02 October 2006

Distracted by Sammy

Today hasn't been the best of days.

First of all, my auctions are going nowhere. No visits, no bids. So I went to one of the eBay groups and asked for suggestions. One powerseller said my titles needed to be redone. Instead of "Wild Roses -- Original Floral linocut Relief Print LMH", she said I needed to have terms people search for. So the new title is something like "Rose Floral Contemporary Garden Wall Decor Art LMH". Not nearly as poetic, but it probably is better. After changing this one, I changed the other 3 auction titles.

Then because things were getting late, I just removed the morel print from my store, wrote a new title for it, and sent it to auction. I can feel it now -- with the new titling, hundreds of people are now flocking to my auctions! Ah, right, and I'll soon get a call saying I won the Noble Peace Prize!

I also spent most this morning getting photos printed out. Since my printer only works occassionally, I send my photos to Winkflash.com and have them print them out. It takes a few days and costs $0.19 per print, but it's easier than trying to keep my printer printing nicely. (The dry air dries the ink in the inkjets, so if I don't print daily, I have to spend an hour or more cleaning the heads.) Today was not a good day for uploading files. Prodigy, my ISP, kept dumping me on large files, so I had to rescale a few photos.

The big concern/distraction today is my tuxedo cat Sammy. He had a large mole on the side of his face, which he removed on one of my kitchen chairs last week. So, he has an appointment with the vet on Wednesday to have it surgically removed. Over the weekend, he removed most of the rest and now it's infected. I tried to clean it out with hydrogen peroxide, but it's hard as it's right next to his mouth. I called the vet and the vet tech said not to worry since my appointment is for Wednesday. But I'm going to worry anyway!!!

So with this as the background, here's today's painting:



It's a pink ladyslipper orchid on masonite. The picture is so bad because I had to use my cell phone to take the photo. Since the oils won't try for a few days, I can't very well lay it face down on my scanner! It actually looks better in life. But I'm not terribly pleased with the layout. Part of the problem is the shape of the panel -- 4x6". It's too long to really highlight the flower. It also would have helped, probably, if I had put more flowers in the background, but I had wanted to highlight the flower so I figured less was better. Not so in this case.

Well, I knew when I started this painting-a-day thing that not every piece would be a masterpiece. The point is to learn to paint faster. Still, it's hard not to feel a bit disappointed in the results. (Yes, I have the idea that every piece will be a masterpiece!) Tomorrow, I will take a little more time planning out the painting.

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