In this newsletter there are trees. There's a downloadable ebook collection of my tree paintings. There's access to a printed book too as well as a tiny art exhibit.
For a while now you've seen the occasional tiny tree I've drawn during breakfast. These are portraits of trees I can see outside my windows. I picked 6 of my neighbor trees to regularly say good morning to and inquire about their moods. The portraits I’ve done looked like this when I've shared here.
Or like this.
When framed my tree portraits look like this.
They're 3 x 2 inches- small enough to fit in your hand, or a stocking…
I've been working towards a printed book of my tree portraits and an art exhibit at a local independent bookstore Vintage Books because in my mind books and art go together like coffee and croissants.
Fortunately the bookstore agrees.
So December 9 besides my art plus books tree exhibit they're having me do a live-drawing event. That means that from 1 to 3 on Saturday Dec 9 people can being a photo of something: a pet, a person, a plant… anything meaningful and inspire me to make a drawing which I'll frame on the spot for them to take with them. These drawings will be small hand size too. Here's the flyer, meme thingy the bookstore made about my event.
Here's a video that I made.
But back to the trees and books: Often I read books other people have written on the topic to which I'm making visual art responses. So over the last 5 months I read a number of tree themed books, both fiction and nonfiction, novels, short stories, poems and created my tree paintings. Here's a short stack of tree themed books I've read.
Vintage Books will do a window display of tree themed books and my tree artwork that will be on view for a longer duration than my live-drawing event. I hope, in this process, to discover more tree themed books.
The bookstore will also have printed copies of both of my newly created books: Portraits Of Trees and A M Sketching - drawing done at breakfast.
I'm hoping you've noticed that as a subscriber you've gotten to see everything I've made as it was being created and you've had early access to the finished books too.
After creating my portraits of trees I collected them into a 36 page printed book, Portraits Of Trees, that includes my book list. I created this printed book and the ebook because not everyone can come to my exhibit and because I personally wanted the book list collected with these portraits of my neighbor trees. A family keepsake scrapbook so to speak.
And yes, I made a Portraits Of Trees mug on my Zazzle shop.
So I'm hoping you'll enjoy Portraits Of Trees! The 36 page ebook version is downloadable at the bottom of this newsletter. It too will join my index page of ebooks I've written and illustrated.
No paywall on this newsletter today. I'd rather trust that if you're able to support my work that you will. No matter what - I appreciate you and am glad you're here. Please give my regards to the trees in your neighborhood.
Your prep work--reading about a topic you’re drawing--is such a fascinating idea, I may do it in reverse. An artist I am not, but it seems like it would get the creativity flowing.
Have you seen Safar Fiertze's post on trees? I think you'll enjoy it