I think I am finally done!

Well, after taking a few hours tonight to finish up the ground and darken the background I think I am finished. I keep messing around with the background and bushes so I will leave it alone now. It always helps me to do a final review with fresh eyes.



- Desiree

Day 4- almost there!

I think I am finally seeing the end of the road now, the light at the end of the tunnel. I have made my way down to the shoes and bench and even some of the bark and wood chips that are laying under the bench. I really enjoyed fussing over the metal on the bench and still have more to do. Hopefully I will finish this up tomorrow or Saturday and then just look at it for awhile making tonal adjustments and maybe fusing with the one ladies face that is still bugging me. I also will be taking the background darker. The painting is actually reading much warmer than it really is due to the lights I am using when I take the picture. Once you see the real colors you may be shocked!


- Desiree

Day 3- a little more progress

Day three brought little time to work on my painting but I managed to squeeze in a minute here and there! I miss the stretches of time to concentrate on a piece but I am thankful for those stolen moments I manage to grab throughout the day.



- Desiree

Valentines Day

Valentines Day, a photo by ddhabicht on Flickr.

Desiree Habicht
Desiree's Designs
www.desireesdesigns.com

Day two-moving along

I am participating in a 9 day plein air paint out during the day and working on this at night. The plein air isn't going very well so I am feeling a bit beat up when I start this at night. Why is plein air so much tougher! I am determined to figure it out but in the mean time I am feeling better that this one is turning out ok. I am trying to get the pastel down and some more detail. The yellow overtones are just from the lighting it's not how the actual painting looks. Today I didn't paint plein air due to a doctors appt,phew, a break!



- Desiree

A new pastel

I am working on a new pastel for a show I want to enter. I took this photo in Italy during our trip. It was taken in the park around the Borghese Museum outside of Rome. The museum is amazing, housing many of the masterpieces from Italy. This group of visitors were sitting on a park bench, enjoying each others company and very engaged.

I start by creating a drawing that will serve as my guide throughout the painting. I usually work from left to right to avoid smudging the pastels but sometimes will work a bit differently if I need to work,for instance the whole bench. As I was working my way over to the mans face I got hung up on him and worked on his clothes first. I was making sure my faces come out before working the whole piece. I already broke my left to right rule, I do that a lot. I am not thrilled with the first face but will continue to work it later.

Here is the beginning of the painting






- Desiree

Happy Valentines Day!!

 I had a fun day today with the kids. Nathan joined us a bit late but we still had fun. The girls and I set the table and got ready for our guests. We set out our finest tea party china, with our red tea pot of course. The plates were red and we filled them with strawberries and goodies for everyone.

 The covered bowls were filled with surprise goodies that could only be opened after lunch. We made all the kids favorites today, mac and cheese, top ramen, strawberries. We enjoyed our lunch and then had some tea and Valentine cookies. The candy was saved until later.

The girls continued there project of making Valentines Cards for everyone. I think that 5$ box of heart stickers has paid for itself in spades. We ended up saving the best, most sparkliest heart stickers for our cheeks! All serious celebrators have sparkly stickers on their cheeks on Valentines Day! 

From my family to yours, we hope you are all out there having a great Valentines Day!

Our Year started off a bit rocky but better now

Fathers hold their children's hands for
just a little while...
And their hearts forever.

I am so sorry that I have not posted in some time. Life seems to get int the way sometimes and this time it seemed to take the wind out of my sails. Right after Christmas, my father in law suddenly passed away from pneumonia. He was such a strong man and healthy as a horse, he was also caring for my MIL who has Alzheimer's. It forced all of us to rally together to figure out what we needed to do for her and to fulfill my FIL wishes. He was so blessed to have lived the life he wanted, he never cared what anyone else thought of him or how he did things. He was a big personality in our family and will be greatly missed.
I seemed to have lost my way a bit, not only with his passing but with other things that are happening with my family and friends.  It seems there is so much illness and just sadness right now and it is very close. It causes me to reflect and it made me retreat a bit, I think so I could regroup and just concentrate on those closest to me.

I am convinced that this is going to be the year of change for us, maybe a bit of bad but I am praying a whole bunch of good. I am starting to really get excited again. Looking forward to what tomorrow holds and now I need to start painting again, something I haven't done since Al died. This month I have so much planned with my sketch classes and a prayer flag class. Then there is the 9 day paint out with the Plein air group! I should get some painting done then, if I can remember how!
I have been tinkering with some artquilt designs as the deadlines are looming. I am also doing a show in May and need all new quilt patterns so I have been busy trying to design those. I submitted a small ornament for a Fons and Porter Ornament issue in the fall issue but havent painted anything. I need to just jump in again.
The girls remain a constant in my life right now, a nice diversion. We took them to the Pacific Aquarium recently and the Wild Animal Park, their excitement and curiosity is so wonderful. They are just little sponges soaking up information. I think they were more excited when the scuba diver was inside the tank cleaning the glass than they were about the fish. Some pictures of things that happened this month. Life is good.

