Random Thoughts

1.  Yesterday, I was very good at not managing my time well. Not on purpose, it just happened that way. Maybe after several weeks of being super efficient with work related activities, my brain rebelled. Whatever it was, when I mentioned it to the Amazing Reese at the end of the poorly managed day, he said, "That doesn't bother me one bit."
2.  The first thing that happened to me yesterday was that a bird pooped on my leg. I know Italians believe that bird pooping on humans is good luck, but I'm not Italian. Maybe the bird poop incident is why it was such a wonky day. (?)
3.  I wonder if the smell of cooking bacon ever tempts vegetarians to not be vegetarians anymore. (?)
4.  If God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them taste so good?
5.  Beef stew.
6.  I laughed out loud when Reese said, "When the knock on the door said alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, I naturally thought it was a delivery." 
7.  The last two times I went to the farmer's market, I bought myself white flour chocolate chip cookies. I'm pretty sure that is not the healthiest-for-you item to buy at a farmer's market.
8.  Speaking of which, today is farmer's market day. I find it weird that all I can think about is those cookies. I love locally grown super fresh veggies and farm raised meats and eggs. Why  am I only thinking about those cookies?
9.  As much as I love and appreciate delicious craft beer, I don't actually consider it to be a breakfast juice. It's just not something I drink with my bacon and eggs in the morning.
10.  I'm in a bit of a creative dry spell as far as painting goes though I'm happy to report that I did just paint....my toenails. Hey. At least I'm painting again.

Tide the Knot

There was a little bit of an issue tying the bow of the sash on Hilary's wedding dress. First of all, the ribbon was made of satin and kept coming loose. So, I used a small safety pin to pin the bow to itself, so it wouldn't come undone. After that, the sash/belt kept slipping down, so I borrowed another safety pin and pinned the sash and bow to the dress. But the big eye of the safety pin was still visible. Now, when our daughters were small, there were a LOT of bows and ribbons in our house. The Amazing Reese became the official bow tie-er in our house.  Because I had done such a mediocre (lousy) job with the wedding dress bow, the Amazing Reese came in to save the day. He was able to turn the big eye so that it was not visible in the back! Most excellent. But in the process, he pricked his finger, which wouldn't have been a problem, except he was bleeding all over Hilary's bow and sash! The entire room of ladies in waiting (bridesmaids and friends) freaked out. Someone yelled, "Get some club soda!" Another yelled, "Use cold water!" Then bless her heart, the maid of honor pulled out of her maid of honor emergency kit and yelled, "I have a Tide to Go stick!" Someone yelled, "It doesn't work on blood!" But hey, we were running out of options. Amidst the frenzied "discussions," someone yelled, "Try it anyway!" So the maid of honor unscrewed the Tide to Go stick cap, dabbed it on the blood droplets, and guess what? IT WORKED! 

Oscar

This is a clever little boy, full of purpose and delight. It's a portrait commission that I've been working on for his grandmother. It's 16" x 20" oil on linen. He's one of three. His two sisters are here and here.

My original intent was to have all three portraits finished before our daughter's wedding last weekend, but I spent so much time shopping for shoes (just kidding, but not really --it's been a super busy summer) that I just couldn't squeeze out a big enough chunk of time to devote to it. This week, I finally had three days in a row, enough time to complete the sketch I had originally drawn for this about three months ago. The first day of painting went OK, but I ended up scraping off a large portion of what I had painted - many many hours worth of work. Yesterday I put in a FULL day - morning until bedtime - literally. The light was lousy at the end, well, it was full on night time, there was no light, even with all of the lights on in the studio, but I was making such good progress that I hated to quit. And then today.....another several hours of working with tiny brushes  and voila.

People ask me all the time how long it takes to paint something. This portrait started with several (at least three) photo shoots for reference, trips to the photo lab, several initial portrait sketches, one final loose sketch, and hours and hours of actual brush to canvas, plus all of the clean up and running back and forth to the store to buy art supplies. Suffice it to say, I work hard at this....and I LOVE it!