14 June 2006

It's Winds-Day

One thing about living here is that it can get a bit windy at times. And this is one of those times. It started yesterday, kept up all night, and is still windy this morning. Now this is not a gentle breeze, but 15-20 mph with gusts upto 35+ mph. It makes being outside not too enjoyable, or at least that is my excuse for not working on the sprinkler system this morning. At least it's not as bad as it gets sometimes, when my square garbage can goes scooting across the yard!

And it's windy enough on my patio that reading a book there isn't easy. The pages keep flipping plus I keep worrying about the hanging baskets falling. If I take them down and I'm not out there, there's 50% chance that the bunnies will come up on the patio and eat the plants!

So, today is an "inside", which is probably good. I need to get some work done. I have an alpaca portrait to finish, 2 oil portrait demos to do, 2 other oil portraits to do, 1 pencil portrait to start, and whatever I need to do for eBay. And this is not counting a few other commissions which I need to do, but either haven't received the photos or the money. I'm not sure how I got so far behind?!

Anyway, I'm having a couple of problems with portrait commissions right now. First, I'm nervous about doing these oil demos. I found the drawing demo I did to be more difficult than I imagined it would be. It's the starting and stopping that is the problem. Plus the feeling that I'm being watched and I need to live up to people's expectations. The second problem is that I haven't done much in oils for quite a while -- since January. And the final issue is that I'm having decent luck on eBay with my own work (not portraits) and I would like to work on more such work. I'm especially anxious to try some oil paintings on eBay, as I know works on paper sell for less.

But if I get working on them -- working a 3-4 hours per day on this backlog -- I'll get them done fairly soon, so I can do more of my own work. Actually once I get working on them, they won't seem so bad or scary. And if I don't try to finish them off all at once, then I'll still be able to work on some of my other things, like the hummingbird or other still lifes.

So, I had better get to work!

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