Not Painting...sort of.

I haven't had time to do much painting lately. Fall always gets so busy every year. Even in this sluggish horrible economy there have been some sales and shows to get ready for. With the bad economy I have stayed away from shows in general. No sense in going through all the entails from getting ready for a show only to just stand there smiling and not selling. I read from another artist telling you how to manage your art career that wehn it gets slow do more of everything, showing, painting, entering art shows. I've found that I don't agree. I'd rather use the slow time to paint...makes more sense than standing there in the sun smiling and inside wishing you had sold something to pay for the gas for the trip home.

The studio tour we do each year is almost here. I say "we" because it is something that Linda is involved with as much as I am. We not only show our studio but let people come into the house to see more are, the larger pieces, hanging in a home setting. Linda is forced to treat the Studio Tour as having a party with friends coming over...that means clean clean clean. Poor Linda. This year we needed to paint our deck which is highly visible from our living room. That meant scrape, scrape some more and then sand and paint. We are almost done but the clouds rolled in and rain expected tomorrow. This break allows me to now get some paintings framed and reframing other paintings. I need to choose what goes up on the walls and move my drums out of the studio and out of the way hidden in our bedroom. Good old me likes a large set of drums = more moving.

I spent this morning filling rusty cracks and holes in our raingutter off the studio and reorganizing the workshop area in our garage. My Dad gave me some Coleman lanterns last week that I will clean up and get back into working condition. I was going to use them for a camping trip/art show in November that fell through. I started tinkering with them but then Linda was giving me that "we need to get ready for the studio tour" look so back to the house we came. Everytime I walk through the studio I see the half-painted piece I'm working on just sitting there staring at me. Aarg!

I've got 3 nice gold frames somewhere between San Diego and my house at the moment. I've got ink for my printer on it's way too. I keep telling Linda we need to get the inventory program for the paintings up to date but she needs some documents off of my computer printed up...and it's sitting here out of ink. All of that to happen soon. Thankfully I've mowed all of the lawn, even the lawn down our side of the street which is about 3 acres long. Our mower, a riding sears Craftsman mower, has something going bad in the transmission so I get to pull that apart after the Studio tour to fix.

 Have to pick up more varnish later today so I can get some paintings done tomorrow. All of this fun stuff. I'm not griping though. It could be worse....I could have to deal with tons of sales in between it all, haha. Good thing the economy is slower than dead.