Painting #312 - Dec 2 - A pretty good day

Well, I managed to drag the other heater out of the basement and over to the studio, the other heater was smoking so badly that it clogged the wick up and it shut itself off, I couldn't keep it lit, I went back and forth 3 times, to the studio, to check to see if it was working properly, the last time I just decided to do a little hauling and get the heater that's working over there, now, I filled the other heater, thinking that that was the problem, now it's full and I now have to figure out how to get that fuel out of the one heater and into the other one. I'm hoping that my husband and I can get the the store tomorrow, and find me a couple of electric heaters so I can eliminate the kerosene one, such a pain, having to run over there before I go to bed tonight, just to make sure that the heat is still on, oh well, hopefully we'll get that done, and I can stop worrying about the freezing, had that happen a couple years ago, and I had ruptured pipes and such a mess, I'd hate that.

While I was at the studio, I did get the portrait commission started, well, actually, I started it the second time, I didn't care for the one that I had done 2 days ago, but just thought you should know (since I've been telling you that I was going to for several days), I'm much happier with what I did today, I'm doing this portrait in pastel (my old stand by), I thought of doing it in oil, but, decided that since it was my sister-in-law that ordered it (of her youngest son and his new wife), she is much more used to me working with the pastels, that I didn't want to change the medium she's more used to. Also, I do have those new pastels that I wanted to use, the Schminke are so soft, I could see how using them could become expensive, I just bought the 1/2 stick set of 75 and that was expensive enough, but, they are so soft that the few that I did use are showing quite a bit of wear already, oh well, no sense in having them if you don't use them, I will have to post it when I get it done.

Well, this painting is one that I have been working on for a couple of days, it's a 1/8 sheet folded the long way of a 1/4 sheet, a very interesting size to compose. I chose 3 or 4 photo's that a friend of mine shared with me (I'm getting a bit burnt out with my old selection, trying to come up with something that stimulates my creativity has been becoming difficult), I have been pondering some abstraction, but, haven't made my mind up to it yet. Anyway, these deer were in the clearing, but were so small in the photo that you couldn't really see any details at all, blowing them up to the size in this painting made it important to have some details, so, I used another photo she took, but the deer had changed positions and they also were fuzzy, so I think this works, there is just enough information that you know they are deer but not so much that they don't fit in the painting, I like this little painting and I hope you do too (this painting looks so small on the screen, just try to remember that it is much larger than it looks here, it's equivalent to 3 of my regular 6" x 6" blog paintings).