Christmas!!

It's very early on Christmas day and I have quietly made my way to the kitchen to have some quiet time before the craziness of the day begins. A time to give thanks for God's gift to us,His ultimate gift of salvation. In all the busy-ness of the season it is easy to lose sight of why we celebrate this day.

Today my house will be filled with family, gifts and good food. We will laugh a lot as we play games and visit. The noise level will never go below the roar of a low flying aircraft and the kids will be making messes in every corner. When all the festivities are over my house will resemble a battlefield of fun. I am so thankful for these crazy days of Christmas, knowing that each year we are all together should be cherished. I was trying to put together a video of Christmas's past to play throughout the day with our music. As i was going over all the photos it was a reminder as to how quickly everyone grows up! It also reminded me how much things change although they feel so "the same". Our family is forever changing, growing, multiplying, dividing, dying.
This year is hard for us as Randy's parents are not doing well, his mom with dementia and his dad with pneumonia. So many years a part of our Christmas day celebration, we now are running down early to see them before Christmas. My mom,still weak from surgery, unable to travel,so we will go to her after Christmas but they all will be missed so much this year at our table.
With the baking done,Blake's stocking finished, the decorations complete and before my day begins, I wanted taking a few minutes with you to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. I hope and pray that your time together with friends and family is filled with love and laughter and many, many wonderful memories.






- Desiree

Christmas is only 5 days away!

Where does the time go? I have to still decorate my tree and finish shopping but I managed to get the paintings of the 12 days of Christmas where they needed to go! Phew! Now to get to cleaning my house, do some shopping, plan Christmas dinner and wrapping. I am looking forward to a few nights of doing nothing but sitting by the fire and drinking tea and watching movies with Randy and Jenn. Here are a few of the finished pieces, I am showing some of the ones you didn't see, with their finished border.

I will be sewing some pillowcases for Nathan out of the 3D fabric I found him and then I will be making some prayer flags. The first two are already in my mind as I am praying for two dear friends as they each deal with a hard, long fight. One with breast cancer, one a brain tumor, their treatment doesn't stop for the holidays, for baking or shopping. Praying for a quick and complete recovery!

Less than 12 days til Christmas!

I was asked to paint the 12 days of Christmas in the next few days, a rush job for a company overseas. They want bright and whimsical so I am having fun painting these small little characters before next week. I never realized how many birds are in the first part and how many people are in the second part. I also discovered that the Catholic church has religious meanings for all of the images. I am so blessed to be able to create and paint everyday as a passion and for a job! I am thinking that these will soon be quilt patterns too!



- Desiree

My blog is a book!

No, no don't get excited! LOL it's not good enough for that but I did use the blog2print service and decided to have my blog printed from when I started it to the end of last year, 2006-2010. I got it the other day and I LOVE it! It's so much fun to go back and see all the things I wrote about,the old sketches, pictures, special occasions! It is far from perfect,typos and poor sentence structure I'm sure. There are also probably tons of run-on sentences because I am famous for those! But,it's mine all the good and the bad. If you are a blogger you might want to think of doing this every year or two. My book is 120 pages, cha-ching, but I love it!









- Desiree

Crepe Paper Poppies recreated!

I received a box today, but with the holidays, it is a common thing to see on my front porch. Jennifer discovered eBay and we have been getting little packages lately. As I carried it in I noticed it was for me and couldn't wait to open it. Inside,surrounded by popcorn were three narrow boxes,as I pulled them out I could see the brightly colored tile inside the smaller box. I immediately recognized it as my poppy design. It is so much prettier than I thought it would be. It comes with hanging mounts on the back,art tiles. They are also bigger than I thought they would be,6"x16". I am going to order a bunch for special gifts. This design was done for an art quilt that won many awards and was featured in several publications. It was sold to a private collector who is now thinking of tiling something to match!

