Corvus morning

Weirdest day today; on nurse duty for a cat with cystitis and a post-op sleeping man. Amazing how long a day can stretch itself to when you have no work to go to, do not want to hoover for fear of waking man or freaking out neurotic cat, and are trying not to go too far away from home for too long for fear of.. well, whatever happens to sick man and cat in worst-case-scenario.

What it actually meant is that I have drunk far too much tea, finished a painting and rationalised all of my current work into lists for the various shows, kicking out a few that I wasn't sure about and swapping others around. I do like a list, me.

The picture I finished finally uses my biro-under-paint thing properly; I put in the string of fish that I have been toying with and intended to use quite a bit of colour on it, but discovered it was working well in monotones, so let it be. This means that it is really just biro under shades of grey and cream with biro back over the top of it again - satisfying way to portray dried fish and definately has potential for a bigger, more complex string of fish picture. The fact is that I am essentially only a couple of small boards off finishing everything I set out to do for the shows that are imminent, so I can take my time with the last ones and then set about some little box canvases and maybe some little framed boards. The aim of the latter is to provide some purchasing potential for visitors to the show who don't want to shell out a few hundred quid, which, lets face it must be quite a few in these treacherous times.

The relaxed schedule today meant an early start to Tesco, the car park of which is the home of a very healthy selection of the family Corvus just now; early doors there are mobs of rooks, crows, jackdaws all 'doing stuff' around the place. I am a big rook fan so I was especially pleased to see their funny little cone noses hopping about (attached to their heads, luckily); they must have had a bumper season this year as it used to be more of the other breeds. I had a phase of painting crows (and rooks particularly) a while ago, and will probably return at some point; 'Crows doing stuff' was one of the first paintings I sold for a few hundred quid and I was sad to see it go as it was a bit of a Nilsson classic. Ended up painting another version a few years later in exchange for the design of my first ever website; as usual it was inferior to the original to some degree, but still a good picture. A rather drunk friend introduced me to everyone as 'the crow lady' at a private view of my work a couple of years ago; luckily I don't think it stuck in anyone's minds, or at least if it did they haven't adopted it as my moniker of choice...

Time to check out the patients again; it has to be said that they are fast becoming self sufficient; I hope this isn't a measure of my nursing skills in that they can't wait to be rid of my attentions....