 Welcome friends and visitors to Monet Cafe. It's that exciting time again where we announce our winners of our monthly challenge in our Facebook group. This past month for December 2018 we had the category to emulate another artist. It could be an artist that's passed away from the past or someone who's kind of famous today or that you like. As in you know this particular painting by Degas, I happen to love this painting, Blue Dancers. And it just so happens. We have two categories. We have Beginner and Advanced and it just so happens that the advanced category winner did recreate this particular painting. Now take a look at this. That's the original. Now here comes the actual recreation for the Advanced category and the winner is Linda Fiola Long. Congratulations. I mean you can see what an amazing, amazing recreation of that painting. And there were so many great entries. You know I can't help but have some honorable mentions. So these are a few of the paintings in the advanced category that I just wanted to share. I think they are just so well done. I wanted to mention too that I wish I could have gotten every single artist's name to put in here. Not only the one that they were emulating but the name of the artist in our group. But you know it's a lot of work to put these videos together. So you'll recognize your own work if it's in here. And all of you congratulations to everyone who submitted. But I wanted to mention that again not all of the works here were pieces of an artist that has passed away. Oh and also this too is another recreation of that blue dancers. That was just so gorgeous. I love that piece. And I want to encourage you if you have never tried this. I think this was one of my favorite monthly challenges we've had so far. Because I think what it does it causes us, it stretches us as an artist. Not that we want to copy other artist work but it breaks us out of our molds and our habits that we're in when we try to emulate someone else's style. So I think this was a very beneficial challenge and exercise. So you should try this. Also too I wanted to mention that some of these I was so impressed by a few of them where they, oh look at that painting. Where they, the artist in our group took another artist and didn't just emulate a particular painting but used their style like this one here. I believe this was a combination of Van Gogh and Monet and oh how gorgeous. Oh these are just fantastic. And I don't want to forget to mention that the winners of each category the advanced and beginner winners will receive a prize. The co-inventor of Pan Pastels has generously offered to give prizes to the winners. And if you're not a member of our Facebook group already I highly recommend you do so because you can get in there and see this album, see all of the works and the artist that they used to recreate from. And now for the beginner category. The winner of this category happened to do a recreation of a Claude Monet painting called the Studio Boat. So congratulations to Ronnie Rabin's Malik. You did a beautiful job as a beginner recreating this painting. Gorgeous reflections, just really gorgeous work. And now for the honorable mentions. I am like totally impressed with these beginners. What outstanding work you're doing. I was also very impressed with the variety of artists chosen to emulate. What a wonderful representation of various types of art. Oh and this one was really neat. One of the artists in this category decided to use a piece of art from one of our very own members in Monet Café. Her work is fantastic. Her name is Steffi Clark and I understand why someone would want to emulate her work. It's gorgeous. So congratulations to everyone. I really wish I could include all of the paintings in this because I am just so proud of each and every one of you. Thanks so much for another successful Monet Café monthly challenge. Please join us again soon. Subscribe and of course, happy, happy painting.