nuttall class countdown

 (10x12)

My workshop with Ted Nuttall in Rehobeth, Del., will begin in less than 10 days. (There's an interview with Nuttall in the summer 2010 Watercolor magazine, illustrated by several of his paintings.)
My weekend company, Peter's kids and their satelllites, are all out at the beach. The breakfast dishes are done and dinner's all prepped. Painting time.
I was working from a soft-focus black and white photograph, which, along with the young girl's naturally rounded and smooth face, led to some indecision about modeling ... and about what colors to use.
I went as far as I could in the first stage. Then took a break and came back and added a few darks, mostly around the eyes.
Poor kid looks awfully grim, though in the photo, she looks very sweet.
(ps: I rephotographed this: though I took the picture outside in daylight, it was too blue; this is more like it!)

(first stage)

Then I messed around with mom and dad some more. My mother looks like Yvonne de Carlo! And my father's mustache isn't readable, but the more I mess with it, the worse it looks to me. May be time to abandon this and chalk it up to experience!

.
Another summer gone. And I wish, like Joni Mitchell in my favorite song of hers, "Urge for Going," that it'd stay around for just another month or so.

I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky, then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
And shivering trees are standing in a naked row
I get the urge for going but I never seem to go
I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I had me a man in summertime
He had summer-colored skin
And not another girl in town
My darling's heart could win
But when the leaves fell trembling down
Bully winds did rub their faces in the snow
He got the urge for going
And I had to let him go
He got the urge for going
When the meadow grass was turning brown
Summertime was falling down and winter was closing in

The warriors of winter they gave a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying and all that lives is getting out
See the geese in chevron flight flapping and racing on before the snow
They've got the urge for going, they've got the wings to go
They get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I'll ply the fire with kindling and pull the blankets to my chin
And I'll lock the vagrant winter out and bolt my wandering in
I'd like to call back summertime and have her stay jut another month or so
She's got the urge for going and I guess she'll have to go
And she get the urge for going when meadow grass is turning brown
All her empires are falling down
Winter's closing in