What a great night, we had Friday. The Southern Missouri Arts Connection had their opening reception for their holiday show, $100 Below Collection. A spontaneous drawing/sketching session happened as the evening evolved, while others mingled, noshed on cookies and appetizers, and bought art for Christmas gifts. This holiday show will be up for the month, so if you are local or visiting the Branson area, come down on to the SMAC Gallery to see all the great gift possibilities. For December the center has added another day to their hours to even make it easier. The SMAC Gallery is now open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 12:30-5 p.m., and Fridays from 3-7 p.m. I hope you stop by this season and support all the participating artists. I even have a few pieces in the show at prices you wouldn't believe. I'll post photos of them next week but frankly forgot for this week.

If you regularly follow me, you know I'm in the middle of a painting for a teenage girl who lost her brother. This makes my third blog about my progress. I was hoping to be finished with it this week, but their faces proved to be harder than I anticipated. This week, I mostly worked on skin tones and faces. The arms and touch of leg showing were easy enough, but I swear I've redone their faces four or five times so far.  I do have excuses handy. Working small is always harder. The low resolution (72 dpi) doesn't allow me to blow it up to see the details and the strange shadows in the photo over their eyes makes it even more difficult to see what their eyes look like. At best I've met Colton once a long time ago, and I only met his sister Lexi last month when she came down for my solo exhibit. So I have a lot of excuses, but I'm not going to rest on my excuses and say this is the best I can do. I'm going to keep at it until I feel like the faces are right. Each attempt gets a little closer.

When I made my flesh tone mix I was out of DecoArt Traditions Hansa Yellow, so used Hansa Yellow Medium instead. I wasn't really happy with the mix but used it anyway. So I knew I would have to change the skin another day. I also worked on Lexi's top, refining the folds. When painting folds I use at least three different values per fold, and blend wet on wet. For this top I played with Grey Value 6 for my darkest darks, Warm White for my mid-values and Titanium White for the highlights in the center of the folds. My Traditions mini mops are great for blending two values so you can't tell where one value ends and the other begins.

My second day in the studio I mixed up more skin tone making it a touch more yellow. Then I re-painted the skin. Over and over I tried to get the faces right, until I was ready to throw out the whole painting. Whenever that happens the best thing to do is stop, which I did. Fresh eyes and another day makes a big difference. I forgot to take a photo that day.

Friday night was the reception for the December exhibit, but despite being tired I went to the studio Saturday. I gave the teens sit-down shadows, tweaked the shoes and played with Lexi's hair, adding highlights with a brush mix of  Raw Sienna, Yellow Oxide and a touch of Titanium White. I refined her hand and added the bracelet and watch. The bracelet looks like earthy wooden beads. So I brush mixed Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna to make the beads. Then added highlights with first Burnt Sienna, then lightest lights with Raw Sienna. The watch was done in Yellow Oxide and Titanium White. The shadow around the clock face was done in Raw Sienna and the shine around the clock face was done in Titanium White.

I'm still not happy with the faces, but these are the best so far. I'll be tweaking them some more this coming week. But also this week is another meeting of the Elder Blondes, a group of like-minded senior women artists. I'm so looking forward to our play time. I'll try to share some things from the group next week.

So I hope you stay tuned to see what fun we get into this week. Until next time, I hope you stay safe, healthy and in God's shining light.

--Signing Off

Lynnette Horn