I Get the Worm

 

"Wilted Beets on a Broken Plate"

8 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

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Sadly, (but happily for the morning after) the title of this post does not refer to me attending an all-night Tequila bash (Veinte de Mayo, notwithstanding). I got up around 3 am to fetch Ellie some water, cuddled with her for five minutes, went back to bed, and could think about nothing but coffee for the next hour and a half. So I got up. 

And, since I was up, caffeinated, and bagel-ed, I decided to warm up for my Monday morning "teaching" gig. I use the (air) quotes because truly, we're all learning from each other in this group. I may be learning more life lessons than art lessons, but they are precious to me. My students don't know it, but I'm absorbing as much from them and their talk of young-adult children, aging parents, world travels, and husbands - it's always the husbands, isn't it? - as they (hopefully) are from my harping on lost edges and perfecting your ellipses.

So here's this (early) morning's warmup. 25-20-15-10 brushstroke sketches:

Believe it or not, I got up SO damn early that I still had time to take - and edit - photos of everything I'd done that morning, and my painting from the weekend, besides. Which is a good thing, because my Classy Painting Ladies kept me busy until until 3 pm today. I've just run in the door with time to write this little missive before having to move on to the dreaded dinner question.

And the answer is: pizza. 

But maybe a word about this painting before I go? The title says it all, I'm hoping. But I wanted to explain that I'm not really trying to be dark and serious on purpose. Mom brought me the beets, fresh and glowing, from Saturday market, and of course I had no time to paint on Saturday, what with putting on mascara and other unpleasantries, for my ladies night out (book club), and other random Saturday things. The leaves were so gorgeous, springy, and so many shades of green that I really wanted to drop everything and go paint them, but beauty duty called, and I left them for Sunday. By which time they were as tired as I was after yakking until all hours with my book club buds.

The broken plate is sad, in its way, though it got that way honestly. My dish-doing is spotty, and my dishwasher-loading even more so. I pulled this one out of said dishwasher so elegantly cracked that I knew its next life would be in my studio. At least this week.

And now I present to you your honorary degree in comparative literature (because compared to good literature, you know this is a mess), since you basically just read a novel. That's what happens when a blogger gets cooped up with a sick baby for a few days. A word purge. Thanks, as always, for reading.