This Mood

So many things achieved. I hate when my mood doesn’t reflect what I’ve gotten done…some of that is moody hormones, unfortunately, but some of it is getting bogged down by other crap that just won’t leave me alone. The little stuff is really getting to me at the moment. Need to dump that mentality. Must be getting to the end of the school year.

My two quilts are going to the photographer today…I dehaired and ironed them this morning, got up a little early to make sure I had enough time. Probably won’t finish writing this before I have to go, but that’s OK. I graded papers last night too. Girlchild and I were going to go to this art and music thing, but it was canceled for the rain (yes. we had rain. a miracle.), so she went off to dinner with friends, while I watched the series finale of Sons of Anarchy. Sheesh. Well, it’s done anyway. I think it’s hard to end a series well (Sopranos for example, not as an example of ending well). At least they got to make a decision about how to end it, instead of just not being renewed.

So I finished tracing the Wonder Under on Bathtub 2 last night…

And no, Kitten wasn’t helping. She mostly sat around on the papers I needed and then rolled around presenting her belly for petting. Then attacked. It’s nice when she comes out though.

It took almost 8 hours to trace this quilt, which is more than I would have guessed, but there are some whopping big and complicated pieces in the bathtub and water that took more than a minute or two to trace. I usually figure about 100 pieces an hour. Tracing big pieces takes longer than small.

The next step is to cut them all out and then move on to the ironing. I need to clean up the studio first though. There’s some stuff in there that’s been there so long, I don’t know what it is. Time to get it out of the way. Summer cleaning is how teachers think. We don’t Spring Clean. There’s no time. Summer is when our brains like to get rid of stuff and reorganize and move stuff around.

So that’s on the list. Even starting now, I think. I can’t iron fabrics for the next quilt without some major cleaning in here.

I’ve had some conversations about smaller quilts I can make for sale this summer. I don’t want to do all cats, but I will do some. I’m thinking of a different owl and maybe a raven…and possibly one like the cancer donation quilt I did with the hands and the heart, but simpler. So I’m finalizing all that in my head and figuring out how to fit in at least three major quilts between now and the end of September. Ha! Wow. Crazy much?

Honestly, though, I’m kind of looking forward to putting some sort of plan together for summer work on quilts. It helps school feel less crazy. It helps quiet nights at home seem less lonely. It helps with the frustration of my job. It helps temper the teenaged mutant attitudinal beast who is currently on my couch, bitching about everything I say or do (walking away, my sweet. I love you, but I’m not in the mood). I’m crying at the drop of a hat these days, stupid hormones. Fuck. Going to draw today. Seriously. They’re whirring about in my head, causing strife and stress and nausea (oh wait, those are the hormones, right?). My photographer gave me some really positive comments about the quilts I dropped off…not that I didn’t like them, but I keep having this discussion about pretty versus significant. I prefer the latter. Most people like the former. I have to find the happy place between them for the stuff that sells easily and then keep making the big stinky stuff to keep me sane. Like sanity is my strong point! Whatever.

This mood. Sheeit. Dammit brain, I finished all this stuff. Would you back off for a bit? Sigh. We can engineer bridges, put humans in space for months on end, we know how to replace a lens in an eyeball without stitches, but we can’t find an acceptable treatment for menopausal crap? This world we live in. Don’t tell me it’s equal. It’s not.

An Hour a Day

Things that are good right now. Right this second. The dog is sound asleep behind my chair and is not eating the girlchild’s underwear. I am only teaching Punnett squares for about three more days and then I am done done done with the stuff that is apparently so hard we can’t do it. I had an awesome book club meeting last night and a long talk with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. I have another social meeting tonight. Grades are done. I think I have uploaded every stupid-ass document Cornell needs onto the financial aid system. The boychild is coming home in less than two weeks. It’s supposed to rain. There are leftovers in the fridge for my lunch today. Google Classroom finally updated so I can grade assignments from my iPad. I’m wearing jeans to work today (this after a long work dress code discussion at book club last night). My foot hurts but it’s not a broken bone. I already had an ankle brace in my stash. I still like Cheerios for breakfast after some 48 years of eating them. Two of my quilts are traveling with the People and Portraits exhibit, and now they will be at all four AQS Quilt Weeks in 2016.

