Cow Painting Completed, Amish Girl Continued

Well , I just wanted to share with you the completed cow pastel painting on velour. I think it came out better than I expected and I really love this velour paper for painting animals, and I can’t wait to try more. The next one I might like to try is a piglet or Llama, we’ll see. I hope you like how it turned out.

I also am farther along on my amish girl daydreaming in the back of a buggy. I am really loving this one. I couldn’t decide between a pale yellow dress, or light rose color, and finally decided on the rose. I really like the way this looks so far. What I really like is the way the silhouettes of the amish parents look in the front of the buggy. It’s just enough to let you know they are present, but don’t overshadow the daydreaming, amish girl.

All in all, I’m very happy and can’t wait to complete this painting. Then I can finish Pink and on to Paul Newman! So exciting! Enjoy!

Cow completed

Amish Girl Continued (sorry a little blurry)

Amish Girl at the Farmstand, A new Pastel Painting

Hello all!  I am so excited as I have been practicing my pastel and pastel portrait painting by painting my daughters portraits.  I have learned so much by doing them and watching You Tube over and over on pastel portrait painting.  I have been wanting to paint another Amish painting for so long and I have started this one, Amish Girl at the Farmstand.  The colors in her face have come out so realistic with this new method of colors I have been trying, and I love the result. Now I can’t wait to see the whole picture done!

I don’t know if you can see it, but there are faint pencil lines where I am going to be painting canning jars of fruits or vegetables in front of her and I think I may blur the background with trees and a white barn.  I can’t wait to get back to this and show you, so stay tuned and let me know what you think!  I also have another one in the works and this is an amish girl in the corn, but I’ll show you her as I get a little further along on it.  Enjoy and check back!

Also, I am now selling ACEOs (and more) on my Etsy shop, little affordable works of art (prints) you can collect like trading cards…it describes it more on my shop in my announcement if you’d like to check it out here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/cherylmcnultyart

Thanks so much and have a good day.

Amish Girl at the Farmstand

Amish Girl In The Garden, A Pastel In The Works

Hello everyone.  The weather here is yucky and so I am blogging and then going upstairs and painting with my pastels!  Because it makes me happy!  Here is a picture in the works right now.  This started to be an angel, but decided to try an amish girl instead.  I love the amish culture and the peacefulness and quiet of the country there.  The amish girls in their colorful dresses just add to the beautiful landscape.

I can’t wait to see how this looks finished.  She will be framed in flowers as if she is in a garden, and a butterfly will be flying toward her.  I will update with the finished picture!  Hope it is a great pic!  We’ll see!

Country Kitten Pastel Picture

Just finally finished this pic.  I was not used to the smooth side of pastel paper here, so it kind of sat on the back burner…awhile.  Anyhow, I really liked the softness of the picture and the way you can almost feel how warm it is outside.  Hope you like it.

I Hope You Dance…Again Colored Pencil Drawing/video

I had posted this once before, but am doing so again. I had almost forgotten I had even done the picture. It was done several years ago.

Do you remember this song?  Once you hear this song, you never quite forget it.  The words stay with you.  They did for me.

I had to illustrate what the song was saying to me.

A little girl dancing down the road to her future,  not knowing all that lies before her, but dancing anyway.

I hope you like this.  🙂

I Hope You Dance

“Legends Of The Fall” Movie

This movie is unforgettable, especially if you are a Brad Pitt fan.  This is one of his better movies I think, along with “Meet Joe Black”, and the powerful “A River Runs Through It”.  There is just something very intriguing about him when he plays characters such as these.  They are all so masculine, but there is also a sensitivity and vulnerability to each one as well.  No one else could have played  these characters better than Brad Pitt, except for maybe the late James Dean, whom he reminds me of so much in these roles.

This is the  storyline:

Set in the Rocky Mountains of Montana in the early 1900s, this is a tale of love, betrayal, and brotherhood. After being discharged, Colonel Ludlow decides to raise his three sons in the wilds of Montana, where they can grow up away from the government and society he has learned to dispise. The three brothers mature and seem to have an unbreakable bond, until Susanna enters their lives. When Samuel, the youngest of the three, returns from college he brings with him his beautiful fiance, Susanna. The eldest son, Alfred, soon finds himself in love with his brother’s fiance, and things get worse when he discovers a growing passion between Susanna and Tristan. Colonel Ludlow’s favorite son, Tristan is willful and as wild as the mountains. As the brothers set out to fight a war in Europe, suspicion and jelousy threatens to tear apart their once indestructable bond.

A wonderful movie  that will stay with you, not only for the great characters and  it’s story,  but with it’s captivating scenery  as well.

