Lucky 13 Envelope

OK here it is as promised. An example of a lucky 13 envelope and it's contents. The first is "Water Saint" by Kage Harp (who is also the owner of the beautifully decorated envelope). The second is the Birds themed card by Abigail Garner, and the third is "Dreams Give me a Chance to be my Real Self" by Wendy Anderson, the fourth is "Leaders of the Saints and Sinners" by L.K. Christensen and the 5th is "Embrace Chaos" by Stephanie Pointer.

Lucky 13 Botanical

The theme for this month's Luck 13 card the theme is "Botanicals". For this one I pulled out my trusty Montana Wildflowers guide and chose to depict one of my favorite little flowers, the Twinflower. I decided to put my new pastel pencils to the test. To get a flow going with the medium, I also did a funky little version of White flowers, which was useful as a test piece for the fixative spray and certain color blends such as the cream background.

A few hours work

Progress! I finally got a few hours in the studio today and did some satisfying work on the Wine Lover and Old Vine painting.

The Wine lover got a background layer, some darkening and defining in the shawl and dress, an antique wash on the skin and some definition around the eyes and eyebrows. I am wasn't quite ready to tackle the mouth yet, which has been looking a little vampirish...

The Old Vine painting got several layers in all the treed areas, shadowing in the central yellow hills, a green wash to determine where the middle ground vine rows will be, a layout of new vine rows in the far hills, a brown color base for the main vine in the foreground, some sketching in of the trunks that will be just beyond it, and a little bit of color on the distant hills.

I have so many ideas and so little time these days, but in the works are another Big Mountain painting, some children's nursery sets and a few random floral pieces.