Deep breath. See. That’s all ok.

I had book club last night. This is a group of smart geeky women, the two oldest besides me are a good 10 years younger than me, but they are accepting and funny and sarcastic and intelligent. Some of the best conversations I have some months are at these meetings, no matter what the book is (we panned the book…Mass Midnight by F. Paul Wilson…lousy dialogue, messed up the story, didn’t even make sense at one point, not pleased with how they dealt with anything, except that the vampires didn’t get all sexy or sparkly). I don’t make it to all of them, because of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but I do have a good time when I go. I had a long conversation afterwards with a friend there, and it got me home and dinnerfied late (thanks to the girlchild for making dinner), but I did manage to get off the couch and do art. I almost always manage to do that. I’m not a couch sitter really. I’m usually grading papers (did that yesterday too) or sewing or cutting stuff out or drawing if I’m on the couch. Girlchild’s new TV obsession is SVU, of all things. Kind of a mental shock for her to go from weeks of watching Friends (which almost drove me bonkers) to the Law and Order offshoots. I suggested she start with L&O and she just looked at me like I was crazy. She finished the second AP test yesterday, so she’s a little braindead.

So I traced…

Only for about an hour. That’s the key. I think some people are like, well, I’m not going to get very much done, plus it’s late, and then they never get up. I regularly do about an hour a night, or try to anyway, and when I have more time (and energy, honestly), I do more. I can do almost 4 hours in a good night, but that’s rare, except on weekends and vacations. But an hour a day is 365 hours you didn’t spend on art before. An hour a day when you figure about 7 hours to trace all the Wonder Under for this quilt? That’s a week. That’s nothing. And I wasn’t always this good at it. I had to push myself to get here. I used to put it on my calendar, just like I did the blog writing. And then it became habit. And now, I have to be sick or out of town to not be making art, and even then, I’m probably drawing with the latter.

Which reminds me, driving to the book club venue last night, a drawing related to the Barton thing I showed you yesterday popped into my head. Like BING! And it’s still there, because I didn’t draw it last night. Aargh. I need a full day just of drawing I think.

So 4 1/2 hours in, I’m 400 pieces in as well. Only a couple hundred pieces to go. I’m feeling better about this piece. Progress. It helps.

Keep doing the work. Keep getting up off the couch.

A Thousand Drawings in My Head

OK, so I had a picture sent to me via one of those Facebook friends I’ve never met (which is fine…I’ll meet her someday, and we have quilt art in common) of this painting by an Australian woman, Del Kathryn Barton. And it’s hard to see up close, but here’s the link…and it’s the center panel my friend was pointing out to me (did my brain explode with ideas? Fuck yes, it did.).

So I went searching out on the Interwebs and found this video, where she talks about her process…

And Oh Holey Moley. You thought I had an issue with detail. There we are. Her stuff is amazing. And crazy.

It’s very hard to persuade myself to go to work right now, because (1) it’s hard and (2) I’d rather stay home and draw. Is that an option? (No, it’s not)

I was a good girl last night and graded for about 2 hours before doing art stuff. I spent about another hour prepping for the rest of this week. I only traced for about an hour. It was mostly large pieces of bathtub rim and side…

Very exciting. Actually kind of a pain in the butt to fit on the Wonder Under. I had to cut one in half. It was too big…which makes me wonder if I will have to shop for bathtub fabric this weekend. Hopefully not.

I’ve spent a little over three and a half hours tracing at this point…

It doesn’t feel that way though…I’m only at piece 280-something. Slow. But I guess I’m halfway done, or close to that. I might finish by the weekend.

