a potato day

at least i hope so
at least 2 bags of 50# each for the winter *** ahem, my beloved lehigh potatoes won't be ready until tuesday next ****--we are slowly getting ready
i wish most of this had been done earlier, (potatoes couldn't be done earlier- but wood could have been)
i wish wood was already stacked, trees cut back from the chimney, windows caulked, and covered with plastic
i also wish i had been well enough to garden, to build my cold frames and have tucked in winter vegetables under a blanket of mulch.
i'm better but not well yet.
i have some hopes of improving slowly.
meanwhile i am painting
right now i am in the midst of chickens.
i don't foresee corn at this point, but it is possible that in a week or so there will be corn and pumpkins and maybe gourds ......and colored leaves to paint
*** i need more lightbulbs*** (note to self-for the drafting table)
i am actually looking forward to getting the colored paper and starting a gouache painting on the drafting table while i work on my chickens on the easel.....

i did 6 paintings in gouache of the summer flowers here....... i am considering doing six paintings in gouache of fall/seasonal plants, possibly corn, leaves, berries, gourds, pumpkins, nuts...
maybe if i keep going i will, after a year, end up with 24 gouache paintings that could be called 'the four seasons' or something

now as an aside..... no one is more surprised then i am to find out how committed  i've become to all this work, and how one thing suggests another and how before i know it a series happens
and yet my subjects seem so randomly varied to me.... and simple, what ever is sort of to hand
and the really oddly interesting thing to me is, how involved i get when i'm painting whatever it is i am painting...
i also seem to be thinking of things such as...'what exactly is it about this light on this form'
all this is done while i am somehow in this weird meditative 'out there' state i get into while painting...

i never thought i would get beyond 'does this tell the story' , even though i am a great believer in 'just show up and work every day, no matter what'......
i probably should have/could have predicted this if i had actually stopped to think about it
meanwhile
as i type this
my painting is calling me .....i am redoing a purple chicken.....
don't laugh
he's giving me the stink eye and daring me to do better