December Paintings

My friend Diana asked me to do a painting of her sister for a Christmas present.  She sews quite a bit, so I thought it would be fun to do an exchange.  

I did this painting of her sister and she made a quilt with pictures of my family on it for me for Jake's Christmas present.  I didn't think the trade was equal as far as cost of supplies went, so part of my side of the bargain was to pay her for all of the fabric and other things she needed to buy in order to make the quilt.

We had a tough time choosing which picture of her sister to paint, there were some of her as a kid, and some great mother and child shots of her as well, but finally we ended up choosing one of her walking through the streets of Tallinn, Estonia as a base.  I researched for more pictures of Tallinn's streets and ended up creating a picture that included a skyline and a few more buildings than the original, because I thought it made the painting more interesting.  

Here is Jake's new quilt.  I asked Diana to choose the fabric based off of the painting we have hanging in our living room, and to make sure and use purple because that is Jake's favorite color.  It was so much fun to do the trade and surprise Jake with a personalized gift.  

When we were in the process of deciding what to paint, I was looking through photos on their family website and came across a childhood photo of Diana with her brother who has since passed away.  I thought it was so sweet and decided I wanted to paint it for Diana as a surprise and send it when I sent the other one.  It was Saturday afternoon when I decided to do it, and I needed to get the other painting in the mail on Monday, so when our church was cancelled that Sunday due to snow, I spent all of Sunday afternoon and evening painting.  

This is how it looked when I finished.

Since I am posting gifts, thought I'd throw this one in too.  Jake's dad is always the hardest person on our list to shop for.  Last summer he took the kids on their first fishing trip and I went along to take pics.  He has always seemed to really love the photos so we decided to pic our favorites and change them to black and white and create a story board for him.  Thanks to my friend Jeremi who is a photographer we had templates and knew to have it printed on styrene.  We didn't get to see the final result as we had it shipped directly to Grandpa, but we heard that it turned out great.