- Desiree

Latest Commission piece for Christmas

I finished a commission piece for my chiropractors wife for Christmas. She almost lost her dog this last year and he wanted to have the dog painted for her. I used pastels on suede mat board which is a wonderful surface for doing fur. Here is the progressive painting which is 16"x20"

Fons and Porters The Love of Quilting

Fon's and Porter- For the Love of Quilting

Its been a busy week, full of surprises!. Yesterday I shared with you that my interview was posted and my quilt was auctioned off on ebay. Well today I received the new Love of Quilting magazine where my pincushions and I are featured. You get the pattern in the magazine, I hope you will check it out. It is on the shelves now, it is the January/February 2012 issue. Also Kelly Mueller from Wooden Bear has a huge spread. They are giving you one of her patterns also and they did a whole spread on her studio and then taped her for a new show they are doing on QNN called Quilt with the stars. It is a wonderful opportunity for her and she is such an amazing person! I happen to know her personally and she is so sweet and down to earth. I hope you will check it out and I have posted some of the links here for you! The first part of her interview is here, the rest will hopefully be up by the time the magazine hits the shelves. Also ask your local quilt shops to get her latest Christmas fabric line coming out for next year, you won't want to miss it!!!!! Her adorable artwork and great projects are perfect for all you quilters wanting a fun, holiday project. Enjoy



- Desiree

Busy month Decembers are!

It is a time of decorations and lights, parties and food, performances and plays, family and fun. A time to remember its Christ's birthday we are celebrating before we get lost in the busyness of it all. I found that I waited too long to do some of the things I had wanted to do with my students and friends sadly. Next year I will work on starting earlier. My decorations are still coming together slowly, I need to finish those up too. Why is it that I am dragging with everything this year? I did manage to get my cards painted and printed, a family photo taken and included in the cards. I also managed to make some gingerbread cookie dough and spent yesterday baking cookies with the girls. I told them to add some raisins and red hots to make eyes and mouths but don't add too many. Not wanting to inhibit their creative flow I watched as they decorated the gingerbread men to death,I did end up limiting the decorations so we actually would taste the cookie which, by the way, looked and tasted delicious when all was said and done! Some of the small cookies didn't survive the finger assault that happened on the pan while being decorated. We ended up with many limbless cookies that we had to eat since they were too small to go into their cookie dishes.

I also have been working on some hand made gifts. I love gourds for some reason. No one, including my husband, can seem to figure out my fascination with gourds. I buy them, grow them, decorate them, burn them and save them! LOL These are pear gourds, and I love this simple covered dish I make by first cleaning the gourd and then drawing the upside down flower for the lid. Gourds are dried and when they are completely dry they dirty skin needs to be washed off. It leaves a wonderful mottled design on their hard surface that will accept stains and paints easily.

Not cleaned yet!

After they are cleaned with just some warm water and a scrubber sponge or steelwool I draw on my design. I then take my small jigsaw and cut out the flower designed lid. I have to make a small opening in the gourd to insert the blade, this can be dangerous if that knife slips so be careful! After cutting out the top I clean the inside out. It is filled with seeds and dried innards! I am allergic to the dust so I wear a mask and that seems to stop the lung irritation that happens when I saw or clean them.

I now burn the design into them, adding some shading and decorative elements. At this point, once I am happy with the whole design I will decide whether I like the stem or if I want to add a decorative hardware pull as the top to the gourd. On this one the stem was broken off so I drilled into the top and put on the hardware. I then us leather dyes to stain the inside of the gourd and let it dry. It dries rather quickly if its warm but it was cold so it took about an hour. I then use the same leather dyes to paint the outside of the gourd, the flower and leaves. You can either leave it natural or paint it, they both look great and its just personal preference. Once they are dry I spray them with a high gloss sealer, but leaving them natural is nice too! Its all about how I am feeling at that moment. 

Just the top flower and inside is stained at this point

All done

another view

These make wonderful gifts and the top lifts off in the shape of the flower revealing a hidden place to store things. I love covered jars and this one is perfect. Let me know what you have been doing this Christmas season, also share any home made items you have done as gifts. I like those the best. It is easy to buy things, its so much more personal to make something unique.

Featured artist and my quilt is up for auction.

So much is happening today. I woke up to find my interview for the sketchbook challenge blog was posted. They asked me some questions which made me have to really think about what and why I sketch. I hope you will comment on it. I would love to be asked to be a part of this group of artists.

Jamie Fingal also sent me word that my small quilt I did for the Alliance for American Quilts is up for auction,you can see it here.
It was a photo quilt I did for them but dedicated it to Jennifer and here work with the animals.
- Desiree

My Pistache tree

My Pistache tree, a photo by ddhabicht on Flickr.

My Pistache tree never colors up the way they are suppose to,beautiful reds and oranges but after Randy threatened to rip it out we got the most beautiful golden yellow,pinky color this year. It was as though it heard him and in an last ditch effort it gave us a golden display that seemed almost lite up when the sun hit it. Yesterday we had Santa Ana winds, my tree is now here but it went out in a blaze of glory,covering the back lawn in spun gold! The girls decided to lay in the leaves as they watched the last few hanging on the tree be blown off. It was raining these gold leaves for hours yesterday,amazing!

