Holiday Wishes!

2015 has been a crazy year; wonderful in so many ways! The biggest is I have my hearing back thanks to Dr. CaJacob's skilled hands! I also have tiny titanium implants in my ears, which is way cool! I have otosclerosis, a hereditary hearing loss which causes the ear bones to calcify and preventing the sound waves from getting to the cochleas. Now I can hear normally; it is amazing and no more hearing aids!


It looks like it will be another crazy year in 2016. I have a lot of great things lined up and am kicking things off with a trip to Costa Rica with some friends and a university group.

I plan to do a lot of sketching and painting while there.

Here is a sketch from recent trip to the Krohn Conservatory with a group of fabulous ladies. Their holiday display is extraordinary and they add to it every year.

Final sketch...

On location

Sarah, me, Amy, Anisha, and Vanessa

Lion Sketch for Sale to Support The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado

John the Lion, the handsome fellow I have sketched several times at the Cincinnati Zoo

I have a sketch for sale of John the Lion  that will benefit The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado to build funds in order for them to bring in and care for 33 lions and 1 Andean bear just being rescued from circuses.

Spread the word; Share and enjoy!


http://us.ebid.net/for-sale/john-the-lion-by-christina-wald-138219609.htm

From a trip last summer...

You can see all the art and prints available here:
http://us.ebid.net/perl/main.cgi?mo=user-store&title=wildlife-art-for-the-wild-animal-sanctuary

Also for sale is a signed copy of my book Big Cats.
http://us.ebid.net/for-sale/big-cats-by-christina-wald-138219576.htm

Spring Fairies

Unleashing the last spirits of winter

Something about spring makes you think of fairies. I think it is all of the new life that emerges. So, I have been doing a lot of them in my sketchbook lately.

The council is in session...

We also just saw Song of the Sea, a wonderful film by the folks who did The Secret of Kells. It was a beautiful film with a bit of a Spirited Away vibe with a dash of Tolkien's Silmarillion (he was greatly influenced by Celtic and other European mythology). I loved the design and the concept.

It is common mythology around the world of spirits being a part of everything... The world does awaken this time of year from a dormant state.

I can hardly wait to get outside to sketch!

The Leaf Litter...

Even at the Krohn Conservatory!

It is The Year of the Goat

Happy Chinese New Year a day late! Although this is from the goats I saw in Greece on a tiny island off of Aegina called Moni Eginas.

It was cute and covered in goats and peacocks.

My friend brought bread to feed them and got head butted by an aggressive male when she tried to pet him. She said she should have known better and had giant bruises to prove it!
They had glorious horns!

Moni Eginas; magical land of goats and peacocks

Trip to Romania Part 4: Maramureș and the Painted Cemetery

Beautiful wooden chapel next to the tallest wooden church in Europe.

Me sketching quickly

Sketch of one of the chapels in Maramureș next to the church with that is tallest wooden building in Europe. I loved the little chapel next to it and drew there. The gorgeous arched gateway was a good place to sketch from.

Ioana took this picture of me entering the monastery complex. The chapel is hidden behind the trees, the tallest wooden church is on the left.

Chapel detail

The architecture is very different from Brasov and the Moldovan areas.
We were very close to the Ukraine here. This was also the town with the Merry Cemetery called Săpânța.

Taken from my balcony overlooking the cemetery

We stayed at a wonderful pension here called Anuta. (Basically what they call a bed and breakfast there). The owners were super friendly and even invited us to try their homemade brandy! 

The location was next to the Merry Cemetery. It was hard to convince my husband that was a selling point when he saw this picture I snapped from my bedroom.

When we first entered the town, we stopped by a woman's house where she showed us socks and blankets she had woven. The folk craft in Romania are high art. Gorgeous stuff!

She had Ioana take my picture at the loom.

I have several posts after this including castles, more painted church details and I cannot believe I skipped posting about Sighișoara!!!

The Merry Cemetery in the daytime...

Greetings from Săpânța!

Happy New Year!

View from the bench

My final Romania post will be soon. I have been really swamped with a variety of things.

I have several books in the works and I look forward to showing work from them soon. I am crazy swamped right now, but there are a lot of great things happening! (Yes, I am aware I said I am swamped twice!)

Here are some images I have neglected to post.

December 23rd I visited Krohn Conservatory to sketch their holiday display with Amy Bogard. It is beautiful, filled with Cincinnati icons made out of natural materials. We found out later from Chuck Rekow that the display was done by Applied Imagination.

Amazing! It looks like Cincinnati as a fairyland!

See Amy’s sketches here! http://cincyillustrators.blogspot.com/2014/12/holiday-sketches.html

Amy and I also sketched at the Mummy Exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center. 

