“No cheeses for us meeces”

Quite possibly the best line of any Christmas film.

(For those of you who haven’t been blessed with the quote yet – or the song it comes from – I would highly recommend watching this clip from A Muppets Christmas Carol.)

As it happens, this post actually has nothing to do with cheese or mice but it does have something to do with Christmas. So, from that perspective, the title still totally makes sense!

So what could be better than cheese or mice? Well, I wanted to share a few Christmas presents that I painted this year.

Mr Snowman

I recently shared a post about some snowmen I sent out to friends and family. In addition to these, I decided to draw a slightly larger snowman as a present for my ‘Big Brothers Big Sisters’ sibling. I volunteer for this amazing Oxford Hub project and wrote earlier in the year about the things I did to keep up contact with my ‘Little Sister’ during the first lockdown. Luckily, I was able to see my ‘Little Sister’ in September and October. I was a bit worried that lockdown might’ve been too disruptive – I used to see my ‘Little Sister’ pretty much every week and a gap of 5 months was therefore a lot – but it was like nothing had happened. We went to the park, got some milkshakes and talked about our cats.

Things have changed again since then so I haven’t seen my ‘Little Sister’ for a while and I wanted to make sure she got a nice Christmas present from me. So Mr Snowman wished her a Merry Christmas on my behalf on Christmas morning. I should add that I also sent her a chocolate lolly for good measure!

Savanna scene

This piece was for my partner. As supportive and wonderful as he is, he does have a rather inconvenient birthday – Christmas Eve! Nothing he can do about it and, to be fair, I wouldn’t really change it. I just enjoy teasing him each year!

That said, trying to think of ways to make a Tier-3-birthday interesting the day before a Covid-Christmas was a bit of a challenge. I usually opt for ‘experience’ presents and that just wasn’t an option this year…! 

I painted something for my partner for his birthday in 2017. I remember it being quite a stressful experience. I usually worked on it in our little flat (when we were still living in West Oxfordshire) while my partner was out playing football on saturday afternoons. I agonised over every detail and added something in at the last minute. It ruined the whole picture. I remember crying all afternoon trying to work out how I was going to do it all again in only a couple of weeks. I managed to do it, but, to be honest, it’s quite funny looking back now. It was definitely a gift where the thought counted, but, looking at my work from this year, I really didn’t know what I was doing with watercolours back then so the quality wasn’t great!

My partner has said previously that he would love a savanna scene so I did some research and drew out what I thought was within my capabilities. I’m still pretty nervous about drawing and painting new, unfamiliar things so I wanted to attempt something realistic. This is an A5 piece so I picked a couple of iconic animals to feature (the giraffe and a gazelle), along with typical savanna grass, shrubs and trees. 

I began with a simple watercolour layer. When I started the piece, I wasn’t exactly sure about which materials I was going to end up using. I was considering using ink over the watercolour layer like in some of my other landscapes but I thought that might be a bit too harsh. Instead, I added pencil crayon to the foreground. I wanted attention to be drawn to this section so I left the watercolour background untouched and prayed that the detail of the giraffe and gazelle would shine through!

Ingleborough in watercolour and ink

This final piece was for my mum and dad. It was a bit of a gamble but I did decide to layer ink on watercolour for this one. I say gamble because I think ink looks best where there’s a lot of intricate detail. The picture is of Ingleborough and, in my limited experience, this sort of landscape didn’t really strike me as having a lot of intricate detail.

That said, I found a useful photo of this Yorkshire mountain with a dry stone wall in the foreground. This wall reminded me a lot of the windmill and derelict barn I drew on top of watercolour earlier in the year so I decided it was worth a go.

Like the savanna scene, I started with the watercolour layer. I decided to be quite loose with this and only directed the colours very vaguely around the key features of the picture. I then drew the outline of the dry stone wall. I started with this because it’s the defining feature of the piece – your eyes are immediately drawn to it.

Satisfied, I moved onto Ingleborough itself. I looked at its scars and crevices and drew them out in ink. I was very careful with this. I didn’t want the mountain to end up being solid black and I thought there was a serious risk of that happening – I love working with pen but it can be tempting to add ‘just one more line’ and, before you know it, you’ve got a solid black object that is irreversibly ruined.

I didn’t add as much detail to the middle ground but drew lots of ink onto the dry stone wall in the foreground. Though I drew out this section first, I didn’t add detail until the very end. I really enjoyed this bit, but I still had to be careful with my pen and didn’t want to make the wall too dark.

I’ve never walked up Ingleborough but its iconic flat top always reminds me of home and the brilliance of the Yorkshire Dales!

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There’s one final piece I’m planning to share with you but I can’t just yet. Due to some postal delays, the recipient hasn’t received their present yet so I look forward to sharing it with you soon!

(And, to bring this post full circle, I can confirm that there have been plenty of cheeses for us meeces this Christmas!!!)