Annual family traditions are not easy to establish and maintain over an extended length of time. My daughter Gretchen and I have a 15-year old ritual of painting a watercolor every Thanksgiving day. We created our first turkey watercolor in 1995 when she was 11 years old and that began our annual process of creative story-telling, illustration and pure teamwork painting watercolors depicting a marvelous story about turkeys in our modern world. This year marks our 15th watercolor and we are ever so excited to begin!
A brief overview of our turkey saga: Turkeys on route to the slaughter house escape. Turkeys tour the world. Turkeys experience trauma, love, family, travel, culture, politics and heart break. The story is much more complex and will someday make a great book! Our process is simple - we dream up a concept that may pertain to current world events or our personal lives, sketch out the big idea, illustrate the image on watercolor paper and then paint away!
1995 Watercolor - our first in the series was a straightforward picture of a turkey looking a bit worried. This look gave us an idea to put a personality to the bird and create a sequence of events that we could paint in future Thanksgivings!
1998 Watercolor - This painting shows the evil farmer (notice the yellow hat and red truck) taking young birds to the slaughter house. Gretchen and I already had a turkey escape planned out for a future watercolor.
2000 Watercolor - here is Gretchen with the beginnings of the great escape painting.
2000 Watercolor - the farmer is helpless watching the turkeys make their way to a better life. Our watercolor the following year showed them sun bathing on a Mexican beach drinking pina coladas!
2002 Watercolor - turkeys summit Mount Everest. The future is bright for our adventurous birds and their political cause! They picketed the White House in the 2004 watercolor.
2005 Watercolor - Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans and our turkeys sprung into action saving others in the chaos. They even saved our farmer (in the yellow hat and red truck)! Above the image is a photo of Gretchen painting turkeys in Florence, Italy taking art classes in a studio overlooking the Duomo.
2007 Watercolor - our interpretation of Norman Rockwell's famous Thanksgiving dinner celebration. They are eating a delicious platter of worms! Notice the picture on the wall of the farmer - now best friends with the turkeys. (this is one of many back stories)
2009 Watercolor - the great world recession/depression of 2009 punched all of us in the gut, including our turkey friends. The pencil sketch above captured the big idea and we chose to paint this watercolor in black and white sepia tone to emphasize the bleak conditions we all faced in last years holiday.
What's next? 2010 marks our 15th watercolor together and we proudly look back at a pretty darn good father/daughter tradition. Gretchen now teaches art at a private elementary school in Bellevue, Washington and I operate my design and visualization business Leggitt Studio LLC. Life is good!
Look for other interesting articles on my blog, visit my website www.drawingshortcuts.com and read my new book Drawing Shortcuts Second Edition.
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