Advent Calendar 2023

I've finished drawing my Advent calendar, the 13th since I began in 2008.  As always, it's been a meaningful way for me to reflect, draw, and color using seasonal images and words, often taken from scripture, hymns, and prayers. 

Because Advent ended on Sunday 12/24 this year, my calendar grid has double-wide spaces for the Sundays (moving down diagonally from the top left) and for Christmas Day.

Each drawing space is small, about 1-5/8" high, and it may look a bit fuzzy or faded above.  For a better view, click on the image.  If you'd like to see my calendar drawings from past years, click here.

• Copic markers; also some colored pencil for 12/3
  
• Pen: Copic multiliner or Micron
  
• Words and sources:
• 12/3  We are leaving ordinary time  (My calendar each year starts with these words which point out the wonder of the Advent time, looking forward to Christmas and the birth of Jesus.  And in the church year, our long season of "ordinary time" - the summer and fall weeks after Pentecost - has now ended.)
  
• 12/4  Make haste to help us (Psalm 70:1 and Book of Common Prayer, evening prayer liturgy)
• 12/5  O come, thou branch of Jesse's tree (Hymn "O come, O come, Emmanuel")
• 12/6  Joy
• 12/7  Keep awake (Mark 13:35-37)
• 12/8  Grace
• 12/9  Good news - Jesus Christ the Son of God (Mark 1:1) 
• 12/10 Joyful hope is springing (Hymn "Sleepers, wake!") 
• 12/11 Mercy and truth have met together (Psalm 85:10) 
• 12/12 Restore (Psalm 80:3) 
• 12/13 The day is near (Romans 13:12) 
• 12/14 Stir up your strength and come to help us (Psalm 80:2) 
• 12/15 Peace shall be a pathway for his feet (Psalm 85:13) 
• 12/16 God so loves the world ... (John 3:16, with "loves" in place of "loved")
  
• 12/17 Rejoice, rejoice, believers, and let your lights appear!  (Hymn)
  
• 12/18 Listen 
• 12/19 Holy and mighty (Trisagion hymn, "Holy God, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us")
  
• 12/20 The Lord is not slow about His promise. (2 Peter 3:9) 
• 12/21 Son of God - Savior - Emmanuel - Redeemer - Son of Man
  
• 12/22 Praise
  
• 12/23 Patience
  
• 12/24 May the Word sent from God lead us in the way of love, hope, joy, and peace. (Advent candle-lighting sentence from our church bulletin)
  
• 12/25 Joy to the world!
  

Sketch - Cezanne Inspired

Getting warmed up for February's Cezanne inspired project, I did this rough pencil sketch with a Bible verse that echoed the feeling of abundance in the original painting.  I added a bit of coloring, then set it aside, thinking I might use it for another drawing. 

But the longer it sat on my table, the more it seemed complete in itself, and the words developed layers of meaning for me as time went on.  So three months later, I'm calling it done.  Sometimes my scratchiest sketches make me happy without needing a polished end point.

• Copic marker colors used: W1, 3; Y13; YR21, 30; YG05, 21; E81; V000, 22; BV31; B41
• Colored pencils, a very old set of Venus Spectracolor: ultramarine, orange, olive green, scarlet lake, terra cotta, and orange-yellow
• Paper: printer paper, cut down to 4-1/4 x 5-1/2"
• Words: From His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. - John 1:16

Three Purple Flowers in Vase

Three flowers in a vase. Drawn with pencil, colored with Copic markers and a bit of colored pencil.

Added April 26, 2011: Click here to see my greeting card with another version of the flowers.

• Copic marker colors used: Y11,19, W0,1, RV000,91, V000,12,20, BG10,70,93, custom colors YYR2000, YG6000
  
• Colored pencils: Venus Spectracolor cream and lavender
• Paper: Neenah, cut down to 4.25 x 5.5"

Garden Weeds

Weeds propagating in the garden. Dandelion with its many seeds, grass with its ground-level runners, and a plant that I know as "witch-weed," perhaps in the morning-glory family. Witch-weed propagates by a white underground rhizome that sends up threadlike roots and elongated heart-shaped leaves. It's difficult to remove, because the rhizomes are brittle, and just a small fragment left in the ground will grow another plant. Today's drawing was inspired by Illustration Friday's word for the week, "propagate."

Below is my 1981 pencil sketch of a small witch-weed plant that I found growing in my garden. After I drew the weed, I'm sure I thoroughly destroyed it.

• Copic marker colors used: Rocks W3, BV23; Soil E43+E21 (colored on top of each other), dotted with E33,71 applied with W0 brush tip, all blended with W1 and 0; Leaves and stems G07,40, YG05,21,23,63; Dandelion roots E41; Rhizome Copic opaque white; Sky airbrushed with B01, then mottled with Copic Opaque White applied on a wet brush.
• Paper: Neenah, cut down to 5x7"

Fruit Bowl 2 - Sketch

This was just a quick little warm-up drawing, pencil on scrap paper. But I liked it well enough to color it. The coloring is sketchy like the pencil drawing, but layered in places. See Fruit Bowl 1, a year earlier, for another version of the same subject.

