It’s been a full, exciting week.  I’ve been walking each morning, caring for the garden beds, working on commissioned paintings, packing prints, and recording some test audiobook samples for Move Slow and Make Things.  I’ve also been arranging some fun giveaways as we get closer to the launch, and this afternoon (Friday), I received my first advanced copy of the book!  As an author, there are few things as thrilling as receiving the first copy of a book, holding in your hands the work of over two years.

The book is so beautiful.  I’ll take lots of pictures of it and overshare them like it’s a newborn baby.

Here are my four things for this week:  Pigment Stories, bird watching, Wordsworth, and floundering.

what I’m reading

I am making a final push to finish the Van Gogh Biography I’ve been working through for weeks.  Even after listening to it on walks and when I paint, I still have almost 13 hours left in the audiobook!  As long as it has taken me to get through it, it is excellent.  I would’ve finished it long ago if I hadn’t hopped around so much and tried to read more than one book at a time.  As I’ve shared before, though, I like having books in my stack and queued on Audible so I can let the topics, writing styles, and subjects mingle.  I can select the book that best suits my mood or my work for the day.  I also like to take physical books with me to read at appointments and other places where I might sit around and wait, and the current book that I’ve been grabbing for that purpose is Pigment Stories.  I have an entire shelf of books dedicated to pigments and dyes, and this has been an excellent addition.

what I’m watching

I’m drawing a blank when it comes to recommending a good show or movie.  We’ve been watching some weather documentaries and rewatching some of Clarkson’s Farm before the new season comes out, but right now, I’m watching a cardinal, a robin, and a bunch of starlings flitting about our front yard.  They are taking turns in the bath and picking around at something in the grass.

Why don’t you tell me what you’re watching that I might enjoy?

what I’m loving

“Fill your paper with the breathing of your heart.”  – William Wordsworth

I need to read more Wordsworth.  I always love his quotes that I trip across.

what I’m working on

After a busy season, I tend to have a couple of weeks when I flounder.  I still get things done, but I move a little slower, and it takes more to stir my motivation.  As I shared in the introduction to this post, it’s still been a full, exciting week, but I thought it was important to share that I’m not always Miss Hyperproductivity.  Sometimes I put things off, linger in bed a little longer than usual, and waste time.  I’ll allow myself a few days of that, and then I’ll go back to striving for a daily rhythm that reliably propels me through my next projects and goals, step by step.

Here are a few recent dog portraits I painted over the past few days…

What have you been reading, watching, loving, and working on?