Christmas cards 2014

Here they are, my Christmas cards for 2014, I chose to do our local birds, I chose not to write anything on the face of the card so that the card could be framed if the recipient wishes. I might do a few more, if I do, I'll post those as well.

I used Derwent Inktense Blocks and Derwent Inktense Pencils to draw and paint these images, I am drawing/painting on heavy card stock. Enjoy!

Continuing the Christmas Cards-with a video

I have most of the Christmas cards done, just a few more to go. Today I tried something new, I have been wanting to record myself painting but didn't have a tripod or other setup to do so, I mentioned to PB that I wanted to do this and made a suggestion about one method, mounting the camera to the board I'm painting upon.

PB stopped working on his project and immediately began working on mine, in less than an hour, I had the first prototype, I created this first video using that. It worked pretty well, though the video was upside down, I used Microsoft Movie Maker to fix that, I also sped up the video to 2X, otherwise it would just be way too long.

Another fun feature of MMM is the ability to do a voiceover, add text, intros and such, it's fun and easy to use.

This video is one of the Christmas cards I'm making, this bird is a Dark Eyed Junco, also known as a Gray Headed Junco. This is one of our local birds.

I am using Derwent Inktense Blocks and Derwent Inktense Pencils to draw and paint this image, I am drawing/painting on heavy card stock. Sorry for the strange sound about 3:10, my dog barked in the original video and I wasn't able to edit it out before I uploaded the video.... since the video is sped up, the bark sounds strange.

Starting my Christmas cards 2014

I've been working on Christmas cards, I have just under half of them done, may do even more than I did last year, not sure yet.... anyhoo, this year I decided on a theme, our local birds, my criteria is they need to be colorful and easy for me to do, I would love to do crazy quail or a roadrunner, but those birds have a speckled pattern, mostly with white speckles, something I don't feel comfortable tackling now.

So far the birds I have painted are tufted titmouse, scarlet tanager, acorn woodpecker, Scott's oriole, and white breasted nuthatch.

I am using the Derwent Inktense pencils and blocks, I lightly sketch out the bird in pencil, then painted in the color. The paper is just plain old white 8.5x11 cardstock. I'll add the name of the bird and my signature on the front of the card, I'll write the sentiment on the inside and give them out, this way if the receiver wishes to, they can frame it.

I am having a really good time doing it. Here are the ones I have so far:

acorn woodpecker

scarlet tanager

scarlet tanager

white breasted nuthatch

tufted titmouse

scarlet tanager

Scott's oriole

Scott's oriole

white breasted nuthatch