I'd like to be the kind of painter who produces large, atmospheric portraits and elaborate still-life scenes, or pages of tightly detailed pen-and-ink drawings with gruesome humor, but what I am is a librarian who likes small, soft, cheap paintbrushes and 5x7 rectangles of paper. I admire designs filled with flowers and bats and skulls, and what I paint is fire hydrants and children and cats. That's okay.
underdrawing-in-progress
Monday was my first painting day in more than a month. I got overenthusiastic and ended up biting off more than I could chew, because I bought a new adhesive to mount my oil paper onto hardboard and didn't have any boards smaller than 2 feet wide. And I'm not going to cut them down to comfortable 5x7 chunks, because power tools are on the top of my "DO NOT APPROACH" list, right next to fireworks and trampolines. I still have a lump on my head from falling face-first into the pointy end of a barbell in 2017. Whatever kind of a painter I think I am, I'll be a worse one without any fingers. But probably more popular, as a human interest piece.
So now I am staring at the expanse of empty background resentfully. Who wants to spend hours painting backgrounds when there are little pink ears and fat fingers and the soft corners of mouths to get caught up in? What was I thinking, painting something this big?
Too late now. Get it done, self.
This is just a detail. The rest is EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY.
And I have been giving my knitting another shot at killing me. Again. Of course.
Lungs, like swatches, are for sissies.
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