wherein we discuss UFOs and an embarrassment of riches

this is the piece I've been working on -- or more exactly re-working

yesterday I finished re doing the face, but the eyes are still not quite right

I usually don't have UFOs (Un Finished Objects) in my studio -- mainly because I either finish the piece or get rid of it, but I'm pretty invested in this piece, even though I'm not totally happy with it

and usually I have at least two (or more) pieces going at once so that I can work back and forth between things when I run into this kind of issue -- but because I've worked on pretty much nothing except Christmas gifts since the first of November, I don't have anything else actually "in process" right now

so after determining last night that this was not working for me, I decided to work on beginning at least one more piece

which resulted in these two drawings

this abstract piece began as a "doodle" that I did in a little notebook that I carry in my purse -- originally it was a pen and ink drawing of random shapes in black and white

blowing it up and printing it on a full sheet of paper and then using colored pencils to play with different ideas resulted in this "color wheel"

I'll need to figure out how big I want this to be so I can print out the pattern then it will be off to the fabric stash to find some fabrics to do this with

and this drawing, based on a photo I took back in November in our back yard

this one too needs to have some decisions made about sizing

these both give me something immediate to concentrate on while my subconscious works on the problem with the dog piece

and this piece is somewhere in the future

but given the issues I'm having with the current dog piece, I'm deferring this one while I work out the "how tos"

and I'm wondering if I can do something with this picture too

I've learned my lesson -- even when I have Christmas projects to work on, I need to keep working on my art projects too, to prevent this sort of artistic "break down" in the future

yesterday I finished unpacking all the goodies that I brought home from our Christmas gathering

my daughter got a new drawer unit to store her scrapbook tools and supplies in, which meant she had a couple of drawer units she had outgrown -- which she let me have

I did have all of this thread in one big plastic container, which made finding something specific time consuming, so being able to sort them out this way should make that process a little easier

my family got me some very cool goodies for Christmas -- art supplies, inspirational reading, new tools for projects and some other neat stuff

it will be fun to put all of these to good use!