'LONG STARE OUT THE WINDOW'
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'Long Stare Out The Window' is a 14"x18" acrylic on canvas. It took a long time for this one to see the light of day. The seated woman just wouldn't co-operate! I thought I "had her" and I debuted her on the What's New page, then realized NAH, so took her down. Next the unthinkable happened: she lost her head! Literally! In the frustrating limbo between knowing what I didn't want and not getting what I wanted, I painted over her head and there she sat, sans tete, for several weeks in a stack of canvases. I broke my own rule and abandoned this painting, knowing I had to take a break from it. It was only after moving house and being in a strange new city, without my sons, that I knew what the woman was feeling. I painted her face and expression without stopping.

1. I started this canvas by taking a brush and sketching in a seated woman with a cat on her lap, then I painted the wall and window around her.	2. I fleshed her out and painted her skirt red, the chair blue, the drapes burgundy, and colored in the cat on her lap. I start adding 'light' on the wall.Her left leg is big and weird, but I'm not focussing on that right now :)
3. I decide to paint in an old stereo, the kind my folks had, the kind that is a piece of furniture in the room.	4. This is the first face I try, and as you'll see, not my last. I sketch in painings on the wall, and add a pole lamp.
5. Her face and hair start changing slightly, I add shadows behind her and light on the curtains, the stereo, pretty much detail everything a bit more, and I fill in the paintings. I've been playing with her right shoulder, and I add a blue pillow under her elbow, after extending her arm a bit. Her skirt has slimmed out, and her legs are re-posistioned, creating a more proportioned appearance.	6. I tone down the shadow behind her head, and give her a new face and hairdo! haha! I also add a second row of paintings, feeling that there was too much empty wall above her. I detail the chair, and paint in a "throw" on the headrest, but this doens't last long. I add another table, near her left knee. It's only now as I type this that I realize that in the final version, this is cropped out! Uh, oops. (It's in the original!)
7. From here on in, it's all about changing her face and hair, which I'm just simply not loving. Er...next...	8. We'll call you.
9. I need a little more feeling.	10. Ok that's just wrong :) Worked a long time on what I thought was "it" and when I stepped back, saw that it was too small in proportion to the body. &^sldjglk#!
11. . . . so. . . this is how the poor thing spent about a month. And in that time, we moved to a new place, 2 towns over. For two weeks, I didn't have my sons, and I spent long days staring out the window, my heart feeling huge and beaten.	12. One day, I unpacked this painting and knew just what to paint, how she felt, and what to call the painting. It was therapy for me to paint out my feelings. Update: My sons spend a lot of time here, and this painting is spending time in a month-long solo art show Click on it :)

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