First, Merry Christmas and all that.  The above just happened suddenly and my only regret is that I didn’t think of putting a train udner the Dalek tree prior to finishing it, because that would hav ebeen awesome.  And so, peace on earth and goodwill to Dalek.

In other news, I have moved.  My new site is still in the works but so far so good.  It is actually the same domain, but no longer on WordPress so if you are using the WordPress.com link you will have to switch to http://Elasah.com (though it may take a bit for the domain redirect to take place so for now you can click http://elasah.com/art to get there.

A commissioned portrait of a black and white wedding photo for a wedding anniversary. Payne’s Grey watercolor on white paper.

This was a fun one to do– I always enjoy doing black and white from old portraits– partly because of my fascination with old portraits and partly because painting in Payne’s grey only is refreshing and kind of resets my brain, especially if I have been doing a lot of color paintings.

Shy print available on Zazzle.

Original ACEO (2.5″ by 3.5″ watercolor on paper)  available on Etsy.

Shoes by Heather Young

A sweet friend of mine purchased the rights to use the digital version of this painting (or the one I will share tomorrow)  for their e-book cover (which they eventually hope to turn into a print book.)  She will, on Tuesday I believe, be posting the two potential book covers and ask readers to help them choose which to use.  They also plan to give away a print of this painting and the other, each to a person who comments on the post. Here is where she announces the coming contest.  I will link to the actual contest as soon as she posts it.

This will be my first painting to be used as cover design and I am very excited to see the final outcome (I saw the galleys and love what she did with it.)   I guess officially it is my second cover-work since the day after I did a pen and ink of my mother-in-laws church for the front of their new church directory.   Not sure that really counts.

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This painting was based on a gorgeous photo of my girls feet by a friend of mine.

This painting is sold but prints are available here.
I was thinking about the process of painting and this one is the perfect example. The painting itself doesn’t take long and I often discount the time leading up to the painting when figuring out time spent.
The process goes something like this:

1. Get an idea–usually it is a request from someone or an idea that is inspired by something or someone.
2. Push the idea to the back of my mind since I am busy with something else.
3. Idea keeps coming forward, eating at my brain.
4. Chew on idea, consider beginning but decide to keep working on it before I start.
5. Consider idea some more, start thinking about possible execution.
6. Come up with multiple ways idea may present itself.
7. Chew on it some more.
8. Begin to consider paper size and possible colors for idea.
9. Change mind multiple times.
10. Get sudden bee in bonnet to just do it already.  Push all other projects out of the way while work on new pet project.

Am I the only one who works this way?  I am surprised to realize that despite it only taking me an hour or so to execute a painting it has taken me weeks of brain work to get it right–and the paintings I have put the most thought into are the ones that turn out the best.  Some of my favorites–like the shoe painting took years in the making even though they only took 3 hours from the moment the pencil hit the paper to finish.

And how long did Shoes take?

Idea: 3 years in the works
Painting time: 3 hours start to finish.

Goodness, originally uploaded by Mrs. Shamus Young.

From my Fruits of the Spirit series.

This is one of my favorite paintings though it is more surreal and stylized than true to the original photo as most of my work tends to be.  When I was doing this painting I was in a rush to finish nine paintings in under 2 weeks so they were finished in time for a show.  Some of them turned out better for the hurry but others I would do over, or choose a totally different photo to work from.

Currently I have two paintings in the works– a commission that needs done by June and the large painting that I am still chewing on and sketching.  I also have a fireflies painting I am working on in my head– it is one that will likely take me a few months and a few preliminary sketches before one day I suddenly decide to just do it and take it on.

This is one of those paintings that stuck in my head for some time before I drew it, and then sat there a long time before I decided to color it.   And even though most of my favorite dragons by other artists are green, grey, or blue, for some reason most of mine end up being red.  He just wanted to be red.  And this illustration was actually for a personal website I did, more of a diary just for me than anything I made right after my mom died so I had a place to write out what was going on in my head.  And yes, I need a much better photo of it.

SOLD (Thank you Telas. )

Watercolor Painting: St. Mary’s Convent, Freeport, PA, originally uploaded by Mrs. Shamus Young.

This painting is of a very old convent in my grandmother’s town that she had me paint for her church as it was to be torn down a few weeks after I painted it.  The brick work on this building was amazing and very detailed.  Because of the detail I had to paint each brick individually to capture the proper feel.  I also had to make sure to add in the bomb shelter sign, at my grandmother’s request (bottom left of building).  As far as the results go, this is one of my favorite house paintings, though I did not enjoy painting it nearly as much as some others– that’s a lot of bricks. .

Art, originally uploaded by Mrs. Shamus Young.

Issac playing in the sand around our fire pit, about 500 ft behind him was a real backhoe working, inspiring his play.  The backhoe he was playing with  was my brother’s and my dad’s before him.  I believe it was a gift my grandfather got when he bought a new full size backhoe (not the dinky ones we have today but one of the giant ones excavators used to use.)

This painting has a special place in my heart because it reminds me of my own childhood playing in the sand with my brother  as well as riding the backhoe while my dad was working for my grandfather.

Art, originally uploaded by Mrs. Shamus Young.

My girls are so different– the oldest more proper and nervous of the camera while the youngest is spontaneous and loves the camera but is  always a blur of movement (unless she is reading and then there is no movement at all).  They also love to dress alike despite their very different styles.  The original photo was taken in front of our house where the girls were balancing on the rocks around our  flower garden but it just worked better for the painting to leave that part out.

The one new thing I did on this painting was use a blue watercolor pencil when drawing out the shading on the shirts.  In general I don’t like watercolor pencils, at least the ones I have– they are too vibrant when wet compared to when dry and it always frustrates me when the colors become unexpectedly overbearing and inconsistent with the actual color of the pencil.  This may not be true of other varieties but in the case of the pencils I have (I don’t remember the brand) the inconsistency is significant.  In this case, however, it works– in fact, I like the result much better than my usual Payne’s grey for shadows on white.

This painting is 12″ by 16″ and is  for sale on my etsy site.

An 8″ by 10″ of Essie playing hopscotch in a dress made from a vintage child’s tie on top with a skirt I added because the material was so similar.  When she was younger she wore dresses all the time and loved old fashioned little girls dresses I found for her at the thrift shop and garage sales.  She and her sister also loved playing hopscotch– now they are more likely to use all the sidewalk chalk up drawing on the sidewalks and walls of the porch and making “soup” with chalk dust, leaves, and flowers.

This painting is for sale: $30.  Please contact me at gracedbychrist @ gmail . com for information.