Handwork today

I'm finishing up 2 prints that are going into a B&W show at Davis & Blevins Gallery, just north of Dallas. I have two sets of watercolor pencils that I love. Staedtler is one and Derwent is the other. I can always blend them with a wet brush or keep them as is. One set has a grey that's more warm, and the other set has a cooler black. The differences are subtle, but when you want it right, you want it right.

Here's a photo taken on the hike
and bike trail on Town Lake maybe 10 years ago.

I set a schedule last weekend and so this has been an exhausting week! I'm fitting in exercise now, so that's new. I've also fit in two marketing days at 2 hours each. I can read marketing books--I've accumulated quite a few--as well as perform business tasks like correspondence and data entry so it's flexible. Before I set my schedule, I didn't differentiate between studio hours and marketing hours, and I'd often spend more time working and scheming on the marketing side when I really needed to up the art making. Plus there's always the problem of getting sucked into the Internet vortex, and this way by limiting my studio hours to actually working on art, I've been super productive. My daily household responsibilities have taken a nose dive because they're not on the schedule (grin), but husband has been very encouraging for me to stay at it, convincing me I'll eventually get the hang of it all, including laundry. My inspiration for setting up a more detailed schedule (vs. x hours per week) was Mary Hunter, an artist in my art marketing group, who admitted she actually clocks in and out when going into her studio. My schedule is just broken down into expected hours per day, etc, leaving it up to me to do the time since I often have to break up work into segments, but you get the idea.