Under construction

So you know what the difference is between a painting and a study? I am not sure myself, but I think in my case it means things didn’t go the way I wanted so I decided to stop working on it and call it finished.  😉

Life has been more than usually insane lately, as we struggle to deal with our cracked foundation. Naturally, any construction project involves ripping apart the entire house, and doing the simplest task becomes an exhausting sort of enterprise–not really conductive to keeping on top of daily tasks, much less trying to get large tasks completed. My husband and I have equitably divided up the labor–he is doing most of the hard work, and I am doing most of the complaining about doing it.

Now we need it to stop raining every three minutes, so we can finish getting it put back together.

During this process a caterpillar got caught on our gas meter hanging over the abyss while we were working. We didn’t think that was a good/safe place for it, so after completing whatever we were doing that day, we came back to see if it was still there and move it if it was. We discovered, much to our surprise, that it was still there, and had gone into the chrysalis stage–right at the very tip of the wire sticking off the meter:

This didn’t seem like the smartest place to be, given our activities and my supremely bad technique wielding a shovel, so we cut off part of the wire and moved it indoors to safety:

Except that, as previously stated, our house is in complete disarray. So I moved it to the top of the fireplace mantel to keep us from inadvertently damaging it. I had grand plans–my own personal monarch! I intended to photograph the chrysalis every day to document changes, but, true to form, instead I completely forgot about it. Some time later I wandered through the living room and looked up–to see the chrysalis had turned completely black. So I returned it to the kitchen with intent to photograph and make sketches, as the wings showing through the skin was quite lovely. Then wandered off and forgot again, until later returning to to the kitchen to discover it had emerged.

We gently took it outside, and took pictures of it before it flew away, but overall it was mostly missed opportunity–which seems to be the theme of my summer.

So I did this:

While I did have grand plans for what I wanted out of this painting that are totally unrealized, I do think it is a cute little sketch, so I am calling it good and moving on. More construction and more art both await.