Pandemic, heat wave, fires, Idiot-in-charge...what next?

It's been an eventful week. First on the list was getting my aforementioned internet/WiFi and TV/DSL problem fixed. To do this they sent, not one, not two, but THREE people out from AT&T. It turned out to be some kind of wiring problem up on the post that wasn't bringing signal to my house. They finally fixed it Monday afternoon and I was back in business. I had used data minutes from my phone over the weekend to access the internet, but had no TV during all that time, so the side benefit was that I read four books in rapid succession and blogged about all of them on bookadept.com/blog. Three have posted, one still
to come.

The next thing that makes this week notable: We are having the August heat wave that seems like it lasts forever when it's actually five days long...but this year for "some reason" (global warming? ahem) it's lasting a couple of weeks. On Tuesday, I got in the car to go to the chiropractor at 2:45, and my thermometer read 122 degrees. Now, it usually goes way up due to the car sitting parked in the sun, and after I drive for a bit, it drops precipitously and settles in at the real (approximate) temperature...but this time that real temperature only dropped to 116.

I should mention that I do not have air conditioning in my house. I have an evaporative cooler, otherwise known as a "swamp" cooler. This week I learned why it was called "swamp." The principle of the thing is that it's a big box with four pads made from fiber mounted on its four sides. There is a pump, sitting in a tray of water, that pumps water up in little tubes and wets down those pads and, once they are soaked, you then turn on the fan, which sucks air in through the wetted pads, and cools it down before pushing it through your house and out the windows. I like it because A. it doesn't mess with my allergies the way air conditioning does, B. it actually works better with windows open, which means fresh air instead of canned and recycled, and C. it's a LOT cheaper to operate than air conditioning! The only down side is, once the temps hit 100 or above, you're simply sitting indoors in a puddle of sweat, because the cooler puts humidity in the air but only reduces the temps by about 10-15 degrees max. Do the math: 116 outdoors = 100 degrees indoors. Swamplike, in fact.

On Wednesday, after doing some cleaning up and rearranging of my chaotic living space in order to let the AT&T guys access everything they needed, I apparently swept a piece of glass out from under something into my pathway. I haven't broken anything in months, so it must have been lurking, an escapee from my dustpan, under the coffee table or sofa. Anyway, it was small and chunk-like, and promptly embedded itself in my heel when I landed on it with full force.  So, after trying and failing to extract it myself with a large pin and a pair of tweezers, yesterday I took myself to Urgent Care, properly masked and gloved, to get it removed. The shot to numb my heel hurt like the fires of a thousand suns (no, I am NOT exaggerating), but after that the glass came out pretty smoothly, and the aftermath, while sore, doesn't have the same nerve-bending impact as unwarily stepping down on a piece of glass stuck under the skin, so I'm good.

All that brings me to the events of yesterday, when I spent an indulgent evening watching part of the Democratic Convention and then switching over to Fringe Season 4 episodes back to back until 11:00, when I became restless, realized that the house had FINALLY cooled down, and decided to make some art. As usual, I was going to paint the background and leave it to dry to use today, but it dried quickly in the heat so I thought I would just add the drawing, and then the gouache cried out for application to the eyes and nose and chin, and before you knew it, it was 3 a.m. and I had finished "Portrait of Rosemary."

This one was kind of a commission; my friend Michael, who is one of my biggest fans when it comes to my art output and always posts extravagant remarks and compliments on Facebook under anything I put up for scrutiny, asked me if I would be willing to make a portrait of his friend for her birthday. He then sent me two reference photos, neither of which was ideal. I tend to say no to these kinds of requests, not because I mind but mostly because friendships have either been ruined or made exceedingly awkward by misunderstandings surrounding either paid commissions or unpaid favors in the past. But I told him if I felt inspired, I might take a shot.

The more I looked at the first photo he sent, which was of Rosemary in a giant pair of sunglasses, the more I thought that it would be fun to try to capture the effect of somebody looking through dark glasses, where you could catch a glimpse of their eyes but they were mostly obscured.

It took a bunch of different techniques to get it to a place where I was satisfied with it. First, I painted the eyes just as I usually would, using gouache to make them stand out white over the top of the colorful ink-and-watercolor background, and then painting in the lids and irises in colors, adding black, adding highlights/glints. Then, after those had dried, I went over them (twice) with India ink. It took them back to the correct intensity, but the bits of the white gouache that didn't show up when the picture was in color stuck out, surrounding the eyes in awkward places, when covered over with a layer of ink. I left them as is for a while and considered the rest of the piece.

I got an order from my new best friend (Dick Blick) yesterday in the mail that included my black gouache, so I decided to fill in the meager background with black and then put a line of white around the hair for further embellishment. It was while I was doing this that I also carefully applied the opaque black over the top of the white bits of gouache that were showing where they shouldn't, and it worked perfectly. With a little added touch-up of the black ink details around the eyes, I was able to say that they achieved their goal.

The rest of the painting got away from me a bit. I had intended to fit all of Rosemary from the shoulders up (including some of that beautiful lace) onto the page, but after I made the big features that are a trademark of Deb Weiers's Wonky Friends, I unconsciously then grew the face to fit the size of the features, so Rosemary is off the page at the top and has no framing room at the sides. (There IS a little more black than this, but my scanner cut it off.)  But Michael says it captures the essential Rosemary and thinks she will be pleased, so I am, too.

Daler-Rowney inks, watercolor, gel pens, Uniball, LuminArté paints, on 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper.

Strange bathers

On Friday around noon, my WiFi and DSL went kerflooie. Don't know what happened, but the gateway box started flashing all yellow and red lights, and that was it. I tried resetting the box several different ways (the reset button, obviously, and the old unplug and plug back in magic) but no dice. I called AT&T, sat on hold for 38 minutes, and was told to do the same things again, which still didn't work, and then the nice young man said "My first available appointment for someone to check the lines is Tuesday at 10 a.m." Four days without the internet or television? WHAT? But, AT&T customers can't be choosers, so I settled in for the long wait.

Friday night, deprived of "all that," I decided to produce the next idea I had for a Deb Weiers special. I started at 6 p.m., and kept going until I finished at 10:30, only then realizing I had failed to eat dinner. So I had some cheese and crackers, bewailed the impossibility of posting my artwork, and went to bed.

Saturday I did fiddle about on Facebook on my phone for about an hour, but was otherwise productive as one can be with no distractions: Watered all the flower beds in the yard, wrote (and stockpiled) two blog posts for my book review blog, revised a powerpoint for my readers' advisory class, and cleaned up/swept/hosed out the patio. Then I found an old lamp in the garage, set it up with an extension cord, and read my book from 9 to 12:30 on the patio where the weather had finally "cooled down" to 85 degrees! (It was 106 at noon.)

This morning, in the course of backing up my phone (while hooked into the computer) I somehow managed to glom onto someone else's WiFi in the neighborhood, and temporarily got the use of my computer back. Still no TV, but at least I can post and communicate. What did we do before the internet?!

Anyway, here is the result of my productive Friday night. The inspiration for both are real: Yes, that is a real bird (a rusty egret), and the woman is modeled on one of the actresses on the show Fleabag (google "I look like a pencil"). Since the egret was standing in water (his natural habitat), I plunged her into the pool as well. I call this "Strange Bathers." I'm flailing around a bit, trying to find my way to using the skills and techniques I have learned from Deb Weiers's class but turn them into my own artwork. I feel like I made a start here.

Pencil, watercolor, Daler Rowney inks, collage, Uniball, gel pens, on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper.