Crash day....


These are so hard. Anyway, the tumor Pitunia shut down sometime last night, so I am just draggin' my b-u-t-t this morning.

Shades of Grey is coming along, I've maintained my pace of 2,000 words a day. It's been two whole days into NaNoWrimMo, so I suppose it's not time to call in the dancing girls just yet.

I had thought I would just post the Novel as I went along, but that just isn't realistic, especially since I have a tendency to edit while I'm writing. I don't know if I can break this habit, I don't even know if I want to break it. I'm not sure if I need to create a separate blog dedicated to the novel or what. I'll figure something out in the next day or two though.

While I was in student housing at Idaho State University, my little two room apartment had these wonderful huge floor to celling picture windows. Unfortunately, as you can see from this picture, looking out my bedroom window, that mean zero privacy. The curtains were left over from when the rooms were motel rooms, so they were those wonderful heavy blackout insulated ones. Perfect for keeping out winter chill or possibly even radiation blast from a nuke, but that meant no sun light when they were drawn. I'm one of those people who likes to wake up with light. I had to come up with a way to keep the curtian open a little bit, so I could get some daylight, but try to maintain some privacy.

I'd seen a segment on the Christopher Lowell show (miss you Chris!) where they had painted a window for privacy, but they didn't go the same artistic way I did. I think they painted it to look like a screen, but I don't remember. On a different craft show I seen them painting glass fixtures, so I decided to paint the window.

I used acrylic paints, mostly just the 99 cent little pots of paint from the craft store, so the materials were not expensive. They would also wash off when it was time to move, with little hassle. I painted the branched first, then added the leaves and the flowers. Then I outlined it in black. I needed to keep an eye for how it would look from the outside too, so some times I would line in black, paint the leaf or blossom, then re-line in black so it looked good from both sides. I needed to let it dry between coats, which in SE ID, is not a problem. After painting the details, I thinned out white acrylic to almost a watercolor wash to paint the background white.

To give you an idea of the scale, the finished painting was 3'x4'. I chose this view of the painting because it gives the best view of what I was trying to block out ... my glorious view of the complex parking lot, and the utility room.