Somehow I finally had the guts to pull my novel in progress out from beneath my desk this week. I revised the opening chapter (or what I see as the opening chapter right now), and I actually sent it out for consideration. In addition to that, I have had about a thousand ideas for paintings. I have been able to get a few of those ideas down on 11x17 watercolor paper as sketches, and I am grateful that I’ve been able to do that. I know that I need to work larger than that, and I have struggled a bit with letting the 12x12 requirement of a local contest force me to try to work in that size. If I had something that small that I wanted to share, then that’s when I should submit to something like that. I do not have anything that size right now. So I am going to stop trying to force it.

I finally was able to see my oldest daughter in an environment where she was “in the moment” so much that I captured her true spirit in a photo. This was done using a technique that I learned from James Gurney. I used gesso on top of the pencil sketch, and then I used oil paint on top of that. I’m hopeful to have this one completed enough that I can give it to my wife as a birthday gift. Fortunately I bought a couple things to make sure she gets something even if I’m not done with this in time. I can’t get the orange of the jersey right, but I’m not surprised by this considering I’ve never mixed that color with oils before. I could change the color to something else, but the contrast between blue and orange in the jerseys looks good. I don’t like painting geometric shapes onto spheres, so I am probably not going to do much more to the ball than what I’ve done aside from adding a bit more shading to give it more roundness. I had the number on the orange jersey before, but I did it too soon before I had any of the folds and one of the shoulders was wonky, so I’ll have to do it again. Other than that, all I may change will be to get some branches and things into the background to get some more depth in the painting.

And, of course, there will still be more and more paintings dealing with war-related stuff. Isn’t mothers’ day coming up soon too? I might start just doing stuff with a palette knife so I can’t blend anything into mud. That might help me to get things done faster. Will they be better? Maybe not. But at least there will be more of it.