One of THOSE Days!

Here it is about 3:30 in the afternoon and I'm still in my pajamas!  Seriously, this is ridiculous, I know, but I usually get up before my DH and this morning I went right to work in the studio trying to rework the dark cowboy and give some interest to the light one!  lol

I'm just now realizing what time it is and crawling out of my den (er, studio) - good thing I have clean pj's for tonight.  I think I'll just stay as I am at this point and take a shower and put on my clean jammies right before bed!  Thank God we don't get many unannounced visitors!

I think I made some progress on the "almost" portrait of my husband but I really spent the most time on the dark cowboy that I posted yesterday.  I really worked on it but I think I'll just repaint it - I re-worked it then sprayed it again and this time the spray (SpectraFix) spattered and left those little splotches on the painting even though I saturated it well.

It also darkened the painting again after I'd worked so hard to lighten it and give it a bit more life.  I think I'm going to concentrate on painting with gouache and just play with pastel as pastel is just one of those mediums that really doesn't do well if you don't get it right the first time around.  It's pretty easy to overwork and muddy up colors whereas gouache can be overworked and muddied BUT you can usually wipe off an area and completely repaint if need be.

In the painting of my DH, for instance, I was following some advice from my friend, Sue, from the PencilPix blog and trying different things in the empty space to the right of of the figure of my husband.  I finally settled on some far away trees and painted them in only to discover the color I used wasn't exactly right. Since I was painting over an area of the sky, the under color was mixing into the new color and I actually got some mud.  It was a relatively easy fix to just wipe out what I didn't want (I used a damp cotton swab/cotton bud) and start again.  I'm not posting any new photo of it just yet as I'm waiting to see if it actually does help the painting.  I also tweaked some of the values on the jacket a bit and I just want to let the painting sit to see if it needs anything else.

Anyway, it's a gorgeous day here and I haven't been any further than the back porch when our dog wanted out!  It's supposed to rain for the next day or two so I guess I blew the opportunity to get some sun for a while!

Hope you all are enjoying the spring and that it's beautiful where you are too.