Curly Hair

I used to serve in a Young Women organization at church. Izabelle was in my class. She loves art and has the most amazing sketches of people. She’s in her teens and I’m in my 50’s, but she has inspired me to get my own sketchbook and draw people over and over. Her people are absolutely darling! I’d love to have snapshots of her sketches just so I can look at them – they make me smile. She draws her people in the cutest poses, wearing darling clothes! And so, this past week I pulled out an old sketchbook. At first I just sketched a girl with curly hair and dots for eyes. (I’m always trying to figure out if I like drawing realistic people or people with dots for eyes or a simple curved line for a mouth.) 

Later I drew a pattern from the internet of correct facial proportions and then began a sketch of me (sort of). 

Without worrying about drawing the girl to look like me, I stuck with using the proportion guidelines and just drew eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and nose, only worrying about correct proportions. To make it a little more like me, I took a selfie and while looking at my photo I added my glasses and my curly hair. I don’t love this drawing, but I’m learning!

The most fun I had was drawing the curly hair! And so before falling asleep, I just had to try it again, simplified! No facial feathers and curly hair! (I quite like the “no facial feature” look! I’ve painted several people without faces. I like the look and it’s less stressful!)

I have natural curly hair. I have straightened it all my life…that is until a few months ago. Our family was heading to a large family reunion (182 people!) in Oceanside, California. It was a beach vacation and rather than worry about how I’d keep my hair straight the whole time we’d be around water, I decided to embrace my curly hair! I haven’t gone back to my straight hair since. 

I read the cutest quote the other day from an article called, “I Think I’ll Be Myself.”  

When asked by a relative, “What do you want to be?” a six year old replied, “I think I’ll just be myself. I have tried to be like someone else. I have failed each time!” So…perhaps curly hair is a way to “be myself”…Or perhaps, I’m just being lazy. I’m not sure and it doesn’t really matter, but I sure hope I can learn how to draw and paint people!!  

The Girl at the Park

My son and daughter-in-law gave me a subscription to Watercolor Artist Magazine for Mother’s Day and they renewed it for me as their gift to me for Christmas. What a fun gift for someone who loves to paint!! Through these magazines I have become familiar with Bev Joswiak, a watercolor artist. She considers herself to be an impressionist figure painter and I LOVE her paintings! Her comments in the magazines have encouraged me to try my hand at painting people and to try and paint them with a variety of colors, lost and found edges and to paint from my own photos. This past March when I went to my daughters in Las Vegas to help when she had a new baby, I met a family from their neighborhood at a park. The daughter of this family had a white blouse on with holes in the sleeve. I was fascinated with the color contrast between her skin and the blouse and I desperately wanted to try painting her. As I’m so new to painting people, I was pretty certain it wouldn’t turn out looking like this cute girl, but with some color suggestions from Bev Joswiak for painting African-American skin tones, I definitely wanted to try. And so I asked the father and the girl if there was any chance I could take her picture so I could try painting her someday. They both kindly said yes. Her two brothers wanted in on the action too so I got snapshots of them as well. My lighting was terrible, either full sun or too much shade from a tree, but regardless of my poor photos I was still able to capture her skin tone next to the sleeves of her shirt.  I had so much fun painting this picture! Although I don’t think the family would recognize the girl in the picture, I think they might recognize the sleeve of her shirt. And although Bev Joswiak doesn’t know I exist, I thank her for her articles and her amazing paintings and for sharing them with Watercolor Artist Magazine!

Sadie & the Carousal

A little over a year ago I decided I wanted to learn how to paint people in watercolors. I’m blessed that some very good artists share their own paintings and how-to-demo’s on the internet—they give me ideas. And I’m so lucky to live in the day and age where I can easily download my own photos and retrieve some of my family member's photos with a few clicks of the mouse! So...my journey began. Using a picture I took of my grand-daughter, Sadie, at our local park/adventure land, I connected the picture to a small projector and shined it on my paper. This way I could at least get the basic outlines. I couldn’t see her facial features very well, but I was able trace enough to get proportions and objects correct. My other goal was to try and not get hung up on whether or not my painting looked like her. So my goal was to simply end up with a “cute girl on a merry-go-round” rather than “Sadie on a merry-go-round.” I also loved trying out the same picture three different ways. I was just given a water-soluble pen and wanted to sketch with it and let the water leak into the picture as I painted. That idea led to the brown horse. And although I painted “Sadie” rather lightly, she still stands out because there is color on her. After painting the horse “without” color, I wanted to add some color. I didn’t love the real carousal’s horse colors, so I had fun choosing my own. For my last experiment I wanted to see what it would look like with a colorful background. I actually don’t mind how it turned out, but I wasn’t super pleased with her facial features. She’s a cutie and I didn’t capture her smile quite right! (I painted all 3 pictures in May 2017)

