Just Stuff
I broke all of my rules and have six paintings going on right now, in various stages. I have a hard time finishing art, so I've always (well, since college, anyway) forced myself not to start a new painting until the last one was finished (with the exception of a couple overly large paintings). I must not allow myself to start another until I've finished all these!
I seem to be going through another period wherein I think everything I draw is utter crap. I MUST learn to draw better than this! It's so very frustrating!! Every drawing I finish, I look back at it and think, "I can do better than this! What's wrong with me?!" but usually when I erase and start over, the drawing gets worse instead of better. So I'm starting to wonder if this is just all in my head... Maybe I'm heading into another depression. I haven't had any nightmares, though, which is my usual signal that a depression has set in.
This lady and phoenix started out as an entirely different picture, wherein the girl was holding a lantern from which she was freeing some fairies. I re-drew it twice and then decided that the real problem was that the image was not sufficiently clear in my head, and the layout was crap, so I erased all but her face, which I was really happy with. So then I'm left with a face floating in the upper 3/4 of a drawing... I stewed about it for a day, and then drew in a body for her and a phoenix. I was so disappointed with how it came out that I was going to chuck it, but my sister told me that the picture was quite marketable and I was being silly. So... I stlll rather hate this drawing, but will finish it.
I'm feeling basically "Bleh" about this picture. I think I can still pull it off, but there is something about the dragon that is bothering me--but I don't know what.
This is a triptych, with each panel being 15 x 19. It's one of those pictures that's been in my head for years, just waiting for me to have the guts and skills to tackle it. It's illustrating the middle of the poem, "Tam Lin," where the fairy court is going out for a midnight ride on Halloween. Tam Lin's human lover is up in a tree, waiting for Tam Lin to pass under her so that she can grab him and free him from the fairy queen's clutches.
I have no idea how I'm going to sell prints of this thing. I'm trying to make each panel sufficiently independant of the others that it can be sold individually. The original, of course, will be mounted to wooden panels and hinged.
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Things are actually going rather well on the art career front. I think I'm on the cusp of a big step forward in my career. I have three contracts ongoing, and if this all works, I hope to spend more time painting and less time trying to sell art (heh, or less time stressing because I'm NOT selling art)! The one I'm most excited about is with an agent, who will take care of all the convention art shows for me. This step will probably take my profits from conventions down to 0, but really, they've been 0 for the last two years anyway, because I have done so few shows. This way, at least my artwork will be out there being seen! The other two are tiny little liscencing contracts--probably won't make much money, but it's a step forward that I'm excited about.
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My personal life continues to be stressful, but not totally unpleasant. Dear Husband is working ten hours a day, six days a week, and has been doing this for over a year now. He's totally stressed out, and spends most of his at-home time sleeping. His current schedule is particularly challenging, because he's on "swing" shift.
The boys are settling sorta into school. Kyle is not fighting so much any more. Both boys are in middle school now, and so it's taking a lot more time and energy to teach them. We used to be able to get through the lessons in about four hours. Now it's taking close to six, and we're still not quite finishing all of the day's assignments. I really wish that Kyle would work independantly, but I guess that's too much to ask of him right now. I think I might have to send his teacher a video of our day, because I don't think she "gets" how much work it takes to get Kyle to finish assignments. She was pushing for me to set the semester goal of getting Kyle to work independantly for an hour each day, but I'm still struggling to get Kyle to go from one question to the next without prompting/reminding/nagging--there's no way he can go from one assignment to the next without me hovering!
Tad has been making all manner of strange lego inventions. I really want to get him the Mindstorms lego sets--you can program the engines and sensors on the computer!--but they're way too expensive. So instead, he's hooking up gears and rubber bands and engines to the lego bricks to create his "minions."