I don’t feel totally into this quilt yet. Maybe it’s because of all the other stress hanging over me. Too much on my plate. Can’t keep track of all of it. Really would just rather sit here and watch more art videos and do some drawing and sleep longer.

Sounds like summer vacation? Except it never works out like that. The to-do list over the summer is even worse, because I know I have huge chunks of time to get the stuff done that I didn’t get done all year. Ugh. Even cooking sounds like hard work. I think this is stupid hormones again. I think there’s a drawing in that too. Sigh. I don’t have near enough time in the day to get done all the art stuff I want, let alone to try to fit it in amongst all the other drivel. Work, groceries, clean, yardwork, errands, manage kid stuff. SLEEP? Whatever. I need a staff. Not a wooden one…one which will do my bidding.

Wah. OK, going to work. The head is full of tiny details that want to manifest into a thousand drawings. Such is the life of a modern-day, semi-responsible artist.

Spiky Balls

Head is a stress mess, filled with tax forms and crazy requests from financial aid departments and school crap. Please explain how I should get a signature from a kid who is 3000 miles away? I should fly there? Gaarrrr.

It happens every year. Deep breaths. Couple that with trying to finish grades and girlchild starting her AP exams…she cooked, but I had to clean up after her. Repeatedly. Even her lunch stuff. When APs are done, we are having a (heated probably) discussion.

By the time I was done with everything (or as done as I could be, which felt pretty damn done, by the way, but surely isn’t, because I have to call New York this morning, except they’re only available for 4 hours today, and those are the hours I’m at work)…I didn’t have much energy for artmaking…especially when said artmaking required more standing.

There is just nothing exciting about pictures of me tracing pieces. Really boring looking. Except you can see that I have filled in many of the blank spaces now. I stopped there because the next piece I needed to trace was huge and would need its own piece of Wonder Under, and I didn’t have the energy to do that. To cut a new piece, to start tracing something really huge, like a bathtub. I like stopping somewhere logical, so I can figure out where I was the next day, and that was a logical stopping place. So I stopped.

Plus it was past 11 and I was still dealing with drama.

UGH. But I feel like crap this morning, and it’s not just because now I’m stressed about financial aid paperwork (I am) or the thing that happened at school yesterday that’s really freakin’ stupid but that I will still have to manage, or that I’m trying to get everything into their heads before we start testing officially at my school, or that I can’t possibly fit everything in, who the hell was I kidding, plus the headache? Plus maybe someone could tell me if this is really a broken bone in my foot, because I wore different shoes yesterday and holy ouch!

It’s morning now. I’m drinking tea. I’ve eaten my Cheerios. I made lunch. I printed all the stuff I needed for the reproduction unit, so I can get it copied for me and the other teacher. I will bully through Punnett squares for another 4 days and then we’ll be done (well, sort of).

Really, it’s better to try to think of the other things…I am tracing Wonder Under for a new quilt. I need to call the photographer about getting those two done…wait, now I’m back into stress mode, too many things to do, the headache is spreading!

I make lists. Lots of them. I put reminders on my phone. I have post-it notes everywhere. I put papers on my doc cam so I know I’ll see them in the morning.

I’M JUGGLING 50 SPIKY BALLS.

Sigh. I don’t even have time to go through my meditation program this morning. I have duty before and after school for the next two weeks. I hate duty. It’s just more stressful management of crap. Being an introvert and a teacher takes careful management of peace and quiet throughout the day…few and far between.

Deep breath in for four. Slowly let it out for four. Y’all wanna know how I get through it all? There. Breathe. And take Motrin.

Making Time

Grades are due on Tuesday, just progress reports. Really, in the old days, I would have started working on them Friday night and finished them Saturday, never leaving them until Monday night. Eh. Whatever. They’re mostly done. I did get some grading done yesterday, documented some stuff in the gradebook that I keep track of, more to force them to do it then because it’s super-important to understanding science…teaching kids good habits, those that will pay attention. But I’m not done. And sometime around 10 PM last night, I quit being a teacher and started being an artist.

OK, realistically, I never stop being an artist. My brain is always working on art stuff, even when I’m stuck in a 2-hour staff meeting on a Monday afternoon (ugh…today is Monday). It’s one of the things that keeps me going. Car drive, art in head. Waiting in line at the grocery store, art in head. Waiting for the X-ray technician, art in head. They did X-ray my foot on Friday to see if the pain I’ve been feeling is an unlucky broken or fractured tiny bone instead of just a sprain. I vote for a sprain.

So at this point in my life, I just have to make time for art…I don’t have to stand around, pushing fabric around my office, waiting for the muse to appear. She’s always there, waiting. I know I’m lucky for that. But it’s really not luck. It’s making sure that I’m doing something artistic almost every single day. Do that, and she will stay…at least most of the time. Significant depression or illness can drive her away, but if you’re lucky, she’ll stick around.

I went back and looked at the long skinny drawing to see if it needed more. I drew three different cats in pencil around the existing drawing, wanting to fit one in, but not sure if I should. One of them stayed…

Then I proclaimed it done, because honestly, I could keep adding stuff, but it would take longer to finish it, which will be an issue as it is, and I think it would actually detract from what I’m trying to say. So I stopped.

And then I started numbering it…

It actually had more pieces than I thought it would…partially because I drew it to size instead of enlarging it, so I kept drawing these stupid tiny pieces. And then while I was numbering it, I thought about adding some more cracks around, but I stopped myself…for now. Looking at that photo above makes me want to add more though. It currently has 543 pieces. Who knows what it will have at the end. I have some time to think about it, though, because it is not the next one on the list…it’s the one AFTER the next one.

So I started tracing Bathtub 2, which is the next one on the list…

I can’t remember how many pieces it has…hang on…this is partially why I have a blog: to document my own shit because I can’t remember it. (Kathy scrolls back through the blog)…595 pieces. Oh. Hey. Not bad.

Anyway. I traced for an hour, and now my right hand is sore…

Which is kind of pitiful really. Although I did use the same hand for numbering. I didn’t even get 75 pieces done. See the big long skinny tree pieces? Pain in the butt. And yet I keep drawing them. You’d think I’d learn. But no. This one is going to have some big bathtub pieces too.

I’m using the new Wonder Under. It’s very plasticky. It sticks to the paper when I trace, which helps in that the paper doesn’t move as much as it used to, but then it doesn’t let go of the paper either. Kind of different…but the paper’s not releasing from the fusible either, so that’s a good thing. I’ll probably be tracing all week. I’ve got a bunch of stuff on at night this week, so I won’t get a lot of art time, I think…although I do try every night. It doesn’t have to be more than 30 minutes though. Last night, while tracing, I got a thunderstorm running through town…thunder, lightning scared the animals, and then it rained heavily for a while. We need it. Plus it’s kinda cool to be awake really late and see the light flashing and hear and feel the boom…then waiting as the quiet pitter patter turns into waves of rain pounding down.

This morning, though, there are no such natural phenomena…today is just overcast and a bit humid, with sounds of hairdryers and water heaters in the near distance. And a job that calls me, kind of rudely, reminding me how I pay the bills.

She Got Legs…

Yeah so I finished the quilt. No final pictures to be posted until something…um…I think we’re supposed to wait a week or so. Plus it hasn’t been officially photographed. But it took me a few hours last night (ok, almost 3, because I was really slow apparently) to finish the binding and sleeves. I debated putting only one sleeve on it, because it’s not huge, but figured it would still hang better with two, and it’s easier to put it on now than later. All these practical things that flutter through my head.

