Happy November! I guess mine started out happy because I walked past the end of the driveway for the first time in about a week. I did 3/4 mile in the neighborhood and it only felt slightly uncomfortable the first tenth of a mile.
I finished a series of three similar paintings yesterday, all 10 x 20. I’ll take one to the Farmers Market tomorrow and might save one to enter in a call for entry. I painted for five hours yesterday and drove out to Windsor to pick up my card order, 160 cards, which I had to package most of last night.
Since it’s November, it means I can get my butt in gear to focus on my painting again. Those of you who are writers might have heard of NaNoWriMo, started long ago by some writers who decided to challenge themselves to work on a novel in the month of November by writing every day. National Novel Writing Month. It went sort of viral and even though I never wrote a novel or even tried, I use it as a motivator for whatever it is I want to do more of. Some years it’s been running, some years it’s been writing, and this year it is painting.
The video above captures a close up view of the big acrylic painting I’ve been working on. This is 30 x 40, so it’s bigger than I usually paint, plus it’s out of my comfort zone being so abstract. But I really want to get the hang of painting abstracts while including elements of storytelling and some semi-representational elements. I have a hard time toning down the saturated color, so that is my next step, along with some value clarification. Then I need to tie it together by blending, softening some edges and hardening others, and glazing. Here is the picture itself:
I sent it in for the Academy for the next critique and I hope they will choose it as one of the ones they critique.
I applied to the Crested Butte Art Festival today. It happens in August and I will find out by the end of March if I got in. I’m applying to higher end shows so we’ll see how many I get accepted into. I am already looking at a new setup for my canopy and display panels for next year. I would have to set up a whole new booth photo so I don’t look forward to that, but the mesh display panels I’m looking at would eliminate the need for display panels, which are a big pain in the butt. I’d still need someone to help me set up, but it would be a simpler process. The canopy is not expensive, but the mesh display panels are $1000 and I will see how this winter’s sales go to see if I want to spring for that now or if I’ll need to wait.
Speaking of pain in the butt, I still have it, but I finished the steroids and am down to two meds- the Mobic (meloxicam) and the Gabapentin. I went to PT on Wednesday and I liked the office and the therapist. Though she said the same thing- we need to get your pain under control before we can get started on treating you. She did s9me electric stimulation, heat, ice, and walked me around backwards, which does feel better than going forward. She told me a few exercises to do for now and encouraged me to start walking as soon as I could tolerate it. Which happened for the first time today.
Tomorrow is the first farmers market and I am going to take it easy and not try to do a demo. I’ll wait until next week or the week after. Right now I’ll be lucky just hauling stuff in and out and sitting there for four hours. And then again on Sunday with the Maxline market. My friend Brett is going to help me haul my stuff into the mall tomorrow morning. If I need help, Dennis will come in the afternoon after work to help me break down.
I still wake up in intense pain every morning, but the past few days have become easier as the day goes on. The gabapentin is the most effective thing I’m taking, though I hope I won’t need it for too long. Whatever position I sleep in at night ends up stressing my piriformis muscle in a way that causes so much pain when I first try to move in any direction. I guess it’s more like 10/10 now as opposed to 15+, sending me through the roof screaming.
It will be a busy weekend but it will also keep me distracted from whatever is happening before the election. It’s already been so bad I can’t believe the orange trash man hasn’t been handcuffed and detained in a mental health facility, at the very least. I can go back to biting my nails on Monday and Tuesday.
Everyone have a good weekend!
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