Well not designing all that much lately. Painting existing designs is the main game these days. This is a new Nines design I started a few months ago and it spends most of its time sitting on the shelf. Sometimes when the office gets warm and my attention wanders I give up on painting and get this bad boy down. Nine pencils. I’m afraid we’re not very happy with each other. Those background colours are giving me trouble! I tried a version with reds and grays thinking it would set off those erasers nicely but not so much. Going to blues and greens now. Get to play with my beach props.
The steps to a new design march up (“Oh this is going to be so good!!!!”) and down (“Oh this is awful!!! What happened?? What am I doing??”), and back and forth between those a bunch of times. I alternate dead certainty that I’m on the right track (brilliant actually) with the awful feeling that I’ve fallen off the track and stepped in something yucky. Eventually it comes together. I like moving the little bits of wool and things around and trying to imagine how it will look. Not quite so thrilled when I paint it onto canvas and it looks totally different! That’s the arg moment. “Arg! Now what??”
Cross your fingers for these pencils. Arg.