When I was done, I wanted to draw. Probably (based on how I’m feeling this morning) should have gone to bed, but I’m not sure the brain would have shut down last night. School was a stress ball, not because of kids (well, a little because of kids), but now it’s done and I really don’t want to think about it. It’s my job and it sucks up too much energy. So I headed for the drawing in progress…

Which was being inhabited by a very black, hard-to-photograph cat. Hi Midnight. She’s the same cat that was trying to lie on the quilt earlier (if you’re on my Instagram, you would have seen her). Basically, she wants to be all over my stuff. Like cats do. Clean clothes, the papers I’m grading, the quilt under the machine, the book I’d like to read. Yup. You know if you have them what evil beasts they are, and they love someone who works with fabric and paper. This is not a light table…it’s a cat staging area.

Anyway, I pulled the drawing out from under and she stayed there and I drew around her.

And this is where the shitty day went back to OK, because dammit, I rocked those legs. I did exactly what I wanted to. I am incredibly happy with the damn legs…

Can you tell? And then I stopped, because…well, I could stop there and be done. But that’s unlike me. I want to add stuff to it, like cats and cups of tea and trees growing out of weird places. But I don’t know if it needs it (and she already has stuff coming out of her head). Maybe it’s OK to just stop there and make that quilt.

I don’t know though. So until I do, it’s still in progress. Which is fine, because I think I have to do grades tonight anyway. UGH. OK wait. You keep having these epiphanies about Art Good and Work Semi-Bad, certainly don’t let it take your sanity…so maybe grades yes, because progress reports are due, but maybe also something else. Maybe I’ll pull out the big drawing and work on it tonight. I seem to be on a roll with that.

I’m also considering a new batch of smaller quilts, a la the birds of last year, except maybe cats? I don’t know. I’m also looking around for a summer job, part time, one that doesn’t suck up my brain too badly. Ha. So not teaching. Sigh.

With all that cheeriness in mind (fuck! no! You drew awesome legs last night!), I need to go to work. It’s Friday. I can survive that.

Bound…But Not Done…

So I was a good girl and followed the plan yesterday. I came home after haircuts (me and girlchild), actually made it to the Giant Box Store of Long Line Hell before that (needed to go for the last month, but couldn’t bring myself to drive into the parking lot), unloaded everything, and started cooking dinner. Girlchild walked in the door and pushed me out of the kitchen (I love it when that happens), so I came in here and started finding the stuff I needed to get done before I could bind the quilt. All of that was done and taken care of before dinner, and I managed to get back up off the couch after dinner (oops, now you know we don’t eat at the table…which only happened when the boychild went to college and there was only the two of us), clean the kitchen, sign the girlchild up for college housing (is it OK if I clicked all the music-preference boxes that she hates?…it’s OK, I changed them), and then kicked her out of here so I could iron and trim the quilt and bind it.

The girlchild does actually on occasion resent the time I spend making art. Sigh.

I did actually go through the boxes looking for the bindings Mariah had already cut, but she cuts 2 1/2 inches, then folds in half and I cut 3 3/8 inches and fold in half. I debated it, using hers anyway, but then the fabric I wanted to use, it wasn’t long enough to go around. This quilt isn’t actually tiny…it’s about 22″ x 33″. So I rummaged around some more and found a dark blue, but I didn’t have enough to go all the way around, plus I liked a dark purple near the base, where all the purply triangles are, so I found a purple (ssshhhh…this one is from my stash, not Mariah’s), which made up the missing part.

The camera has totally washed those out…

So I pieced a binding and put it on…

I only spent 2 hours last night working on this…compared to 4 the night before. And another 2 or more on the drawing on Sunday and Monday nights. I figure I work on art somewhere between 10-20 hours on art on a school week. Much much more on a non-school week obviously. It really is a second job.

Anyway, I pinned all the bindings down…

You can see the purple on the bottom…

I wasn’t perfect about where it lined up, because I didn’t want to be. Plus the piecing isn’t perfect either. Also OK. I like it though. I’ll hand sew it tonight at quilt class, and will hopefully finish today. Otherwise it will have a May finish…although that might be good, because I could enter it in shows a month later than if it’s an April quilt. Not that it matters much.

