A 2017 Calendar!

I am happy and proud to introduce my first Trowel and Paintbrush calendar!

It's twelve months of herbs and edible flowers featuring my botanical watercolour paintings.

I started working on this project a year ago. I was encouraged by an artist friend (thank you for the nudge, Brenda of @cattailswordwork) to think about doing a calendar. I quickly figured out my theme: herbs and edible flowers. I already had six herb paintings finished. I started to work on six edible flower paintings hoping to have it ready for 2016 but I underestimated the time it was going to take me. Rather than introducing a rushed effort late in the season, I decided to make it a 2017 calendar.

I did some finessing of the edible flower paintings early this year. In the past few weeks, I hand lettered the months and days in watercolour. Some of lettering was done with a fine paintbrush, some with a pen nib dipped in watercolor paint.

I chose 'Mint' for the January page as it seemed to fit with a fresh start. The sweet violet bouquet seemed to be perfect for February, aptly so I found out later as the violet is February's birth flower. I chose 'Thyme' for March because time marches on. (Sorry to be corny but it's true! Sometimes I need to amuse myself.) I placed my viola and pansy painting as the July image since that's when my birthday is and violas and pansies have lots of family associations for me. Sage is on the December page as it is so often used in holiday meals.

I've printed the calendar in my studio on beautiful paper with the same care and attention I give to everything that I produce. As a bonus, I also created an accompanying page which describes some common uses of the herbs and flowers featured in my calendar.

The calendar would be a lovely gift for a gardener, cook or nature lover. Or you may want to buy it for yourself! It would brighten up a kitchen nook or an office space. I sell it without a hole at the top centre which is perfect if you want to display it with a clip, clothespin or washi tape. Or I can punch a centre hole for you so you can loop a piece of twine or ribbon through it.

It was so much work but I am thrilled with how it turned out. I really hope you like it too!

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Winter Inspiration: Story Behind the Painting

Sometimes the winter months seem like they will never end. That initial delight when the first snowflakes of the season arrive can turn into a cold and dark dread of winter's final days. Even my creative spirit at this time of year can feel sluggish as if it was laden down with ice crystals.

In November, a lovely customer ordered my Autumn Leaf print with the Albert Camus quote: "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower". She contacted me once she had received her order and asked if I knew of the beautiful winter quote by Camus. I didn't and what a beauty it is: "In the depth of winter I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer". Isn't that gorgeous? Quite beyond enduring unpleasant weather and dragging seasons, it speaks to the strength that we can find inside ourselves when life is difficult.

She said she would be interested in a companion print with the winter quote and had a wonderful idea of what to include with it. She suggested winterberry also known as Ilex verticillata. Do you know it? It's a beautiful shrub--a species of holly native to parts of North America. When the rest of nature is brown, grey or covered with snow, winterberry sports beautiful bright red berries.

While I wasn't able to find winterberry in my local forest, I did find branches of it at a nearby garden centre. I absolutely loved painting the berries. A greater challenge for me was creating the lettering in watercolour to match the quote I had done for the autumn leaf image. Watercolour paint is capricious. Hand lettering with a small paintbrush is not like using a computer font that remains the same each time you use it, although in the middle of this project I sort of wished it was! I did so many tries before finally coming up with a version that was similar in weight and tone to the previous quote. I am happy to say that my winterberry print is now available in my shop, on its own or coupled with the autumn leaf print.

Thank you to my lovely customer and Albert Camus for the wonderful winter inspiration!

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You can buy directly from me below. Your order will be processed through my secure Shopify shop. Shipping is free in Canada and the US. A flat rate of $7.50 applies to all other destinations. Products are shipped within 3-5 days of your order. ~ Kathleen

Happy Thanksgiving and a Sale

I want to wish a 'Happy Thanksgiving' to all of my friends and customers who are celebrating today in the United States. I hope you have a lovely day with family and friends.

I hand-lettered this message this morning in watercolour and then surrounded it with some of the nature finds I have in my studio. I wrote the words in pencil, fleshed out the letters and then filled them with watercolour.

In Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving in the month of October! It's always on the second Monday in October. I've always been a little jealous of the American tradition as I feel you have a more formal beginning to the holiday season. In Canada, there's a very long gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas and I never feel quite ready. Meeko's ready for the holidays though. He told me so.

I've been busy this month although I haven't been posting here on my blog very often. If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you will have seen that I've been working on a new series of flower paintings. I will be working at creating prints of them in the next few days. If I have time, I am also hoping to include them in a special project.  I'll let you know.

I also wanted to mention that I am having a holiday sale in my art shop. You can get 20% off, now through Monday, November 30th. Just use the coupon code SHOP2015 at checkout.

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A Sweet Saturday

This past weekend was full of pleasant surprises. I received a couple of orders on Saturday morning which is always nice. One was particularly touching: an order from someone in Europe to be sent to Manitoba, my birth province, for her mother's birthday. It feels special when customers share the reasons behind their purchases. It makes things feel personal. She asked me to write in a card for her. I actually had the shivers when I read the order. Maybe that sounds strange, but it feels like a privilege to have my art chosen as a gift for a family member, especially someone who lives so far away.

I also had a customer contact me about the possibility of doing her wedding invitations. Her favourite flower is the iris. I was able to tell her that I had a couple of completed iris paintings in my painting drawer. We're just in the initial stages of talking but the fact that she contacted me saying that she loved my work and thought of me for her invitations is really lovely. It made my day.

I've always loved irises and can't wait to see mine bloom in my garden again. Well actually, I can't wait to see anything bloom in my garden at this point! Yes, that iris photo at the top was taken against a backdrop of  snow. I think the snow might melt this week, but I really don't want to hope too much.

On Saturday morning, I opened a parcel that had arrived the day before. I purchased two fabric pouches from Sonia. She mailed them from France on Tuesday. I received them here in Canada on Friday. The postal elves were working extra fast last week! The pouches are so beautiful. I am going to use them in my studio. I've put a jar in the base of one of them and am using it to store paintbrushes.

On Saturday afternoon, I worked on some exercises for a watercolour lettering course I'm taking. It was a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. The course lasts for ten weeks and I'm sure that I am going to benefit in all sorts of ways. I incorporate text in my paintings sometimes and I just want to feel more confident about it. One of the exercises was to choose one letter of the alphabet and to do as many variations as you could think of within pebble shapes. When Emma saw the photo of my 't' exercise, she said "You did that? I thought it was Geninne's work." (She hadn't seen me working on it.) Do you think she could have given me a nicer compliment? :) Without a doubt, this course is going to be good for me.

This morning, I took some time to write a 'to do' list. I had so many things swirling in my head that I thought it would reduce some brain congestion to have them down on paper. It kind of worked. I can't quite believe that we are at the end of March. Both this week and next week are short because of the holiday weekend. March felt short already because of the girls' school breaks. I have so many new prints that I want to introduce to my shop; I have new paintings to paint, I'm thinking of creating my own website...do you see what I mean? So many thoughts swirling.