Family Collage

 What an odd looking bunch! Not my latest work, but I will share it anyway.

I have been writing about my Christmas commissions a lot lately. This is not one of them.


I can't show you my completed portrait commissions.  My clients want them as Christmas gifts and each one is meant to be a surprise for someone.   While I am fairly certain that none of the recipients ever read my blog, it is best not to take chances at this time of year. Instead,  I am posting a drawing of my family I did several years ago.  (You are viewing the drawing through glass, as it is framed, even though the frame was cropped out of the photo.)  As I remember, this was something of an experiment. Most of my commissioned work is much more formal - parents in the center, children arranged around them according to age - but I wanted more of a "collage" look for this one of my own family.  I rummaged through some old photos, candid shots taken when we were children.  My husband found a  photo of my two older sisters standing in front of a picket fence and wanted me to paint it. I had always loved the photo of my brother with his pet pigeon and I was really into dolls and teddy bears as a child. The drawing was more about how they all fit together in a composition than about our birth order.  In the ten or eleven years that have passed since the drawing was finished, I have grown as an artist, I hope my skills have improved, though my style is still pretty much the same.  I would crop it differently now, of course, less background and more attention to the faces.  It would probably be a whole new picture.  As a matter of fact, I think I will do another one soon - start from scratch and see what happens this time. That will be one of my goals for 2011.

Now that my last Christmas commission drawing is finished, and all that must be done is printing copies and framing them, it is time to get ready for Christmas in earnest. Not much time left, but that is the way it usually happens in the Burgus household. We are sometimes wrapping presents right up until midnight on December 24.

Still have some decorating to do and hope to share photos with you.  Hope it is a lovely season for you. I love Christmas!!!!!