See those sketches here: http://cincyillustrators.blogspot.com/2014/12/preview-of-mummy-exhibit-at-cincinnati.html 

Sketch from the hearing doctor's office

I have been squeezing in sketches hear and there between deadlines. The view of Clifton from the ear doctor’s office (in the Good Samaritan hospital campus) was gorgeous! I could not resist sketching it.

So, I am catching up on this blog and am currently preparing for the Slam Bam Comic Jam at the Art Academy. 

Details very soon. The opening is January 30th!

Trip to Romania Part 3: Painted Monastaries

Me Sketching at Voronet

We went to a lot of monasteries old and new. Of course the star monasatries are the old ones...

Above is Voronet Monastery in the Moldovan area of Romania. It was built in 1488 by Stephen the Great. The painting have survived war, weather and disuse. They are now restored including the paintings on the inside. They are not restoring the exterior paintings as far as I know which I think is a good thing.

This was the only place where we ran into an American tour group.

Detail from the exterior of Voronet. All of these churches have paintings of the Last Judgement... This is the place you want to avoid...

This is from the Humor Monastery located in Mănăstirea Humorului.

Me sketching at Humor Monastary

Detail of the battle in Constantinople.

Above is the Humor Monastery, a painted monastery located in Mănăstirea Humorului.  The frescoes were originally painted in 1535 and this one shows Constantinople defending itself from a Persian invasion in 626. The Persians were illustrated as Turks which is proof that the news is always prone to revisionism even if it is really old news

A lot of the monasteries had these cool seraphim images depicted as wing clusters with lots of eyeballs.


I know I have been slow to post these images. But there is MUCH more! Next up, the Merry Cemetery and a stones throw from the Ukraine border...

Trip to Romania Part 2: The Carpathian Mountains and Piatra Neamt

Sketch of the Museum of History and Archaeology in the city of Piatra Neamt.

More from the Romania trip!

Piatra Neamt: We loved this city so much, we stayed for 2 nights at the Grand Hotel Ceahlau and took a lot of time to sketch. They have the cutest gondola up to the top of the mountain.

Recently restored fortress that was much more vertical than the sketch suggests in order to defend from the Turks.

Sketch of the Carpathian mountains before a hike on September 7th.

Picture on location from the porch at our little pension. I sketched during breakfast.

Just call me Indiana Wald! Hiking over a safe but rickety looking bridge in the Carpathians

I was sad not to see any brown bears in the mountains. We did see their scat though…

Trip to Romania: Part I

Red line shows our itinerary...

I just got back from a 2 week trip to Romania with my friend Ioana who is working on a plant field guide to the country. So much fun touring the country and seeing castles, churches, villages and fortresses.

It was a whirlwind! We were on the road a lot so we could see as much as possible. But, in the short time, it was just tastes of different regions. 

We first went to Romania in 1998 to be in George and Ioana's wedding. The country has done a 180 since then and is growing in leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, the guys could not join us this visit.

We did not get to revisit the seaside town of Constanta or the Dacian ruins, but next time...

Our first stop was Brasov and OF COURSE Castle Bran in Transylvania. We did not see Bran last time since I had to pick one castle to visit and that was Peles. So this time, we made sure to cover it.

Brasov is an amazing town. I hope to go back and sketch more! We only got a little taste of the city.

The Brasov town square

While I sketched this, they were giving a free opera concert. It seemed to cover a lot of the greatest hits and was a bit of a sampler platter of songs.

A peacock is a good image in Brasov. It is a proud and beautiful city.

Did you think I would not sketch it?

Queen Marie's Chapel we thought... Gorgeous with all the moss...

Me, walking up to the castle...

If you are curious and want to know more, watch this amazing series about Romania called Wild Carpathia. They go to a lot of the places Ioana and I went to and talks about how they are trying to conserve the largest areas of virgin forest in Europe.

http://youtu.be/jvDIpOPlWJ8

Travel Madness-Report on ICON 8

It has been a CRAZY summer! I am REALLY behind on posting here.

I went to Portland in July for ICON the illustration conference and just got back from 2 weeks in Romania. I am now digging out from under a TON of work.

So, enjoy these ICON and Portland sketches.

ICON was a great time. I met a lot of cool artists and got to visit LAIKA studios.

I do wish they had a set up that involved smaller groups rather than a lecture hall for all the presentations one after the other. I know there are a lot of challenges putting up an event like this, but there was an impersonal, lecture hall freshmen 101 feeling to it that would have probably been helped by everyone picking 3 or 4 smaller sessions a day to see.

It would have also been less overwhelming.

The speakers were very good for the most part; there was just a fatigue that set in when you watched so many in a day.

The workshops were set up more in that way and were excellent.

More soon!

 

Chinese Gardens

SKETCHES FROM ICON 8: