Upside-down or Right-side-up?

 

This painting is meant to merge my two homes: Coronado, CA, where I grew up; and Mt. Pleasant in Washington, DC where I currently live.  It is no where near finished despite hours of work.  It is rather massive in size, which accounts for many of the hours, simply because it takes awhile to put that much paint on a canvas of this size.  I am now stuck.  I have no idea where to go with this, the sides don't seem to marry easily -- perhaps it is telling me I can't have it both ways?  I am tempted to throw shapes on top, like bicycles, cars, planes, clearly out of proportion (imagine a bike taking up a quarter of the painting) just to tie the damn thing together.  On top of that whole mess, it is hanging sideways right now due to space constraints, and the peanut gallery informed me "it looks better that way."  Ugh.  This is why other paintings are so unfinished right now.

Various Stages of Incomplete

 

I cranked out a lot of letters this weekend.  Unfortunately the process of making letters mandates some drying time, so none of them are quite done.  But!  The bulk of the work is done.  F for frog and flamingo I for iguana (I wanted a prettier animal, but really what animals start with I?), K for kangarool (my husband is lobbying for the addition of a koala to this painting as well), J for Jaguar (not even close to done), L for lion (need to add a ladybug and perhaps a lizard?), M is for monkeys.  Once the letters themselves dry, I am going to lay on the blue, and followed shortly by the grass (and eyes!  I did not forget about the eyes!).  It appears I am back in business and back on track for finishing this alphabet.  I remarked this weekend, Are there Really 26 letters in the alphabet?

No matter how hard I try, I always seem to end up with paint on my sleeve.  The poor flamingo and frog took a beating from the arm of my shirt and had to be touched up, and I had to distract myself from paintings in order to spend some time scrubbing oil out of my shirt.  Why I choose to paint in clothes I don't want ruined continues to mystify me, and my mother.

Counting Sheep

I started this painting a long time ago, but it wasn't quite working out.  So today, after painting all weekend long and still not quite finishing any one piece, I decided to get this one out and give it another go.  I am now quite smitten with it, but despite multiple efforts, cannot get it to look quite right in the digital images.  Consequently, this painting will never make it as a print, but is very cute in person. Once the current layer dries, I will do some final touches on the faces, but otherwise this piece is ready to go.  One triumph in a weekend otherwise full of incompletes!

Sidenote: I opted for a slightly more cartoonish style for these little sheep because for some reason my style of painting does not easily lend itself to things that are fluffy.

Taking the Weekend

I have been a bit off-track painting-wise since about June of last year.  I changed positions at the hospital to a much more lifestyle friendly clinic position that affords me all day-shifts, only requires weekday working, and gets me home by 6pm most days.  Unfortunately, an unintended consequence of this switch and more normal lifestyle is that I no longer have long stretches of time when I am home and all the rest of the world is at work.  It also has given me all sorts of other opportunities that I have been eagerly seizing, which are also sucking time away from painting.  I have employed other creative outlets such as photography and storybook writing, but mostly I just miss painting.  So I am taking the weekend. 

I am mostly done with letters L & K, still am avoiding F like the plague, and am slightly lamenting the fact that there are 26, not 12 letters in the alphabet.  This project was supposed to be done a year ago.  However, I have completed several other notable pieces in my time away from alphabet-ing, and am quite pleased with their results.  But the lack of letters has prevented me from completing the Animal Sounds book which is supposed to feature the letters as well as photos of animals I have taken at the zoo.  Ugh.  I am optimistic for this weekend, and am currently working on 3 pieces concurrently, although one is intended only for my own wall-space.  Wish me luck and stay tuned to see the new stuff!

Oh, and just for fun, the blizzard that kicked off the painting flurry (because I was trapped inside with no work to do!):

 

And this was only part one.  Part two made it so snowy that I couldn't even go out and photograph it.