Love is all that I can give.....

This is actually a sketchbook page I began in California, played with in Nevada and finally finished in Missouri. Traveling art show !!!Not much traveling since November, but I will be off to New Jersey for a quick trip in a few weeks. In the mean time I am working away at my visual journal and needing to finish three 90% done pieces and get started on something new. I have some ideas and reference shots for a still life...we'll see how that goes.

This week-end my DH is going to be gone almost all day Saturday so I am thinking of how to optimize all that art time !!! I want to make a few new journals for gifts and could actually set up a line of work and just rock out. Then again I have an idea about setting up a shallow shelf of some sort to set up my still lifes on. Thirdly (is that a word??) I will have an opportunity to set things up elsewhere in the house and challenge myself to paint as quickly as possible. so many ideas, so few hours !!!! I should also go for a run, clean the house, do some laundry, vacuum, scrub the bathrooms and all that fun stuff. je refuse !!! I am tired of wearing myself out doing stuff that could really be done when DH is around and can maybe even help...OK I am on drugs with that last line.

Having free time..or husband free time as the case may be is like suddenly finding yourself with an extra, unexpected $100. You can come up with so many ways to spend it that you wind up going way over $100.

Gotta sit down and breathe.

I am going to do this: Pour myself a large glass of iced tea and go up into the studio. Clear my work table, get some clean water, put anything I can trip over away. Then I am going to pull out one of my sketch books..not a good one..One of the cheapies I sometimes get for free when I buy supplies at Dick Blick...pull out my pencils and start to draw. what to draw ????? Well, I'll either grab some fruit or already have some decandent pastry, slap it on a pretty plate and simply begin. The flip side, if no fruit or treat to eat when I am done ( after I do get in that run) is to pull something from my stack of reference photos and go for it.

A long time ago and in far away Santa Fe, I took a class in printmaking..specifically, monoprinting using plexi plates. It was wonderful. After the first year, the instructor allowed anyoone who had taken two or more classes to pay a "studio fee" vs, a more expensive class fee to come on and work. I thought that was heaven on earth. For a given amount I got to use the presses, a full palette of printing inks and mediums. I had to pay for my paper, but that was only a few dollars a sheet. I started dragging every art friend I had to this set up. I was amazed when some began to complain bitterly about how they couldn't just "turn on" inspiration to create work at a given hour and place. I was shocked. I planned every precious minute by making sure I had a sketch book full of value sketches, reference photos, hot coffee and the world's most bedraggled apron. I couldn't imagine waitng for inspiration to "strike". I went and set up every trap I knew to trap that sucker and bleed it dry in the 3-4 hours I had to work. I would finish with a stack of finished prints. Wonderful stuff that made use of my "ghost images", chine colle and anything else I could think of to furhter the process. One image would freed off the previous and they would develop like a movie. I could not understand this waiting around trick.

That said, I think I might have wasted some serious time waiting for the "right" moment to get back to my art work. There is never a right time, or an inspired time. There is only this moment. the one we have right now. Nike had it so right. don't think about it, don't do more than a moment's planning . Begin and the finish will follow as naturally as breathing.

There, that breath helped a whole bunch, didn't it ?