Can it be Tuesday already?

I find the days seem to buzz past me in a blur. I've recovered from my little bug, with the exception of some lingering body aches, that might be actually attributed to trying watch tv while on the treadmill. Well, like Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, "it's always something".

It's nice to have a little studio space in which to be creative, and I know you are bustin' a gut to see my latest painting, so here she is.

This is copied from a demo in my pastel instruction book. Some folks don't believe in copying another artist's work, but I think that if it is from a tutorial and it gives you a materials list, it is meant to be copied. It's not like I'm going to try to pass it off as anything, or even claiming that I took the photo, but if you look in Painting with Pastels by Maggie Price, you will recognize it from the section dealing with bright underpaintings. That won't keep me from being proud of it, or framing it for my home.

Before starting my journey with pastels, I didn't know that you could collect the dust from your pastel painting and make your own neutral colored pastel. Yep, you can and that's what I did here. The colors usually result in some sort of gray depending on, obviously, the colors you used. This is what resulted from this painting.

It's a very nice greenish gray that will be great for shadow areas and such. The method I have been using is to place paper beneath my table top easel and capture the dust that way. After putting it in a container, I added water, five drops at a time and stirred with my gloved finger of my right hand. After slowly dripping water and mixing about 20 drops of water I got a good stiff consistency and proceeded to form the dust into a cylinder. Pretty cool, huh?

And last but not least, I'm really trying to get serious about my weight and health. I'm 40 pounds over my mid-range desired weight. In April my sister and I challenged each other to lose 20 pounds, and I haven't dropped an ounce. Any hoo, I decided to take before pictures to be a bit of a motivator. I decided to take the pictures myself, and I'm not showing the actual pictures, but I did think that this was pretty funny. I have a ten second timer on my camera and a two second one. You guessed it, I accidentally pressed the short timer and had to run to my spot.....resulting in this image.

It looks like I'm doing some kind of clogging, doesn't it? I always wanted to learn to clog. You know that kind were they wear taps on their shoes? Wouldn't that be fun? If you live locally and find a clogging class, let me know and we'll partner up.

Well, with this picture burned into your retinas, I'll say ta, ta and go work on a new painting. I'm working from a reference photo that is gorgeous. It's a wonderful image of a Japanese maple, that was in a fall edition of House Beautiful. You just never know where inspiration might be lurking, huh?

So that's it until later. Take care and be creative and kind.