Sadie on the carousal
the reference for my painting

Jackson & Sadie - airplane ride

Tautphaus Park—what a fun, quaint park—it’s almost identical to how it looked when I was a little girl! There are 5 rides: The Merry-Go-Round, Octopus, Airplanes, Train, and the Ferris Wheel. There’s also miniature golf and a food shack. The Funland is part of a large park with several picnic/shelter areas with large and small playgrounds. There are baseball fields, tennis courts, an indoor ice skating rink and a zoo.  I love the “small hometown” feel I get just being here!

Jackson, Kristi, Sadie - Ferris Wheel

Sydney & Adam

Sydney...engaged and now married! 

Using her photo from their wedding announcement, I painted Sydney and Adam this 5x7 picture. I figured she could display it on a shelf or in her sock drawer... I'll never know😊

Their Wedding Announcement Photo

 I helped with her bridal shower and was mainly responsible for the invites. I painted a card with flowers and added words using Photoshop. Thanks Jennifer, for helping me learn how to use Photoshop and thanks Spencer and Landon for helping me hand deliver the invites.

My original painting before adding words

Lisa & Sydney (mother & daughter)
Our good friends

Super Cooper...Floating & Quoting

While Kristi and Jen were both here with their kids we went 

fishing and floating at Warm River. 

A river? Yes! 

Warm? No!

It's cold. All the more reason for Cooper to float with two inner tubes, 

one stacked on top of the other!

Speaking of Cooper, I've wanted to post this video of him for 2 years, ever since he surprised his family by quoting from memory "The Living Christ". He wasn't quite 4 years old! He heard his parents and two older brothers (age 6 & 8) memorizing this, but they had no idea he was memorizing it too! Nate caught him on video while on a visit to their home.

I'm so proud of you Cooper!! 

I cut this video down to make it easier to upload, but he had memorized the whole first paragraph! This is just a small portion of it. You can click this link to read the whole document: The Living Christ.  

Here are a few photos of the grand kids floating:

My reference photo for my painting

Cooper and Spencer

Landon

Isaac

Jackson

Sadie

Dance, Dance, Dance

My dancing owl painting
(the only art I could think to use to depict dancing!)

12,000 youth came together on June 2-3, 2017 for a Youth Cultural Dance Celebration

 for the re-dedication of the Idaho Falls Temple. 

The celebration took place at
the Holt Arena in Pocatello, Idaho

It was a spectacular sight and a fun opportunity for Del and I to rub shoulders with our youth and other chaperones.

Eating breaks: A fun time to socialize!

Just as fun were our local practices, held weekly for about 2 months. Notice in this video below, cute little Linzie, our Bishop's daughter, who came to the practices because of her love for dancing! Although not one of the performers, she could have been the star of the show! By the way...wait for the ending of the video...so darling!!

The following are a few pictures and videos of the event:

Gathering for our drive to Pocatello. I love these girls!

Us with our friends, the Merrill's, at the public
open house of the Idaho Falls Temple 

Taken across the river from where the Sunday
 rededication service was taking place.

 Here's a link about the Youth Cultural Celebration of the Idaho Falls Temple. 

Here's another link about Idaho Falls first temple being rededicated. 

Del - The Fix-it Man

For those who are new to my blog, I do this in part as a way of journaling,
but it's also a place for me to store photos of my art.
I begin each blog with my art and try to relate it in some way to what I'm writing about,
but sometimes, like today, it's a stretch of the imagination.
This painting is from a page in a book I'm illustrating about Del when he was 6 years old.
Because there's a John Deere tractor in the painting, I'm using it for my post today!

Del – the fix-it man! For the last little while Del has mowed the lawn about 3 times in 3^rd gear. It got stuck in “fast gear” and he couldn’t use anything else, including reverse. After tearing the lawn tractor apart, he came to a conclusion of what might be the problem. So he stopped at some businesses and called around to find the parts or see what others would charge to fix it. Bottom line, it would cost $1000 if everything goes well, but our model is so old that the parts aren’t even available! He secretly thought: “Hurray!! I can go buy my dream John Deere tractor!!” But being the fix-it man that he is, I think he just couldn’t leave it alone without at least trying “one more thing.” Whatever that “thing” was, he’s got it running again! I think he’s slightly disappointed. I’m thrilled. His dream tractor costs $2500. Yah! Money saved! What can we buy instead?!! 😉

Del in the garage between two cars trying to fix the tractor!

It's fixed! Time to assemble the parts and put it back together!