Did you think I'd be finished the Promise series by now, because I thought I'd be finished the Promise series by now. We're on month six. Six. I have never in my life worked on a painting or series this long, unless you count the paintings I've abandoned and never finished as being works in progress. It's taking all my self discipline to keep myself focused and not to let myself stray too far towards any of my next ideas. To be honest that was a large part of my motivation to paint them this way. So much of my work is alla prima, painted fast and loose - I typically spend much more time planning and thinking about my figure skating paintings than I do painting them. I wanted to see what I could do if I made myself take the time and build the layers up slowly. This series felt like it had an emotional depth that warranted it and I was ready to challenge myself. I've learned so much from these paintings, and I can't wait to apply that knowlege and experiment futher. Except that I have to wait. I have to finish what I started.

I have actually made a lot of progress. Two out of four pieces are done, finished just this week, and the third is only a few finishing touches away, I think (I hope!). The biggest is... not finished. But I've been staring at them for six months - at this point I only see values and tones and cat hairs I need to tweeze out. One of the things I'm looking forward to most about completing the project is being able to finally step back and see what I've achieved. 

Speaking of cats, this months cat pictures are courtesy of the absolutely gorgeous May that we had in Ireland. Some of the delay on getting the paintings finished may be less a result of the work itself and more a result of my spending a good chunk of time on a blanket in the back garden. In this country when the sun comes out you drop everything, strip to as little clothing as the weather will permit and bask like a reptile after a hearty meal because for all you know it's going to rain from tomorrow until September. So when it lasted several weeks I think the whole country took a hit to productivity.

Eventually the temperature dropped back down below 20°C, so I did get some work done. I've actually been dabbling in livestreaming and I'm finding it surprisingly helpful for keeping me focused. I don't spend as much of my time frowning at a bit of a leg or an ugly ice skate when I know there are people watching. Admittedly at the moment there's rarely more than one or two people watching but they're still people and they're still watching! So if you don't already follow me on Tiktok go do that, and keep an eye out for when I'm painting - if you care enough about me and my work to have read this entire post then you are definitely the target audience for my livestreams! You will have to say hello though - I'm very concerned about scaring people away by talking to them (because I am personally very easily scared away by streamers talking to me) so I just get to painting. It is really nice to talk to people while I paint though, don't be shy! 

Here's hoping my next post will be the series release, or at the very least, an update on when that might be happening!