An Adventure

I fear that I am yet again not accomplishing much from my studio, but I will say that great plans are starting to fall into place for it! I fully intend on getting back to my Queen of Hearts now that my work for Thrice Fiction is finished with this last piece:

"Lotus" 9x12 inch, acrylic on studio painting board. Available in my Etsy Surreal Shop.

I actually wasn't sure about this piece, but by the end I was in love with it. My daughter really likes it. It's one of those pieces that if it doesn't sell, it may mysteriously show up in my daughter's room. My art that she likes tend to magically show up there when I'm not looking (actually, my son will sneak a few pieces here and there too.)

On the Alice in Wonderland front, not only is my plan to work hard on my Queen of Hearts (who has now officially been reserved, but prints will be made eventually), but there are also plans in the work for the White Queen (who lived backwards) as a companion piece, and little paintings like the "eat me" tea cakes and so on. I'm nearing the end of the series, but I see a few more coming. I may not be painting much physically right now, but there is a lot going on internally in my mental studio! (I know that sounds wrong, but go with me on it. I paint many paintings in my head before they ever show up in reality!)

As I said in my last post, the move is on for North Carolina! That's all well and good, but there is a lot that needs to happen in order for us to get there. We're going on a trip to find a new house. At the top of my list is a REAL studio space! My husband is all on board, I imagine due to my studio here sprawling out over all levels of the house. The tiny bedroom upstairs that initially housed my entire studio doesn't even hold all my supplies at this point. Wedging myself in it to paint is near impossible! With my parents living with us temporarily, I've even pulled my painting back from the kitchen table to my bedroom. Neither are good places, but it's what has to happen in the chaos!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to looking at homes with a true eye to a good creative space! It's all very exciting! After we get back, my parents should be relocating within a week or two, and then things will settle down some. I can't move until the house here sells, and so I'll just be working on my studio projects and biding my time. It's actually a good thing I have work to focus on.

In fact, I've been perusing my unfinished pieces. There are a LOT, and I think I'm going to work on finishing them in between working on the queen (it's a sort of break, even though you're still working.) I'm not sure what to work on first, but I have some options:

The top left is the acrylic dragon/girl piece I was doing for autumn last year. The top right is actually in oils and I was doing a painting time-lapse of it. There are to be two castles, both crystalline/impressionist and one black and one white (white and night, black in the day) with lightning in between the two. The bottom left was my Christmas one from last year that I didn't finish on time as my Christmas card, but I'd like to finish it for this year's then. I wanted to paint a new Christmas painting every year! The last is a surreal landscape, with a big tree.

I have no idea why I wandered away from any of these. It's not as if there was a huge distance to go on them. I never used to do this. I would work on one piece and finish it, then move onto the next. Now, I have oodles of unfinished work... how did that happen?

It Starts As A Trickle

Well, I finally have news! We ARE going to move to North Carolina!

It took forever (since February), but it's finally official. You would think that I would have had some huge sense of relief, but honestly I didn't feel anything. At first I was disappointed that I didn't feel wildly excited. Wasn't this was I was waiting for? But then I slowly realized this quiet numbness was actually an improvement from feeling frustrated all the time. After being grumpy about our situation for so long, having that answer finally silenced all the internal grumbling (and colorful cussing.) There wasn't any jubilation, just quiet.

Quiet isn't so bad!

I thought that would wear off too, but it hasn't yet. Not totally. Instead it's like a trickle of awareness starting to sneak in, whispering "This is going to be hard..." I had to call and schedule appointments and cancel other appointments (along with some snide "WHY are you canceling?" questions, they don't like that. You would think my calling to cancel a December appointment would be looked at as thinking ahead and respecting their schedule and business, right?)

Things are going to pick up quickly. I have no time line, no real idea when we'll be moving, but my vague understanding is "soon". In the meantime, my parents are still living here, and their cats are still knocking things over. One of their cats figured out my big lovable ball of fluff has no instinct for fighting (he's an indoor cat) and decided to attack him. My poor boy (all 22 lbs of him) came flying out of the basement after the yowling with his little nose bleeding from a nasty scratch.

Socrates, taking my spot where I was reading. No pictures of his cut nose, he wasn't in the mood. This is a picture from a while ago.

My muse for my Cheshire cat is so patient, he decided he'd rather stalk me and snuggle me than fight with the big bully that my parent's cat feels he is (he's even taking on the dogs.) Luckily, my parents were very upset at the behavior, and we're working on keeping them apart and their cat out of my cat's territory. Socs is much happier now.

Socrates is a lover, not a fighter!

Minus feeling protective of my furry inhabitants of the house, I've also been cleaning up messes like crazy. How, in the name of Crayola, am I supposed to work like this?

Well, I managed to get one piece done for Thrice Fiction Magazine, the wolf:

"Wild" 8x11 inch, pastel on pastel paper

I can't say that I'm thrilled with it. I feel like I could do a better wolf, more flowing hair and such... but I used pastels and sort of constrained myself. Part of me still likes it though!

I'm also finally putting up my embellished canvases in my Fairy Tale shop. These are fine art prints of my paintings on stretched canvases (gallery depth) that I then enhance with paint to make them original in their own right. This is a good example...

