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Soooo...after having an older blog post about balancing life as a full time artist published by Fine Art Views, in which I talk about the importance of having a schedule such as certain days for painting, others for marketing and writing blog posts, and leaving plenty of time for family and leisure time I realized that I have not been as great about following my own advice as I did in the beginning of this new life!

Perfect example is the fact that this is my first  blog post since the beginning of July! Ouch! How did that happen? In my defense, and yours, if you can relate, summer time is a very difficult time sticking to any regular schedule, especially now that we live in a place where friends and family want to come visit a lot. So, before I knew it summer and house guests were gone and it was time to play catch up with commissions and entering juried shows. There just never seems to be a good day to take a day away from the studio to do marketing and writing a  blog, let alone a newsletter (I don't even want to look at the date of my last one of those!). Even though I know those are necessary tasks and I always feel better when they're done, I also feel like I didn't get enough done in the studio. Actually producing new work gives me much more of a sense of accomplishment than does bookkeeping or any other paper/computer work.

I realize part of my problem is that I put way too much on my plate and then feel guilty for not getting it all done. At this point I have no idea how I ever had time for a day job, because I'm busier than ever. Being part of an art center and sitting on its board of directors, volunteering at events and being part of several committees takes up a lot of time away from the easel. I enjoy most of it very much, have enjoyed community involvement and volunteering all my life, but I end up staying at work much later in the evening than I planned just to catch up. And leisure time?? If Rich is on a business trip I don't take any time off at all, work late and get burnt out. I recently started making time again for running and yoga, and sometimes resent even those hours for cutting into studio time! I KNOW how necessary it is for me to live a more balanced life, but darn it's hard to actually do it!

As I am currently preparing for an exhibit of about 8-10 paintings I am filled with self doubt and pressure. I thought I had a great plan on what to show and got started with great enthusiasm. In this case I have a chance for the first time to create some huge pieces because they will need to be seen from a distance and don't have to be framed because they are in a display window of a medical clinic with no direct access (since I work in pastel, the surface can get smudged easily until it's under glass, but framing is very expensive especially on large sizes). The first piece seen at the top is done and had a very steep learning curve! Oh, how different it is to work so much  larger! I had no idea it would be so much harder. Part of it is the fact that it's cumbersome moving it around the studio and it doesn't fit on my easel very well, but I also did not have a way of attaching it to the wall to work on. I mounted Wallis paper on 1/2" thick black gatorboard knowing that it would not buckle or warp when I underpainted in a wet medium (in this case, Dr. Martin's concentrated watercolors). What I had not considered is the fact that I could not achieve a looseness with my strokes (it may come as a shock that my highly realistic work has any loose strokes at all but it actually does!) because the size of my pastel sticks remains the same whether I work large or small (if I painted in oil I'd simply switch to a larger brush). Yes, I can use the sides of the sticks which I do a lot in all my work, and they do make larger sticks and pan pastels (none of which I have), but I was surprised at the difference it was not being able to flick my wrist a certain way and lay down a confident stroke of color, for instance. I am satisfied with the finished piece, but it caught me off guard just  how difficult it is to work so large. I see large work by other pastelists all the time and love it, and now I admire them even more!

The companion piece to Winds of Change I proved even more of a challenge. I'm not even sure why, because it was the same inspiring model, I had worked out all the kinks as far as surface preparation etc. and yet....as of today I have officially abandoned the new painting!! I have overworked it to death, there is simply no more tooth left even after spraying it with fixative to recover some of it and it has taken up way too much time and mental energy to continue with it. The time and money invested kept me hacking away at it trying to MAKE it work, but the best thing is to let it go and move on.

The deadline is fast approaching and I needed a plan B. These two large paintings were going to be the center pieces of the exhibit but it just wasn't working. One of the problems, I believe, is that the second reference photo was not nearly as sharp as the first one, having cropped it down from a much larger image and I simply could not get the details correct once they were  so enlarged. My model is back in Germany, so that didn't help, either. I MAY wash the whole thing off later and start over, or I may just mount a new piece of paper onto the back of the board and begin a whole new piece. But for now, I layed out a new plan for the show and while it's very removed  from my original idea, I feel so much less pressure and stress! I'm actually going to exhibit some earlier work and only have to create one or two more new pieces. I'm trying to cut myself some slack about this, because I squeezed in a couple of very important commissions which took time away from this project. I also have several new commissions waiting to be painted, so now I get to focus on them sooner rather than later.

To sum this post up, it's great to make plans and in the interest of balance and productivity we should stick to them as much as possible but sometimes we have to go to plan B to get things done and move forward. I'm a stubborn German, and a lot of my stress is self-induced, so letting go, saying no to some things, reducing what I commit to and not being too hard on myself doesn't come easily. It's a process I am learning every day and "Progress, not Perfection" is my new mantra!