Saturday, November 01, 2008

Hijacked by carrots

The Kiss - work in progress
Acrylic 5 x 7

My plans for relocating my studio have been hijacked by carrots.

The weather forecast is due to get frosty and The Other One (T.O.O.) decided that ALL the carrots had to be picked today and deposited on the kitchen counter. That's all well and good except that then something has to be done with them, like cleaning and blanching and draining and drying and bagging for the freezer.

All I wanted to do was get things into gear and do some drawing and painting, but instead it was carrots. At this point in time, I quite hate carrots. I know that I'll appreciate them being in the freezer later but today they didn't thrill me.

Finally late in the day, the furniture was moved out of the new studio room and the ancient carpet that was there pulled up. I have some laminate wood flooring to go down that should be pretty impervious to damage or spills and I'm gradually replacing all the carpets in the house with wood flooring as its so much easier to clean. I only wish I'd had it years ago when I had small children and animals.

I am also looking at decent lighting for the new room. There is a north window there but it is on ground level and gets morning sun. At this time of year especially, light is needed and I'm to find the most suitable light to use. I will look at daylight tubes perhaps despite their utilitarian look and use a gooseneck halogen lamp that I already have.

Despite disruptions, I made a start on a little painting. This was from a photo that Maggie Steifvater let me use. I've had it since last year but haven't gotten around to it til now. I used acrylics but now wish I'd used oils instead. Acrylics are tending to frustrate me more lately as they dry before I have a chance to manipulate them. There's still lots of work to go into this piece and hopefully I'll find a little more time to work on it tomorrow.

6 comments:

Maggie Stiefvater said...

Pumpkin already looks yummy!

Anita said...

Don't you just hate it when something gets in the way of plans. I made a list this morning but I managed to get through the miserable stuff like housework, baking cookies for my DH, hand-washed two sweaters but I still have the ironing to do - AAAAGH, I'd forgotten about the ironing.

Anonymous said...

Life has a tendency of getting in the way. How refreshing it'll be though to get refreshed studio digs! I need to do something similar; especially with lighting.
This looks like a darling painting. (I'm sure you know, you can use the acrylic as the underpainting and use oils from here out)

Laurel Neustadter said...

The painting is off to a good start. I look forward to seeing the finished painting. I can relate to your carrot story.

Jeanette Jobson said...

Thanks Maggie!

Its really frustrating when delays happen,but you get used to it. Ironing....its one of those things that isn't so bad once you get going, but the getting going is hard.

Tracy, I'll looking around for a good overhead lighting and task lighting system for the new space. Any recommendations?

I thought about oil over the acrylics but figured I'd tough it out and see what happened. Oils next time. :)

Thanks Laurel. Carrots. Hmph.

Jo Castillo said...

Beautiful, Jeanette. How nice to get a new studio, well, after all your hard work. I bought a small set of the new Golden Acrylics to try. Supposedly you can work on them a day or so. I hear they are not like acrylics or oils. I will post about them so we can find out if we can manipulate them. I understand your frustration.