starting the year off

I hope your New Year had started well, folks. although I think that changes must happen everyday, I end up sharing the feeling of fresh start with others and I'm here shining with plans and optimism for 2010. and a lot of energy to work and make things happen.

I began the year with 2 short term plans in mind: losing the Christmas weight (too much cheesecake, eggnog and all those amazing seasonal beers) + organizing my emails and messages and stop procrastinating. the first plan is doing well and in a little more than one week I got back to the pre-Xmas weight (want to drop a few more though.) second one is a bit tougher and i've been miserably failing so far. i have a slow rhythm and i'm always busy with other stuff, and when i finally get to relax to write, at the end of my day (i.e, around 11pm), i am already tired and sleepy. got to try a little bit harder though.

art. i am more and more in love with the acrylics versatility. my only complaints so far is not being able to lift the paint off when I make a mistake -- I have the option to repaint and fix the mess thought, but it's not the same, because the transparency goes away. the second problem -- not really a problem, just an inconvenience -- is having to get everything very well cleaned after each painting session. you can reuse the dry watercolor in your palette in the next day; but not the dry acrylics.

I decided to start the Tree of Life for the 4th time. f-o-u-r-t-h. and bigger too: 20 x 30 inches. I am surprised with my own persistence. it was starting well, but at a certain point... I screwed up very bad. i could go on if I was using watercolors, but this time I had no choice but abort the work. for the 4th time. I need to learn how  to plan my work more carefully and stop being so eager to get to the finals.

some shots of the experience:

my idea is to use those white peacock feathers as a representation for sperm. there's also a big peacock in the center of the painting, and the tip of its tail goes right to the tree "womb" -- the tree is composed of bodies of tree women that represent the tree aspects of the goddess (Virgin, Mother and Crone.) it's been a while since I started to get drawn to the peacock symbolism, and here it evokes renewal, the Great Round of life.

I love the concept for this painting and I'm not going to give up on it. so, let's get the paints ready for the 5th attempt. Happy New Year everyone.