When I was a kid, Hanukkah meant menorah-lighting, family time, songs, latkas… and presents!
So here’s a present for you… three beautiful Chanukah coloring pages!
Click here to download them for free! Enjoy and happy holidays!
Author: Dena
Inktober Drawing Challenge: Day 4 & 8
Day 4’s prompt was “spell”…
Then I missed a few days… Day 8’s prompt was “Star” and made me think of God’s promise to Abraham…
“… and then He told me: Count the stars– if you can… your children shall be as numerous as they are…” (Genesis 15:5, roughly translated)
Inktober Drawing Challenge! Day 2 & 3
Every October, artists all over the world take on the Inktober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month. It was created by artist Jake Parker as a way to “improve my inking skills and develop positive drawing habits.”
Each day has an official prompt. I missed day 1, but here are my drawings for day 2 &3!
Day 2: Tranquil
Day 3: Roasting
Mom Log #2
Not only do you get a drawing, you also get one of my Special Poems :)
Now tell me I’m not the only one who turns into a demon when the sun sets….
Mom Log #1
I used to keep a journal from about age 10 to 20-ish. I miss it. I tried to start it up again a few months ago, but it didn’t have the same magic. I’m thinking a quick sketch about my day, and a few sentences, shared with my nearest and dearest (that’s you!) might work. So here’s the first one :)
Portrait of a Survivor: Livia Shacter
The past week I had the unique opportunity to paint the portrait of incredible woman named Livia Shacter, who just turned 100 years old on Sunday April 2. An Auschwitz survivor who speaks 6 languages, she now has 54 great grandchildren (and more on the way). She is warm, gracious, and eloquent and it was a pleasure for me to get to know her over the past few weeks and hear the story of her life.
The name of the project is called פנים אל מול פנים (Face to Face) in conjunction with the Foundation for Holocaust Survivors in Israel. Portraits and biographies will be displayed in Jerusalem April 20-25, surrounding the date of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day).
I started with a couple sketches…
…then I transferred the drawing onto a 50×60 cm canvas and laid in a light wash with acrylic paints. That was to establish the main shapes and to give me a bit of confidence before I went in with the thick layers of paint…
And the finished portrait:
Portrait Swap: Digital & Acrylic Painting
Keeping on with the #DrawYourFriends fun! My Facebook friend from India, Suarabh did an awesome digital painting of me:
In return, I did his portrait as an acrylic painting:
Thanks for looking!
Quick Acrylic Painting: Tamar
I’ve been drawing my FB friends, and some of them have been drawing me in return. We all love selfies, so having a drawing of yourself is twice the fun!
But then, for a change, one of my friends did an actual PAINTING of me! So…. I had to return the favor. Overcame my laziness, got out my paints, and did a small portrait painting of her. It felt great to be working with my acrylics again!
Here are the paintings she did of me…. yup, two of them! The first one she said aged me 10 years. so she did another one. I definitely got the better end of the deal… two for the price of one!
In addition to portraits, Tamar does breathtaking landscape of Israel in oil. Check out more of her work on her FB page Tamar Rund Artwork.
Hilarious Facebook Portrait Swaps!
I mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve been doing sketches of my Facebook friends. Some of them have drawn me in return, so it’s become a kind of portrait-swap thing, and it’s really fun(ny) to see how very different I look in all my friends’ drawings!
Here are some of the results of the portrait swaps. As you can see, my friends have varying levels of talent, but what matters is that they took the time to draw me and I appreciate their efforts!
Some of them are really fabulous… and some of them just make me laugh (and think to myself, dear G-d, do I really look like that…?)
You’d never know this was all the same person, would you?
(Except for my nose. My nose looks the same in every single picture. *sigh*)
Drawing the BYLA Building
Took a break from my children’s illustration to do a commission drawing of my old high school. Except, way back when I was there, they had a much smaller building! 