Muse: ChristmasVisions 48

When I saw the hand-painted penguins from this week's muse, Chriss Blagrave, I went looking for penguin stamps on the Internet. I was looking for digital/cling/rubber stamps, but I found quite a few images of postage stamps instead. And when I saw these chinstrap penguins on a New Zealand postage stamp, I decided to take the plunge and have a go at hand-drawing and water colouring these penguins for this week's challenge.

Last year, I bought a set of Winsor & Newton water colour paints, intending to learn how to paint the way Anna Mason does, but with all of the health issues DH and I were having, I've only used the paints on a few backgrounds. Recently, I watched a video on Anna Mason's blog and was told by the speaker, Josh Kaufman, that we are procrastinating: we say we want to learn something new, but we're coming up with all kinds of excuses to postpone getting started. This message stuck with me, and I'm trying to stop procrastinating. So when I started my little project, I told myself I was going to use this as an exercise and not worry about the outcome. I also took Anna's advice to take measurements to get the drawing onto paper. After drawing the first penguin I got impatient and drew the other penguins without measuring everything, but I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Looking at the end result, I'm amazed that I created this, and in just a couple of hours. I think deciding on the sentiment was the hardest part lol. In the end I decided on a combination of sentiments from a set by Simon Says Stamp (Ornaments).

And here's a picture of Chriss's wonderful inspiration card:

Challenges:
Muse: ChristmasVisions 48
AAA Cards - 66 Watercolours
STAMPlorations June CAS - Anything goes (optional colour: blue)
The Glory of Christmas - 86 No patterened paper
Tuesday Throwdown - 298 Watercolor