Day 10

I think that I am in the home stretch here. It feels like things are winding down for this particular project and I am feeling back to my less stressed self. However, there is still plenty to do.

On Wednesday, I started the process of painting the cradles. I used to stain them kind of a dark mahogany color but that was too time consuming, having a long wait for them to dry between coats. So I switched over to painting the frames as well as the cradles black. I have a small, low table (which used to be the kid's art table) in my studio that I normally use for gessoing and for painting the frames and other odds and ends. But as my work gets larger it is more challenging to fit more than a few pieces on the table. So this time I had to let a 24x36 piece dry on the dining room table. We don't use the dining room much and the cats have pretty much claimed the table so there is usually a bit of prep in order to use that. I did the first coat but didn't have a chance for the rest of the day to sand and paint the second coat, so I will have to get back to them tomorrow.

I then did four underpaintings. Even though this barn project is nearly finished I have another show in November and the work must be completed by October 27. I am also expecting the gallery director to call me any day now to ask for a few pieces for publicity, so I need to get a move on with new work for that show.

The next thing I did was to put the final Liquin coat on three paintings that are finished. And by the time I got to actually paint it was nearly 2pm (oops, forgot to mention that I did spend some time commenting on blogs and other such things, bad girl!) and so I only had about an hour and a half before the kids got home. But in that time I did manage to make some good progress on one of the 30x30 barn pieces, pictured above. I would have liked to have worked on the others also, but I feel pretty good about getting them finished by Friday or Saturday.