I am thankful whenever I get an entire afternoon in the studio working. Stop and think about it, though. The work we do advances when we get hours of painting, actually brush and paint to canvas. No one thinks about the time we spend organizing, planning compositions, gathering our subject references, making our initial sketches, correcting where necessary and more. A working studio can get messy very quickly. For instance, on a day when I use eight or ten brushes, then they must be cleaned. I lay them out to dry and pick them up on my way into the studio next day. So then, now All I want to do is get to painting, not putting away the brushes. So two or three days like this and now the taboret and table are littered. I didn’t have such a tight schedule when I was fully functional, young and energetic. All this to say that tomorrow I must begin by cleaning up.

I am working in this paining of ‘Sisters’ and also four others. I began a small landscape just to change the pace once in a while. I love landscape but cannot seem to succeed with one unless it is backdrop to a portrait. I am keeping this one small and I refer to these small ones as nature scapes because they focus on some small feature of nature. Hopefully, I can work up to a moderate sized true landscape. I hope you enjoy the image of the girls. I plan on doing a first flesh layer on the figure to your right in class. It is always helpful for my students to see how I handle the paint. Well, if the temps warm up this coming week as predicted, we should get some outdoor time in the near future. That doesn’t help my painting schedule. I am grateful for all these blessings and challenges. Shalom, Diana