Christmas Polar Bear Painting

It was December 1st when Sister headed to the attic and brought down all the Christmas décor and let me know that it was time to get busy decorating. By all the décor I mean a box, just one single box. It is a rather large box, but still.

When I had to sort through my house and decide what we were going to take to Korea with us a few years ago I knew that I wouldn’t have much storage space to dedicate to Christmas. So bin after bin after bin was narrowed down to one single box. Now we are in the Netherlands and have ample attic space but sadly all those bins are still in storage in the States.

Even though the pickings are few the living room has been filled with red and white and polar bears. I love polar bears. I have no idea who gave me my first stuffed polar bear as a child, but I still have Wilbur (though he too is in storage.)

Anyways, as I was saying the room has polar bears all over in it and a fall pheasant painting. I like the painting, but it needed to be replaced for a bit. So a crafting I went.

I sketched out a winter scene with polar bears, of course, representing our family: Ben, Sister, Brother, Little Bit, and me. I added a star as a reminder of the meaning of Christmas, Christ’s birth, and then filled in with some trees.

I have a 1/4 inch sheet of plywood that I have been packing around for a few years. It’s 2 ft by 4 ft and will fill the wall nicely. I cut a piece of banner paper the same size and proceeded to sketch the drawing onto it.

I primed my board and used carbon paper to transfer the image on to it. It’s really light, but it’s there.

Next came the painting. This is where I kind of got into the project and forgot to take step by step pictures. Sorry.

And viola! It’s done!

So there were some changes made from the drawing to the competed painting. I decided to leave out the trees and make it more simple.

Did I leave out the trees because I liked it better that way? Or was it because I ran out of time because of the Christmas markets in Germany?

Yup, pretty sure I was out enjoying the festivities when I should have been painting trees.

Oh, well, you do what you can, right?

Merry Christmas!