Thanks to Steve and Allison for being my impromptu models!

Arty Kiddos

Here's an update on the kids' art...It's fun to look at the last post about what they were drawing/painting.  The contrast from then to now is so exciting!  They grow up so fast!
Aaronie has yet to really do much drawing.  He's 4, but he just hasn't done much with a pen or pencil.  He loves clay, and he has ventured into painting a little lately, so we'll keep working with him until he gains some more confidence and therefore more interest.
But Nora and Sara, especially Sara, love everything arty.
These pieces were all done in South Dakota, so Nora had just turned 6 and Sara was still 4...
I wish I had their names on each of these, but I believe this is Sara's:

The snowman is Nora's.  She saw me take color notes on a drawing once, so that explains it.  Look at the note below: "Im.invitng.you.ovr. BRING A CAT".  Hahahahaha

These are all Sara:

And I LOVE this one, by Nora.  I love how big the Holy Ghost is, and how he has his arm around her.

Also while in South Dakota, we did an art activity with all of the primary-age kiddos from our church.  We did print-making, collage, watercolors, and then we did this collaborative piece:

I drew in the figures and painted all of the faces and hands, etc..  Then I mixed up some different yellows and greens in acrylic and let them go.  I touched up over the top with some oils and then my kiddos did some drawing with acrylic markers.  I've never really been too sentimental about any of my art, but a had a little moment while painting this, seeing Christ with my children...

Anywho, now we are in the mountains of Utah.  The weather is great!  And we have a fenced-in yard!  So we've had some fun with different art supplies.  We set up some watercolors outside, and the kiddos decided to paint the trees and the scrap wood instead of just paper.

Painting inside with cookie sheets works too.

And blowing watercolors around with straws...

Aaron is painting, everyone!  Hurrah!

And last, but not least, we've been learning to weave.  We got them some cardboard looming boards (basically a thick piece of cardboard with notches all around the edges--you really could make it yourself) and let them pick out their own yarn.  And they loved it!  Each of them made something, and now they're learning to make pom-poms.  They even took their looms to church to keep them busy during the main (sacrament) meeting.  Art for the win!

The Young Artists

 I've been meaning to scan in and blog up my kids' artwork.  Mostly because Sara so often surprises me with the kind of work she can produce.  She's very careful and meticulous and does amazing things with drawing and cutting.  She loves it and she's good at it too.  Looks like we have an artist on our hands!  Unfortunately, I didn't record the dates on a lot of these.  But I believe they were all done in the last 12 months?
The drawing above was done by Sara.  The composition is really nice!  But I was particularly impressed with the little figure up on the right, with the frown and the arms and legs.  I haven't taught her any of this stuff she's doing, so she's just watching and learning from what mom and dad do and from the books we read.
These next two are Nora's.  I taught her how to draw a jellyfish, and she went crazy.  Her first drawings, which I can't find, were gorgeous and carefully done.  But this is her usual drawing style as of late...wild and crazy with big motions.  Totally Nora!

 These little pink ones by Sara are really interesting.  Those two on the left are side profiles.  One of a woman, and the other of a.....alien?  Haha, I don't know.  Nora did all of the writing.

 I think this is my favorite of Nora's so far.  She said that those were tiger stripes (and you'll notice the vertical lines for the paws), and that this is of "Rachel and Nora and Sara with one leg".  She has a thing for Calvin and Hobbes, so she *often* draws tiger stripes all over her body.  She was about 3 and a half here.

 And this shows a couple of my favorites from Sara.  That caterpillar with the leaf was inspired by an illustration from Ladybug Magazine.  When I saw this I recognized it instantly.  I just LOVE that she's looking at other drawings, and remembering them and being influenced by art!  And aren't those little faces on the bottom AWESOME!?!?

 Here is Sara mimicking Nora's jellyfish drawing (on the bottom), and then she also drew that cat at the top.  Totally her--no instructions from me whatsoever.  She was almost 2 and a half here.

