Tuesday, December 31, 2024. 

It's nearly 2025!!!  Best wishes for a really good year ahead.

This photo shows the fairy house I created for my granddaughter last year (2023) at this time.  It was so much fun to make!   It is light as a feather and really sturdy.  I learned how to do it from watching Where the Gnomes Live on YouTube. If you want to see more photos of the process just email me and I'll put them in the blog.  ellenhgh@gmail.com

 

This octopus is one of my current projects.  I'm  doing it in oils on canvas 3' x 5'.  Back in February I was inspired  by the octopus in a book  that my book club read:  Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.  I was the hostess for our meeting to discuss the book so I quickly did a first sketch to have on the wall when they arrived.  It remained there on the wall until a week or so ago when I started on it, again.  

You can see that it's outside on my porch.  After reading a fictional account about the history of the paint color blue, Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore, I decided to go back to acrylics.  While the book is fun, I already don't like the fumes from oil paints so I was easily influenced.

For awhile I stayed with acrylics only but I had already begun this painting in oils so now I'm using oils, again... with lots of ventilation!

 

These are my two friends Ethel and Merman.

A spin-off from making the fairy house was that I learned how to make mice from the same person who taught me how to make fairy houses (Where the Gnomes Live on YouTube).

Ethel and Merman have a house I put together from things like shoeboxes.  I found some furniture that is just their size at Hobby Lobby and bought it and I also made some from patterns I found on Pinterest.

My friend who lives in Atlanta teaches art to children.  They learn about different artists and then create their own pieces of art in the style of that artist.   This year I was so lucky to get to visit the Hirsch School where my friend works.  So, when the children were studying abstract art, I decided to create a story using Ethel and Merman, their home, and a piece of art that my friend created as an example for her students.  I photographed each scene and then created the script for a digital book.

In my next blog I'll show you photos of the White Mice Ball that I made using the same technique as I used for  Ethel and Merman.  Thanks for any comments! Until next time,  Take care, Ellen