Man, it is hard for me to focus some days!  Today was one of them.  I got up at 6:15 to go for a walk with a friend then came home and ate and showered and talked to Chris before he went to work.  I came out to the studio before my tutoring student at 9:30 and worked on a color study.  I'm calling it deep evergreen forest in sunlight.  It felt good to play before teaching.  I've never been one to get up early in the morning until this past year, but now I'm starting to appreciate the advantages of it.  I feel like by 9:30 the day is half way over.

Maybe that's why it was hard to concentrate today.  I taught til 10:30 then helped Dylan load his car then came back out to work but got hungry so went in for lunch then it was almost 1 and I'd been up for almost 7 hours.  Geez!

At any rate, I did another color study after lunch, called Cloudy Day.  I wanted to create more subtleties as compared to the first one.

Then I did email and wasted time til I finally couldn't think of anything else to do, so then I finally started working on my new piece again.  I'm enjoying it, I think, but I didn't know what to do - I liked the looseness I'd established at the beginning and didn't want to mess that up by getting tight like I tend to do, but I couldn't figure out what else to do.  So I refined it like usual.  The difference, I think, was that the beginning was loose so I had that to work with/against.  I could be more playful and bold and I was refining.  I used colors I might not have used in the past and put more paint down. 

When Chris got here a few minutes ago, I was feeling like it was finished but then he very helpfully - really!  It was helpful!  I'm not being sarcastic! - pointed out that the face is off a bit and the lips are a bit odd, so now I have something to work on tomorrow.  It helps me get focused when I know exactly what I want to work on when I get out here.

So tomorrow will be another opportunity to make this piece look better, and this evening is a chance to go kayaking with my wonderful husband!  See you on the river!