My kind friends

Water Series Image 3
Stage 5
acrylic on canvas
Barbara Muir © 2010
(I decided with the central image
to make the water a bit less abstract.
The line of the beach, and the
apparent tide pools are
completely abstract, but I liked
the pattern on the water
in my reference, and so did
my model, so I put it in.
You can still see the chalk
line across the face, but don't
worry it will rub off.)

I was planning to write about something
else today, and it hit me tonight that I
absolutely had to talk about my kind friends.
Two wonderful women -- Heather and Mary --
came to the house today to help me arrange
my trip to New York, and to calm me down
about where to stay and what to do. The paintings
I'm currently working on will be going into
a show in New York in a couple of weeks, and
I'm going to go and visit with them for part
of that time. I'll tell you more about that when
I make sure it's fine for me to talk about it with
the gallery.

Another sweet friend solved my dilemma about
how to get my canvasses lined up so that the
straight line of beach and of ocean would connect
on each painting. The lines of water and sand
unify the paintings, and make it clear that they
belong together. So my friend Suzanne, trained as an
architect, brought over her chalk line, and with
the help of my husband, we lined all three
paintings up on the floor, and snapped a
straight line to make sure the bands
of sand and ocean are read together.

I worked today on small repairs to even out the
beaches and oceans on two of the paintings,
and then put in some detail on Water Image
3, which will be the central image when they're
displayed, and was meant to be more detailed
than the others in the background. There still
may be a palm tree on the patch of sand at
the far right, and I'm not entirely sure I'll keep
the beach there. Tomorrow I will work on her face, and
on the face from yesterday, and then scrutinize
the paintings to see what else has to happen
before they go to New York.

I left the chalk lines running across the face for
now because I may have to make more adjustments
to the lines before the ocean and sand are complete.

Have a getting-it-all-lined-up day.