I spent the day painting the rock and thought I finished it this morning,
If you are an artist and are returning to a medium that you have not used in a long time, do not start by painting on a difficult surface, like a rock. I did buy myself a set of small oil painting brushes and there is no way I could have done this without them. I photographed it for the doctor, since she needs a photo now, but the auction is not until January. Then I cleaned my brushes and put the oils away in the French Easel. I had pulled out the legs of the French Easel already, so I thought I would stand the rock on it so it was somewhat out of the way. I tried to even out the legs of the easel with the freshly painted rock on top, and off it rolled, down and across the carpet.
My daughter and I were painting at my Dad's outside with the French Easel when my daughter was about 9 years old. I went to the house for something, and when I came back she was crying. Her painting blew off the easel in the wind and fell face down on the grass. I said, oh but that is the beauty of oil paint, it is still wet and we can just pick off the pieces of grass and touch it up and it will be even better than it was. That mostly worked for her. I didn't cry, but there is only one word for how I felt looking at that rock on the carpet, it is that word that can be used as every word in a sentence, subject, noun, verb, adjective.
It wasn't ruined, but I had to touch it up and pick off pieces of carpet fuzz with tweezers. It screwed up the girls bangs and the letter e in One. I almost started over with the lettering and painted it out, since I didn't like it much anyway, but I decided to tough it out. I did as much as I could, but it needs to dry again before I can fix the lettering, which will give me more time to mess around with the things that don't quite work, like the girl's lips. That is one problem with oils, you can work on them forever, and I am missing my watercolors already.
Yesterday, the weatherman predicted a week of rain/snow, but this morning I woke up to rain that cleared up for a sunny afternoon. Poor Cruiser goes into the backyard and examines his favorite, now frozen, hole that he can't dig anymore and just sits staring at it, like the neighbor cat is going to come crawling through any minute. Sometimes he is so busy staring at the hole that he doesn't notice the neighbor's cat is sitting on the fence staring down at him. Spit's digestion issues continued, so I thought it might be due to more than just eating bugs, so I changed her cat food. My cats were eating Iams wet food in a pouch when we had that scare a few years ago when China was supplying a food ingredient that was really plastic. Their food was one of the contaminated ones and I switched wet food brands, but I've really never forgiven Iams. The cats are switched to Science Diet now, and Spit is much better, although I am having trouble weaning both cats off of the wet food altogether.
One of the temporary like me front desk guys was fired last Thursday. He had a pretty bad attitude and thought he would stop working when his temp hours were up and collect unemployment. I tried to explain that it didn't really work that way. I felt bad and wished I was nicer to him, but it reminded me to be grateful I have a job. One of the adjudicator trainees that was promoted from working the front desk goes back to his old job on Monday, so there is also my self-centered reaction of what this could mean for me. We also got an email that despite the pay freeze, Idaho is going to fill necessary positions, which could be more good news for me.
Friday the museum called and asked how to ship back my paintings from the Idaho Paints Idaho show, which made me more upset than the smudged rock. I was really hoping someone would buy at least one. I don't know if I will ever understand how to have hope without expectations and disappointment.
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