Aretha

If the notes I just made on the back of an envelope are accurate, I have 30 paintings to add to my Etsy store.  Sugar balls, that will take ages.  Some of them have been finished for quite a while but needed hanging hardware, which I finally ordered last week.  And some of them are so fresh the varnish hasn't fully cured, like the last of my Aretha series.  There are seven total:

I love them all.  Aretha shall forever be relevant.

You win some, you lose some

First, this:

That's my girl.

Second, I have a story to tell you.  Once upon a time in the not too distant past, like a few weeks ago, I found a beautiful leaf in my yard and although it was almost identical to about ten thousand other leaves in my yard, something about this one struck me.

Those colors together are fabulous and I wanted to paint something with that exact combo.  I did a little custom mixing hoping for the best and, to be honest, I totally nailed it.

SO awesome.  It's called Autumn Vortex.  If you follow me on Instagram you've already seen this, but you don't know the end of the story.  The good part.  Well, the curious part.  The infuriating part.  When I paint something with my banding wheel the set up is on the floor inside a giant box that contains paint splatters.  I leave it there overnight during the initial drying stages because I know the surface is level.  The next morning I usually move the painting (still on the banding wheel) to my library gym where I take a picture right by the window in good light, then put it back inside the box.  After work, if the paint is mostly dry, I move it onto a shelf that's about four feet off the ground.  Air flow is better out of the box so the rest of the paint dries faster.  At some point during this part of the adventure - I think it was during day two while I was at work - a wee creature with mad acrobatic skills SOMEHOW managed to leave a trail of destruction across the face of the painting.  GAH!!!!!  There are no discernible footprints so maybe it was a flying creature.  Whoever it was, they are on my shit list.  I'm still going to varnish the painting and list it on Etsy; I should charge extra for the backstory.

In other news, I dropped off two paintings for the member show at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe - my fave "Letting Go" that's in the September 30 post and "Under the Canopy."  Here's a terrible picture of that one:

I forgot to photograph it before taking it to work, where it was living pre-show because that's the only place I've got wall space for a 24" x 30" canvas.  Maybe it's bigger than that - I can't remember.

In additional other news, I FINALLY ordered hanging hardware so there will be a massive update to my Etsy store later this week.  The five moon flower paintings will be the first to be listed:

Also this little "Mountain Moon."  Everything with "moon" in the title, basically.

In my last other news for the day, here are the official family Autumn 2018 portraits.  I can't believe Rabbit sat still long enough for me to take a picture:

Just a couple of goobers wearing sweaters.

Bloom

Oh October, suddenly here you are.  I'm not quite ready to put my yard to bed for the winter; we were supposed to have a hard frost last night but the forecast shows temps in the upper 70s next Wednesday.  Some of my perennials can't figure out what the holy heck is going on.  Instead of doing yard work today, I just walked around and took pictures.  Circumnavigating my house, here's what I saw:

There was also a lot of this:

And a lot of this:

(Look at that eye booger.)  In all honesty, most of my pictures of Rabbit look like this:

"Hold still, you little freak!"

Anyway, I digress.  Seeing all these flowers in my yard gives the impression that it's still a riot of color over here, right?  Alas, no.  I'm amazed at the things that are still hanging on but they are tucked in between a lot of green and a lot of crinkly dried up brown.  And although it's supposed to be peak foliage in my neck of the woods right now, the big ass maple trees out front disagree:

Soon, tho.  Soon.  In the meantime, to everything else still holding on I say:

Letting Go

It's getting to be the time of year when leaf peepers are out in force, scoping out the Vermont foliage.  I know this because I saw all of them in the parking lot of the Ben & Jerry's factory on Thursday afternoon.  I, however, was the only one there who was waiting for the AAA guy to fix my dead jeep battery.  All in all it wasn't a terrible way to spend an afternoon, although Rabbit may disagree.

In other September news, I've got two more of my Aretha word paintings finished:

I've been posting these on Instagram and the Blues Brothers Official account has "liked" at least two of them, so there's a life goal achieved that I never knew I had.  Three more in this series to go.

Today I varnished the Best. Painting. Ever.  Okay, maybe not the best, but I really really love it.  I started out only knowing what colors I wanted to use - brown, red and something peachy.  The paint sat on my table for a couple of days while I thought about it, hoping a design idea would come to me.  I got nada so had to wing it.  Here's the final result:

And here's how it all went down:  staring at a blank canvas can be intimidating and since I had no idea how this painting was going to evolve I hoped getting the first bit of paint on there would spark something.  Anything.  I started with the brown (TMI side note: this particular brown paint is not as thick as my fave, which is like brownie batter, so after spreading the first layer around the sides of the canvas with my fingers I looked like a proctologist who forgot to wear gloves).  On went the rest of the brown, then the red, peach and a dark rose gold (the bits that look like copper in the photo).  Some blending, some texture and a sudden fierce desire to put a white hand print at the bottom.  The white circles came out of nowhere but as soon as they were on the canvas I knew the painting was called "Letting Go."

It's taken me a long time to be comfortable with having canvas texture visible in the final piece.  In fact, most of the time I still don't like it and with heavy body paint and a palette knife I can cover it easily.  Not so here but that's okay - there are places where you can see the weave of the canvas and other places where the paint is so thick I had to wait two extra days before I could add varnish.  Final shot, complete with professional photobomber: