Individual Christmas cards in watercolor

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Individual Christmas cards in watercolor

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Individual Christmas cards in watercolor

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For a number of years now, I have been painting individual Christmas cards that I send to special friends. I haven't saved every card that I have done (I started sometime in the late 1980s, I think), but I have several, and I have put them into a slide show that you can see with this article.

These cards are based on whatever comes to mind. They often reflect where I am or places that I have been during the year. I try to get two or three designs and then do several at a time. I usually wind up producing between 20 and 30 cards a year.

The slide show does not include this year's cards, which can be seen in the photos that accompany this article.

This year's cards, like many of those in years past, reflect a place
that I have been during the year that has made a real impression on me.
This year it was Vermont. I went there in late September to visit some
good friends, Celeste and James Bernard, and to consult with some of
the folks at World Learning.

I stayed at the Green River Bridge House,
which is owned and run by a remarkable woman named Joan Seymour. The
house would be on the other side of the river just behind the covered
bridge in the painting (if I had chosen to include it). She tells a
remarkable story of her two-year rennovation of the house, which is
worth the night's stay alone. But what is really special is the setting
that includes both the covered bridge and the old Anglican church. The
church, looking at the covered bridge painting, is on a hill across the
river to the left of the bridge.

I didn't know when I was there
that I was going to make these two items into Christmas cards. When I
was there, the leaves were just beginning to turn for what happened to
be a normally gorgeous fall season. As usual, I waited until late
November to begin thinking about the cards, and I happened to come upon
the pictures that I took while I was there as I was rifling through
stuff trying to get an idea. The idea for these cards is the most important thing -- and the hardest.

When
I saw these pictures, I tried to imagine them in the dead of winter and
with snow all around (which, ironically I am told, hasn't happened much
so far this year). Getting the design together some shortly after the
idea phase, and I did that with a couple of sketches (below). The
sketch of the church was made when I was sitting in our end of the
semester faculty at the University of Tennessee.



The
other sketch came from my looking directly at one of the pictures that
I took while I was there. I had taken several good ones, but the angle
of this one was good enough to give a clear idea of the bridge. My big
problem was cutting a lot of things out, including the guest house.

The
next step in the process is getting an outline of the picture I am
doing on tracing paper (right). This allows me to maintain the
proportions of the sketch as I transfer it onto the watercolor paper
that I am using. Here is the ssecret to doing a batch of cards (the 20
to 30 that I normally do). Each is individually painted, but the sketch
or drawing is essentially the same, which saves loads of time.

Thus,
a good idea equals a good drawing, which eventually equals a good
sketch. It has to be simple. There's not a lot of time or space to do
details. But it also needs to be expressive so that the viewer will
react is some way -- positively, we hope -- to both the scene and the
interpretation.

If you're interested, you can see more of my artwork at a little site I've set up for that purpose, First Inning Artworks.