Because I don't have enough on my plate

"Happy To See Snow" ACEO

Coloured pencil on Mi-Teintes
Copyright Rita Woodburne

Happy December, dear reader!

Well, it's the last month of 2008 and I hope you're gearing up for Holiday festivities and giving some thought to what you have left to complete artistically before the year is out. For myself I'm hoping that I can get a lot accomplished this month. Perhaps you'd like to know more...


What I wanted to concentrate on for this last month of the year in conjunction with my van Gogh/ Vermeer project was completing a bunch of ACEO's that are essentially studies of their works or small portions of a given work that interest me.
I came to the decision to do this after reading several books on both artists. Each have works that I absolutely love and both their styles, while quite different, appeal to me equally. Van Gogh has got colour coming out the yin-yang and a lot of his work uses colours that rarely see the light of day in my own palette. Vermeer has the lighting quality in his work that I think is absolutely stunning and is probably going to be a challenge to pull off in coloured pencil (as I found out with the snowman aceo above).

Quick and dirty sketch of a portion
of Vermeer's "Saint Praxedis"

I also have quite a few pages of my sketchbook filled with "studies of...", like the one above. I enjoyed doing them and they didn't take up oodles of my time to get done and with each one I think I learned a little bit more... or at least I'd like to think so. That's why I think ACEO's will be ideal to do because, let's face it, the year is almost done and I can get more ACEO's done than I can larger works which means I'm increasing my opportunity to learn more.

Cherry ACEO WIP
Coloured pencil on Mi-Teintes
Copyright Rita Woodburne

So that's what I have planned for this month. I think it's do-able and just for giggles I may do some study ACEO's of other artists just to keep it fresh.

You know... because I don't have enough on my plate. ;)