Another phase of the portrait

Multi-tasking as usual. The weekends are way too short, especially when the yard calls, too. I planted all my new sedums and two lavenders...and vowed NO MORE PLANTS this year.

I did enough weeding to make everything hurt...there are Always More Weeds! and poor Theresa's back is hurting, so no yoga tomorrow night. I stretch SO MUCH better in the group than alone.

Worked on the portrait another couple of hours, while listening to THE LOVELY BONES...the most fun of all! Although I can already see things I want to change. I'm glad I'm taking a photo at the end of each session, because I thought the last phase looked more like her, but not sure. I'm trying to learn not to be TOO judgmental about my work, especially before it's completed.

I'm thinking that I'd like to do a series of portraits of people...anyone who would be willing to pose, or let me take pictures, along with their stories. There's a book I got from the library, for which a photographer did a portrait of each person in a small Kansas (I think) town, with their stories, then again years later. People's stories are fascinating to me...as well as their images. I have for years done portraits of couples or families, trying to tell a story by how they are arranged and presented.

Here's a painting of a family group I made in the Nineties, just because I liked the family dynamics. I gave the painting to the family, through the friends who had their picture, but never heard anything from them.

I wonder if it's important for art work to be shown and sold for one to feel validated in making it?

I think I'm happier making my living doing something else and creating the art I want to, instead of something that I think someone will buy...but I do admit that I'm happy when I have an appreciative audience....still, I would not stop making art without sales..Paintings take up less room to store than sculptures do.