All the blessings of this wonderful season to you and your family, today and in the coming new year.
Merry Christmas!


"Christmas Blessings" by VJCoulman
Digital painting

A finished candy cane

Awhile ago I posted a sketch for a candy cane painting I was working on. The painting is finally finished (well, I actually finished it three weeks ago but had it at the print shop to have Christmas cards made) and I'm pretty happy with it. Is it exactly what I'd hoped for? Well, maybe not quite. Am I okay with that - yep.


For those of you that like technical details, the original is painted in acrylic paints on an 11" x 14" wrapped canvas (which means the painted border wraps too). This is a photo, not the actual scan, but will give you a pretty good idea of how it turned out.

If you want to try it out for yourself or know a young artist that might want to try their own color scheme on it, the sketch is now available as a coloring sheet on my website.

Have fun! I sure did.

A Christmas sketch

No, no, it's not a script for a short dramatic scene. But between an art exhibit and a drama, I am caught (tangled, snarled, twisted, swamped) in Christmas. I listened to carols today while seamstresses worked their magic, framed some Christmas art, and even carried bags of fake snow around. All this on a gorgeous fall day!

So to finish the day I finally got inspired. (Took long enough.) There's a canvas that's been sitting in my studio, waiting patiently to become something fun and fabulous. I painted a border on last year sometime and then stalled there. Big time.

But I think I finally got it and tonight I drummed up a sketch of what I want.

Inspiring, isn't it?

Okay, maybe not yet but stay tuned and let's see if it becomes everything I want it to be. I'm actually irrationally excited about this candy cane.

Of course, that might have something to do with the combo of hot chocolate and Swiss chocolate that DH just brought me...

Sometimes you gotta kiss a lot of...

Lost in translation

So part of the challenge of starting a blog is that I am a serious techno-dummy.



If a program changes the icon, I'm totally lost. If I move it off the desktop, I may never find it again. (I have the same problem in my office.) It lends itself to a pretty interesting filing system.

Okay, it's really not quite that bad but since probably 90% of my writing and 40% of my art are done on the computer, its definitely a love-hate thing.

But I've figured out blog photos now, so I'm feeling pretty confident. And if I'm really bit-trapped (which happens less and less these days) I married SG (Super Geek) to help me out. Lucky for me he's TD&H, too.

VJC

p.s. If you're techno-D like me, let me explain that the binary in the graphic above spells "help me" too.

Sometimes you gotta know how to speak the language.