This Christmas painting is for Sophie, at her request. It’s Little My from the Moomin books, and she is something of a teeny hero in our house. For those of you who don’t know Little My, here’s a good excerpt:

“Where’s Mother?” he asked.

“Somebody ate her,” replied Little My untruthfully. “Have you any food?”

Snufkin pointed with his pipe-stem. A small kettle of peas was simmering over his camp-fire nearby. Beside it stood another with hot coffee. “But I suppose milk’s what you drink,” he said.

Little My gave a contemptuous laugh. She did not bat an eyelid as she swallowed two brimming teaspoonfuls of coffee and ate no fewer than four peas.

She’s kind of a tiny little anarchist, and I think there’s something about her sassy attitude that really appeals to my very strait-laced kids. Little My is not mean, just cuts to the chase and tells it like it is. And does it gleefully. If you haven’t read any Moomin books, go to the library right now and check them out. Tove Jansson has a very dry kind of humor, and often her stories are funny but also bittersweet. I love them, and her amazing illustrations too.

I took a painting, working, and everything else break to have a little fun with Facebook's new settings. Unfortunately, this isn't an option (yet?) for fan pages, but you can certainly mess with your personal profile all you want! I was inspired by the post here, and there are directions and a download to do it yourself! I will add to this - after you make your images, upload them in reverse order, one at a time. Otherwise they'll upload in a scrambled or backwards fashion. Have fun!

I really wanted to post a new painting every day or so, but right now all the free time I have has to be spent posting, not scanning. :) Rest assured I'm still painting up a storm and will post as soon as I can.

Meanwhile for your viewing enjoyment, here's an amazing video where the animation is all done in watercolor. By hand. (and most definitely not by me, I wish!) I'm in awe.

This is the third year in a row that I've done custom paintings for Christmas gifts for family members. For some reason, everyone wants one! So I have been painting like crazy. Good crazy.

I'll be posting a new pic every day or so, and I'll start off with Peter's. He wanted a rainforest. A rainforest! Nothing like something simple and uncomplicated, huh? I told him that would take a while, and he pointed to the painting I did for his father that now hangs above our fireplace and said, "You know, just do what you did for Daddy, but in a rainforest instead." I don't know whether to be honored that my kids seem to think nothing is impossible for me to do, or frustrated at the complete lack of concept of the amount of work that goes into a project like this. So Petey, you get your rainforest.

One really good thing about challenging myself to pick up the brushes again after 6 months is that I have a huge looming deadline to contend with, and a large number of paintings to finish in that time. (I also have some stuffed animals I wanted to try to make too, but that's a story for another day.) The good thing about all this pressure is that it forces me to make the most of all the time I have, and to declare something to be done sooner than I would have normally. And they really ARE done, it's not me slacking off; it's that ordinarily I would fool around with something that was done for another week, and think about it, blah blah blah. It's a rainforest, Peter saw me working on it and loves it, and I'M PAINTING EVERY DAY. That's all I need to know.