• Copic marker colors used: B41,45, E00,04,95, G21, YG03,63,91, V04,15, YR04,09,15,21, R08,24, RV13,95
• Paper: 4x6" copier paper

Curved Shapes in Greens and Yellows

A very small, abstract pencil drawing. Curved shapes colored in greens and yellows, with an airbrushed background.

• Copic marker colors used: Y06, YG21,63, G21,40; Copic airbrush Y06 and speckles of YG63. When I color on top of pencil, I try to dab the colors on, instead of dragging the marker tip across the pencil lines, to avoid smearing the pencil.
• Paper: a 4x4" square of Strathmore medium-weight drawing paper.

River Landscape 2

I wanted to try a colored version of a 9x12 pencil landscape drawing from 1981. I used my light box to trace it onto 8.5x11 paper, moving the upper left "over and down" a little to fit the smaller page. Then I colored it sparsely. I'm happy with the result, in the spirit of the original.

Copic colors used: W0,3,5; C0,1,3,5; E41,44,49,71; Y000,11; YR00,21; BV04,20,23,31; G07,24,28; YG23,63,91; BG10,49,72,93,96
Paper: Neenah, 8.5x11"

Small Landscape Drawing

This is a small drawing on sketch paper, glued onto a 4x6 card. I drew it with pencil and colored it with my markers. No multiliner this time. I like the watercolor effect.

Copic colors used: B000,01, E000,71, G21,24, R02,08, BV04,20, W5. Note: in an effort to keep the pencil from smearing onto my marker tips (which looks bad but doesn't hurt the markers), I tried not to drag the tips across the pencil lines.

Grape Ivy 2008

My grape ivy plant #3, a cutting of a cutting of my plant #1 from 1970. I love its leaves and its knobby stems and its survival skills. I drew plant #2 in 1983.

I drew this in pencil, then scanned and printed it before coloring. (In other words, I didn't color my original pencil drawing.) On the copy that I was coloring, I also added some lines in cool gray Copic multiliner. The pot is a very dark brown in real life, but for this drawing, I made it blue and gray.

My original background (YR21 and BG000) looked too intense to me, so I faded it out by coloring over & over with colorless blender, pushing the excess color out the back. And the paper didn't even pill. About this drawing I wrote, "It's such a pleasure to have markers that make nice colors, don't blob all over the paper, and what's more, can do interesting effects that I never knew could be done with markers."

Copic colors used: The clay pot is base color R02 with E09 rim & E09 applied on the R02 marker to give it the streaks & splotches. The leaves are base colors of G12, G21, YG03, YG23 with various layers of darker greens applied on the lighter markers. When it was all done, I added some white colored pencil on the potting soil to make it less of a solid dark color.

Fruit Bowl 1

This is a bowl of plastic fruit on my dining room table, where I draw. I used some white colored pencil on the gourds and grapes. Otherwise, it's all Copics. I used "splotching through paper" to make the uneven coloring.

I did this about one month after I started using Copic markers. Shows how easy they are to work with. The back of the paper is also nice in its own way (below).

Edited October 11, 2009: See Fruit Bowl 2 for a later, sketchy version of this subject.

Glass Jewelry Box

Someone made this leaded-glass jewelry box for me. Pale golden glass, with a clear beveled diamond shape in the lid. I drew it in pencil on cheap thin typing paper and colored it with colored pencils.

I still have the jewelry, including the beaded necklace and earrings (below) and the pin with blue stones. But the box fell apart after years of use.

Lady Slipper Orchid

Several kinds of Lady Slipper Orchids grow wild in the eastern and midwestern U.S. My drawing is exaggerated, but not by much. August is past their blooming season, so this was not drawn from life.

Narcissus Flower

Pencil with a touch of color.

River Landscape 1

A pencil landscape. I like the meandering lines of the drawing.

28 years later, I drew a version with color.

Turtle Shapes

Two overlapping shapes, traced from a ceramic turtle that I made in grade school (shown below.) To try this, click here.

Flower in Red, Blue and Yellow

A very small drawing.

Landscape in Yellow, Crimson Lake, and Blue

One of my last colored pencil efforts. Great colors, I think.

Dragon

A fire-breathing dragon doodle.

Tree with Four Leaves

Done with colored pencils. Wonderful colors. A solemn feeling.

Paper: ecru Crane's card approx. 4x6"

Landscape with Silver Strand

Sometimes I see the silver strand as a path, sometimes as a stream of water. I love this drawing, but colored pencils were not the right medium for me.

Paper: white Crane's card approx. 4x6"