No, that’s not my age! It’s the number of paintings I have produced this year. I’m probably 20 paintings behind since I had surgeries this year, but that’s okay. That way I don’t have too many frame jobs to do!
My last painting of the year 2010 was of an old yellow lawn chair on postcard watercolor paper. There was a pinery/greenery decorating class going on at the time I was trying to paint this little 4 x 6 inch painting of that chair, and so it turned out to be a little off since I kept getting distracted from all the fun the students were having in the class at Summers Past Farm out in the big outdoor coffee pavilion patio.
I usually do an average of 50 paintings a year and am glad that I at least did as many as 41 this past year. I log every painting that I ever do. I number it, title it, list the size, etc. My log code is in this order: the number of the painting, the year, the month. For example, the yellow chair is listed as #41-’10-12. After this number I will start with 01 in the year 2011.
My friend Madeline Strafello passed away this year and her family gave back a painting that I had sold to her. This painting needs to be re-framed and I was so surprised I didn’t even have a log number on the back of this watercolor of the bird watchers in Del Mar! uk oh! I kind of know approximately what year this painting was done because it was done on location at a Saturday morning session with the SDWS group.
It amazes me that some time I will wake up in the night wondering where such and such a painting is, thinking I had lost it or not list it. It is like this, each painting is a production of mine, they are like my kids in that I need to know where each one is and what happened to it. Wondering if I mark it sold in the log book, or did it win a prize, or is it at the gift shop? Well, one of these days I’m going to sit down and add up everything in my log book. By this time in my life (I’m 68), I have done over a thousand paintings and am so glad I have them all logged.
