Boo!

Well, it's the last week of October! Sorry I missed last week, but here's this week's photo of my back yard:

Sunday afternoon, October 26th, off the deck

You can see that the leaves are pretty much done. We had a Nor'Easter blow in and for several days the wind was simply howling. We could have had a sweeter leaf season, if not for that. I'm actually amazed that there are leaves on anything after that storm, as it almost flipped our big table on the deck!

Last week I worked on my Queen of Hearts, and I'm super close to being done:

I was painting the hedgehogs, and the one on the left came out fine... but the one on the right turned into the Dormouse. This is what happens when I paint. I simply cannot plan everything out. Sometimes, it has its own ideas, and in this case it was including the Dormouse!

I need to paint the rose hedge that goes around the painting, because I will be including some white and red roses as well as some in-between that are dripping red paint. Those are more complicated elements, and I don't want to over complicate the painting by adding in more detailed flowers and such in the rest of the Garden just yet. I need to check the balance. I thought the hedge would be last, but that just shows what I know! Nothing! The painting rules me!

I am really looking forward to being done with it, however. I did paint some mini-canvas creatures for the online auction I participate in on Facebook:

"Elsie" Poor Elsie. She just wanted to go out trick-or-treating with everyone else... but no one asked her to go! I think they worried she might eat all of their candy, as Elsie has a fearful chocolate addiction - particularly if it has caramel too! 

"Charlie" Charlie is a friendly sort, but as he was out and about on Halloween night he suddenly noticed all manner of wee beasties knocking on doors and asking for candy! It was pretty scary for poor Charlie, so he went and hid in the pumpkin patch until it was all over!

"Gus" Gus is the bravest of our three little misfits. Once he realized what was going on, he made his own happy Halloween friend out of a pumpkin... isn't that what everyone else was doing when they carved theirs? Well, Gus certainly thought so! But he didn't want to get much closer to find out more. No, no... this is close enough. Definitely close enough.

I'm thinking more and more about reabsorbing my Whimsical Misfits (these sorts of creatures) with my Fairy Tale page. I'm just not certain what to do though. They're pretty specific, and yet, they certainly can be their own fairy tale too.

Hmm.

This upcoming week, I hope to finish the Queen (FINALLY!) That's my primary goal. After that, I think I'm going to take an Alice-break and work on Holiday art. Specifically to finish the kittens from last year for Holiday cards, and a few others as well. Christmas certainly comes fast for the artist community, because we have to be working well in advance! It makes me want to put my tree up early, though.

Normally, we put all the Christmas decor up the first week of November, except for the family tree. The family Christmas tree goes up after thanksgiving dinner (so we all don't go into comas after the pie) that way we know the whole family, and often out of town family are there to join in. This year, with showing the house since it's for sale, I can't put up any Christmas decor until Thanksgiving weekend. Although... if showings die off, I may sneak down and start putting stuff up anyway. It cheers me up, and I'm one of those people who has to have everything down on January 2nd because it bugs me after the fact. So, my holiday time is limited! Gah!

I hope everyone has a nice week ahead! We're having a teenage horror-movie party on Halloween. That ought to be... interesting. Or scary. Probably scary.

Scary Movies and Queens!

This week I have less art and more life to share, I think, as far as the visuals go. Here is my weekly shot from my back deck for autumn. Actually, I think I'll just continue to do this until we move. I'll have no view at all of anything in North Carolina. I asked what a view is there, and it's either a "city" view (when you live in the city and high up like in an apartment building), or trees. That's right, if you have trees smack up against your windows and can't see your neighbors, that's the best you can do for a view. Well, at least where I am moving. I imagine there are some amazing places on the beach and up in the mountains, but that's not where I'll be living.

A bit chilly and dark this morning... but pretty colors!

My son completely bailed on the Inktober challenge, and my daughter, despite saying she was going to pick it up, didn't. I just sorta let it go after that. So, my Inktober challenge was very, very short lived.

This is fine though, because I shifted my focus to my Queen of Hearts. I tried painting like normal, but the truth was... I was having trouble seeing. Darnit. I finally gave in and got my glasses. I just HAVE to wear them now while painting, even when I'm not doing close-up work. As a matter of fact, I need to go buy super-magnifying reading glasses for the close-up and tiny stuff. I'm NOT happy. I feel like a librarian when I wear them (no offense to any librarians, but I got yelled at by a lot of them growing up because I checked out too many books for their liking and they didn't believe I was reading that many every week! Speaking of which, I just finished the Maze Runner trilogy. I then proceeded to download a ton of romances to my kindle because I need non-apocalyptic brain-candy for a while or I'll go insane!)

I even snapped this photo, proving that I gave in to my glasses.
Getting old stinks.

When last you saw my Queen painting, she looked like this:

And then I actually made quite a bit of progress! I started painting away, and finished with her at this point on Friday:

I'll add flowers to the garden behind her very last to balance out the colors overall. It'll be pretty!

A close up of the queen and the pink flamingo on her shoulder:

So, the first thing I have to say is how sinister flamingos can look. I went through all sorts of reference photos and I have to be honest here; flamingos kinda freak me out. I actually dialed back the rather sinister feel from the real pictures to make it a little less scary, and they're still quite the intense minions for the queen.

