What are you doing New Year's Eve?

I've been looking at Norman Rockwell paintings on Pinterest and one specific painting jumped out at me. It was the painting of a little girl in her pajamas at the top of the steps while she looks on at the adults having a holiday party downstairs. There are actually two versions:

The first one is a preliminary sketch where Rockwell figured out the composition and color. It's rough compared to Rockwell's usual final art, but I admire the looseness and mood.

After doing the color studies, and after implementing reference pictures of a child model at the top of the stairs and his friends and neighbors at the bottom of the stairs, Rockwell finished the final version below.

There's a great write up about Norman Rockwell's process of creating this painting here.

While I was looking at the Rockwell paintings, I felt inspired and I wanted to do my own version.

In my version, the little girl has cornrows with red beads, a cute pink striped pajama set, and a HarperIman Sienna doll. The adults are having their holiday party below.

(It's funny. I said I would give myself a break with drawing crowds because I had to draw a lot in Cooking Up Change and A Song for August, and yet, here I am... drawing crowds for fun. And enjoying it.)

Here's to the joy of staying up past our collective bed times to see the ball drop, just like the little girl at the top of the steps.

Happy New Year!

-Alleanna