Oh Happy Day

Vanessa, 11"x14" oil on stretched canvas
Today was one of those amazingly wonderful days. Little miracles everywhere.

• Really nice people on vacation spent some of it talking with me.
• A happy couple bought the Cafe Ole Riverwalk painting (that some of you helped me improve with your suggestions).
• The woman in the hat painting bought the painting of the woman in the hat! She saw it on my blog and wanted it. Isn't that great? She lives in Canada with her very sweet husband so I'll ship that to her tomorrow.
• I got to meet a shy 15 year old artist named Amber, along with her mother, who came in to inquire about personal instruction days.
• I started a painting for an almost-too-good-to-be-true fellow in Ireland.
• I got to paint Vanessa from life. Vanessa came in the other day and I couldn't help but ask her if she might sit for a portrait sometime. We agreed on this afternoon. I budgeted two and a half hours but really felt it was done at an hour and 45 minutes. Of course, now I see a couple of things I might address tomorrow using the photograph I took of her. The transition of light to shadow in her left cheek (viewer's right) is too sharp and could use an intermediate value there. Tiny other things. But for the very most part I just love this portrait. We talked and laughed and I actually recorded 30 minutes of it. So tomorrow evening I'll see what of it might be worth sharing. Can you tell I'm being more successful in resisting smoothing out my brushstrokes? I really like the effect. I have to be more careful with the ones I do, but it does seem to pay off.
• Karen and I went out to dinner for very good Mexican food at Rosario's. Mmmm.

Hope you had a happy day, too! Sweet Dreams...........