Trying To Find The Calm

Since I took a picture last week of Autumn starting up here in Vermont, I decided I'd do one every week, just to show the changing season right now. So, here is this week's Fall foliage photo, taken from my deck, Sunday morning:

You can see that the colors are definitely heating up! Peak season falls around the first two weeks of October, so we're right on schedule. It gets flat out brilliant. I'm waiting for my oak on the left there to start turning orange!

I finished my piece for the live auction on Facebook on The Rabbit Hole Artist Collective:

"Sail Away" 8x10" acrylic on fine professional canvas panel.

I really am happy with the way the auction piece came out, and I am planning several paintings. I've just got the whole hair-turning-into-night-thing stuck in my head. I've got all sorts of ideas. Luckily, that will fuel my surreal side very nicely for a while.

I also painted a mini that was months past-due:

And then with all those obligations finally taken care of, I was finally able to start back to work on my Queen of Hearts (which I am sure the client who has reserved her is relieved about! Heck, I'm relieved too!):

This is where I had last left it, and started back in...

And the light was gone by the time I stopped (hence the bad lighting in the photo), but this is where I ended it. 

Now, I know I covered up a lot of the spiral trees, but that's part of how I paint. Maybe I didn't need to spend as much time on them, but the truth is that *I* know they are there and I'm not 100% sure how my paintings are going to come into being. They tend to have a mind of their own, and if I try to control too much I end up messing them up. So, I complete a lot of the painting that perhaps no one will ever see (like the wall on the White Rabbit painting, for example) because it's important to me to do it right and not have gaping holes if it goes in a direction I didn't expect. So, while no one will see how much went into those spiral trees, I know they're really there.

I went with a yellow flowering tree in opposition to the purple flowering tree (and if you look beneath them, they have opposite colored iris flowers too.) I plan on making the garden an explosion of floral color, so although it just looks very green now... it won't for much longer! I have to be careful though, because I know those flamingos are going to be a huge wash of pink!

I'm sill trying to decide about her skirt too. All one color? Red? Black? What about red and black stripes down? The center will be white ruffles, of course. But this is how the painting grows on its own; I'm never quite certain how it'll all end up. Just mostly certain. Mostly.

That wrapped my busy week up. Then it was time for two house showings on Saturday. There was a live bid on the house, but it's dead now because the other side was looking for a cut-throat deal and that simply isn't going to happen. I'm well aware we're past the Vermont real estate window, and I'm simply preparing to be here until next Spring. We're actually fine with that, because it is better for us financially anyway, we'll be likely to get a much more reasonable bid on the house, and I get to have one last winter! Win-win! If we got a reasonable offer, we'd take it, of course, but until that happens I'm happy with where we are.

All this back and forth is messing with my calm, though. I just found it, just started back to work on painting, and now I'm having problems keeping my calm because I want to yell at someone. The truth is that we're fine. Better than fine, actually. So, I should be calm and all this should be background noise. I just like things settled. Calm. I need to find my calm.

Saturday also brought with it a fever for me, which wasn't a huge surprise as my kids were sick this week too, and I'm worn down by all the unsettled energy going on. A cold isn't all that much of a shock. It's kind of like the other shoe finally dropping, actually!

I've been trying to take a few more "selfies" because my daughter pointed it out that it's fun to look back years later and see yourself. As I have avoided the camera as much as possible, there are actually very few pictures of me around. So, what the heck, right? This is me on Saturday with a fever, a migraine setting in, and laying down for a nap. For the record; I have a lot more wrinkles than this... which is probably why I like the picture! Sure, I feel like heck, but I look 10 years younger! HA!

I felt a bit better Sunday even worked out! Saturday was just a very big day after a very big week, I guess!

I'm typing this out on Sunday, and it's my day off... but I think I want to paint. Because it's a day off from the major studio work, I have decided to paint some Halloween minis! So, I'm off to do that! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

(I did start a halloween mini, and we had a last of the season fire last night)