“Eat all your vegetables and then you can have dessert.”

Fair enough.

Translating this to painting “Dessert” to me is starting a new painting. I am SO good at starting new paintings.  I love the rush that I get from putting the first layer of color on a blank canvas. That decisive moment, getting lost in the creative process. Sometimes having no clue what I am going to paint until I start doing it.  Fun times.

“Vegetables” are the pieces that I’ve started, one way or another and.. then never finished. Blame it on my attention span, or waiting for the paint to dry, or just straight out not being sure how to finish. One way or another I’ve managed to amass a collection of 24 paintings I’d consider in the “Vegetable” state. To be fair I think this number is quite down from the chaos that was  my last year of art college.

Regardless, it’s a new month and that has been thinking again about how many months there are left until the new year and how nice it would be if I finished all these “veggie” paintings so I could start a new batch of “Cookies” in January.  Wow. Can you tell when I write on the days I’ve only slept four hours??

Any who. Art Attack! Continues. I’ll keep posting progress of these 24 unfinished works until they are… finished. Enjoy, world.

I decided I’d have a little theme this week, as I found a bunch of older pieces of art as I was organizing the other day. The theme is “Oldies but goodies.”
Here’s the second batch from the “Vaults”. All paintings this time!

I had a strange experience today. It was my day off. I choose to forgo my usual gig down at the Vallejo waterfront to take a much needed “me” day.  Here’s the part that has become far too strange and foreign as of late:

I Slept in.

It was awesome. For someone who routinely is at work at 5:30 o’clock in the am, sleeping in meant 10am.

Good times.  I’ve been feeling a little burnt out lately. Between work, the band,   putting together my first book and just not being disciplined enough about getting enough sleep I have been feeling haggard at best. I took a video of myself playing one of  my new songs last week (for practice mostly) which I was watching back today and I could SEE how tired I looked. And that was on a day off! Yikes.

So in the spirit of good-intentioned resolutions,  I hereby declare to the world at large my intention of the moment:    I Intend to get more sleep!

Wish me luck on that one.

With the rest of my day off (after the sleeping part) I spent some time organizing around the house, working on incomplete paintings, and completing a whole new painting, start to finish on a whim.

It’s a watercolor experiment,  11X14, titled “Problem Solver” The associated text goes like this:

“There are few problems that can’t be solved if you have the right tools.”