Visions of Sugarplums part 1 The sleeping bear

Hello my friends, I hope everyone is doing well and truly enjoying the Christmas seasons. My last post was poinsettias, and I have been since working on this Visions of Sugarplums. In this video, I took some time to explain my process of doing my designs and working out the compositions, and so I hope as you watch the video, or even better paint along, you can see how I come up with this design. It turned out I really love this bear, my original inspiration of the picture was a matured grisly bear, and I wanted to see if I can help it to become a younger bear, and so what do you think, I quite like it. During the beginning of November, my husband and I took a trip up to Yellowstone National Park, and on November 3, as we were on our way leaving the Park, after a full day of hiking, we spotted a grisly bear on the side of the road. I said we spotted, but we didn’t , we saw a few people already gathering around with cameras on their hands. At first I thought they were taking pic of the bison that was sitting there in plain site. But then I told my husband we were not too tired, let’s stop anyway. And to our joy, we saw over a little hill , a really really huge grisly was eating something, and he not only was a big grisly, he was quite fat too. As we thought about it, we realized that was the coming of the time that grisly was preparing for their long winter nap. And a lot of them were eating as much and as much fat as they can so they can go into hibernation. So we thought that bear was probably eating some kind of fatty food there, and were not really disturbed by the relatively smaller size of us. My husband was very excited to see a bear so big. As we drove away we talked about the habit of bears, and how there were a year we saw some black bears climbed up trees to eat pine nuts, which I assumed is very fatty, to get ready for their long winter nap too. And so when I was practicing or my first run of painting this bear, I focused on his accumulation of fats and hope I can paint it properly. Let me know what you think.

As you can tell by the title, this is only part one, because it was a longer paint along, and on part 2, which will probably be up in a couple of days, I will paint the candies and sugarplums, the whole painting was supposed to be fun and playing on a bear dreaming of candies. My daughter actually suggested a fish, which would be fun too. Haha I don’t know. In the video, I showed the first version of the practice, and I accidentally practiced on a bear that is a creation of another artist. Even though my end design is more than 10 percent more changed to her design, I decided against using it for the video. My husband encouraged me to try harder, and I therefore came up with this bear which I loved. And yes I hope to put this up in my shop here for this or next year if anyone is interested in buying, for Christmas or for whatever they deem useful. I think the sugarplums part is fun too.

In this video I mainly focus on the specific parts that we can’t leave out for painting animals, step by step detailed instruction so you can have fun. And I eliminate a lot of unnecessary details and I talked about all those in details also. It is nice when you follow along and all the thinking of painting animals is already done by me. And when you learned it then you can use it as a roadmap to do that next time. You can remember if you are painting real time in a zoo, or at a museum, more practice will make it easier for you to remember the steps, so do take the time to try this out. I will be delighted if you will send me the result. I have been in art long enough you know I understand almost all frustration that may come up. And please do ask questions if you want, don’t worry, if I know the answer I will try to share. Even if it is about art business, you may have to prepare for some long opinions. All in good fun. So please check back for the second part, that I will put up as fast as I can. The second part can also be used to paint Christmas art, if you want to attempt to do so yourself. Painting Christmas candies is very useful for a lot of things. And that video also has lots of tips and steps for painting candies. I had a lot of fun doing this two video. Sorry took me couple of weeks, I was stopped by couple of design challenge but all is fun and I couldn’t be happier.

Concerning my shop which is about to open in a week or so. I used to sell on etsy and had been very successful. I made a lot of friends with my customers and had the most fun. However after a short break during covid, I was not happy with a lot of not very good wholesome art. Etsy is very eager to push those arts because of advertising, so I decided to, if I had a chance to open my own shop. I do believe in a wholesome environment for my viewers who come here and provide a happy uplifting experience for all of you. I hope you can experience a spirit of sharing and encouragement and helpful with helping each other succeed here, and I am very happy it is heading that way. And because I have a bunch of children who are very good with computer and website designs, they are so helpful in bringing to pass this shop here for me. They use opensource Woocommerce, and I am so proud we can do that. If you like me to explain a little I will, but I won’t try to bore you with fascinating facts here.

Ok have fun here and I hope to see you soon. I have part 2 coming up. I also made a video on a commission on a Persian doll cat and the process of painting that that will be up very soon too. And before Christmas I hope to do a sheep painting, in honoring of our Shepherd our Savior Jesus Christ. Those are my plans and I pray I can get that all done. I am having a great time and hope you will too here. Please say hi, ask questions and I love to hear from you.

Kathy