Final of Montrose Girl, I think

Well, here it is. Now that winter is here, we have very short days. By 3 pm I had to stop painting; I can only paint in daylight. So the photograph was taken in waning light, which meant adding a little fill light in the tweaking stage. Now it's up to my client to say if it's finished. I had fun putting this up in 3 stages. I'll probably do it again.




I found another great site at Etsy. Twisted Tree Studio (see link on the left) produces an array of interesting things, but I was fascinated by the fact that she does huge Trompe L'oeil wall murals. We're talking about 9ft high! I've dabbled with murals myself, and they are hard work. No nice canvas to work on, or a comfortable art table, it's just a perpendicular slab of space in front of you, possible a giant canvas on the floor. A 9 foot mural would mean a lot of climbing up and down, not just to replenish paints or clean brushes, but to assess the picture. You can't do that when your nose is right up against it. I admire the fact that this kind of thing is being produced. It's a favorite art form of mine, the idea of fooling the eyes into thinking you are looking through a door, or an archway, a window, out onto a wonderful vista. 'Have Brushes, Will travel' is Twisted Tree's slogan. She'll go anywhere for a good mural.

Oh, and back to that other thing about our shortening days...my cats, Baby and Jeeves, don't know that. They just think it's six-ish, which is when they get their evening meal. I tell them it's only 3:30, but they look at me with such hurt, as if I am the cruelest mommy in the world. Guess I will have to feed them now, as they are playing a rather aggressive game at the moment. It must be brought on by the hunger-hunt-kill instinct. As I am a vegetarian, this is distasteful to me, to say the least. To think that my sweet cats, soft and loving as can be, could devour another living creature is hard to take. It's bad enough having to open the smelly cans, or getting any of the stuff on me, but at least it's vaguely unrecognizable. Why can't cats be like dogs? Dogs are perfectly able to go vegetarian. Apparently cats just don't have, literally, the stomach for it.

Tomorrow could be more interesting that this.