Christmas Card 2008 Work in Progress

This is the initial sketch for my Corgi Christmas card this year. Everyone loves Corgi puppies, even Santa. The darker images of the two puppies running with socks are actually sketches on tracing paper that have been taped in place. Alot of times when I am laying something out I will sketch out some of my objects and use this method to find the best placement.

After I finish the sketch, it is traced and tranfered to a gessoed board. I like the flat surface, especially when it comes to illustrations like this where it will be scanned and printed. I've tried canvas images and was just not happy with the results.

The original is painted in oils and I am more than half way complete.

Hello

I wanted to pop in for a minute to say that I am alive. I've had a major computer melt down and it seems to be never ending. There may be some good coming out of this as I will probably be purchasing a new scanner and decluttering the space where I work from by getting rid of some of this old equipment. For now I cannot put up any photos of what I have been working on.

Last Sunday we took a ride up to the Berkshire Botanical Gardens in Stockbridge. What a beautiful place, I think what I enjoyed the most where the benches and chairs placed thru out the garden to let you just sit, relax and enjoy the view. Well I've had it for tonight. Hopefully we will be back up and running soon.

Summer Jewels

These Nasturtiums are courtesy of my parents garden. We stopped by last Sunday to pick up some vegetables and at the front of one of the rows was this beautiful mound of flowers. I love these guys, they are happy and vibrant.

I have been working on several projects - but nothing to show for it tonight. One of my goals for this year is to become more fluent with Photoshop so that I'm not asking my husband for help quite as often. It is very important to me that I become as independent as possible -to create the work and than have the necessary skills in place to work on my images whether it be posting to my blog or creating prints or cards. So this was one of those weeks were I was more a student than an artist. But is for a good cause because in the end I will actually be more productive.