4×4 – Page 4 – Katie Jeanne Wood

Red and blue floral mini painting No 163

acrylic on panel, 4×4, floral
Available here
Small to large prints available here

I woke up at 3:15 this morning after falling asleep in the recliner last night while watching youtube videos. I put in a 12 hour work day yesterday, as usual, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I would have slept longer, but Greg was snoring so loudly, he woke me up. There’s no way I was going to bed when it sounded like a chainsaw was running in there ;), and there was no way I could go back to sleep in the chair. After 4 or 5 hours, it was getting rather uncomfortable.

The twins (my nickname for the kitten cats) started racing around, sounding like a herd of buffalo. It was just a matter of time before Sweet Pea joined in, and there’s no calming them down once they get started. It’s sooo cute when they all play together, but not at 3 in the morning when Greg’s trying to sleep. So, it was back to the studio for me. The babies, of course, followed me, and now I’m up here yawning, and sipping coffee while they fight over who’s going to sit in my lap. Remember when I held both of them in the palm of my hand? Awww!! I can’t fit them both in my lap anymore.

lalala Oh, the glamorous life of an artist, eh? I hope I get some paint time in today. It’s been a long week of being stuck doing office work, for the most part. I’m getting a little itchy to paint.

Pink and blue cottage chic roses painting No 160

acrylic on panel, 4×4, floral
Available directly through me here

I found another stack of 10 of these 4×4 floral paintings on my photography table, which haven’t been listed yet. I completely forgot about them, so I’ve painted 270 of them, not 260, like I wrote yesterday. This, of course, is a game changer. Now I’m thinking maybe I should keep going to 300. I’m so close, and that would end the series on a high note, instead of looking like I’m quitting when I’m almost there. haha I have a thing with numbers, and 300 sounds better to me than 270. What can I say?

Ack! I’m overthinking again. KISS!!!

Story People gets it right every time! :)))

Okay, okay..I’ll end it at 300, and there will never be another made beyond that. Truthfully, it helps that I’ve sold 4 of them since last night..sales motivate me. Thanks, everyone!!

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Pink cottage chic floral painting No 159

acrylic on panel, floral, 4×4
SOLD!

I’ve completed 260 of these mini paintings in a little over a year. Although I think some of them are my best work, that’s 260 too many, in my opinion. I’ve made a decision to retire this floral mini series. I’m still going to paint minis, but I’m going to use the 4x4s for birds from now on. The florals deserve more room, and so do I. Getting all those roses in that tiny space isn’t easy. I don’t make enough money on them to keep putting myself through that torture, so get ’em while you can. Once I’m done listing all of them, there won’t be any new ones.

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Pink and yellow cottage chic floral no 158

acrylic on panel, 4×4, floral
Available here
SOLD!!

My studio windows were under a magic spell this morning.

It was 5F when we woke up this morning. Brr! Guess I won’t be spying on the neighbors today. 😉 haha Actually, it’s all melted off already, except my office window which faces north, and doesn’t get any sun. It’s so pretty. I hope it stays around for a while.

Pink and blue cottage chic floral painting No 157

acrylic on panel, floral, 4×4
Available directly through me here

Running a little late today. I was up, and in the studio by 7:00am, and it’s been full speed ahead ever since. I had to reshoot my new blue floral paintings, which took a while. I shot them already last week, but for some reason there was a yellowish tint on all the photos. It was either edit all that out on each photo or delete and reshoot. I decided to reshoot because it will save time in the long run.

When I went to upload the photos, I noticed I had taken 303 of them. I knew I was getting a little heavy on the shutter button, and I haven’t even shot the small pink ones yet. Oy! Now to sort through, pick the best ones, and edit edit edit until the cows come home.

This part of my job..the photo editing, if I ever win the lottery, I will never edit another photo again. I swear. I’m hiring a full time professional photographer, and by that, I mean my husband. It would free up 20 or 30 hours of my time every week that I could be painting, instead. Oh, please, please let me win!

