Our Home at Christmas. Merry Christmas to all! I wanted to do something different with my Christmas Cards this year so I did a watercolor painting of our home. Our house is white but when the sun is setting in the afternoon it casts a wonderful warn hue on the house.
The photo and reference sketch I worked from is from last winter’s snow (You must remember the 9 feet of snow we had here in Massachusetts!) I decided to make it really look like a starry night in December by painting the sky a little darker and showing the stars shining bright. (They are really there every night but sometimes we forget to look up)
The Christmas tree is another of my artistic license items. We do not have a pine tree there but I think it adds to the festiveness of the painting. As artists, we sometimes have to listen to our hearts. Somehow paintings have a life of their own and we just follow along with our brush. This was just one of those paintings. Even though I took the photo and then did my thumbnail sketch to see where my lights and darks would be, the brush and the hand and the spirit dictated something a little different. This is the fun things I can do when I am not working on commission. I stick to pretty much the subject on commissions depending on what the patron wants.
I then photographed my work and took it into an editing program where I added words to it the image and made it my 2015 Christmas Card.
This is my Christmas card this year and I wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy, Creative New Year! May 2016 be our best year yet!
Sharon Morley, December 19, 2015