Apple-Pine: holiday

Showing posts with label holiday. Show all posts

Post-Holiday Feelings

The holiday decorations are packed and back in the storage. It was a nice year with many cards which we put under a tree (and a few of them ended up on a tree this year!). We connected with many people, and I am grateful for the chance to do so. We did not add any new decorations to the collection this year, but I have a feeling we will make some for the next one. As always, I wish I had drawn more, and yet what I drew is what the holidays were like: lots of tiny moments of light.

Holiday Decorations

This year I got a new holiday tree: it is smaller, made with cheerful tinsel, and gorgeously reflects all the lights it can catch at different times of the day. We put it up with some old decorations (whatever survived a decluttering of the last year) and added a few new experiments too. I tried to draw the silver-ness of the tree and all the ways the light jumped from one sparkly tuft to another. But feel like the tree needs to stay till spring for me to make real progress :) As this is not happening I will have to start again next holiday season!

Saying Goodbye to the Christmas Tree

The holiday season is magical and is actively celebrated with an eclectic set of traditions in my family. The magic of light is central and for many years one of the main sources of light in December was this tree. I drew it several times before we packed all the lights up this weekend.

Creating Options for Holiday Cards.

I enjoy making and sending Holiday Cards each year. Whatever you celebrate - the change of year is a great reminder for me to get in touch with people. Some years I am more prepared than others :) This was a year when for various reasons I thought I might forgo the whole thing altogether. But in the end, I started slowly - with a plan, moved from my options A to C going through the lists, and ended up with a bang: a little experimental project at the end of the year which was joyful on so many levels!

Below are some of the notes on the project with a couple of examples of the last part of the experimental cards that I sent out (the ones that I knew could arrive late because recipients know that they are coming - no matter how late I send them out (and some are still traveling:)

After I sent my Holiday Greetings in the newsletter, via email, etc., and posted on social media, I got a bunch of questions about how I made the owl (bottom left below). And the answer is - I mixed a lot of techniques and it was a wild experiment! Details are in the last image of this post.

Sketching holiday decorations.

We just took down all the decorations - from all the winter holidays. Even though I know and support the reason for doing it and am very grateful for the space and order that now emerged, I miss the lights in the evening and all the little things we pull out and pile during the season. I combined some sketches of the tree lights that I did - and now I see that I did not sketch even half of the decorations!

Some lights might come back - after all the winter dark is still here and this year I am feeling it a little more than usual.

Here is a video of the process of this sketch (pardon my inky fingers!):

Festive mood for the end of the year: Kangaroo Paws!

I have my bright lights on and have a whole bunch of little festive arrangements going on - apples, persimmons, dry flowers, pine cones, magnolia cones, pistachio tree berries - and a few days ago my collection grew with this branch of Kangaroo Paws! This plant is usually yellow or red and is native to south-western Australia but is now cultivated around the world and scientists sequenced the genome of kangaroo paws and were able to produce many new colors for the kangaroo paw including blues, purples, and whites!