ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER SAND DOLLAR

At this very moment, I have 3 guys hammering on my front door and yelling. 

Ok, not quite...

But I do have 3 guys hammering on the wall that's just inches from my front door, and yelling instructions to each other.  They are the team that's moving around the house blowing insulation into the walls, and at the moment they are working on the front porch around my door.  LOUD!  But I am very grateful. Two days ago they were in the back of the house doing the exterior kitchen walls, and darned if I didn't notice that the room suddenly stayed cooler than normal during this awful heat wave.  Not cool-cool, but not as fiendishly hot as it usually gets when the weather is stinko for multiple days, as it is now.

Next:  what does that picture have to do with sand dollars (referred to in the title of this post)?  Nada.  But it accounts for some of the other excitement today; my new mattress arrived.  Yes, in a box.  This may be a huge mistake, but I couldn't resist trying a mattress from Casper, a startup based in NYC.  I love the concept; now I hope I love the mattress.  Will report back.  Before I can open the box, though, I have to get my old mattress out of here (bought in late 2001, so you know it is time for a new one), and I cannot do that until the workmen leave later today.

So now, let's get on to the sand dollar reference.  I am still working on the "Tints on Tan" concept that Marty Deckel, CZT, has been teaching.  My last two posts have referenced this and showed two other pieces I did.  Today I tried a sand dollar.  I took a few liberties with it--to put it mildly--and then, insanely, I also added a few water droplets to see if I could do them.  You can see the results on the tile below, and then in the bottom picture you can see my  preliminary "practice" water droplets.

The water droplets scared the pants off me when I thought about trying to draw them.  Clearly I still have a lot to learn about drawing water and about the Tints on Tan technique, but I am having fun blundering my way along.

I put off trying this for 2 days because I was intimidated, then got irritated with my "spineless creative self" and forced myself to jump in today.  It's not perfect, but so what?  I couldn't believe how much fun I had working on it, and once again I was perfectly peaceful during the process, which is the most wonderful part.

"Ready or not, tell yourself to jump."  --Chris Gardner