Artist’s Log 2023 | Art, Nature & Homestead

My days are usually filled with a variety of business, art, and home related tasks. This post will serve as my art, nature, & homestead ‘short’ journal entries. More like an artist’s log book, if you will. Some of the entries might warrant a longer entry, so those will become a separate post. Once this page becomes too full (is that possible on a WordPress blog?), I’ll start a new one. Ideally, I’d like to keep a page like this for each year. This year is starting late, though, so we’ll see how I do with it for the remainder of the year.

November

5 Nov – we cleared large and small rocks from the path where Rob needs to lay the conduit for running power from the solar to the house. Thankful for the rock flipper and tractor with backhoe. It would have taken a LOT more time and effort without the machinery.

3 Nov – my last day of real estate classes. Now to study for the test.

October

3 Oct – obviously, this journal is turning out to be like all of my other attempts at keeping a journal. I forget to write anything, lol. Today I painted a pet portrait of a dog I once owned named Ghost. Also got in a lot more steps than I usually do. I took a walk this afternoon and took pics of colorful autumn leaves and smashed rocks on the driveway. Most of the day was spent painting.

SEPTEMBER

10 Sept

hiked up the mountain to check on the water tank, made short video about puffballs, and created blog post about the hike.

5 Sept

On 9/3, we made another trip to the ER. Rob has been unable to eat and in a lot of pain. Thankfully CT scans showed nothing was wrong with his previous surgery, and he hadn’t developed new aortic issues. The inflammation of stomach lining and esophagus were the source of his pain, so meds were able to fix that. Todays to-do list includes working on the Limelight commission and household tasks.

1 Sept

Tomorrow I’ll go to the studio for 1/2 a day. After that I’ll go pick up my Thirsty Raven from Gotahold Brewery and meet up with a customer who is buying ginseng roots. Next up will be groceries. Rob is still not doing well enough that I’m comfortable to leave him all day, and especially not ready to go to Bentonville market where I can’t depart in a hurry if necessary. So I won’t be there tomorrow. Perhaps by the first October Saturday. We’ll see. Today unloaded the car, because I still had all of the Bentonville gear loaded from the last market. The emergency with Rob had happened the next day, before I’d unloaded. I left it loaded just in case I might be doing the market tomorrow, but have put in my intent to be absent notice now. Oh, in other news, I am beginning real estate classes at the end of October and hope to be selling properties by the end of November.

AUGUST

26 Aug

When I went to town a few days ago, I forgot to get feed for the horses. So this morning I went to town again and got more groceries (things I forgot to add to my list last time), more meds for Rob. He still isn’t doing well enough to leave alone for a whole day at a time, so I didn’t go to the studio today. Frames arrived for the 9 x 12 Kings river paintings. Both of those need to be varnished, which I will do as soon as the paint finishes drying on the Summer scene.

23 Aug

Quite a bit has happened since my last entry. The Bentonville market on the 12th was good. That was Saturday. Then on Monday, Rob had a Type B Aortic Dissection. All first letter caps for that one’s title because it’s a doozy. I finished a new painting and started the next one. The finished one is sold already, while still on the easel, giving me another stepping stone on the path to my idea of success as an artist. And today I worked in the garden this morning, then needed to call the cardiologist’s office because Rob’s not doing as well as it seems like he should be. That resulted in going to town for a new prescription, and since I had to go to town, I got groceries and brought the trash to the recycle center while I was at it.

3 Aug

The following is too long for what I envision my Artist’s Log Book entries to be. But I did this before I decided how to approach it. At first I thought maybe they’d be journal entries. But I like the shorter summaries better, so that’s what I’ll do going forward.

Shade for seedlings

We slept in this morning and didn’t get out for our morning mile (1 1/2 miles now) until 0730. It was already hot. When we got back to the house, I transplanted some little indigo seedlings to a garden row, but then worried that it might get too hot for them today. So I built a little shade cover for them out of sticks and brush from things I’d trimmed and pulled in the garden. It worked great. All seedlings still well by late afternoon. And it DID get hot, over 100*F. The thermometer says 106 right now at 1730, but I find that hard to believe. It definitely felt 100 though.

