Ever have one of those days where you feel like you got up on the wrong side of the bed or something? Well, I have those a lot, but today I especially felt like that, and it was especially disappointing because I had planned on having a productive Monday all weekend. I was excited and rarin’ to go, I’ll tell ya. I wanted to get into the studio and start working on everything that I am still behind on – so much so that I stayed up late on Friday transferring a drawing onto a new panel.

This drawing went onto the first of the 20 x 24 inch panels, which is a bit bigger than the canvases I’ve been working on. I’ve been painting on 16 x 20 inch canvases and they are the 3/4 inch thick ones, which means they are going to have to be framed. I really like the idea of framing them in either country frames with a built-in linen mat or maybe even some driftwood frames to give the paintings an extra Joshua Tree vibe. I’m not sure how they will read exactly, but I want to do it anyway.

My goal is to to do six of those, but I need to do at least four before I start on the 20 x 24s – which are panels, not canvases. They are the Ampersand gessoboards actually, the ones with the 1.5 inch cradles, so they look nice without any frame at all. I haven’t even finished the fourth 16 x 20 inch canvas yet, so I don’t know where I get off transferring the drawing onto the gessoboard now, but I wanted to do it to see how it was going to look. I got excited. What can I tell you?

I am still working on number four of the 16 x 20s, which I showed in my last blog post (unfortunately). It looked like caca.

What happened was, as I mentioned in my last blog post, I was just finishing up two mixed media pieces on panels and one of them had a sky blue background. It’s done now, but this is not the greatest photograph because I took it at night:

I’m calling it Sky House. It’s 20 x 20 inches: oil, fabric, paper on birch wood panel.

And then there was this little one that I couldn’t find a name for:

but I think it’s going to be Homestead for the Clown (9 x 12 inches).

Anyway, I mixed a lot of that light blue for Sky House and wound up using a version of it for the sky in Joshua Tree painting, but I don’t usually paint the sky in those things until last. I mean, I’ll do underpainting, but not thick and pasty like I just did, so I think I got off on the wrong foot right away there.

Then, every waking moment (and even while falling asleep), all I could think about was how I was going to navigate around that blue and attack those rocks. Was I going to paint it on the easel? Flat? What? Would I just wait until it dried? I wasn’t sure, but I probably wasn’t going to wait more than after the weekend.

But I woke up this morning and I just didn’t feel like painting. Instead I drew another composition for the 40 x 60 inch canvas:

I didn’t transfer that one though. That’s going to be a beast.

So finally, I took a nap. I figured I was just tired and crabby, so I slept for about an hour and I woke up pretty refreshed. It was time to attack the caca painting.

The first thing I realized was that the little merry-go-round I had drawn on it in the first place was too small, so I made a bigger one and used some carbon paper to stick it on there.

I know that probably doesn’t look much like a merry-go-round, but that’s what it’s supposed to be! It’s supposed to be kinda old and homemade.

But the carbon paper sucked ass! It wasn’t good for much, but it will at least act as a guide so I will know where to paint the general lines. …Stupid carbon paper. Don’t bother with it on canvas.

So then I spent a few hours painting on this painting and I think it looks worse than it did than before it started.

And that was my day.

Hoping tomorrow is better.

Oh…

I know I keep saying I won’t do this, but here is another sneak peak of something that has to do with my installation. I won’t say anything about it though.