Ooooooooh I should be in bed like a good little Sunny, but as per usual I’m up puttering around and waiting for paint to dry. Instead of sitting here twiddling my thumbs, I decided to take some pictures of what I’ve currently got on the go. Normally I don’t like to show works in progress because I’m superstitious and once I’ve let the cat out of the bag, I tend to not want to finish things, but I decided tonight that I would do it anyway.

The first thing I’ve got going on is two paintings of girls for my sister Raili (who’s almost 4) and my daughter Madison (who’s 10) for Xmas. I’m making these paintings partially because I want to – my daughter’s been drooling over my recent work over the past few months – but partially because I’m broke as fuck and Xmas is on a serious budget this year.

The one on the left is for Raili, who’s blonde herself, and the one on the right is for Madison, who’s a brunette. These girls are going to both be holding the word “Imagine” and their dresses will have matching fluffy trim along the bottoms once I cut them out and adhere them to the canvas.

The canvasses, which I forgot to take pictures of, are white and crackle based, with splatters of metallic colours corresponding to their dresses with glitter paint over top. Silver for Raili’s and gold for Madison’s. It’s hard to tell in the pics, but the cardstock their dresses are made out of are metallic as well.

Obviously their slippers are encrusted with glitter as well, which corresponds to the colour of glitter on the background of the canvas. Both canvasses are 8 x 8.

I’ve also been sketching boys in the hopes that I’ll have time before Xmas to do one for my son, in metallic blues, of a boy wearing a crown and holding the word “Inspire” as he’s been drooling over my recent work as well and I don’t want him to feel left out. Since these paintings are taking so long for me to get done, I’m not sure I’ll have time to do it, but his birthday is in February so if I don’t get it done for Xmas, he’ll get one then.

The other piece I’m working on…I was really leery of sharing this one because I’ve been reluctant to work on it for some reason and I was afraid that if I put it “out there” I’d definitely run out of steam. But then I thought maybe if I put it “out there” someone will say the right thing to get me wanting to work on it again.

Behold the mermaid:

Her canvas is 20 x 16 and her background is metallic blue “waves”, done in a wash, and gone over with silver sparkly paint. The sand at the bottom of the painting is actual sand, made into a paste with gesso and sand coloured paint and painstakingly applied (which wrecked one of my favourite brushes :o(). I’m actually unhappy with the colour of the sand, so I think I’m going to repaint it with a lighter colour of brown.

In this picture, you can kind of see the glitter in the top left hand corner of the painting. As you can see, she’s going to have purple jeweled nipples to match her eyes and tail.

Her tail is a paisley pattern with crackled “scales” applied over top and accented with metallic purple paint. Once the piece is finished and varnished with Triple Thick Gloss Glaze, the crackle should “pop” a little more and become more prominent.

And finally, this is what her original sketch looked like, which I’m probably only going to change slightly:

I’m probably not going to bother with the seaweed and if I do, it’s probably going to be made of frilly scrapbooking fibres. I’m unsure as to whether or not I’m going to include the fish, but if I do, they’ll be made of patterned scrapbooking paper. The hooks in the sketch are going to be actual fish hooks, which I’ve already purchased from good ol’ Wal*Mart and the hearts are going to be made out of this glittered red cardstock I found at Micheal’s. She’s also going to be wearing pearls around her neck.

So that’s what I’ve been working on. Exciting, no?

As I write this, I’m waiting for the glitter paint on the slippers of Raili & Madison’s paintings to dry so I can adhere them to their canvasses with gel medium and they’ll be dry by the time I wake up tomorrow when I can add their arms.

I think that’s why I’m stuck on the mermaid painting, it’s time to add her arms and that’s the worst part of doing these paintings for me because they’re a pain in the ass to paint and get the colour to match the rest of their complexion and it’s also a pain in the ass to make them the right length. With practice I’m getting better at it, but I still hate that part of doing these because it always takes a few attempts to get them right.

So that’s my paintings…

In other news, I don’t know how I feel about this new anti-depressant my shrink’s added to the mix. It’s called Gabapentin and I’m on 200mg a day and while I’m not as depressed as I normally would be at this time of year, I feel…boring. I feel like I’m unfeeling, I’m numb. I feel like I want to cry but the drug won’t let me, like it’s masking my emotions and blocking me from even really having them. I don’t have the drive or passion for things I normally do and while yes, like I said, I guess it’s good that I’m not wanting to kill myself and the grey days are easier to handle, but I don’t think I like this numbness either. I don’t like feeling blank, neutral. Truth be told, I think I like being bipolar and feeling the extremes. I miss them when they’re not there. :o/

I have no idea what I’ll tell my shrink when she calls tomorrow and asks me how I’m feeling. I’ve read about other anti-depressants and I don’t think I want to be on any of them so I don’t want her to switch me to something else, but I don’t really like this one either. What to do, what to do?

Anyway, this is getting long and I’m starting to get sleepy so I think I’ll save my other words for another time. Just as a reminder though, you can add the feed for this blog to your Live Journal by clicking here and I just wanted to mention that I’m not following comments on the LJ feed, so if you have something to say and you want me to see it, it’s probably a better idea to post it here.

And with that, I’m off to bed.