The closer I get to the end of the school year, the louder my art brain yells about free time and summer days and being on vacation. It’s hard to focus on school stuff at all, because people around you are lazing around, leaning back, taking a break, when we have a run for another 9 days, a sprint if you will. I mean, you can do anything for 9 days, right? OK. I’m pretty sure I can come up with something that I wouldn’t be able to do for 9 days, but right now, I keep telling myself I can get through 9 more days of students and teaching sex ed and dealing with whininess and hyper behavior (oh wait, that’s kind of my household at the moment).
I did take Saturday off though. I had to deliver a quilt to Oceanside, but I got to enjoy some art there (more later) and bought some teeny tiny art, two by high-school students and one by an adult. Go ahead, you guess which is which…
Top left is the adult (female) and the other two are high-school students (both male). Interesting pieces.
Then I spent a few hours roaming Art on Adams (more pictures later) and seeing mostly mediocre art with some standouts.
Sunday was a whole shit-ton of grading and school stuff (see that’s what happens when you blow it off for a day) and I think every day from here on out will be like that unfortunately. I did make it through all the makeup work, so that’s a plus. And my aide can input grades today and tomorrow.
I finally finished (well, got to a point of ending stuff and frustration) at around 9:30 PM and headed in to trace stuff. Midnight spent most of the time trying to lie on the drawing. There’s the girlchild talking to her…
Simba is still a spaz, even with a cone on his head. Here he is trying to get me to play with his toy while I’m tracing.
Girlchild was bored, so I handed her the coloring books I ordered from Jamie Fingal…I didn’t buy them to color, but because my art group is planning on doing a coloring book and I wanted to see what hers looked like. You can find them at that link. Girlchild’s been quite happily coloring while watching TV, in between job applications and brief spurts of cooking madness.
Cleaning the kitchen is still not her forte.
I traced for over 2 hours. Girlchild had gone to bed because she was tired (I should have noted that as a clue it was getting late…because I stayed up way too late).
I’m in the 900s now…still not halfway, but getting close. It’s 9 1/2 hours so far…I keep having to adjust my time estimates. It’s somewhere around 20 hours total, I’m guessing, depending on how fast I go. Last night, I was quite fast…250 pieces in 2 hours. I completely lost track of time, which is always nice. I traced cocoons and poppies and passionflower vines, plus a hand, some pine branches, and up the arm, minus the crane. That’s where I stopped: at the crane’s foot.
OK, so I plan to do some more, hit the halfway point even, tonight. Grading may get in the way, but hopefully there will still be time. Remember my goal to have it all traced AND cut out by the time school got out? Eh. It’s looking a little more difficult…but we’ll see. It’s OK…I set the goals with the realization that I might not meet them, but sometimes I’ll beat them. It gives me something to point at.
Kathy Nida 