Goblin Wants an Orange

"So your husband is flying out tonight, and your mom has the kids," my friend said, sitting at the reference desk. "How do you feel about it? What are you going to do?"

"Well, I thought I'd eat a lot of mushrooms*, because he hates -"

"No, you're going to go downstairs and paint. And don't show me any pictures. Your paintings make me sick, I hate you, you're such an asshole. So you go do that, because if you don't do this and be a painter then I'm never talking to you ever again."  

Embroider that on a cushion. She's the best motivational speaker. 

So that is what I did. The man is away for a month, and my mother is watching the kids a few nights a week until school gets back in. It's a handful of free time that will seep through my fingers if I try too hard to hang on to it, so I'm applying it straight to canvas. I ate a bowl of cereal for dinner and spent a few hours in the studio finishing the albatross of a painting that has been holding me up. I couldn't move on to smaller studies while it was looking at me.  

And it is DONE. It's blotchy from drying because I did an amateur job sealing the board, but it is DONE, and it will dry evenly over the next couple of weeks, then I'll slap some varnish on it and those shadows will deepen and glow like lake water at night.

Process pictures:

I sketched the original concept thumbnail on my tablet.

Then I primed the board, sketched and spray-fixed the underdrawing, and started laying in sections of paint.

I bought a big tube of black paint for the background, and didn't shell out for the premium poison, so there was a bit of fish oil in the mix, and when I laid in the background, the cockroaches in the basement spent the night clinging to the edge of the board and licking all the oil off. I hope they get the runs. But not all over my other paintings.

god damn it

Last night I fixed it, and the rest of the painting came along pretty quickly. I hauled the thing upstairs for the final dry so the roaches wouldn't slobber all the paint off again. We've got them under control inside, but the basement opens up into the underside of the house, and there are ruffians down there.

I've got a thing for goblins and oranges. (This is Muu, for my tumblr readers.)

I cruised through the fabric in about 20 minutes, it was a lot of fun. And then I stuck my elbow in it and had to fix it for another 20 minutes.

I WIN, PAINTING.

Tonight: more painting. I don't have to sleep or eat until the family returns.


*At this, one of our library drug users snapped to attention with a hopeful look on his face. Sorry, buddy.