Within a blink of an eye, winter is upon us! This year has been very challenging for people to connect. Now is the perfect time to send a holiday card! These 5 by 7 watercolour cards are printed on heavy stock kroger paper and come in white envelopes. Perfect size for sharing a few photos of your year.
All the colours of fall are so beautiful! I love looking around the lower mainland in the fall. The beautiful fall colours of greens turn orange and red.
Winter seems to be having an off and on again relationship with the West Coast right now. Is it really over between us? Are we ready to move on? Just when we think it’s over, winter comes barreling back into the room yelling, “AND ANOTHER THING!”
I’m ready for spring! I’m ready for being outside again!
Have you heard of loose flowers before? Neither did I until I started researching! They are beautiful and simplistic. The MOST challenging part? The ‘proper’ way to paint these is to only use 1 or 2 brush strokes per petal. It is almost maddening to me to consider something is good enough with just one or 2 strokes! The perfectionist in me is incredibly conflicted. I want to make it perfect! To do it correctly, you can only do it once! Still, it has changed my perspective on painting yet again, and I have truly enjoyed learning about this style.
The season of winter bliss is upon us! A lot of friends have been asking if I am going to create holiday cards. The tricky part is making them affordable to purchase multiples. I’m currently working on a possibility.
Winter holidays tend to carry so much meaning and emotion that I found this project daunting. What do people celebrate? How can I put that into paint? How do you capture the feelings that people have? Trying to paint for what someone else wants became baffling. and I had to stop. I had to just paint what I felt and hope people enjoyed it.
For me, the winter holidays are about family. Pretty vibrate colours among the white winter snow, and hope for the sun and light. And of course, a Peanuts Christmas. 🙂
I have found a lot of winter scenes quite challenging, as they are often bright from reflection and painting light continues to be a challenge for me. So far, these are my collection! Let me know what you think!
Remembrance Day has always held a very special place in my heart. Our family is incredibly grateful for the ability to live in a country where we feel safe, women can go to school, and we know we can be taken care of if things become terrible. All of that, every right we live in was fought for, and defended.
Our resident blacksmith Russ completed his first Remembrance Day Poppies last week as well! Check out his work here! It’s absolutely beautiful.
This piece features 2 lonely graves under a strong, vibrant tree. On the right 2 soldiers continue their walk forward. Are they comrades? Are they the soldiers who now rest under that tree?
Mostly, I enjoy art that tells a story, and makes you feel something. If I’ve inspired an emotion with this piece then I hope it touches your heart.
Something dear to my heart is raising public awareness on the need for more funding towards Childhood Cancers. It’s an awkward subject, and if you’ve stayed to read this long, I hope you’ll enjoy my work.
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month https://www.kidscancercare.ab.ca/childhood-cancer/stats
Each year, an estimated 300,000 children and adolescents worldwide are diagnosed with cancer
One in every 5 children diagnosed do not survive cancer.
Sometimes Hope is all we have to hold on to, finding a cure gives everybody hope that one day they will get to go home
This piece I make for my son Kyler, and our oncology family. May they live a long healthy and beautiful life
My joy, my mental break comes from the arts.
I’m going to be honest. I love butterflies. Love watching them, chasing them, and now painting them. Know what I don’t like? Feet.
True, mostly adult human feet, but bug feet are not much better. It’s possible that I never looked too closely at our fluttery friends.
I’ve been enjoying drawing outside while my little guy plays in the park. Many parents just stare at their phones, but that feels like a waste of time for me. My joy, my mental break comes from the arts. I highly recommend doing any of your hobbies outside if you can. Much like how food tastes so good when you’re camping, art just feels better outside.
Five minutes after I inked the body… My father pipes up, “You know… Butterflies’ legs don’t look like that.”
*Blink*
“You couldn’t have told me that 5 minutes sooner!?”
I still love this orange butterfly. I told this story to a friend an hour later getting ready for a hike. He takes a look at it, and says, “You know, butterflies are insects.”
“….yes… And?”
“Insects have 3 body parts.”
“Yah! The butterfly has 3 body parts and a head.”
“No… that’s not how it works.”
Thanks Barney.
The next day I was at it again. Refusing to give up! I started drawing at the next park. This time I checked, and double checked the body parts and leg placement. I created, Joy, the green butterfly. She loves to ride on bubbles kids blow in the park.
My flock is growing
Things have been challenging lately. Lots of medical uncertainties, and family being affected. Currently because of Covid if a family member of yours is admitted to the hospital you can not visit or stay with them while they are even in the ER. You can imagine why I know this for sure.
When I’m stressed, you can count on me doing 2 things well!
Eating, and Painting.
I’ll be damned if I didn’t find a way to do both at the same time. Something I think my buddy Russell the Blacksmith can not claim he can do. I am one of those strange folks who has to do something when I feel powerless to do anything.
I sat down with my paper and colours and what came out? Butterflies. Lots of butterflies. Fragile, tiny and beautiful butterflies. Much like Hope, you want it so badly, but know how quickly it can flutter well out of your reach.
My first butterfly was blue. Been feeling very blue lately. My mother was admitted to the hospital this day.
She was released to go home for the weekend, and my butterflies turned green.
Last night I had a quick visit with her and managed to be out in the park, see beautiful dancers spin pretty pretty lights and fire. My soul was appeased.
Today the butterflies multiplied and became multicoloured. Paint what you know? I believe I paint what I feel. My mother will soon have surgery, we are hopeful for the outcome. <3
Every now and then, I plug in the old Nintendo. Thankfully, I’ve held on to a couple of old CRT television sets.. and as long as one has a functioning Coaxial or RCA jacks, I’m good to go like it’s nineteen-ninety-one! ..and this time, I happened to have a bunch of my art supplies out on the kitchen table. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on this one.. I was trying to keep this sketch quick and loose.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is still my ‘go-to’ video game on the NES. I can’t say enough about how great this game is and rightfully, how popular the franchise became in the early 90’s. The toys were junk and the spin-offs were horrible.. horrible good! Anyone remember the Super Mario Brothers Super Show? It’s probably on Netflix.
I thought the game’s UI was particularly exciting. An animated, top-down map of a cartoon world.. with the BEST music to be found on any 80’s, 8-Bit console. Clearly the real inspiration for Google Earth, and maybe why I have such an obsession with maps and cartography ..and mycology, lol.
Come to think of it, this game may have had way more influence on my tastes than I realized. Throughout elementary school, no homework session or assignment seemed complete without a little Koopa Troopa or Power-Up mushroom doodle in the margin.
I guess I’ll have to pullout some of the old issues of Nintendo Power Magazine I have squirrelled away somewhere in the crawlspace, hahaha.
– Aaron
I am a huge Firefly fan. The dialogue, the character development and the stories of a dysfunctional family are perfect, and very relatable. River Tam has a special place in my heart, as she is also a dancer. Her movements in her choreography were fluid and beautiful. She starts off needed rescuing, but in the end to save the world she had to stop being afraid of the gifts she had. Not only that, she’s a kick ass girl who understands what family means.
Maybe I have a thing for Warrior Women. But really… Who doesn’t?
Take My Life, Take My land, Take Me Where I Can Not Stand… I Don’t Care, I’m Still Free.
You can’t take the sky from me.
Joss Whedon & Sonny Rhodes
