@sheralmyst
Was wondering how the home repairs is coming along? Or are you still in the middle of it all? And did you do the thing with the Archaeology Association?
Mal and I are (very slowly, and with the help of our offspring and their mates) doing an internal series of changes. Things like giving away books from one shelf to the Book Sale in support of the local library. And moving the huge collection of tabletop games to that shelf. Then we gave away the empty bookshelf, which opened up a lovely amount of space in our big Uncommon Room.
We have plans to take down and store some of my huge older paintings to make wall space for the newer smaller framed ones. Also plans to de-clutter and clean a number of rooms that with both of us ill we have not been able to keep up.
Add to that the slow crawl of recovering my music, and the few scant minutes a week for painting, it feels like things are just not moving along fast enough. I’m already very impatient in nature. I want things I am working on to move along quickly.
But it is what it is, This cancer thing is eating up my stamina but I still have lots of reasonably good days and a few that are not so good. I know I am asking too much of the situation.
I promised some progress photos so here goes:
Garden Monument:
Garden Monument WIP, still much refining to be done.
Dragon Eye:
Dragon Eye WIP. Added darker value colours with palette knife.
Dragon Eye WIP. Added warmer colour in the same value range.
Dragon Eye WIP. Covered the whole painting with translucent white rubbing it on lightly with a a very soft cloth.
Dragon Eye WIP. Poured half a teaspoon of 97% isopropyl alcohol over the central “eye” and wiped back some of the translucence to reveal more of the underpained Eye.
16x20" (stamped/carved piece:
I’m still looking for my leatherworking tools so I have not worked on the stamped piece since I added the heavy modelling paste to areas of it to break up the symmetry some more. I’m hoping the modelling paste won’t be too dry to stamp into.
"Glorious Mess:
Awhile back James and I decided to paint with black and while gessoes onto opened up brown paper grocery bags (this was during the first Covid lockdown when we were having groceries picked and packed by a service and we simply picked them up afterward. But tons of brown paper bags!
I’m sorry to say I may not have a photo of the original painting I started from. The point was to use the bags to play on with paint, not to make “art”, per se. And it was fun, but I painted mine with acrylics afterward and hated it (too symmetrical and too much cad yellow!). And now it is the basis for Glorious Mess.
Glorious Mess WIP: covering an old work on paper and breaking symmetry using a palette knife
Glorious Mess WIP: Working in some diagonals and other shapes.
this was so much fun! It was like being three years old again and fingerpainting, but with a three inch palette knife. I will keep playing with it until it turns into something. 
Oh and Mal named it. When he first laid eyes on it he exclaimed “What a Glorious Mess!” lol
Music:
I have now recovered two of my songs --“Let’s Take It Slowly”, and “Buddha’s Prayer”, and all but the last few chords in the third sequence of “Moon Trilogy”, a long song triggered by the first moon landing but not about it. I can’t seem to recapture a pivotal chord sequence in the third part. But it will come back to me. I’m surprised at how much I have been able to recover knowing it has been over a decade since I put the music away so I could concentrate on a more focused exploration of the art.
How is everyone else’s creative work coming along?
(also this seems too long to proofread. sorry.)
Flowers are starting to bloom and butterflies are fluttering by.
The peepers are in full chorus, and I’m hearing a beautiful cacophony of bird and small critter voices. Mourning doves, Phoebes, even a red winged blackbird! Chippies, and squirrels --black ones and red ones are scampering along the deck rails. The trees are beginning to bud, so Mal tells me, but I can’t see them yet of course. Unless I take a step ladder outside. lol But no flowers yet.
soooo, I am thinking of opening a test pit on my side of the line. Must get out my trowel and sharpen it. I have a screen ready for sifting.
