I'm afraid I have no new painting to show you. I have been painting a lot...and scraping it. And repainting, and scraping. Etc. Very little of what I'm painting is satisfying me at the moment. Apparently I'm in one of those transition times when artistic things (perhaps interests, and hopefully abilities too) are changing. I have been working separately on some stuff with a totally new (for me) technique, and will share pics if I ever finish one of them (lots of layers, perhaps infinite layers, therefore perhaps a never-finished painting...?).
In the meantime, here's a lovely bit of a tree in the park where I walk my dogs. I see a little Kokopelli running in the middle of it...do you?
Well, the results of the PastelMat-stretching business are in: it quickly became apparent that re-moistening the tape and trying to peel it off was going to require the patience of a saint. That I'm not. So I went the X-acto knife route. So here's what I'm left with: a permanent mess of stuck-on tape on my stretching board. Oh well. Live and learn...
(P.S. I shall order some blotting paper in the future and try that method. But the compressed-air blasting is probably not a good idea: visualize a pastel-dust explosion in your face...)
So, you see, I have been busy.
The animolecules have been busy too. I'm trying a new med with Rumi for his perpetual eye problem. It's an antibiotic in fish paste that they're supposed to love the taste of (HA!). Since The Husband is traveling, I have to wrap up Rumi as an angry little burrito baby (pic from previous post: click on this link and then scroll down--where his eyes were much worse than currently) and stick the "syringe" (no needle, of course) into the corner of his mouth and shoot 1 ml of the paste down his cute little gullet. Well, that's the theory, anyway. In practice, it's like wrestling a (small but shockingly strong) alligator, and you simply don't have enough hands. The first day of the med, he managed to froth at the mouth like a demon to the point that much of the med went everywhere but into him. It made a lovely chartreuse stain on the blanket he was wrapped in, though, and on his chest and face...he looked a bit glow-in-the-dark for a while afterward. Then today, I got most of the med down him, then he ran off and started eating his regular food really fast...and promptly threw it all up (no pics of that, I sort of thought you wouldn't want any). So, that was ten dollars' worth of meds in two days, right there. I thought I knew what it was like to give a difficult cat meds before, but Rumi? He's a little silky white gladiator. 
...And then he goes off and falls asleep in a sunbeam and looks all smug and cherubic again.
Rumi and Lynx were also both quite industrious while I was gone this evening. I came home to this (note strangely ragged bottom edge of lampshade...and then look at what Rumi's chewing on: yep, that used to be the bottom of the lampshade).
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