Goodbye Old Year, Hello New!

Father Time and Baby New Year

The old to the new,

The beard to the baby,

the wrinkled to the plump,

The tired to the fresh.

Father Time and Baby New Year from Frolic & Fun, 1897

What a weird, but wonderful image for the turn of the new year.

The old is always to the left, the new to the right.

I wanted to make my own version, so I used my own Baby Bear as the New year’s baby and his older self as the old year.

my quick thumbnail sketch

pencil on watercolor paper, with 1st wash

several washes-no line.

painting with line and some photoshopping

And finally,  two older images of an infant Miss Bindergarten,

and her grown up self wishing All Y’all

a Happy, Healthy 2016!

Please share the joy, Y’all!

 

Painting Fergie’s Portrait

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Fergie is a Goldendoodle.

If there is a cuter new “doodle” breed, I can’t imagine it.

She is the fortunate 1st ‘child’ of my beloved cousin, who dotes on her every wiggle and bark.

Now that she has come of age,  I was commissioned to paint her official portrait.

Fergie and her family visited while the leaves were still falling in October.

After exploring the woods thoroughly, she chose this scene for her backdrop.

And I caught her sitting still, however briefly, in the driveway.

To begin this portrait I painted the background landscape before adding the main figure. I am working in gouache and trying to stay loose. A lot gets covered up by the figure, but it still seems to make the whole more cohesive.

To add the figure of Fergie I did a careful pencil drawing and used simple graphite transfer to position her in the scene.

Once Fergie was in place I added lots of shadowing to push the landscape behind her and leaves in the foreground to anchor her on the ground.

I paid the most attention to her face, trying to capture the sweetness and life-not to mention her glorious curls!