Paintings over the weekend

I worked on several paintings over the weekend. Which means I really didn't get anything else done, anything such as; there was no cooking done, no cleaning done, no shopping done. Just a bunch of paintings. Oh and a little this and that but let's talk about the paintings. They are much more interesting.

Galveston and Nessa paintings

I finished the painting of Nessa. This one took the least amount of time. All I did was change the background color. The green makes the painting seem a little less angry. It is hanging on my drying wall. Along with the Galveston painting. About the drying wall, I have found that hanging the paintings in various stages of doneness means I can work on more paintings at one time. I have an easel and an art table. If I kept a half done painting on each than I couldn't work on anything else until these were dry enough to work on some more. If I hang them I can start two more in the meantime. It is all about rotation and efficiency.

Guiding

I finally finished this one. For a little 11 x 14 it took forever. All that those grid lines were a nightmare. I do like the way the dad and boy turned out. This is a commission piece that I'll be sending out on Saturday. The owner will be happy to see it. She's been waiting a long time. Our move totally screwed the timeline on this painting.

Caleb

I drew out this one. It will be the second gray scale painting I will have done in the last 12 months. Once I get started this one shouldn't take too long. This is the way I start paintings. I draw in a brief outline just to get perspective. I use to free hand this process or basically just start in with paint but I found that I was having to go over a lot of paint. This saves time and paint and frustration.

Peace

If you are friends with me on Facebook (and if not why?) you would have seen the progression of this painting from drawn in to partly done to this stage. It still has a lot of work but I think it is really coming along.

The last two are photographs that a couple of my Facebook friends posted. I borrowed them as inspiration. Just an FYI to all my Facebook friends...Your photos might become my inspiration. At least I ask permission first.

Oh another FYI to my friends that I steal borrow from, you are under no obligation to buy the painting unless you want to but I am one of the cheapest painters you'll ever encounter.

That is how I spent my weekend. We went to the RV Show on Saturday. I still have to process the photos from that this week. We were pretty amazed at how fancy RVs have gotten.

How was your weekend?

Love,
M

Just a couple of things

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I haven't posted in over a week. I know but I've been uber busy. That said, I still wanted to keep you all in the loop of our lives.

1. Nessa got a bath the other day. She looks gorgeous! Without smell-a-ternet I can't even tell you how much better she smells.She was sinking up the house. There is very few smells worse than dirty dog. Maybe, cooked cabbage. That is a smell that I just can't abide.

2. I'm working on book with a friend. We think it will be awesome, well read and will make us a ton of money. We are more pie-in-the-sky thinkers obviously.  Our proposal is halfway done. Okay, halfway may be generous but it is coming along. Did you know that College Press' want to you write a boatload of the book before you even get a chance to propose it? Neither did I. FYI, it sucks. If I wanted to take the time to write the whole book before hand I would but I don't. I want them to tell me they effing love the concept and want to send us money so that we can do out of town research. See? I do have aspirations of greatness.

3. I hate writing a personal biography. It always feels so tawdry and narcissistic.

4. Blogger has been threatening to change their format for like forever. Well, they did and I hate it. It has taken me 3 days to just figure out how to get my reader to work. I hope this explains why I haven't been stalking all of you recently. Don't even ask me how much of a bitch this new format is to navigate on my iPad.

5. Today is World Vegetarian Day and is the first day of Vegetarian Awareness Month. I am all for people eating more vegetables and less meat but having its own awareness month? I'm not so sure. It seems that there is a celebration/event/special/awareness month for everything which lessens the impact to my way of thinking. I would hope that people know that there are many good reasons why cutting back on meat consumption is good for them, the planet, and of course animals.

6. This is so predictable...I pack up my paints and I get a commission. After the bar guess what gets set up next? BTW, I need to thank Jen Cohen for recommending me. Jen, Thank you! You are the best! I love you.

7. I find the Life Alert commercials annoying, I actually find most commercials annoying but this one particularly. Why? Because the overweight women with an oxygen tank says: "I'll give up beer, bread, wine and soda before I give up Life Alert." My thoughts are is that if she gives up all those she may not need Life Alert.

Wow! I just read all six of those points again and it seems to be a whole lot of complaining. Let me think of something good...*crickets*...*uhhhh*...

8. My presentations went really well last week, my aunt is on the mend, kind of, but that is a huge story that I won't go into but will say that there are some odd religious beliefs out there and my car got great mileage on the whole trip. See? All good things.

9. Oh wait! I signed up over an e-newsletter called Money Talks News. I'm really enjoying it. It is all about saving money.

This is the first post I've written since they changed the format so I need to finish it up and set it to publish because I have no clue how to retrieve my drafts. You've got to know that that situation is pissing me off.

Love,
M