Next on my list? Finish the Oasis drawing, maybe finish the big drawing, then trace the first bathtub…which needs to be done by mid-July, but I’m really aiming for end of June. Then Oasis by mid-July (OK, now we’re sounding crazy again), and the big one by the end of August. That’s the plan anyway. I’m good at that long-range stuff. I’m even good at breaking it up into smaller goals, although I can’t do that at the moment. Progress report grades are due Tuesday and I don’t even have that in my schedule. I’m kinda thinking tomorrow night, even though I’ll be tired…because progress reports don’t have to take as much time as the end of the trimester, and my TA can input stuff today, and maybe I’ll get all the warmups graded today (um, maybe? That might be crazy talking again.). Sigh. See, even in my real job, I have to project out and try to figure out if I can get stuff done. I still have two online assignments I need to get through, but that means I need my prep period (lost today to admin) or my computer…which I could do today, I guess. Sigh. Too Much Crap.

And the stuff that makes me feel better in my world? Making art. Making connections with a few people, troublesome at the moment. People I care about are not happy with me, and it makes me feel like a lame person…although it shouldn’t. It’s all about my putting my foot down on the line between work and the rest of my life, and that has upset some people, because they think I didn’t put it far enough out, but I know it’s what’s best for me. And there aren’t a lot of people out there looking out for me at that level, so I have to do it. And I feel the criticism (hear it even), and I’m just not in the mood to deal with it. I do not know really what it is like to raise kids in a marriage, so I don’t assume I do, but I do know what it’s like to do it without that…and sure, if it’s not a good marriage, that’s a whole ‘nother nest of problems, but I still know you can’t imagine what it’s like to do it alone. And I’m lucky in that their dad is still around, but still…it’s not like doing it alone.

Besides, I think I’m just a strange little beast who feels things differently than most. It’s not easy to explain the artistic drive to those who don’t have it. And mine is strong.

Anyway…binding tonight…here was the dog last night when I was trying to find somewhere to put the ironing board so I could get to the sewing machine…

I really need to clean the office out this summer…that pile of papers and notebooks and boxes near her does not need to be in here.

I’m starting the day feeling a little lost, but also happy to be finishing this quilt. I found out that the other one for this show will be in the summer issue of Fiber Art Now in an article on my art group and the show we’re doing over the summer, Diverted Destruction, so that’s cool. Keep looking at all the good things and let the bad things just fall away. Don’t need them.

That Place to Stop

Stayed up too late. Ugh. But the quilting! And I was almost done! And it won’t take much longer…just this little bit…don’t look at the clock, just finish. Not the best decision in the world. Oh well.

I had about a third of the outline quilting left to do when I abandoned this a week or so ago.

I pull out my trusty phone that has my trusty app on it where I keep track of my art time…oh holy crap. It’s been two weeks since I touched this. I wonder why? Just didn’t feel like quilting, I guess. What have I been doing? Sewing bindings…drawing. That’s about it, right? Not a whole lot, really.

This is not a huge quilt, so I figured I could make a serious dent in the quilting last night. I wasn’t starting as late as the night before, so that had to be a good thing. When I finished the outlining, I had to make a decision about the background, which has 70 trillion colors in it and goes from dark to light all over the place. So I picked a variegated thread that goes from orange through green through purple…

Which is kinda crazy if you think about it. My background does have purple, but more of a blue purple than this one. It has browns that verge on orange. There’s like no green at all.

I usually pick a thread that fades into the background color. I don’t like the background to compete with the image, but this one already does, so by using an allover stipple with a variegated thread, I was hoping to tone that down a bit…

Up close, it’s still a little crazy.

But I like it. And from a distance, it’s not obvious…just tones down the lights a bit…

I think it works. I’m really happy with this.

I finished all the quilting last night. I shouldn’t have. I really should have stopped somewhere on the right side of the quilt, given up on finishing it last night, and gone to bed. Deceptively not small quilt. I quilted for almost 4 hours last night. I’m officially crazy. And tired this morning. I know I survived on much less sleep than this last year, but I don’t know how I did it. Proof that there was something really truly wrong, I guess.