Gessoing Panels

My supplies from Jerry’s Artarama came in, and I had panels to make ready for more paintings. So after coffee at noon (we don’t eat lunch, but do have coffee at lunch), that’s what I did. I tried a new grounds from Gamblin after watching a video on YouTube. Since I’m still a newbie at oil painting, I want to try out various things, and a different ground than the acrylic gesso I used last time was one of those things. I would eventually like to try painting on linen canvas, too, but I’m trying to minimize my spending. So I’m using the materials I have on hand until I absolutely have to buy more. Hopefully that will mean more paintings have sold so I need to make more to replace them 🙂

This one is supposed to be very good for oil paintings. I made a tremendous mess, my fault not the product’s, and I didn’t get a pic of that. Fortunately, my smears of titanium-laden grounds that splattered everywhere on the counters cleaned up well and easy with a little coconut oil. It’s not a ‘brush-on’ product, it needs to be applied with a sort of tool like a thing you use for drywall plaster over the seams… I don’t know what you call either one of them. I just used an old empty Walmart gift card. I had a cake decorating squeegee sort of tool that would have worked, but I left it at the studio. Spackling knife! That’s the tool I was trying to think of.

Artist’s Log: Social Media posts about the weekend’s gallery/studio schedule

Then I got on Photoshop to make some graphics to share on social media about the studio/gallery being open both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. I’ve started doing all of the sharing and promoting on Wednesday, because it seems some people aren’t even seeing the posts until after the weekend has passed. I swear if I mention a day in my post, then FB and Instagram make sure it isn’t seen until AFTER the day I mentioned. Unless, of course, I pay to promote it. But who am I to complain? They’re free platforms to use, after all.

Recording an Idea!

I had a really good idea about an hour ago. Have you ever had a great idea for something and then once you’ve talked about it, the idea either dissipates or someone else has the same idea and acts on it while you were humming and hawing about whether or not to do it? Well, I’m not sharing the idea yet for that reason, ha. I need to let it percolate for a little while, and I can’t act on it yet anyway. Once it comes together a little better in my mind, and I have time to do some research needed on it, then I’ll share. It’s also art related, but not necessarily related to my own art.

Apply to Art Festival

I decided to see if I can get into the Oklahoma City’s Festival of the Arts. They supply the tent, so I wouldn’t have to haul that. And if I do get in, it’ll be the first event specific to art that I’ll have ever done. The Art Market in Bentonville is just art, but that event is in conjunction with the farmer’s market, so not really the same. This is an art fair where the people are attending the event with an intention to look at, and hopefully buy, art. It’s really hard work to set up and vend at events and I had hoped I wouldn’t need to do that at all this year. But the gallery/studio isn’t bringing in sales at the same pace as my expenses, so I’ve got to do outside events to keep Wild Ozark floating.

The next ‘away’ event is Aug 12 for the Bentonville Art Market. Then in October I’ll be doing the Ponca Color Fest. And I think that might be it for this year, unless the art market in Bentonville moves indoors and I get to continue once a month with it. | Artist’s log update: I did get into the next Bentonville Art Market session, so I’ll be there first Saturdays in September and October.

Dirt Road Guided Nature Tour

It takes 30 minutes just to get down our dirt road to the pavement, then another 10 to get to the post office in Kingston. I know, I said that yesterday, too, but it was for a different purpose. I linked to a different post this time, too. This time, I’m talking about the sorts of things I like to look at while I’m driving that slow down the dirt road. It occurs to me that other people might be interested in seeing those things. So I came up with a Dirt Road Guided Nature Tour so that I can share exactly that. Click here to find out the details.

That’s it for today, as of right now at 1806. I didn’t expect to have another journal entry post ready for today already, but there you have it. Daily posts are not my goal, though, so it might not happen tomorrow. Update 8/23: Since I’ve decided to switch to an artist’s log format, I very well might be able to make daily entries to this page. We’ll see.