Painting is a funny but evolving thing. There must be a hundred thoughts that work your mind in the process. At first, excitement, you have a new project! You search for ideas, dream action and shapes. The canvas impatiently waiting for you as each idea is poured over. Tentative sketches further your hopes. Then new excitement as colors find their way to the canvas.

Once you get started, prepare to be overwhelmed, because you realize there is a lot to do! As you get into your subject, you will start to feel small amounts of accomplishment and somehow manage to put one step in front of the other. This one has formed quickly, but the last painting, Hostages, took an entire year to trudge through for this very reason. It even almost ended up in the gesso pile, of which there are several.

Eventually your subject takes shape, but not without hundreds of doubts and promises you make yourself as it evolves into something of a "being" in it's own right. You will either love and cherish it through each improvement, as each shape is defined, or hate it to the bitter end through perceived errors and fault finding.

Yes, the end, as it eventually arrives. You will miss it, perhaps even mourning your subject some, whether or not you toss it. If kept, the days that follow will likely find you examining it deeply, looking for imperfections and faults, questioning every detail. You might even white wash it all in the long run and start over again. Such is the life of any piece. After all, most my canvases are found at garage sales...all the victims of their prior owners art love and art love lost.

ROFL...painting sure makes me philosophical. I was starting to mess this up and had to stop for the day. The red blanket needs help and his suede jacket has been troublesome, and I should have left it hours ago.

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