Here is the print of Cinderella, from the original painting (long since sold, but one of my very favorites, I do so love Cinderella):

Cinderella print

Now, here is the actual embellished stretched canvas I completed:

Embellished canvas print, ignore the glare - that's just from not tweaking the image for printing, and showing the actual canvas instead. You can see how deep the colors are on the picture below.

You can see the stretched sides are just black canvas.

You can see that the moon is completely different, more like my current moons. Plus, the original was in oil and so I wasn't able to make it all sparkly. Now that I can? I put copper and gold and other iridescents on it! Sparkly pumpkins and hair and more, oh how I love iridescent paint!

I really do love these canvases. I actually plan on making several for my own collection and keeping them! Sometimes I'm so sad to see an original go because I have fallen in love with it, so I'm grateful I can create more of them, so to speak. Not as wonderful as the actual original, but still fun. I'm sneaking little things into them that aren't on the original too (like a lady bug on my Garden Party painting, etc.)

Now, I'm off to try and finish the last piece for the magazine. Wish me luck! It involves swirls and an eye and... well, I'm not sure where I'm going with it. I suppose that's a good metaphor for my life right now!

Distracted

I can't seem to get any work done. My house is full of people. My house is full of animals. It's almost impossible to concentrate long enough to type out a full sentence, much less actually paint. I haven't made any progress on any of the pieces I have, and deadlines are looming. I never even finished the one piece for the auction.

Instead, I helped my parents finish moving in and then just sort of hit a wall of exhaustion.

My husband flew out to North Carolina for the final interview-meeting-thing, and then I virtually house shopped with him (he drove to various listings we were interested in, and I followed along online. We can't actually LOOK at anything because we're not allowed to even speak to a realtor until we're assigned one through the company.) We've been told to expect an offer from the company. This is the same company he already works for, but I guess in big corporations it works almost like it's an outside one. So, I would say we're at 99% probability of moving to NC (with no timeline on when we'd even get there, but seriously, if we could just get an answer that would be a huge improvement over dragging this all out since February.)

Other than that I've been doing laundry non-stop, dishes non-stop, and answering questions and more... NON-STOP. My patience is a lost thing. If you see it, send it home, would you?

Seriously, I may need to go rent a hotel room, lock myself in and just paint for a day or two straight. Would that make me a bad person, if I ran away to a hotel so I could work?

*sigh*

Rainy Day

For a July day, it's decidedly dismal here. It's raining, and dark, and apparently we're not going to even make it out of the 60's temperature-wise. Yet, I sort of feel as though I need it, this down weather. It's been a BIG week.

Due to a mix-up, my parents ended up moving in with us a week early, and in more of a rush than they intended. They're staying with us until this move to NC (or not) is decided. Their lease was up, and rather than sign a new one here and be stuck in Vermont and left behind, or sign one there and not have us actually go, they're here.

So, there's been packing, and boxes, and shifting and merging, and... seriously, just trying to merge their refrigerator goods with ours was like playing food Tetris!

They have two cats that are running around like little furry lunatics, which makes my art areas a tough thing to work in. My dad also telecommutes, so now there's another person trying to work all day in the madhouse. Basically... I'm fried at this point!

My deadlines all came and went and I didn't meet them.

Here is a piece that is STILL unfinished for an auction that ends in only a few days:

Started with the sketch on pastel paper

Started filling it in. It's been a LONG time since I used pastels (minus my spoon thief)...

It's getting fuzzier. I'm not certain I actually like the pastels. I feel as though precision is tough with them.

Someone suggested silver hair, but unfortunately I had already started on the auburn. I think silver or purple would have been fun! But regardless, I'm not really thrilled with it. I just feel... it's fine when you are a few steps back from it, but right on top and up close? It's fuzzy. Blurred a bit. Maybe pastels are supposed to be this way, but I like a crisp line, so it's really bothering me.

I also didn't remember that there's only so much you can load the paper too. With paint, you can keep going in layers. With pastels, you only have a few and then it's done. It simply can't take any more.

Anyway, I've decided that this week is all about my deadlines. I need to finish this piece if I can. I need to also finish two pieces for Thrice Fiction. I have one sketched out, and it will be in pastels also:

I'm hoping the soft blur of chalk pastels will suit it better than on a human face. We'll see!

After that, I'm sincerely hoping I can get back to my Alice series. It's hard to maintain focus in chaos, and my house feels a lot like being in a hurricane! Moments of calm, but a lot of moving parts - most of it unpredictable.

The good news? We're at the tipping point. My husband is flying out for his interview/meeting this week, and it should be settled if we're moving or not by no later than next week. Actually, I know it will be because we can't hold out any longer. The company really likes to drag its feet (this has been going on since February), but we can't tolerate that any longer. Either they make a decision or we will. We know what our alternative course of action is, so now it's just coming down to the final play, so to speak.

I don't even care any more, I think. I did want to move, but what we've been put through since February... I just don't care. I need things settled, even if it means we stay here.

And I need a break. So, this rainy weather? It suits my mood. So, that's something! Hopefully next Monday I'll have more exciting things to report!