Christmas lights are my favorite thing about all the craziness of the holiday season.  Twinkle lights make everything magical.  The warm glow illuminating against the dark night or hidden in the branches hypnotizes. So after a week of Thanksgiving vacation, Phoebe and I headed out to watch the downtown Conway Christmas tree lighting.

Watch the video the Conway Christmas tree lighting here

The Conway Christmas tree lighting was a perfect subject for my black sketch paper. If you have never tried it I highly encourage you to. I love how black and toned paper makes colored pencils pop! The colors are richer and it gives your illustration a higher level of contrast with a lot less effort. I want to try different subjects on this dark paper. Actually, I think a series of botanical illustrations would be nice. Maybe I’ll put that on my list for the spring.

We had a good time. We made bets on whether the whole tree would light up this year (that has been an issue in past years) and imagined a “Polar Express” scenario with Santa’s sleigh catching the tip of the tree.

She’s a senior this year and going out of town for college in the fall. I think I am finally realizing she wont be here everyday and these little moments won’t be so easy to have at a snap of the fingers.  I relish in the fact that my children are older and independent. Breathing a sigh of relief that I’m no longer chasing littles.  But the idea that one day they would leave has become very real and I don’t think I have prepared myself for that. We didn’t stay all that long. Since both of us are not the biggest fans of milling about in crowds. We grabbed a coffee (well actually I had chai and she got some frozen froofroo thing) and headed home.