A block of hope for a dear friend

We were asked to make a block for a friend who just found out she has breast cancer. All the blocks will be gathered and made into a quilt for her,each block given as small letter of hope and love from so many people who love her. She has been such an inspiration to so many as well as being an example of a strong, successful women. I have so many people in my life right now that seem to be dealing with so many hard things. I think I am going to start making prayer flags. I found these on "The Prayer Flag Project" noticed many of my quilting friends were making them. The idea behind them is that you create one for every prayer you might have, some are doing one each day for 30 days, then you hang them outside. The wind is to blow the prayers to set them free. You leave them hanging in the yard and let the elements take them slowly, disappearing over time. I think I will add this to the wonderful thought behind these prayer flags, I already believe my prayers are set free as I say them. So my prayer flags will be there to remind me when I see them blowing to pray for those special people that I have made the flag for. I will share my flags soon, but for now this is my small block for her quilt of love and comfort during a hard road ahead. It is sent to you with much love and many prayers!

The guidelines were a cream background with fall colors and they have to have a heart in the block somewhere. Well I took the fall colors and made them into heart shaped leaves. Fall is the time when nature explodes into the warm wonderful colors of Autumn as it readies itself for the hard times winter brings. It is my prayer that during those dark days of winter she can wrap herself in this quilt and feel the warmth sent to her by so many as she waits for the spring in her life to bloom with that gift of hope and health again.

Thought for the day!

I was asked to do some costal, beachy things and I am not having much luck since my head is full of Christmas! I did this little sketch and made it into this card, kind of how I am feeling about the assignment.

A new painting for the series-Pears

I did this one to go with the others but need to move on, although this is such fun!

Thanksgiving Day 2011

Sketch of our Turkey this year! LOL

 This year we decided to cook a turkey although we have been vegan since March, we decided that no one would come for dinner unless we delivered meat!
We started our Thanksgiving celebration the night before with brining our turkey for 16 hours, Randy was anxious to get up and get the bird onto the rotisserie the next morning.  I was ready since I was doing mostly fresh vegetables and potatoes. Even though we have been vegan since March we decided that no one would come for Thanksgiving if I didn't do a turkey so we decided to cook for the masses and make some things that would work for everyone. The morning came and Randy jumped out of bed to get the turkey out of the brining solution and get it on the spicket.  We tied up the legs and the wings nice and tight so that it would turn without anything dangling and burning. Happy with our sewing job we got the bird onto the barbecue. Since it was so early, I asked him if he could help me do something that would only take a minute. He agreed and came inside. While inside, I guess the grease from the bird caught fire and when Randy looked outside our barbecue was on fire! He ran out to put out the fire and save his bird! Finally, with most of his arm hair now gone, the fire was out. The tile behind the barbecue was black, and there was a lot of smoke. When we opened up the lid of the barbecue we found a blackened, charcoaled turkey shaped briquette! Oh my gosh! He decided to take the bird inside to be cleaned up. He began to run water over the burn victim in hopes of saving it. Most of the skin had to be removed and he then decided to take it off of the spicket and put it in a pan on the barbecue grill to cook. The metal running through the bird was hot and burned his hands as he tried to removed the burnt bird. Finally, in the pan, covered in aluminum foil the bird was back on the barbecue cooking. He then decided that the turkey might taste burnt so he ran to the store and bought a fresh turkey and paid top dollar for it. I decided to take control of this bird and got it ready for cooking inside, in a real oven. No more man-turkeys. At the end of the day, both birds turned out perfect, and as far as being vegans we now had more turkey meat than anyone else on our street! We ended up sending a whole turkey home with my son! Randy is threatening to cook another turkey for Christmas but I am going to give the fire department a heads up this time! A fireproof apron and gloves sounds like the perfect Christmas gift for the hunter/slayer in my family!

Turkey after being cleaned!

So Thankful that everyone is safe, healthy and we could enjoy the day together.

International Postcard Exchange

I belong to an amazing group of artists that live all over the world, the group is called sketchersize. The idea is that we are supposed to send sketches from our walks. We have been sending postcards to each other over the past year and I have collected a wonderful assortment of artwork depicting the everyday lives of people and locations I only dream about. The postcard I sent out last month was from my San Diego Zoo trip. The weather was so amazing, the big cats seemed to lay right up next to the fences, begging to be photographed or sketched. It was a great day to enjoy living in Southern California.

Strawberries

I am working on a series of fruit and vegetable paintings. I did this layout and challenge originally on the DPW site with my persimmons. I really have enjoyed painting these, photographing at different stages. I am using watercolors so the first scan I do is while the paint is still translucent and softer. Since I like them looking older and more weathered I continue working the paint and applying layers to achieve the look I want. Here is my newest one, strawberries.