Self Portrait

A long time ago, before I stopped writing in this thingy, I posted a post about a school project. It was the master copy/self portrait project and I had all sorts of grand ideas about what to do for it. This is what I ended up doing:





The quality of the picture isn't great, but you can get the idea. It's a pretty straightforward self-portrait. It's a wierd one, in that it looks great to me from certain distances and angles, and god-awful from others. Yep. I want to do more portaits and self-portaits. It was wonderful and infuriating to paint.

Eh.

I stretched a couple canvases and primed them, but I haven't been able to do any actual painting yet. My hubby's been gone and I have a tough time doing anything other than moping when he's not around. He'll be back in a few hours and I'll be happy again.

I'm having a hard time getting motivated about my commission. The subject matter is kinda blah. I know it'll be good once I get started, and I'll make it something I can be proud of, but it is hard to start.

I'm having trouble starting the peice for my grandma too. I've decided to paint an egret for her, because my sweet little town is full of them, and I thought it might remind her of when she came to visit me. But I don't have a picture of them, or pictures of them, so I'd have to rip someone else's picture off the net, and I've got moral qualms about that. If it's going to have my name on it, I want it to be my art.

And I can't start the other peices I want to do because I feel like I have to do those two first.

Those are my excuses for not painting. Why is it that people always come up with so many reasons not to do the things they love?

This isn't exactly about art.

But it's kind of about art.

I've been grappling with friendship lately. I've always been a bit of a loner and pretty goddamn shy, so I haven't made friends easily. The friends that I have made have been really worth having. But there haven't been too many of them. It's not like I can just move to a new place and immediatly make of bunch of friends. I guess I probably can, but I don't. I've lived in my sweet little town for 2 years now, and I still don't have many friends here. I want some really good friends, like my friends up in Portland. And I don't want to move to Portland! (not yet)

So what's a girl to do?

Money

I've been freaking out about money. Periodically I do this. I think about my school loans and wonder if I should drop out and pay them off. I have this basic idea that I always come back about how artists don't actually make money. I know this doesn't have to be true. I want to start having babies soon too, which in addition to my massive school debt makes me really wary. I don't want to be required to work outside of the home, and who knows how much the hub's going to make when he graduates.

I know I actually can make money as an artist. I've sold peices and I have commissions, right now, that I just have to stop prcrastinating and do. So if I just make up my mind to make money, and remeber that, I'll be fine. It's the remembering part that's hard. There's a really cool thing called the Art Deadlines List, which I just subscribed to, so we'll see how that goes.

I haven't painted or otherwise arted (unless you count cooking and winemaking) all summer so far. I think that stops today. My grandma wants me to paint her something, and I have that commision. And I really want to paint a big peacock.

So I think I shall.