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           Two Together

I recently demanded of myself the arduous task of cleaning out the storage closet that contains my frames.  Within the hour, my studio looked like an episode of Hoarders.  Frames stacked against the wall...actually stacked against anything...and smaller frames of relative size in stacks on any available hard surface  and me with a clipboard, trying my best to categorize.  I reduced the number of "what was I thinking" frames to charity and re-stored all (almost all) back to the closet with the exception of this one large frame 24 x 30 that left me mystified as why I purchased it.  I have never painted anything this size.  It would require a full sheet of paper which to me has always been a scary thing.

So...being even more demanding of myself, I pulled a clean, white, smooth sheet of hotpress watercolor paper from my bin and sat in front of it waiting for inspiration. Reducing the image to accomodate a mat made it a little smaller but still it was big (and scary).

 I have been on Camano Island's annual studio tour for probably 12 years now and it seems my loyal followers expect a new heron painting each year.  Last year, I took a sabbatical from the tour to deal with my husband's health so there was no new heron or anything else.  I decided to make up for the missing heron last year and produce two in this year's version.

Painting this large was quite a challenge for me and several times I convinced myself the painting was finished only to study it and find

improvement was needed.  I decided I couldn't work on it anymore which is usally a good decision for the painting and now am faced

with cleaning that big piece of glass without breaking it and getting the mat and painting and backing secured.  I just know that when that is all done, I will see a cat hair under the glass that appeared out of no where.