Pink and yellow floral No 155

acrylic on panel, floral, 4×4
Available directly through me here
Small to large prints available here

My work related New Year’s resolution is quite simple – no more offering paintings for sale that I dislike. This is a big one because I do it all the time. I got into this habit because the nature of Etsy is to list, list, list all day and night..seven days a week. I’ve noticed that big shops list constantly, every hour, around the clock. The only way for me to list every day is to have a slew of paintings and prints for sale. Easy, right? I created A LOT of paintings. I have over 1000 listings in my Etsy shop right now, if you include the expired listings, and my drafts. I did all this in a little over a year. That’s all well and good, but here’s the thing..in order to create that much, I’ve been rushing through paintings. My main goal being – get them listed NOW. Full speed ahead, goooooo! Who cares if I like it or not. Heck, I’ve listed paintings that I positively knew I would end up taking down to revise, but I was fine with it at the time. I’ll deal with it later, is what I’d think. Now, I’m to the point of revising a bunch of paintings every couple months because I keep listing paintings that I don’t like. It’s a real slippery slope.

As I was worked on revising several larger paintings Saturday, I got to thinking about how stupid, and pointless it is to work this way. If I slow down, and actually create something I like the first time around, I wouldn’t have all this extra work to do. It costs me a lot of time in the long run. I not only have to revise the paintings, but I have to reshoot all the photos for the listing once the painting is finished. If I only list paintings I like, it would remove this whole need to revise. I thought, damn girl, you’re working waaay too hard. It has to stop. So, 2016 is for slowing down, and working at my pace, not Etsy’s pace. You read it here first. haha I hope I remember this when I get out of jury duty at the end of June. ha! We’ll see.

There is one more change coming, which I’ll fill you in on tomorrow.

Cottage Chic Chickadee bird No 21

acrylic on panel, 4×4
Available here
Small to large prints of this painting available here

Had to take some downtime last night, and get away from the studio. It’s simply not possible to work around the clock, no matter how much you love your job or how much of a time crunch you’re facing. It’s still work, and I’m human.

We watched Ray Donovan on Showtime..3rd episode. I was starting to really dislike the series. When Greg agreed with me, we decided to stop watching about 3/4 of the way through. The show’s topics aren’t working out for us..at all. I’m very sensitive, I guess, but on top of that, it wasn’t interesting. Yawn. I wanted to like the show because Katherine Moenning is in it, but they gave her such a non-existing role. I had to wonder why she took it. Blah. Life is too short. I felt like watching Empire instead, which is a much better show, hands down. Love Cookie!! Greg had never seen it, so we started on Season 1. He loved it, so we have ourselves a new series to watch.

Pink and blue floral painting No 135

acrylic on panel, 4×4, floral
SOLD!!
If you know anyone who would like my paintings, please share my blog link.

I felt sooooo awful last night. I was standing at my worktable putting a final coat of varnish on my orders before I packaged them up to ship out. Sweet Pea came up behind me to help..she’s such a good helper, and LOVES to paint. She even has her own paintbrush. I didn’t see her, didn’t even know she was upstairs. It usually sounds like a herd of buffalo coming up the stairs when she comes up..she races herself to the top. Last night she was being stealthy, I didn’t hear a thing.

Since she’s blind, she has a tendency to get too close, and she’ll sit or lay directly behind my feet. We don’t wear shoes in the house for this reason. I stepped back, right on her, hard, and she screamed the worse scream you can imagine. My first thoughts were OMG! emergency vet, QUICK!! I broke her leg!! I was in a full fledge panic. Thankfully, she was walking fine, and after much love, kisses, petting and kitty treats were given out, I was forgiven. Whew! She was running around chasing Harold everywhere this morning, so she’s fine. 🙂 Talk about a scary few minutes there, tho.

It poured buckets over the weekend. Big thunderstorms that went on for hours. For a minute I thought it was spring, not December. We kept losing power. There are still flood warnings all over the state until tomorrow afternoon. Our garage always floods, but luckily the house stays dry. The sun is back today.

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