I'M BACK AND RARING TO GO!

Finally, I was able to get back to producing some art today. I think this is the longest I have gone without posting. I still am without my laptop but am limping along with my old computer. I didn't appreciate the upgrades in all my programs until now. I miss a lot of the features I have been taking for granted. I have been spoiled!

We (I use the term loosly as my husband did nothing to help me) had 20 people for a holiday dinner last night. I spent two days before Christmas shopping, all day Christmas cooking for the party ( Making latkes for that many people takes forever but I only do it once a year) and all day yesterday setting everything up. My sons are fabulous and they did help me get ready and cleaned up most of the aftermath. I spent most of the day, today, putting everything back!

I sat down for a few hours today and did some graphite drawings. Mostly it is for practice and pleasure. I don't think I will do anything with them. I do like the strange lighting on some of the faces and the face in the lower right has real possibilities for stylization. In fact, when I first drew it, it was less realistic but I wanted to have the face work better with the whole page. I think I will go back and work with this image again.

I have a lot of framing and matting to get done, so I think I will mostly draw to finish out the year.

I managed to read a good book "Outliers" this last week. It is a small book and an easy read. Lots of very thought provoking material. The one fact I wanted to share is that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get to excellence....name any area of expertise and the masters have spent 10,000 hours. Basically, that is 10 years with hours of DAILY practice. That is what separates the good from the great! Now, I have to figure out how many hours I have already put in and how many more to go!