Back to the drawing board

Hello fellow artists,

It has been a challenge this week but that is what makes the job so interesting, right? Highlights and shadows of the week include...I had a friend tell me about an eye incident in which she was injured. Having a bad day at the easel I thought, "I don't even have an excuse for my poor week of painting and drawing." I must confess that we had a replacement model for the week of which she could not stay awake. Have you ever tried to paint a portrait of a bobbing head? It's not pretty! The confession is that 10 minutes before my completion of another 6-7 hours at the easel my left eye lost most of it's angle of vision and much of it's ability to see color or tonality... STRANGE! I wrote it off to either stress or pulling a muscle in the eye... if only my thumb hadn't gone numb for 36 hours too. All this and I come home to my friend's accident report letter filled with encouraging words towards my work and efforts... shadow got shined upon.

Okay the highlight is that I got the feeling back in my thumb 2 days later and actually had a fair drawing day by Friday. The moral to the story is... if you don't keep going back to the drawing board, even when you are inches from dangling the current project over a shredding machine, you may never get to the better days. Furthermore I did my weekly plein air studies at Central Park today and an improovement from last week. Still nothing worth enjoyment but alas I made this blog to force myself to make better art. So first a CP study from the angel fountain on the main plaza, then a little comic relief from "the boys". -G.A. signing off.