Good day/bad day

I had today off from the store and the plan was to get up fairly early and head to the school and start painting the show. That didn't quite happen. I had changed the time on my alarm so I didn't have to be up quite so early but then forgot to turn it on. What actually woke me up was the smoke detector plummeting to a not so graceful landing on the tile floor below. No clue why...maybe all the times it has randomly gone off late were cries for help and just couldn't take it any more.

I had a pretty good day paint wise. I over came the the drawing obstacles that were thwarting me on Christmas day (yes I went and worked Christmas day)
This is what I started with. My love and I had snapped a 1' grid over the flats on Christmas. I cover the renderings with plastic wrap and draw the same grid in scale on the plastic. From this I draw on the flats with charcoal. Usually the drawing is done on kraft paper (especially if one is painting on fabric) which is then transfered to the scenery. The paper is more forgiving and even comes with a grid printed on it. For the sake of time and money, I was doing this directly on the flats



I started on the sky and finished the drawing while that dried. Once the charcoal was what it should be I go over it with Sharpie. and then flog away the charcoal. That is the fun part. This is my flogger...I inherited the leopard print flogger but it has become one of my trademarks now. Basically it works like it sounds...you hold the stick and flog away the charcoal.


Once that was done I laid in the base colors on the wall. Then a little more work on the sky. It is nice when you can rotate on a project. Really half the job is waiting for paint to dry.



Then some detail and shading on the wall.






Last I threw some green down to base in the bushes.






The play list for todays painting was as follows:
First a little NPR then CD's
Enigma-MCMXC A.D.
Medieval Babes- The Rose
GreenDay - American Idiot
Evanescence- The Open Door
Rob Zombie- Hellbilly Deluxe
System of a Down- Toxicity

So the bad part of the day. Other than the late rude awakening. I got a stupid traffic ticket. I turned left out of the school like I always do...except you're not suppose to between 3:30 and 6:30 weekday. Now this normally isn't an issue for me because I'm never leaving at that time. Rehearsal is typically 3 to 6. So I'm either already gone or just showing up at those hours. Well school is out right now, so there I was, not even thinking about it and now I have a ticket worth $103. I feel like such an idiot and irritated as hell. With so much going on in my life right now, and so much stress, I know I am on the verge of my breaking point. I'm trying to keep this ticket from being what cuts the thread on my sword of Damocles. *breathe*