Tonight, I’ll (SLEEP!!!) um yeah that AND trim this and bind it hopefully. I probably should do some grades too, because progress report grades are due next Tuesday. Eh.

I do not know how I am going to choose a binding color for this thing. At my fiber art meeting on Sunday, I presented new work and so did another woman who used to quilt, but now makes things that hang on the walls that could be quilts, but she’s trying to move away from that to art (I did not take offense at that…mine are obviously both, and I don’t mind using all the trappings of quilting to make my art). She doesn’t use a batting, doesn’t quilt, and doesn’t bind the edges, but her work is abstract and rooted in traditional quilting in some ways, more contemporary calm and focused on simple shapes and movement across the piece. I like the binding on mine as a frame to the piece, especially when it’s hanging on the wall. It gives the eye a place to rest, points it back inside the piece. Like stop here, and bounce back into the image. So I will need a binding. And I’m going to have to rummage through my stash for all those binding pieces Mariah gave me and see if some of them work. I don’t think it would be strange to piece a binding for this quilt from multiple fabrics. But I still want that finished edge, that place to stop.

Maybe I will finish this one in April too.

No, I didn’t draw last night. Still working the legs out in my head.

All right. Need to take my exhausted self to work, where the kids are all flabbergasted that I have a Facebook page. Oh kids, kids…I’ve been on Facebook since before you started SCHOOL. Really? The world is such a strange place when you deal with middle school all day. My current students were born after 9/11. They don’t know a world without cable TV and cell phones and tablets, and yet they barely know how to use all that.

Shit. Another drawing popped into my head. Bloody hell. The drawing part of my brain is on a roll…BALANCE! Can’t get there.

Late Start

I didn’t start making art last night until 11:20 PM. I didn’t mean to start that late. I got home late anyway, because of errands after school, and I was tired. Like sit on the couch and read your book tired. It’s hard to be motivated to do anything when you’re that tired. But at some point, the girlchild mentioned the gym, and that got us out of here and over to the gym. Late. And we worked out and it was good. I really do enjoy exercise, plus I was trying to finish my book…not because I liked it, but because I wanted to know what was going to happen. If that makes sense.

We got home, had dinner around 9:30, and then I finished the book and cleaned the kitchen, and after ALL that, headed for the drawing from the night before.

The plus is that it went easier last night. I’m not sure what the issue was Sunday night, but it was just like hard work. And I did consider that I should just go to bed (and this morning’s headache is probably proof that I should have gone to bed, but I didn’t…and I’m glad).

I got most of the torso of the front figure done (I think the back figure will be mostly hidden)…

And added the back figure’s arm. I’m still debating whether there will be anything on the sides…there’s room, but it would be OK if there wasn’t anything there, I think. I don’t have a ton of time on this piece or the other two I should be working on, so I have to keep that in mind.

The stuff below will all be new, not using an existing drawing as a jumping-off point like I’ve been doing with this.

So I have four legs and I have to decide how to handle them. I had the front figure’s legs in pencil, drew one in, and then decided to wrap one of the back figure’s legs around the front. I’ll draw that tonight maybe. I wasn’t happy with the foot, so I stopped. Plus it was midnight 30. And that’s late and I needed to go to bed.

And I felt really calm and mellow afterwards (which might have been the hour and a half at the gym maybe)…and fell asleep quickly…and didn’t sleep all that well in the long run. Ugh. Hormones. Messing with my sleep. Stop it.

I have quilt class on Thursday and I don’t know what I’m taking with me to work on there. Nothing is at the right stage. I’m not drawing there. Everything is already numbered. I won’t trace Wonder Under elsewhere any more unless it’s small, and nothing I’m working on is small. I haven’t gotten any Wonder Under traced, because I decided to finish the two drawings first. The quilt under the machine won’t take long to finish. I guess I could try to get it quilted and put a binding on it, so I could stitch that down. Ugh. Not sure I can do that in the next two days. We’ll see.