 Some fun coloring by Sara back in October.  I love that she didn't just stick to one color, but filled in some of the shapes with this splashy color.  Really cool!

 I think this drawing marked the first time I thought: Wow!  That's really amazing!  Really, she wasn't even 2 yet!

 And here are some more cute faces by Sara.  She was about a month shy of 3.  I love the little house in the middle of the page, with windows.

 And Nora and Sara worked on this one together.  This wasn't intended to be art at all; they were just playing with paint.  But it's kind of nice, no?  And this is what Sara did today (on the right).  This is a drawing of "Amber with her long hair and the ocean all around her."  The thing is, she drew this upside down, so that it would be right-side-up for the rest of us.  Kind of amazing, huh?  I think so. 

Maybe someday we'll all be painting in the studio together, Sara sitting at an easel and Nora throwing paint from the top of a ladder (;  Love it!

We are not dead yet!

 Well, ahem, it has been a while!  I haven't done much art (besides the art of birthday cakes and the art of vaccuuming and the art of surviving with a  4, 3, and 2 year old in tow), but I have done some.  So let's document, shall we?

 I've actually been teaching a little homeschooling family.  I will be the first to say that teaching kids is not something I'm a natural at.  But I'm learning.  And they are absolutely the best people in the world, and very patient with me and my learning curve.  I'm going to try to take some more pictures of the work they've been doing and put it up on the blog.  The two photos above are part of an illustration project.  Zach (10) wanted to illustrate a scene from the Hobbit, so we made a dragon out of clay and used Rice Krispies for the pile of gold, and a little lego Bilbo for Bilbo.  Ha!  I'm excited to see how his painting turns out.
Over Christmas I was able to do a couple of drawings as gifts, one of my nephew Graham:

 And this drawing is of Grandpa Fisher, who died a few years ago.  This was for my mother in law.  I got tears!  It was a good moment.

I'm working on another drawing, one of my nephew, Ollie, and I'm also toying with the idea of bas relief sculpture for portrait work.  My homeschooling family bought me some sculpting tools for Christmas (!!!) so I have what I need to begin!  Hopefully I will be posting some sculpture here sometime soon.
Happy arting!

THE Painting

So we went out west this summer to work on THE painting. The big 8 foot by 4 foot thing that I started before Nora was born. It was supposed to be a school project, and then it was a school project on steroids. And I'm still working on it, three kids later. I've been reluctant to post about it, because it's kind of embarrassing. I actually submitted this thing to the Church a couple of summers ago, keeping with their deadline, thinking that it was "done enough." What a mistake. After seeing it again, I'm mortified that I actually let anyone see it in that state. It had SO far to go. It still has so far to go. I hate that so many people saw it then, as if it was a finished piece. I hate to let anyone see a painting before it's finished. So if you look at it and think "ewwww, I don't like it!", don't judge me. It isn't finished, ok? And I might not finish it before I'm 80. So here's the post. OK?!?!?!
I knew before we got out there that we'd have to take some more reference photos, a big group shot to track the shadows. I can't remember whose idea it was to use the laundry rack and blanket as the camel, but it worked! Kurt and offspring looked very epic and were just what I needed. (Thanks!)
I had a good reference photo for a camel, with the right lighting and everything, but wasn't sure how a camel's shadow might look on a short figure to its right. So I made a really realistic looking camel out of kids' clay. Pretty believable, yeah? I do what I can.So, then to the paint. I mainly just worked on the ground/background:
Before:
After:

Before:After:

But I did a little work on some of the figures too. Notice the robes on Sariah:
Before:After:
And then the real beast was to redo the camel. Again, he isn't finished. But he's better than the wookie I had before. (By wookie, I mean furry bactrian camel. But that species isn't very recognizable.) Here he is as a non-furry dromedary:

Before:

After:Still a long way to go. I'll get to it sometime.