Hubby and I were out walking and came upon a tree that looked like it had washed out avocados hanging from it. Turns out, it was a mahogany tree. We were awed at the beauty of the tree and the rarity of its wood.
An older woman gave us cuttings from the tree and told us to root them. She told us how old her tree was. I secretly thanked the tree for the cuttings.
I found one of the pods on the ground and it popped open this afternoon, seeds spilling out.
I’ll try planting the seeds, as well.
Merry Christmas! The day is finally here. Just when you think you won’t get everything finished on time, it all falls in place.
Played with the brush markers this morning and decided to do a tree. It feels good to play with the materials for the fun of it. It’s not perfect, but trees are not perfect, are they? And they are beautiful for all their imperfections.
I also added today and yesterday’s carved stamps below.
I wish everyone a very Merry and loving Christmas. Hug people today just because you can. Love everyone. That’s what today is about.
Today I made two loaves of cranberry bread, a holiday cake, carved my stamp, did chores, and made a lasagna for tomorrow evening. John made his sauce, I added the ground sausage after it was finished for the lasagna.
I finally sat down to do my holiday sketch and with a tad of holiday stress, decided that I needed to play with traditional art supplies for therapy. It was very soothing.
One of the December prompts is wreath and although I carved one as a stamp, I wanted to do another for the challenge. I used brush pens, charcoal pencil and paint pens for this wreath.
The stamp today is an abstract design that I did spontaneously. I like experimenting with random designs.
The fourth prompt is “witch” and it happens to be one of my favorites. Usually for Inktober, I work on my “Little Witch” series, which started back in 2018 as a desperate need to find ideas for postcards to mail to my mom.
(Mom was placed in Assisted Living back in 2018 for memory care. I mailed her postcards to give her something to look forward to and help her settle in.)
This year I did the “TheyDrawtober’s Cook” list and that’s what I sent my mom this year. I thought the food art would give her some memory triggers. I haven’t seen her since December 2019, thanks to CoVID 19 but occasionally my sister is able to FaceTime with us.
I have to admit it’s been hard to keep up the daily practice. She likes cats and always dressed as a witch for Halloween, so that’s where the idea for the “Little Witch” series came from. I do enjoy doing the “Little Witch” series and Inktober made it fun to use the prompts for the character.
Here is the Little Witch as a pre-schooler….as I mentioned yesterday, I might switch to watercolor; I actually used watercolor and the Arteza brush pens together.
I am still trailing the other October lists for now. As I write this, I have one of the Hallmark channels on TV to help with the holiday transition, even though I don’t want to transition yet. I’d love to wallow some more in post-Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving vibes and enjoy November for November.
It’s hard to transition in the State of “endless” summer. Autumn creeps slowly into my part of Florida. The overnight temps creep downward and daytime temps are around 80, for now. We actually do have autumn here and trees will lose their leaves. It’s very comical. One day the trees have leaves, and the next, they drop them like PJ’s dropped on the floor before a shower.
Today’s prompt is “Haunted.” I am trying to use the Arteza brush pens that I normally use for Inktober, but they aren’t performing very well on the textured Arches paper. I’ll probably switch over to watercolor on the next one.
Not everything I “find” on a page is an animal. The other day I found a rose, and on this page, I found a lady with flowers, her expression showing us that maybe stopping to smell the flowers and taking that moment for a quick meditation, just may be what the “doctor” ordered.
Day 10 – indigo
Here is my exploration into indigo. In my humble opinion, the best shade of indigo is from Daniel Smith.
Day 9 and the post was “ink.” I got a little carried away again. Each square was done independently but I tied them together with laying them out on my desk and turning them to see how well they would work together as a group.
The bottom two were separate pieces done with crayon and ink washes.
Days 4-6 prompts:
Day 4 – Yellow – I was totally spontaneous and I used two Tombow Markers and a waterbrush to create this one. Simple designs like this can grow into something else…
Day 5 – Wood – They Draw had sent out an email about typography so wood became wooden letters.
Day 6 – Sea
I kinda went berserk on the prompt for Sea. I am also doing Carla Sonheim’s Year Long class and the lesson came up for working with crayons and melting them. I made a bunch with crayon and used other media over top over the crayons. I created many Inchies for the prompt “sea.”
Gina Lento: Fine Art and Illustration 
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