The second thing is, yes, I am making the lower flamingo blue. Well, to be precise, it's a mixture from purple to teal. Both flamingos have iridescent paint that make their feathers light up, and while that's pretty on the pink one, it's amazing on the blue because it brings to mind a peacock. Which makes me want to paint a peacock. I know I have painted a few (like Flight) but it makes me want to do an even bigger one!

Anyway, the queen's dress is done except for her sleeves which will be a sheer white once I paint her hands (unless I go back and embellish her dress a bit more with some gold here and there. I haven't decided yet... there's something to be said about gussying her up a bit over the top. On the other hand, she's pretty severe and intense as she is, and I don't want to distract from that either. I don't think she needs extra stuff to make her point, so to speak?)

Now, one of the things I have spoken about before is how I don't actually like the genre of horror films. Because. You know. They're SCARY. Yet, if I put one on (that has a plot line - violence with no plot and point are a complete waste of space in my opinion) and I work, I make amazing progress. My reasoning is that I don't want to be too drawn into the scary movie, so instead of putting my hands over my face to peek through my fingers, I paint, and occasionally peek at the screen instead. Given that there is rarely a time I want to focus on the screen, I end up pretty intent on my painting and make great progress!

Well, I was playing the movie Silent Hill (I can't replay any horror movies I have seen before, because they're not exactly movies I want to relive - so if you have suggestions for movies please tell me) because it happened to be on cable. Monsters. Scary things. And this is what I saw when I looked over to my right, on my bed (I'm painting in my bedroom, I'm so desperate for a big enough studio!):

Socrates, yawning because the horror movie bored him.

The horror genre has nothing on my cat, I'm telling you. Look at those teeth! Good thing he never bites, or I'd lose an appendage! My daughter's sleep mask to the side of him makes me giggle though.

Actually, Socrates has been quite the character this past week. He set up a toll-booth one morning and wouldn't let anyone pass without paying the toll:

"What's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

My son paying the toll before school. No exceptions!

Over the weekend we worked on house projects. One of them involved a forklift and I couldn't help with it, so I made pumpkin spice lattes and my daughter and I sat on the deck and watched. It's better than reality TV!

I'm looking forward to a nice week, with the hope that I might get close to finishing the Queen... we'll see. It may be another week after that yet, but I suppose it depends on how many horror movies I can catch! Good thing it's close to Halloween, then, right? Have a great week!

Feeling Autumn

Here is my weekly photo from my deck, showing off the hot autumn colors!

It's less brown in person, much more rainbow with orange, yellow, and red with the green. My phone simply doesn't do it justice.

Well, this has been a less productive week, unfortunately. I'm still finding my balance with things. I needed to do something fun for Halloween, just because... So, I painted this:

4x6 inch acrylic painting on professional canvas panel

It sold right away, so other people are clearly in a holiday mood too! It felt good to paint something fun and carefree! Even though I paint fairy tales, sometimes my work can get so serious!

October also kicked off #Inktober online, where artists all over the world are doing a daily drawing in ink. I saw one set of artists that were each drawing a monster to eat the other's monster from the day before and told my son about it. He instantly fell in love with the idea, and begged me to do it. I agreed, and his first drawing was this (all of these are simply ball-point pens on sketch paper):

Kinda creepy to start with, don't you think? I went for the guilt-route and did a "you don't want to kill and eat lil ole me, now do you?" with this:

The next day, my goal was to eat/kill his squid creature so I went with this:

See, the little lantern at the end of his stalk lures in the evil squid-things my son drew, and he eats them!

My son had no problem with killing my cute creature with this:

EEEEK!

Now, that looks like a spider to me, don't you think? So the next day I drew this to squish the spider:

Big foot for squishing creepies!

And then my son quit. 

He said it's too much like a homework assignment to have to draw every day. *sigh* I ended up not drawing yesterday, because I was kind of bummed over the whole thing. However, my daughter had been watching from the sidelines and when she heard he quit, she said she wanted to draw with me. Instead of killing each other's monsters, however, she wants a daily prompt instead. So, we're starting back into it today, and the prompt is Candy Land. We'll see what happens!

I'm working on doing the flamingo over the shoulder in my Queen of Hearts painting, and shipping out other paintings, and I just discovered the owls I painted last year, I guess I never listed them!

2x2 screech owl, now in my shop

2x4 white owl, now in my shop

So, oops. Caught that... maybe I was saving them for myself?

I also, after another showing and feeling bummed about the season, went into my crawl space and pulled out a couple fun Halloween decorations, including my favorite Halloween Cat:

I'm thinking that perhaps that cat shouldn't be put away anymore, as he tends to get lost. Perhaps he should just migrate to my studio in the off season?

I know my house is not supposed to have much personality at all while it's for sale, but it was getting depressing. I love the holidays, and it's hard not putting all the tacky crazy stuff up! So, a few things are up now, and even my kids said it makes them feel better!

No news on the house. We're still having showings, but I imagine it's as I feared that we're past the real estate window and we'll be here until it comes around again in the Spring. Things were pretty stressful this past week, but I think it's all going to be OK. 

Just breath deep and paint!