Finally (epidsode 1) 2013-W24

I don't remember when I first beheld the inspiration for today's work, but I do know that I made a quick study in January 2011 during the early days of Salon deWinchester.  My overarching scheme was for a mixed media piece of watercolor & pastels.  I went on to make the awesome underpainting at right on March 12, 2011.  Pointless observation: not quite the Ides of March, but close enough.

In the fifty-one (‼) intervening months this much ignored underpainting has sat mostly in a drawer, occasionally on a table to "inspire" me toward finishing up, and probably in a crazy place or two — if only briefly.  No doubt I was paralyzed by my fear that I had bitten off much more than I could chew with baby teeth.

Until early last Saturday morning after I finished Seaview..., when I took a deep breath and got down to it.  This work is my most ambitious undertaking yet in pastels and I'm still a neophyte so even selecting the pastels was agonizing.  Whereas laying down the first strokes was terrifying.  And yet, before long I felt comfortable that my approach was going to work out.  Once begun, you're half done, right?  I tell myself that a lot.

From that point, it was like an open bag of potato chips...  every time I walked past the work table I'd pick up a chalk and work a little more.  And a little more.  Well, you know how it goes with potato chips.  Though I didn't eat the whole bag, figuratively speaking, that night as I shut down the house for bedtime I glanced at the work and realized I was near the midpoint.  Would there be anything left for Tuesday Art Night?  Well, there was.

Though if not, I have a handful of other projects that have all stumbled and stalled at varying points in their progress.  I aim to slay them one dragon at a time, many if not most if not all.  My friends at Truman College and the fellows of Salon deWinchester, they who have seen the body of preliminary sketches and studies, will doubtless look on these finished pieces and exclaim... Finally!

Peaceable Interlude in the Serpentine Grapery

p.s.  Long time blog readers: this is the very landscape to which I refer in the 2012-W40 blog.  You know, where I predicted I'd finish this mixed media piece on October 27, 2012.  Ha ha ha