Inertia. I’m not good at it. Really, that’s the key. Don’t sit down. Just keep moving. It doesn’t matter that there’s only 30 minutes before you should go to sleep. Grab a pen/pencil and draw. Take a few stitches. Trace a few pieces. It’s better than none and you’ll feel better the next day, even if you can’t keep your eyes open (probably should go to bed earlier than me).

Redraw…

Sunday Night: Drawings are in my head, crying to be let out, much like the Golden Retriever who then stands at the doorway, staring at me as if I have asked her to sacrifice her dinner. “I don’t really want to go out, mom. I just want attention.” I carry my sketchbooks around, two of them, for two days straight, thinking that will help me, but I can’t draw around people. The drawings are shy; they don’t want attention like that. Just mine, like needy two-year-olds, clinging to mom. Fuckers.

I had an art meeting yesterday afternoon, so I didn’t have a chance to work on art stuff all day Saturday or Sunday until about 9:30 PM. And then this happened.

And I’m negotiating with a cat. Look, Midnight, it’s bad enough that I have to have Friends on while I’m trying to do this, when I really need something dark and evil like Orphan Black or Helix, but when you repeatedly claw at the paper when I’m trying to get it out from under you? More attention-seekers.

I finally got everything out from under the cat and pulled this drawing from a few months back…

Which was a redraw of this drawing…

and which I liked, but…ran out of paper. Whoops. And wasn’t sure about the tree. Or the drumstick. (The top drawing, which is the second one. The first one? Has some things going for it…but…I don’t know.) So I have a deadline coming up with this idea of oasis, and I’m sure some people go straight to palm trees or a pool of water, a place where we go to escape. So I’m working with that, but the place is mental. Because when I get my brain all tied up in knots, that is what I need…a method to get away from that crazy.

I’m working with a prescribed size though. And it doesn’t work with how the drawing was in my brain on this, the third iteration…but I thought I could start by drawing the top and then I could figure it out from there…

And oh my god, that was a clusterfuck. OK, not completely. But I needed more liquid paper than I really like to use, because I’m drawing this one to size, not enlarging it, so when I’m tracing from the back, I will still be able to see the lines I covered up, and it gets really confusing. Plus I was just fucking it up all over the place, so I walked the fuck away from it. Because the lines weren’t going where I wanted them to. The pen was fighting me.

Because if I can’t draw. Bloody hell. I thought about doing some quilting or just going to bed, but I really wanted to make this work. I didn’t want to let the drawing win. So I cut another piece of paper, measured the appropriate size, and laid it on top…

Because some parts were OK. The eyes were fucked up. The right hand was a bloody mess. I don’t even know what was going on with the neckline, but the man’s head was good. And things were in generally the right place. Do over.

You can see on the right what I thought was OK enough to copy. Then the sketchbook is what I’m drawing from…well, sort of. And then under the sketchbook was the rejected drawing.

At that point, it was 11:30 PM. I could stop. Maybe I should stop.

Fuck that. I kept going…got the face done…

And the hand that bugged me before, and the outline of the torso. Much better. Deep sigh. So I guess this is really version number 4. Fighting this one out, seriously. It’s just messing with me. I think some of that is that I’m used to drawing smaller, in a sketchbook I can hold on my lap, sitting on the couch, and this is standing at the light table and it’s big and I’m trying to reach across AND make sure the pieces aren’t too small. So I needed to persuade my hand it could do all of that.

And now, when I’d really rather stay home and draw this, I need to go to work. Sigh. Deep sigh. Art brain goes off to sulk in the corner.

Finished these yesterday at the art meeting…

They were almost done at soccer last weekend. But that’s July. Now on to August. Don’t ask what year.

Note to self: We have enough conditioner until the end of time. Don’t buy more.

Mood is better. Body is in revolution. Uterus is conducting volcanic studies. Tired. Iron depletion? Ugh.