A few days later, M

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I'm going to stop putting the day number at the top of these progress posts, because I actually worked on the painting a tiny bit for a couple of days and didn't post. But today I put in a solid two hours before lunch. One of my New Years "Intentions", which I feel is a better term than Resolutions, is to stop wasting the whole morning. I am in the habit of doing all the New York Times puzzles on my phone before leaving the breakfast table. So... The Crossword, the Mini, Wordle, Strands, and Spelling Bee (I stopped doing Connections out of frustration and disgust.) After finishing Spelling Bee (which I have to keep at until I reach Genius - I'm not bragging, just admitting how stubborn and compulsive I am) I move on to several other puzzle apps on my phone. So I'm changing my behavior by not allowing myself to do any of these puzzles until after I paint. 

After painting for two hours, I stopped and had lunch, and then our daughter Emily came over and we worked on a jigsaw puzzle for a while. I really needed Emily's help because it's such a hard puzzle. Then I took my walk (I have to walk every day, between 30 and 60 minutes.) I never got back to the painting, but I'm happy with the amount that I was able to do this morning. 


I had worked on the money since the last post. Today I tackled the Mr. Peanut cup with milk in it (I hope it doesn't turn to poison yogurt again by tomorrow) and started painting the Moss in the Mauve pot (it's a pretty dark violet color pot, but I'm calling it Mauve!) Tomorrow I will paint the Maple Syrup and start in on the Mirror tray and M&Ms. The rest of the Monopoly Money will come along soon, and I'll revisit a lot of what I've already painted, hopefully without obliterating places that are already working. And I'll repaint the face of the Mask.

Oh, and I also framed the painting that's going to the January exhibit at The Art League Gallery tomorrow. Sometime I'll show how I frame things. This was more involved than I thought it would be. A simple frame, not a floater, but when the painting was in the frame, I saw that there were gaps on both sides - since I stretch my own canvases, the painting's width at the corners is more than in the middle, because of the thickness of the folded canvas. Also, I think on a large painting like this (31" x 25") stretching the canvas probably causes the sides to bow inward a little. Anyway, it didn't look good - you could see daylight along the sides of the painting. So I covered the back with paper, which took a while. But it came out pretty good. Here it is:


A very busy day, and I haven't even finished all my puzzles yet!

Thanks for reading! Click the images for a larger view.


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