Stopping and Listening

I managed to work on this woman's face for a bit ...

Sometimes you just can't paint as much as you want to, no matter how much you really want to. I was all set to put in a long day of painting today since I had no other obligations other than my morning classes. I figured I'd go in to my studio around 1:30 and stay there, happily painting, for at least 5-6 hours. But sometimes things don't work out the way you want them to and I ended up only painting for about an hour. I haven't been feeling well these past few days. I have been having abdominal pains, probably from my endometriosis or perhaps another cyst, and both can feel equally painful. As much as I wanted to stay and paint, I just didn't feel well enough to do it. There are times when we need to just push through the pain, and other times where we need to listen to our bodies and stop. I decided to listen and went home.

I am hoping to get in a large amount of painting tomorrow. There's so much to do and very little time. I want to finish these last two commissions and get back to playing with color. I plan on showing some of these yet-to-be-completed colored paintings exclusively through my studio space in April for Spring open studios. Despite deciding in October that I would no longer participate in open studios, I figured that perhaps this would be a good venue to show my color studies and any other things I experiment with. Maybe I'll even make some money. That's the plan, anyways. We'll see if it works out.