But it’s just not fast enough. I thought I could finish the fourth 16 x 20 inch by the end of the weekend but the weekend nearly over and it doesn’t look plausible.

I still have plenty to go on this, but I am working on a few other things at once as well. I’m a bit further along than this photo. I took this Friday and worked on it for a couple hours yesterday, but I had to stop because of the shakes – combined with parts of the painting that are still wet, so I can’t get into certain areas right now. I still need to do all the detail work , which are all blacks and greens. Only then will it finally be done. If drying time weren’t an issue, I could have it finished by the end of Monday, but we’ll see. Right now I actually have it hanging in the sun for a little while to see if I can dry up those thin poles on the merry-go-round. Maybe I get back in there and try to give it some depth and shadow – even though I don’t want to give it too much. I don’t want to make it look like it’s really there.

But I don’t think I will run into that problem in my work. Ha!

As of today I am working on four others!: the 20 x 24 landscape (working title: Desert Lander), and three collages on panels. I’m having similar problems with Desert Lander – my fingers shaking in mid-air because there’s nowhere to rest my hand on the wet paint. The best thing to do is to just paint the areas I can and wait while mapping out other pieces.

So yesterday I mapped out two of the collages and started piecing them together. That in itself takes a bit of planning.

I’m using paper and fabric and once I decide on the fabric, I have to starch it before I cut it to the pattern. Yes, a pattern. I also make a pattern for these things believe it or not. I really don’t throw these things together willy nilly, even if it looks like I do. A lot of times I will play around with the colors in Photoshop to see if they are even going to work first so I don’t have to fix any massive mistakes later on, but even then I’ve been known to pull them apart after I put them together physically because they weren’t working. It has to work ya know. You gotta do what you gotta do.

So these are the preliminary shots…

 

They don’t look like anything yet – and they won’t look like much when their finished either. Ha ha ha ha! I kid you. You are fun to kid with.

Today I laid down the fabrics and the paper, plus created another one, but I don’t have the camera right now to show it to you, or show you how far along I am with Desert Lander. I did just order a new camera however. Woo hoo!

After much research, I settled on buying a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS30. I already have the Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ1 and it’s a great camera, but it was time for an upgrade. I know most people don’t think of Panasonic when they think about high quality photography, but they absolutely should. These cameras beat out the Cannons and Nikons without killing your bank account, and it’s because of the bitchen Leica lens that makes them superior cameras.

I was able to make that purchase because I happened to make a few sales recently, which I don’t usually talk about, so that’s all I’ll say really. I mean, sometimes I make art sales and sometimes I don’t, but this time I made some significant ones and those don’t come so often. So weee weee weee for me.

My gallery is taking a few of my pieces to Pulse Miami and I wasn’t expecting that. That’s other good news.

Oh and the status about my Yaddo application. I didn’t get rejected this time. I didn’t get accepted either exactly. I am on a waiting list for the weeks that I chose to come, meaning, it’s likely I can go if I change my dates, but if I want to go during the time that I scheduled  for my convenience, then I am placed on a list to see if someone backs out, which apparently happens more than occasionally.

I haven’t decided what I would like to do. Stay on the waiting list for the time I want, in which case I can be called upon to come without much warning, or call then and change my preferences. OR, skip it. I do have a show to work on and while I can work on it there…Oh I don’t know. I am confused obviously.  Still, it’s good news.

But it still all doesn’t make me paint any faster.

It’s about that time of day where I start to wipe out. Let the secret be known, I usually take a nap for an hour around 2:00. I have to! My body just shuts down. It’s an autoimmune thing. That, or all of the autoimmune medications! I’ve been going since 7am though, so it’s not too bad. After an hour, I’m back in there with full force.

But there’s a couple days a week that I won’t nap. Like the days I work on my film, of course I can’t. I’m in Sherman Oaks and it wouldn’t be very polite to fall asleep on Jonathan’s couch in the middle of running through the script, or just crashing out during a recording. Last time I was there, we did a scratch vocal on the narration. God, I hate my voice. I wish I could do the whole thing in a cartoon character’s voice, but it wouldn’t be appropriate. The film sure would have a completely different vibe though if I had a baby narrate it. Ha!

So second half of today, I’ll be painting one of the panels that I don’t have a picture of – wouldn’t you know it!. But it’s not landscapey. It’s a kind of sephirot. A funky sephirot. I really like it and hope I don’t screw it up, ha ha ha. It doesn’t have fabric on it. Just paper, but I’m going to make patterns and prints in parts of it so that it kind of replaces the feel of fabric.  And if it turns out well, I would like to do more of them – but that’s only if it turns out the way I am imagining it, and you know how that goes.

Hold on, let me see what kind of crap pictures I can get with my phone…

Okay, here is the beginnings of the funky sephirot:

and while I was out there, I shot the 40 x 60 inch canvas that I just penciled out, but I don’t see when I will be able to start painting on it.

Then I came back in and though, might as well shoot the Desert Lander one, which didn’t turn out too bad:

I guess it’s not the worst camera on Earth.

And there you have it. Sunday.