Lots and lots of awesome, yummy stuff going on. Yippee! Dance with me!

Pretty things and websites!

Last week the delightful Heather of h’artworks and I exchanged love by mail. And by “exchanged love” I mean, I sent her a Valentine’s card with lots of loving and an alpaca, and she sent me a note and the most delightful, darling little splatter painting/canvas/wall hanging/thingee-ma-doo-dad that I’ve ever seen. I actually don’t know what you’d call it, because it’s several marvelous things all in one! It’s now hanging over my bed, sending me love while I sleep.

And because I’m an idiot I forgot to take a picture of the other side which is blue splatters with a star burst-ey shape in it and is equally pretty. Either way, it just makes me super happy!

I may also be getting the chance to do some more web design! I have an embarrassing obsession with great design, so I’m crossing my fingers. Yay for doing new things!

But the most awesome, exciting thing ever is…

I get to learn stuff and paint naked people!

So I’ve talked about him before, and if you let me, I’ll rant on about his art incessantly, but I took a deep breath last week and emailed my friend Christopher Pew about art classes.

I definitely have no money to pay for classes and kinda figured I’d just save up for them.

Well because the world is smiling on me and Chris is the most awesome guy in the world, he’s going to teach me at no upfront cost. We’re tentatively planning an art show together in a few months, and from whatever I sell, I’ll just give him a chunk of cash.

All the capital letters and exclamation points in the world could not describe to you how freaking excited I am right now. I’m a compulsive learner and now I get to absorb all of his smart, creative genius.

The only thing I have ever wanted to do is learn how to paint like Velasquez. I could probably go on about Velasquez’s art for even longer than I go on about Chris’s.

Let me give you an idea.

He painted this at 19.

He painted this at 24.

You may be sitting there, saying to yourself, “Holy, set the bar high enough, Sarah?” Yeah, I probably have. But I’m sure as hell never gonna be bored.

I once wrote a ten page essay about a single Velasquez painting (Las Meninas, in case you’re wondering. Oft considered by art historians and critics the world’s best painting. There endeth today’s art history lesson, children.)

Chris’s art is almost as divine. (Sorry Chris, but Velasquez is my hero. No one will ever measure up to him in my eyes.) But still, look at this.

Just look at it! Don’t you want to eat this up? Or is that just me?

We’re going to be doing tons and tons of life drawing and painting. I love to paint from life, so every time I think about these lessons, I keep doing this crazy dance and clapping my hands and jumping up and down.

I’m going to learn stuff! And hone my craft! And become awesome! Yay! Sorry if my excitement is knocking you down from here. I feel like a hyperactive goldren retriever right now.

Internal Settings

So as you can see, this is lots of awesome stuff. Between last weeks selling of things and this weeks multitude of wonders, I’m just rolling in happy hay right now. (Uhh…that’s not a euphemism for like…cocaine or weed or something. It’s just a metaphor. Seriously.)

But as I talked about yesterday, I sometimes forget that I’m standing in a river of abundance and start staring at the sky.

I can feel myself starting to stare at the sky, as my heart and mind close off to the possibility of anymore good coming my way. “This is it,” they say. “All of our good stuff is done now. Maybe in a few months we’ll get some more.”

And I’m jumping up and down trying to get their attention and tell them that no, it doesn’t have to end! More good stuff can happen! More awesome can come our way! But they’re turning away, distracted by a pretty cloud.

They’ve stopped listening and now they’re just closing up, and shutting down. I tried to talk to my internal settings this morning, but it turns out he’s just a snotty butler on a power trip named Jeeves. (Don’t even ask.)

He told me that to change my internal settings, I had to sync all of my different parts up. Maybe I need to hold a conference with me? I’m not really sure. I don’t want to shut down, I want to stay open and in flow. I want to remember that I’m standing in a freaking river.

In the meantime, I’m gonna go back to celebrating the awesome things!