This is usually the good part.  Full palette out, I can daub away to my heart's content.  Not that the final glazes are relaxing.  I would call them "bracing."  Like a sailboat, you tack - between light and dark, soft and hard, this time between green-gold and soft purples.  I've been trying.  Every so often I haul my canvas out to a spot of clear sunshine and turn it into something else, no longer my baby, just an image I can view somewhat more impartially.  You can see a corner of a dead leaf on the bottom.  I didn't have much choice about where to prop it.

Did I mention that there are five men on our roof, three trucks and a bin in our driveway, and our car at the mechanic's as I write this?*    It sounds like the shop class from hell.  Realizing, one apothecary bottle too late, that anything made of glass had to be removed from the window sills, I have now hunkered down in front of my canvas and am trying to breathe like a yogi and think calming thoughts.  

I can't think of any.  Please send some.

*Did you ever see the Gary Larson cartoon of a bear husband being greeted at the cave door by his furious bear wife (the telltale apron), who is standing with her paws on her hips and saying "A likely story!"  Your eye moves further right to see that he has a tag in his ear, a tracking collar, a big number painted on his back and a hypodermic sticking out of his rump.  He came to mind today.

Went to a terrific workshop yesterday, where Johannes Vloothuis crammed our tiny brains with a million good ideas about composition.  Joe focused on what he calls the "melodic line," which is the path the artist uses to guide the viewer's eyes into and out of the painting.  It tends to enter on the left, as European readers are accustomed to doing, and usually near the bottom.  Then it inscribes graceful arcs which are subtly connected, until it draws said eyes up and out.

He was preaching to the choir because I have been pondering this while building the underpainting of this ancient tree.  The rhythmic undulations of its roots were the very reason I had chased down this particular tree.  I see that I should knock back the value of the rock on the far right, so as not to lead the eye out;   the roots themselves will constitute the path which swings up into the brighter leaves.  I hope the eye will swing upward and loop through the branches. I have roughly planned the route but need to add more hue to define it better.

For me, at least, these final glazes constitute the payoff for the slow and sometimes agonizing job of building a strong underpainting.  By now, I'm generally champing at the bit, ready to lay out a full palette and get to work.  If the muse shows up and I don't have to assign the painting to Le Salon des Refusees in our basement, this baby might be finished by Monday.  Artists live in hope.  You have a good weekend yourself.

Hello again.  I've been AWOL for a while.  I'm here to ask a favour.  Just as you know to remind me never to paint either another violin or a harbour scene with ships, would you please add "Never paint another ancient tree with gnarly roots and a partial reflection."  Yes, I do admit to a weakness for exposed roots and their reflections.  I waited three years for a second crack at this cursed image, which I had glanced once before;  it necessitated perfect weather on the right river and a quick dropping of the paddle to take the shot.  Had to merge two, as it turned out, because Jon sterns robustly, but finally I had a working look at "The Ancients" #2.  .

Getting the shot turned out to be the easy part.  One of the challenges of landscape is maintaining the balance between overview and detail.  The gorgeous roots that drew me are now driving me crazy.  Unlike Ginger Rogers, who was praised not only for dancing with Fred Astaire but doing it backwards and in high heels, I am having trouble even finding the beat.  To put it bluntly, the grisaille has been grisly.  It's like being lost in a maze.  Now add a gazillion maple leaves (sugar maple, to be exact) and l'm inventing reasons to avoid my easel.  

On the plus side, the drawers in this house have never been better organized.
  
Just last week the final piece of new furniture was dry enough to move inside.  Nothing like a small house to turn you into a cheap date when it comes to storage;  beholding these empty drawers gave me frissons of delight.  Filling them was even better.  Now, to reward myself for ten minutes on sorting out roots and leaves, I simply open a drawer and feast my poor crossed eyes.  For the first time I have all of the paints - oil, acrylic and watercolour - and all of the brushes within reach (except for my favourite brushes, which are currently residing in The Land of the Missing.  Oh well.  At least I now know where they aren't.)  Even my gloves have their own drawer.  Life doesn't get much better.

So pity me not, dear friends.  It may be Christmas before I paint myself out of here, but I have my gloves to keep me warm.

I bought a half-bushel of roma tomatoes today in a fit of optimism.  Ask me if I can can (not the dance)  or make tomato sauce.  No.  Let me think about that...   Still no.  And there they sit, sullen on the kitchen floor, guessing their fate.  I just couldn't help myself.  It's that time of the year.

Just as I buy pears to paint around Christmas, I buy tomatoes in September.  They are just too gorgeous to ignore, winking at me from their glossy piles at the grocery.  I so love ripe tomatoes that  I even painted myself a big fat fall tomato which hangs in our kitchen year round to remind me of what tomatoes should look like.  I was a spoiled child.  My dad grew huge beefsteak tomatoes, harnessing the light and heat reflected off the house's white stucco.  We ate tomato sandwiches almost every day. This cadmium red bounty lasted well into November because my parents harvested all of the green tomatoes before the first frost and carefully wrapped them in newspaper, where they obligingly ripened.  At the time I thought this was quaint; now I realize it was smart.  The pink plastic tomatoes of winter have humbled me.

So I shall settle today's beauties into a pretty blue bowl and take lots of pictures.  I may even tart them up with a few equally gorgeous eggplants.  Did I mention that I bought half-bushels of them, as well as of red peppers?  It was only as I began to rehearse ratatouille recipes in my head that the penny dropped:  all three are fruits of the solanaceae family or nightshades.  This matters only because they have been associated with arthritis, something I have only in September.  Funny, that.

Should you decide nonetheless to risk immortalizing and then eating a tomato, there is one other health consideration:  cadmium is a heavy metal.  One of the many things I owe to Kathy Bailey is a safer palette.  Her red is alizarin crimson, considered by ASTM to be harmless, although I think it's fair to assume that they don't expect you to eat it.  If combined with a touch of transparent yellow and glazed over white, a highly serviceable tomato red can be created.   

However you use them, do enjoy your tomatoes;  it's definitely that time of the year.