Some Fire, Many Irons

I tend to work on a lot of paintings at once. Watercolor dries quickly and doesn't take up much space which means I only have to have one or two stacks of warped paper sitting around my house instead of a whole room full of canvases. Some of the multiple-painting approach is necessary - get too eager and the new paint bleeds into what's already been applied. When you want this effect, it can be beautiful and is one of my favorite ways to transition colors. But I get excited and want to rush to see a finished painting and end up making a mess. Jumping to a new piece while the other dries is one of the ways I force myself to wait to prevent messes.

The other reason I work on a few things at once is because I have to be in a certain mood for each painting. Some will sit half-finished for weeks until I'm in that mood again, while others will be a one-day affair from start to finish. The deformed dog (with uncolored burrito) was something I started weeks ago and loved the colors but couldn't get back into the same groove until last night. Sometimes I'll test the same colors or techniques on another piece or on scratch paper to see if the time is right and if I don't feel it I have learned not to force it.

The second image here is a portion of what I think is the finished groundwork for a painting of a fairy godmother surrounded by rats. I actually wanted to do this one on a larger piece of paper with a lot more rats, but I wanted to at least get the idea out to see if it worked and also got tired of drawing rats after about five or six. The sky in this one was really important to me and I will probably go over it even more before filling it with stars and giving a little more focus to the silver moon (which you can't see in the blurry picture here).

And while it wasn't intended, I realized as I was working on it that I was really feeling (yet another) Sunset Rubdown song. So what the heck, I'll post the lyrics here:

Silver Moons
by Sunset Rubdown




confetti floats away like dead leaves in the wagon's wake
there were parties here in my honor til you sent me away
and now silver moons belong to you
i'm passing the baton from the old mare to the fawn
it was out of line but it was fun, didn't you love the part right before the dawn?
and now silver moons belong to you
i'm off to the ballet and to practice all these ancient ways
tell the new kids where i hid the wine, tell their fathers that i'm on my way, and say:

maybe these days are over, over now
maybe these days are over, over now
and i loved it better than anyone else you know
and i believe in growing old with grace
i believe she only loved my face
i believe i acted like a child
making faces at acquired tastes
and now silver moons belong to you

and silver moons belong to you
i'm off to the ballet and to practice all these ancient ways
tell the new kids where i hid the wine, tell their fathers that i'm on my way, and say:

maybe these days are over, over now
i think maybe these days are over, over now
i believe in growing old with grace
i believe she only loved my face
and i think maybe these days are over, over now

gone are the days bonfires make me think of you
looks like the prophecy came true
you are a fallen tree, he is a fallen tree
how old are you, no, how old are you?

under all the folds of your dresses that you wear
there's an ocean and a tide and a riot in the square
over are the days that the congas made your hair
sway around to the cadence of your hey ho hey ho cheer

under all the folds of the dresses that you wear
sway around to the cadence of your voice when you sang there