my messy desk & beautiful cat

I worked this weekend because fashion week starts the beginning of september. I am doing the unglamorous part of it all.  I painted in the mostly black base and it took me literally three hours.  I stayed to work (ahead) on my friday painting.  I realized that I spent six hours not talking to anyone.  I had sung along to a song or two but when I moved from the cd player to my ipod I became even more insular.  My body was covered in almost black paint.  It is under my fingernails, the backs of my arms, and even my belly.  The day before I put the first coast and as the paint began to dry it also began to stretch too much and pull out of the staples.  The area that was popping out was under this vent thing that hangs away from the wall and a little up from the floor.  So I had to shimmy on my belly to re-staple the muslin, before it shrunk too terribly.  I still haven't gotten all the paint off yet.  And I used all my body scrub.  A bit painty on my legs.

AK fashion week. We are doing SIX different shows…Johanna did we ever do six before?  Six large jobs in a little over two weeks. The sizes as follows: 17' x 24', 17' x 25', 17' x 68', 24' x 80', 17' x 24', and the last one we don't have a size or an image.

Breaking that down, just for fun…if I was just gessoing (its sort of like the primer) in a straight line, I would be gessoing for over a mile and 1/2 in length. Fun times.  Back to work…thanks for everyone's ideas…love them. 

Here is my first 5 gallon bucket of gesso…already painted…and drying 

This will have to do for my painting this week…
I AM painting it and it is friday…
a section of one of the pieces we are working on for the anthropologie job.

Have a great weekend…looks like I might be working…

We had a really crazy week here. Long nights, early mornings, and I just couldn’t pull it together to get a painting done for today. I was thinking that I would have to wait awhile for fedex to pick up the backdrops and I could squeeze in a painting, but our guy got here in no time.
Fingers crossed that there are no hitches and it makes it to California tomorrow morning. We painted two huge backdrops for Weeds. And everyone is exhausted. Got the job Tuesday to be completed TODAY. And we did it. The boss lady is really amazing! One of the backdrops was 20′ high by 18′ wide and the other was 18′ high x 23′ wide. Started the second one last night. The joys of working late. I really can’t believe we made it. I don’t know how that happens. Its like the theater and the show must go on. I was here and I am still amazed.

Instead of a full painting I have beginnings on a couple. One more that needs to be stretched. I have notes on this photo here.

(there is another one of these on flickr)

Acutally at work we are cleaning up still after the mad rush of fashion week.
Buckets to clean.
Items to find their way back home.
And backdrops and more backdrops to be checked in.

The way paint swirls thrills me.