M family...again!

Also this year, I did portraits for the "M" family! This is the third year in a row that I've had the chance to draw these cousins, and it seemed to make the process that much easier because I didn't have to wonder at the exact color of their eyes or hair: I'd done it before! It was fun to see how they've grown over the last year! The background colors here are similar to the blues in the last post; for some reason the very lightest blues aren't picked up by my camera very well, and the brown of the paper shows through, so you can't see how smooth the color transitions really are.
First we have this cute brother and sister:





It was fun drawing this girl because it wasn't the typical smile. The photo for the above girl was taken in fairly low light, and her face was dark and a little blurry, but I attempted to draw it with more of a "blurry" style with few hard edges, and I think it turned out great! It was actually fun and kind of freeing.. It was similar to the way I drew this cat a few years ago:

 Then there were these three siblings, the youngest of which was a newborn when I drew her last year! I had some interesting challenges with these too. For the baby, the picture I was initially given had some kind of phone filter that made it all soft-edged; cool for a photo, but really hard to draw for a drawing. At the last minute her mom posted a new picture of her on facebook; it was crisp and in focus, but the top half of her head wasn't in the shot. So I used it for the face, then drew an imaginary version of the bow from the first photo, as it was hard to see what her headband was like in this new photo. It turned out pretty good! Also, she was in a car seat, and I had to make up how her shirt was, which is why there are no folds or anything fancy to be seen in the cloth. My photo is slightly more yellow than the real drawing. (all three have very similar colors, the photos were just taken under different lighting conditions.)






















As for the brother, the photo I worked from was black and white! Again, his first photo had a weird filter on it so I couldn't really see the shape of his nose or anything. So I took the black and white photo to draw the details, then loosely borrowed colors from the first photo. Not bad. I think he looks older in this photo than he is in real life, but I hope his family won't think so.

 Finally, the oldest sister turned out great. Her photo was taken in sunlight and was just right for drawing.

This time around, drawing these kids was a breeze!

N cousins

 I recently completed a group of portraits  of nine kids, all cousins. They turned out pretty cute! (These first two are brothers).
 

 




















I was originally going to have a blue background on all of them, but this girl's photo had such a pretty green background that went with her red hair, that I had to leave it in the drawing. I figured I'd color her red-headed brother's portrait the same.  (These next three are siblings.)

 

 



Then I got to this boy, and realized the blue background was exactly the same color as his shirt, so he needed a different color; green didn't go with it at all.I finally went with brown, because his sister's photo had brown in the background and it looked nice, so I could color both of them the same and there'd be two in the set. While the photos don't do them justice (as usual) I like how these all turned out. (These four are siblings.)

 

This girl's plaid shirt was the hardest part of all of these portraits.

 
 

I think my favorites are the red-head boy with the striped shirt, and the girl with the big blue bow. I hope their grandparents like them!

Autumn walk

A week or two ago, Elora, River and I decided to go on a  little walk to experience the fall weather. During the last five years, we've enjoyed seeing the colorful grasses and bushes that the grasslands have to offer, but we've always had to drive somewhere else if we wanted to see autumn trees.
As you can imagine, we've been so happy to have so many trees around us and leaves to tromp through.
We especially love the tall trees just a block from our house, in the same place where we took Elora's birthday pictures. Just a few feet away from this golden spot, we saw some more typical South Dakota landscape, and we decided to take some fun pictures.
Elora and River enjoyed looking at the plants, and we even saw a deer that had been hiding nearby!

 

It was fun getting some pictures of all the girls! And yes, mom, I was smiling in lots of the pictures; I didn't use them because most of those ones had other problems...like plants in front of the baby's face.  Please click to see the pictures bigger!




































 Elora was a perfect model in finding some good spots for a picture.















Of course I took a few of just me. Meh.















But my favorites were these last minute pictures I took as the sun was setting and we were ready to head home.

 These close, intimate pictures of autumn are where I find inspiration in the season, even more than a sweeping majestic landscape. What a pretty time of year!

I hope you can get out and enjoy the weather too!

Halloween celebrations

This year was our first Halloween in our new house! We were able to do some fun things this October. Earlier in the month, we visited a corn maze in Spearfish. Along with the maze
 

and pumpkin patch,

 

 there were all kinds of activities for the kids.
From a giant hay pile to jump in,

 
 
 

to a bouncy horse race on inflated horses,
 
 
 they had lots of things to choose from. The maze was fun and there were lots of people there! We were just glad Joseph is good at these things,

and he led us through to the end without any problems.

 

Well, except for that time we were taking a picture and Eli diapered for a few minutes. We all waited patiently as Joseph rushed around and found him. Silly kid.

waiting for Eli to be found.

As for our pumpkin decorating, this year we were invited to a friends home where we had a fun fall dinner and carved pumpkins all together.

 They had a big shop where they process honey, so there was plenty of room and we didn't have to worry about making too big of a mess!

Everyone had lots of fun, and lots of good food.
The week before Halloween, the kids got to dress up for a school parade- it was just an internal thing where people weren't invited, it was weird- oh and Eli also got to dress up for his library reading hour.

















They were asked to wear something not scary, so he wore his clown costume and had fun with all the treats they got.

 
















Finally, for Halloween we got to go trick-or-treating through our neighborhood!
 
 I felt bad that we were gone when most of the kids came to our house (we have TONS of candy left over). But everyone enjoyed the evening. It wasn't windy or too cold; it was perfect!

 

Joseph and I chose our costumes last minute: I was a scarecrow in imitation of Elora,

 
and Joseph was death. I think. River had fun trying on wigs; she seemed very concerned about mine and Joseph's faces, especially my red nose.






















The other kids were dressed as follows: Joshua- a skeleton pirate; Jonah-batman; Eli- a ghost(I think) and River wore a cute cat costume that someone gave us. It was warmer than the usual lion outfit we've used in years past.


 



















Happy Halloween!