Sketches, Cards and Prayers

For a few years now I have been doing watercolor and ink sketches and then making them into note cards. It's easy to scan the sketches into my computer and then format the notecard.  It's fun to print them off and package them as gifts.

Interestingly, I learned how to do this as the world is in high gear and everyone is now emailing (facebooking, tweeting, etc.) each other.  It seems there are few of us left who actually write notes and put a stamp on an envelop!  Be that as it may, I love making the cards... and I do use them, too.

Another piece of my life is as chair of a group at my church called the Prayer Companions.  This is a group of committed individuals who agree to pray daily for special needs of our congregation (and others). Someone asks for prayer and I send out the call to our group.  I also offer to send a card to the person for whom we are praying to let them know we are praying for them.  For the past few years I have been sending a card with a photograph of the church.  It occurred to me that the church building would make a great sketch, so this week I have been working on two different views.

This afternoon I printed out a couple cards with the new sketches.  I think they turned out pretty well. Welcome to Trinity Cathedral on Goldsborough Street in Easton, Maryland.

Decorating...everything

Well, it is that time of year - it seems everything has a red bow and/or fresh greens attached.

The St Michaels Art League has an on-going fundraiser. All our members are asked to paint a card which is then sold for $5.00  - all monies go to the scholarship fund.  Each spring the senior art students at St Michaels and Easton High Schools get their portfolios together and they are judged.  At the senior awards ceremonies in late May, the art league hands out checks to these students.  In the past few years we have been able to give away several thousand dollars to help these kids with their college expenses.

When we began this project, we only painted Christmas cards - we now have cards for any occasion...all hand painted pieces of art.  The painting that I present today is a card that I produced a few years ago.  As a matter of fact, someone saw it, bought it and asked for six more!  Apparently she had a lot of 'dog-lover' friends and wanted to send it to them all.

So, here's my Christmas card to you all.  (and to all your dogs...)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Juried In!

Whew - Christmas is almost upon us.  How did that happen so fast?  It seems as if I just began my fall art classes and this past week attended a fun party to celebrate the ending of classes for this year.

One feature of the party this year was an invitation to all the pastel students to bring two paintings to be juried for a show to be held at the Old Brick Inn in St Michaels.  Not having been a part of very many juried shows, I fretted over what to take.  A landscape? A still life? A portrait? Our teacher had asked an artist friend to be the judge as she knew all of us and didn't feel she could be impartial.  Hmmm - what would the friend like?

I finally decided to enter two that I really liked and that I loved painting.  I have posted them before but have tweaked them each a bit since the first post.

This is "Winnie's Butterfly" from my September 19 post.  I worked some more on it - changed the butterfly a little.  I thought the other butterfly was too harsh - this one seems softer.

The other one was Pastel Class Project from my November 10 post. I did some more work on this one, too.  When I entered it in the competition I called it "Maizie at the Fair" but I think it should be "Hello Cow."  Any thoughts?