I have been told I have a barky cough.  It has been rudely compared to that of seals.  I blame this on the tubing in my body, which was installed in the wrong size.  It’s embarrassing when my family doctor rolls her eyes at the prospect of drawing blood, sighs greatly, and then says, “Okay, I’ll go find the child-size syringe.”  We both slap away at my arm and then, after poking around for a while, hoot with success together  when she finds a gusher.  Skinny tubing.

When my paediatrician was away and I had one of my tri-annual bouts of bronchitis, the new guy listened to my whooping and bubbling and said “How much do you smoke?”  It was such a stupid question that I tossed back a casual “Oh, a pack or two a day.”  The man had clearly no ability to recognize witty sarcasm and said, “Really?”  Understanding his rhetorical limitations, I said “I don’t smoke” in as emphatic a manner as can be conveyed despite laryngitis.  He sent my mother from the room and asked again.  Same answer.  This time he called Mom in and sent me out.  Same answer.  We left in a huff.  I was mortally wounded and refused to return until my dear Dr. McLandress had returned. So you know I have suffered.

When, despite every effort on Jon’s part to contain his virus last week (which included my being banished from the bedroom),   I caught it anyway, Theodore probably being the vector (because he had been allowed to stay!).  All painting progress stopped together.  I returned to my childhood mode of steam tents, long bed stays and  “horse collars” (only just this week did I realize that there should be an “a”).   Damned homonyms.

As usual, the barking is at its worst at night and one does not of course recover without sleep.  Then, after a prolonged coughing/sneezing bout two nights ago, an epiphany:  if coughing is triggered by a so-called “post-nasal drip,”  then maybe gravity could be defeated by sleeping on my stomach??  Tried it and even if it was magical thinking , I had the first decent sleep in a week (you heard it here first).  Of course, the reason I don’t normally sleep on my face is lack of breathing and the obvious disadvantage of being female…..  Anyway, I struggled last night to make this work and finally aligned myself along the edge and off to sleep I went.  Dreaming has been technicolour and particularly exciting lately (lots of espionage) and I was just trying to grab a rogue spy bus which was escaping through a window when I apparently dove off the bed.  Unfortunately my perfectly-executed rotational peregrine dive landed me on a hard plastic waste-paper basket which literally gouged the back of my head.  I felt around, was puzzled by the presence of a swelling furrow, but determined it wasn’t bleeding too badly so channeled Scarlet O’Hara and decided to worry about it tomorrow.

It’s tomorrow and while I am still furrowed, it is under my hair rather than on my brow, so one can’t expect much sympathy.  Mind you, I won’t need plastic surgery either.  And I was completely relaxed so that was good.  And it might even take a row of green onions in the spring.  Glass half full!!

Missing paint group AGAIN.  The Painter hopes to return next week.  Failing that, I make no promises about maintaining a positive outlook.  Watch out, Glass!

P.S.  By now after, almost five years together, you are probably wondering if I exaggerate.  I honestly wish I had to.

I am relieved to report that the dancer now has four limbs and twenty digits, all of which appear to have a blood supply.  Again, I remind myself that  only I am to blame for complicated projects.  That said, wanna hear about the next one?

There’s an elegant arch I have been wanting to paint for years now.  It belongs to the back of Leslie, my favourite violinist.  Trouble was (Already you are tensing up, aren’t you?) was that the reference shot was, predictably, only  about two-thirds of what I wanted, which was her whole frame.  No kidding.  I found another shot of her legs out by only two cardinal directions (thank heavens, she has a terrific stance and set foot placement);  all I had to do was flip it, size it, stitch it and draw it.  Done.

You are thinking” Phew, that was easy.”  Not so fast.

You know that painting ideas lurk relentlessly, hiding under bridges in my brain.  Well my inner troll also demanded that Melody be included in this “French scene.”  So who is Melody?  Do violins have first names?

She, Sweet Reader,  is Leslie’s adoring yellow lab.  And naturally she didn’t appear in any of the shots I had of Leslie practicing her violin.  There was only one photo reference and in it Melody was looking across rather than up -- out almost 90 degrees from where I wanted her attention fixed.  Double dog damn.

Then began the search for a primer on yellow labs.  Art group to the rescue again.  Thanks, Sue.  Eventually a Melody-ish sketch emerged in correct position, from which I cut out a template to shuffle around the canvas until I had created a diagonal linking Leslie’s bow and Melody’s worshipping gaze.