Here is the trailer:  

Legends Of The Fall Movie

Amish Girl Drawing/Simple Gifts Video

I’m just posting this because I believe the two belong together.  This picture, which I drew awhile back (and I would like to do more Amish pictures) was done in colored pencil and I love the way it turned out.  She is beautiful and her innocence seems to shine through.  As I said in the previous post, we just got back from Amish country, and it is very hard to come back into the swing of things when you have simpleness and calmness all around you for a week. Enjoy this calmness for a few with the video. 🙂  Please click on the title of the video for it to work.

Amish Girl Colored Pencil Portrait

A Very Calming Photograph

Ahhhh, now this is more like it.  Yes, I love Amish country-Lancaster , PA.  I need to go back there and refresh myself.  When I go there, I can’t help but  feel creative.  There is just so much around to fill all the senses:

The buggies and the clip-clop of the horses.

The colorful amish dresses and heart-shaped prayer caps.

Amish Morning

 

The smell of baked goods is everywhere (mmmm,shoo-fly pie!)

The beautiful countryside where you can actually see the horizon.  Oh yes, no telephone wires overhead!

Winding roads and corn.  Lots of corn.

And cows-mustn’t forget cows.

Anyway, thought I would just share this picture with you.

Ahhhhh! 🙂

An Idea For A Children’s Book

This is also something that I have been planning for awhile.  I have  always wanted to write and illustrate several children’s books.

Some of the ideas were generated just from a series of drawings I had done.  One series was called “Charlotte and Friends”.  

“Charlotte and Friends” was a series of greeting cards I had done that had 3 characters.  It was a country theme which included Charlotte, a motherly primitive rag doll,Gunther, the comical country goose, and Toby, the loyal scottish terrier.  I have a whole book completed titled “Charlotte and Friends Picnic ABC”.  It goes through the alphabet as they pack goodies away in a basket for a picnic.  I have only sent it to one publisher so far, but they sent it back with a rejection letter.  So….it’s off to another publisher.  Try,try again!

Here is the introduction page picture…  🙂

Charlotte And Friends

The Amish

To know me is to know I love anything to do with the Amish.  For more than 10 years my family has traveled to Lancaster, Pa and stayed for 6 days at a time… never wanting to leave.  It is peaceful and serene. The countryside…breathtaking.  I always thought I wanted to move to the country when I got older.  But country in RI is to be in the middle of nowhere and placed in the middle of hills and tall pine trees.  You cannot see the horizon as you can in PA.  There are a couple of main roads with traffic and lights, but you can take a side road, and  suddenly you are in the middle of paradise.

Every time we go there, we take a side road and travel up a distance until we are in the middle of never-ending farms.  We shut off the car, and you hear nothing!  Look up ! There are no wires over your head.  It’s so quiet, you can hear the rustling of the grass and  towering cornstalks.  The many meadow butterflies flit close to the ground, and  in the fields,there are cows grazing at every turn.  It’s beautiful.

What adds to the already peaceful and serene setting are the Amish people who ride back and forth in their black and grey buggies. They are pulled by sleek, brown horses.  The sound of their trotting is like music to me, and I open a window as we pass just to listen. The Amish people are friendly, but quiet.  The women wear bright dresses and heart-shaped bonnets and often go barefoot on hot summer days.  The men seem to never sweat in their heavy, black pants and straw hats.  You have to experience this to completely understand the feeling you have when you are there, and somehow,  you will never want to leave. 

The experience always makes me feel refreshed, and lets me feel I can go on for the rest of the year, until I go back again. As long as I can go back!

Well, it’s been about 6 years since we have gone last, and now even the kids miss it.  We had made close friends with an Amish family there.  They have a quilt shop on their property.  They have  a daughter of Caitlin’s age, and we  have eaten at their home, and  once, they even came out to dinner with us. Kathryn, the amish girl, invited us one year to her school house to meet everyone.  We went (at first hesitated) and realized “we” were the one’s being stared at and whispered about.  But they gave us gifts and asked questions and were so friendly.  I’m so glad we went.  We will never forget the experience.

The amish family was sadly one of the families that were affected by that awful Nickel Mines shooting.  Their grandaughter was the 13 year old Marion Fisher, and all I could do was cry.  I have tried to contact them since then with cards and such, with no response.

We are going to try to go this summer as a family again, before everyone here goes their separate ways with work and college, etc. We want to remember the feeling again.  The calmness and just enjoying nature and each other’s company in a less stressed environment. To be childlike again…and  also, just maybe,  we will still find that Kathryn will still be there.  We can only hope!

Amish girl, Kathryn, with cousin maybe 9 years ago