For several years, one of my family’s Christmas vacation traditions has been painting. Not everyone participates every year, but new paintings always get made. I typically end up doing my painting on New Years Eve or New Years Day.
Crooked Ukelele, 2006
I should have laid down the strings — or at least one of them — before I painted the bottom tension bar of the ukelele. Then it might not look quite so warped.
Fezant, 2010
During 2010, my parents frequently observed a wild pheasant on the grounds of their church building. They took lots of pictures of him, but I never got to see him myself. That year, my brother made fezes for me and BTH for Christmas. I couldn’t resist the punniness of a Pheasant in a Fez! The background is several layers of spattering done over snowflake stencils cut using TTT’s Snowflake Seeds method.
Moose in Cattails, 2007
I painted this picture over a canvas that was pre-printed with lineart of fairies flying around among sunflowers. As I thought about what to paint, the fairies in sunflowers morphed into dragonflies in cattails. Then I decided that it needed a moose. By the time the moose was done, I realized that I didn’t have a brush delicate enough to paint appropriately scaled dragonflies, so I left them out. I’m still ridiculously well-pleased with how it turned out.
Catnap, 2011
My five year-old nephew had poured out enormous pools of yellow and two shades of blue, so I decided to use those to make a portrait of my sister’s marmalade tabby as he lay napping in a shaft of sunlight. With a dark green backround, the result is quite delighfully pop-art-ish.
In His Own World, 2009
At the time that I painted this portrait of BTH, I wasn’t sure whether the trees and sky represented the real world that he was ignoring by playing a game, or the game world that he was immersed in in his mind. I’m still not quite sure which it is, and I rather like that ambiguity of meaning.
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So, Mists is due on 25 September? I predict, therefore, that Patch 5.0 will be on 4 September because the pre-patch is usually two or three weeks before the launch of the expansion proper and 11 September would be a TERRIBLE day for the Horde to begin its attack on Theramore. That gives me about a month to finish up the Theramore quests with the alt who has been living there ever since late Wrath….
Kamalia et alia 
Ooh, I love the arty stuff 🙂
What a great family tradition. We’re not that arty though as a family 😛
I think the cat is my fav 😀
😀 I’m sure your family has its own fun traditions!
The moose was hanging on my kitchen wall until I did the cat. Will I be happy enough with my 2012 painting to put it up in place of the cat? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see 😛
It’s hard to pick, I love the moose but it’s hard to resist a little stripey cat with cute pink ears!
❤ I'm glad you like him, too!
What a brilliant tradition! And your whole family is arty? That’s so cool Kam 🙂 I like the image of BTH 🙂
It was my Dad’s idea. And yes, we all are, to greater or lesser degrees.
Thanks! 😀
[…] may recall that in July I wrote about my family’s holiday tradition of painting. I usually make my painting around New Year’s Eve, but because BTH and I had only a week to […]