Painting your favorite ornament- a tutorial!

I wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and give you all a little gift of art this Christmas. We have been painting ornaments for the last few weeks and I thought I would give you a tutorial on painting glittery ornaments since it can be a bit overwhelming to capture all the lights, twinkle and glitter. Diane sent me a photo of an ornament she was trying to paint for our Friday Challenge so that is my subject matter.

This time of year gives us a great way to practice some challenging textures and surfaces. I hope you enjoy this video and have a wonderful holiday!
Diane's ornament from Desiree Habicht on Vimeo. To make the video larger hit the arrows on the bottom right side of the video screen, esc will make it small again!

This will be our challenge for the next week also!  Because….

I will be off my computer, enjoying the holidays with family and house guests!

Friday Challenge - Capture a Christmas Memory

I love to make handmade ornaments and gifts at Christmas. There is just nothing as nice as getting something that is handmade to me. It says to me that I am important enough to spend my time making this for you!  Each year as I pull out my ornaments to decorate my tree I think about each of the people in my life who have given me that ornament, I pray for them and enjoy this special time.

I love sharing some of my special treasures and I hope you will share some of yours with me. Grab one or two of your favorite ornaments and paint them and then journal about what makes them so special to you!! Then share your little treasure with us but posting your painting or sketch using the linky tool below!

Shiny verses satin finishes

This was such a great study in my sketching class that I thought I would share it with you. It is painting shiny, reflective surfaces verses satin finishes. With Christmas just around the corner and while you are decorating you tree, take a minute and try this challenge. Get both a shiny and satin ornament and lets get painting.

 We will start with shiny:
 1. When painting a reflective surface remember that the reflection will take on the shape of the reflecting object and skew it. So with the example of our ornament, the image wraps around the round shape of our ornament. It is often hard to paint these weird, skewed images since our brain doesn't get it at first, but be persistent, it will all come together.
2. You also need to make sure you have good values. Lots of lights and darks make it look reflective! 3. Reflections have lots of hard edges, sharp, mirror edges, keep them crisp and strong.

Satin finishes:
 1. Satin finishes are almost the opposite of reflective images since they do not reflect an image but just the light.
 2. When painting your satin ornament make sure you keep all your edges blended and soft, no hard edges.
 3. No strong lights and darks, everything is soft but there is still value changes, just gradual.

 Okay, its your turn, let me see what you have! Give it a go, this is a great seasonal lesson just begging to be sketched and painted.