Surely that should do the prep work.  Remember that no brushes have had to die to get this far.  But the stained window I wanted as background was arched at the top and I wanted the top curve to swing through the upper right of the scene, this time echoing the arch in Leslie’s back, the cursed arch which had started this epic journey.   Some work with a geometry compass on the prep sketch and finally I was ready to begin.

BEGIN?????
Now all that remains is to paint.    If I can still remember how.


​BTW:  I fully intend to update my gallery website, you poor souls who keep hoping I will.  Thank you for your patience.  It's on today's to-do list.  So think Wednesday.
  

It's now Wednesday, I have come down with the plague, aka Jon's cold, am missing art group AGAIN (God is surely not a painter, because we have been iced, snowed, or struck down by viruses for the last three weeks) but at least the "Works in Progress" category on zannekeele.com/More About is up to date.  I am waving a tiny flag.

Sitting here and waiting for inspiration, I found myself musing over the question, “if someone were to promote mud-wrestling as a competitive sport, what kind of mud would work best?”  As I perused the topic, I immediately ruled out sandy soil for obvious reasons and then, remembering that I had dried my hands out painfully when gardening without gloves, decided that lanolin would have to be a must in any mixture.

By the time I got to thinking about best proportions, it occurred to me that my distraction gear was in overdrive again.  Let’s just agree that recently there have been far too many crosswords,online games, long books and Netflix binges.  This kicks in whenever I feel daunted by what I’m painting, even if it was my very own benighted decision.  Well, let me convince you how richly entitled I am to any and all distractions these days.

Still soldiering along on “The Turn.” You know about the dancer’s recent surgeries but I didn’t get around to telling you the story of THE ARM.   Just embarking on this image with its woefully inadequate pre-digital visual references, let alone painting it three feet high, probably seems crazy.  But I couldn’t overcome the urge to paint it in oil and nothing serves to exorcise an image once it is lodged in my brain like a fragment of a song but to give up and get to work.  I even knew there would be serious problems right off the bat.  Lo those many years ago, she had chosen a pose in which her right arm reached out on a diagonal towards the camera.  Every figurative artist knows that hands are about the same size as the face measured from chin to mid-forehead, even if our universal tendency is to draw them smaller.  But this hand, so close to the lens, was now unsettlingly enormous, though accurate.  A male bowerbird would have had no problem, of course.  (see January 7, 2019)

​As if this weren’t enough, I wanted to set the figure on a vertical canvas and realized that  a 3:1 ratio:  36 x 12 would nicely reinforce her tall elegance.  My first thought was to let the giant hand disappear off the canvas to the right but when I blocked it in, no dice;  it unbalanced the composition and drew the viewer’s eyes right off the canvas.

That’s not even the worst of it.  Lacking photo reference for the dancer’s entire mid-section, I no longer even had a semi-workable hand to move around.   Remember the adage about needing a village to raise a child?  My paintings apparently require both a husband and a large art group. This time it was Judy, another friend/artist, who kindly pointed her fingers together and held the pose.    

You would think this would do it, but the new block-in was still awkward until I realized that the dancer’s shoulder and semi-turned arm position would also have to undergo adjustment.  All I had was Judy’s hand.  You’ll love this part:  I tried to take a selfie in the dancer’s position.  Thank heavens Jon arrived home the next hour and rescued me from the virtual impossibility of getting far enough away from my iMac to even take such a shot within the allotted 3 seconds.

Great!  Now all I had to do was set my feet as if in toe shoes, face away, but rotate back towards the camera and drop my shoulders, the pose culminating in my right arm and fingers artistically poised over my right hip.  I will spare you the result, but I’m sure you can imagine it.  I was more than a bit off the mark in every plane, but the look of panicked agony on my face at least proves that I was trying.  Degas would have fainted in horror.

It has taken a solid couple of weeks just to get the value study onto the canvas.  The dancer  is now more or less on the go if you don’t count the  slightly blue arm and the new hand that looks as if it has been parboiled.  Only the Frankenstein stitches have been removed.  Mary Shelley must have been a painter.

And didn’t I then enter it in an upcoming show when it is still not much more than a twinkle in my eye.  I feel a thirty-stint round of Solitaire beckoning.