The reason I refer to “the painting workshop” instead of “the studio” is because I paint in a different building than where I draw. The drawing studio came first, and when I began oil painting on March 8, 2006, it was imperative to keep that mess away from my pencil drawings. It still is imperative; the operative word here is “mess”.

After spending several weeks working on large-ish (large for me means it won’t fit on my flatbed scanner) paintings, there were many little tasks to complete. Each painting needed a title and inventory # on the back, hardware for hanging, a signature, the edges to be painted, and a good photograph.

For these larger paintings, I put them outside on an easel in the sunshine, and then do my level best to take photos with my PHD* camera, which has a screen that doesn’t show up in bright sunshine. Operative word here is “level” —try to hold a tiny camera perfectly parallel with a painting when you can’t see the screen.

Someday I might buy a grownup camera again, but one of my guiding principles in life is “The more stuff I own, the more stuff breaks” (and needs maintenance, storage, cleaning, battery charging, and for Pete’s sake and for crying out loud, STOP GETTING LOST ALREADY!) My PHD is doing fine for now, so I’ll just push onward. Thanks to Photoshop Jr., I can make this work.

Trail Guy came into the workshop with a maintenance-man sort of aura, so I told him that it was time to reupholster my chair again. The duct tape from the last reupholstery session was no longer satisfactory, so he used gorilla tape this time. Classy, eh? The stool came from an abandoned artist studio where some jerk refinanced his place, then took the money and ran. Some friends of mine bought the property from the bank, and I had the good fortune to comb through and claim what I needed. Back then I stood to paint, but thought it would be a useful stool in the workshop. Now I sit more often (stupid peripheral neuropathy).

Tomorrow I’ll show you a few more finishing tasks.

*Press Here, Dummy