More like sketching and enlarging the sketches to transfer them.

I’ve been working on a few pieces at once. I’m still a bit stressed about getting all the paintings done in time for next year’s show, even though I said I wasn’t going to worry about it. So, I spoke to Craig about possibly moving the timeslot further down the schedule. I don’t think I’ll have to do that, but I don’t want to be stressed out about it. He’s so cool; he said that we will work out whatever we need to. That makes me feel better.

The only way to get as many pieces done as quickly as possible is to work on most of them at once. I usually work on two at once, but since they will all be wet for a while, it’s a better idea to start a bunch at the same time.

Been working on that little panel for Mat’s group show. With that one, it’s eight more pieces to complete, not seven. Seven for my show, though.

I also got some paint on Frisbee Cake. (That’s the working title that I will probably keep.) I did the main yellows so far…

Looking at that lemon yellow, it’s super bright! It’s a tad brighter in this picture, though. I snapped the shot in dim light (it’s a rainy day), and I had to turn up some of the contrast. I wanted the kitchen table set yellow to be a slightly different yellow than the wallpaper’s yellows, but it might be too different. In real life, they were nearly the same gold-yellow. My mom must have matched it perfectly when she bought the table and chairs back then. I might put some of that lemon yellow in the sunflowers eventually. Maybe sooner than later, since that color is already mixed. One more thing I have to do today.

I took a very quick picture of the little panel, too. But it’s super crooked in this picture. Try not to pay attention to that…

There’s still a lot of work to do on it, but probably not on the lettering. My tremor is so severe, I truly can’t improve the lettering much more. Hopefully, I can just say it has its own charm. Or something.

The bricks will be painted a dark red (uh, duh), and there will be a few other color touches other than the whites, which is supposed to be snow, by the way. I’m keeping the character’s face blank, but what color? I don’t know yet. Although I was originally going to leave it white, since the background will be the lightest blue I can fade into, it will blend seamlessly with the white below it. His shirt will be a kinda dark lime green, and his gloves will be yellow. There will be a bunch of stars in the sky, too. I am not sure why I’m even posting this right now; it’s a little embarrassing. I guess I’m playing show & tell with a lot of excuses.

The John Fante was done in pen and pencil, which is why the lettering is a little better. And again, it’s not crooked in real life. So far, it’s faaar from perfect. And oh well. Like I said, it’s got a sort of charm, right?

Anyway, as for the solo show work, I have all but two sketches blown up and ready to transfer to paper, and one to transfer to a larger birch panel. The two I haven’t even sketched yet are going to be the smaller watercolors (12 x 16 inches), one vertical format and one landscape.

I will need to frame four of the paper pieces. The smaller ones I can frame myself with readymade frames, but the two big ones will need to be a custom jobby. That’s probably going to cost me somewhere around $400, which is actually an amazing deal and why I go to my guy in Los Angeles. He’s great at what he does and charges me wholesale. If I took those to a retail framing place, they’d cost me about $500 each! They’re both about thirty inches tall.

The title of this first one is Judgey, and I’m going to attempt to do it in gouache. I’m not confident about that exactly. Goauche is a little like acrylic paint, and I absolutely hate working with acrylics. They are a nightmare for me, but that’s on me for never learning them. I’m good with gouache as long as I’m painting opaque, abstract shapes, so I think I would run into the same kinds of “acrylic problems” I have when it comes to blending. I’m doing it on a dark BFK printing paper to force myself to try, and intend to make it look more like Paint-by-Numbers.

This second sketch will be all watercolor on Arches paper, something I’m way more confident with. It doesn’t have a title yet, but it’s from the only existing wedding picture of my mom by herself. All the other pictures of her from that day are with my dad, but they were torn in half by my mom during an “episode.”

Okay, so still no surgery scheduled. It’s because I had to see my primary doctor first to get surgery clearance. I also had to do blood tests yesterday, and those won’t be back until Monday at the earliest. I could have done the blood tests the day before, but I had to fast, which I hate because I’m always hungry.

After the tests come back, I’ll see the primary again. Then, the results get sent to the neurosurgeon, and then they schedule me for a pre-op visit over there. I’ll find out the surgery date during that visit. I know, it’s a lot of hoops to jump through, and I’m feeling impatient. I want to get this thing over with.

Okay, that was long enough. Talk soon. Hopefully, I’ll have made more progress on these.