Happy Holidays!

December brings many things... Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and various other celebrations I know nothing about. But December for me is Winter Solstice. When darkness peaks as the longest night of the year on the 21st, bringing the beginning of lightening back up, minute by minute each day, until the Spring Equinox when daylight and nighttime are equal.

Happy December to everyone. I hope we are lucky enough to get some snow, and maybe catch a snowflake, too.

Plum sugar

My upstairs neighbour, Joyce, asked me months and months ago to paint a little portrait of her grand daughter, and at last I did this for her. I am not a portrait artist in the least (as you can see from my illos on this blog), and get quite daunted at the thought of painting something by hand, as much as I love it. Doing this digitally would have been interesting and much easier, but for the love of earth and water, I've got to use my brushes!

When it comes to art by hand, I am most comfortable illustrating in pen and shading with a combination of hatching and watercolour. I usually only use the black cake to create greyscale watercolours (so simple and classy) but thought some colour would be nice in this one. Hope you like it, Joyce!