Emerging From The Twilight Zone

I feel like I've been existing in some sort of twilight zone for the past ten days as I have worked on finishing two large paintings within only a week (I was meant to complete three but that was never going to happen). The only break I took (aside from animal care and going to town to load up the old chuck wagon) was portraiture last Friday. Our model was a young mother who held some amazing one minute long poses so we could do quick gestural drawings. I alternated between pencil and ink with the latter medium tending to be more spontaneous.

After twenty hours of work I finally completed my entry for the New Zealand Art Guild Awards on Sunday. I have taken a photo of the painting but don't want to post this until the competition has been judged on Friday. The challenge was to incorporate the four terms Cool Blue, Equality, Circular and Stamping into my work which really did make me think outside the box.

My entry for the Art Hawkes Bay Exhibition was due today. I worked until midnight last night and from 8am this morning until one of the Otane Painters arrived to courier it to Hastings for me. There I was trying to screw in D rings and wrap the silly thing while she watched me, thankfully very patiently. I had named the work "Old Friends" and chose to paint my dog Mishka with a cat sitting beside him. Hopefully I will learn if I have been selected for these two exhibitions by the end of the week.