Stranded

Today I was driving home from my dad's house when I unexpectedly found myself spending a few extra hours in a town 50 miles from home.  I am so blessed to have friends willing to drive a long way to rescue me.  This picture is one of the ways I spent my time as I waited.  

Oak Leaves

A full day today for whatever I decide to do is an amazing thing.  This painting is about enjoying coloring.  I was not concerned with duplicating the leaves exactly as they appear.  I was intrigued by the variations of shape and color.  For me lately, it is a victory if I simply show up at my art.  It is the same with my exercising.  I am happy when I do it, but I often go for days or sometimes even weeks when I ignore it.  When I go back to it I am happy again.  I am trying to evict the self-doubt that tells me I should be embarrassed by my feeble efforts.  Posting to this blog is how I am fighting the self-doubt. I do not say that to fish for compliments.  I am simply saying it is a little bit hard to click "publish" today.

Finishing and Starting

Today I worked a little more on the painting of Mom's tree.  It is a rainy day today with flash flood warnings.  A good day to stay home.  I brought an oak branch in from the deck and started to draw it with the paintbrush.  At least I showed up at the watercolor paper today.  I have some Girl Scout forms to deal with.  Also there are some events tomorrow and I really should be prepared.

Mom's tree

Finally painted!

This is the tree in my mom's front yard.  I have painted it before.  It is so interesting.  I'm on my way home now and hoping to avoid severe weather.

The top painting is not done yet, but it was time to go.

What I've been up to

Apparently I've been ending sentence fragments with prepositions.  And I have been knitting.  And teaching school. And I took part in a fundraiser for Friends of Island Lake in Shoreview, MN.  And spending time with friends and family. I have not been painting. There are still important friends and family that I have not spent time with yet, so I do not know when I will paint next.  I did bring my paint supplies along on this trip with my mom, brother, and son.  Perhaps I can do some painting here.  Well, not here at this moment.  We are at a mall because my brother wanted to shop.  I am sitting in a comfy chair in the hallway of the mall.  Knitting seems an appropriate waiting activity.  Pulling out paint, water, paper, etc. would be problematic and there is little here to inspire me visually.  Earlier we were sightseeing and there was much to inspire me, but that was not a time to paint either.

Calendar sketch

Tomorrow Spring Break is over.  Back to regular schedule.  I am constantly amazed by the quantity of time that is used up in figuring out how to use our time.  We use technology to coordinate schedules, but it still takes more time than it used to to keep it all from falling apart.

I did not paint today, but I could not end the day without putting something down. I am not sure I would want the actual words from my calendar in the final product, but maybe I would.  It is real, edited just a bit.  April 12 really is at the bottom of the calendar because that is how it worked out.  We try to erase the past weeks as soon as they are done so we can always have this calendar 5 weeks into the future.  This calendar was a gift from my daughter and I like it a lot because it makes family discussions about schedule easier.  We also have a shared online calendar, but this one is right there by the table.

A work of art with the calendar in it would be about how difficult it is to carve out time to work on art.  Really though, when I look at the calendar, there are lots of blank days.  So it must be my daily schedule that is the problem.  

I need to set up a still life of stuff from my classroom at school.  But how would I work on it?  I would be surrounded by all those things that need to get done.  Right now I need to end this post so I can carve out time for sleep.

Dirty Dishes

It is time to stop working on this for today.  I had a hard time getting started because guess what. I felt I needed to finish the dishes first.  Sigh.  And then it took me forever to set up the still life again.  I tried to cheat and use clean dishes in this second time setting it up.  It was not the same.  I can't keep using the same dirty dishes, gross.  That would not be the same either.  That would be a whole new problem.  No, the problem is how the dirty dishes come back day after day.  

I finally was able to get started painting after I had a bowl of cereal and set that bowl and spoon in the front of the still life.  The cup and other dishes are actually clean ones today.

I was hoping to get all the dark areas blocked in today, but I am not quite done with that step yet.