Mother and Child Painting

Here is my latest attempt at portrait painting in watercolor.

Charlotte and Emily, 2015 by Jeanne Turner McBrayer

This is my granddaughter, Charlotte and her beautiful mother, Emily.  I worked from a reference photo from Christmas of 2014.  They were sitting in our John Deer "Gator" in the North Carolina mountains while we paused in a Christmas tree farm at the top of the mountain.

I meant for this to be a Christmas present for my son Dave, but he did not get it until last weekend.

It is much harder to paint faces than, say, trees!  But they liked this one, and I am encouraged to try some more.

Finished Junk Mail Journal

I came across an unfinished journal in my studio,  and decided to get it done in time for Christmas gift-giving.

The cover is made from a florist box from Hawaii. 

The inside cover is gessoed and painted and stamped.

I stitched the painted catalog pages together with a long sewing machine stitch.  Then I punctured holes through the pages and the cover, and used pipe cleaners to secure the signature.

I had some colorful lined post-it's and some orange duct tape, and added in places for journaling.

I also used some painted papers I had on hand.

With some colorful paper clips and a few bookmarks, the journal was almost 

Jdone.

I tied some fibers and fabric scraps through the pipe cleaners on the binding, and it was done!

This went to my daughter-in-law's sister, Kate, who is a college student.

Here is a quick little watercolor portrait that I did of my granddaughter, Lily.  We received a photo album full of good pictures of the three kids in our older son's family, and I used one as the reference for this sketch.

We did a lot of traveling during Christmas week.  I slept in five different places in seven days!

We finally got to go inside our new cabin, which is installed in place but not ready for occupancy.

I discovered that from our deck, we can hear the waterfall from the dam on the creek below.

We designed our fireplace while we were there.  We are getting quite excited about our new mountain place!