Happy Halloween!  It's been raining (and flooding) all morning in Galveston.  Besides the flooding part it's been quite nice.  The sound of raindrops on my window, the overcast light, and the smell of candles has been making my day.  I  finished my moon earlier and plan on working on my milky way the rest of the afternoon.  There's also a little wolf painting on the way!  Hope you all have a lovely Halloween evening, I'm excited for November. :)

This is what my studio has been looking like lately.  It's been raining on and off for a week, the weather is finally dropping in the 60s/70s, and I've been burning candles while listening to music that brings me back to high school days (The Format). 

During this time of year the lighting in my studio is so soft and lovely, I rarely turn on any lights in my home.  I also don't have the AC or heater on, so everything just feels simple, but good. 

I'm currently working on a moon on circular wood (I just had to) and I'm prepping for a similar one of the Milky Way.  These will be accompanying pieces for my Ritual & Omens series.  There's so many ideas floating around in my head that I'm finding it easy to lose myself and not know where to start.  But I have been writing and sketching and have a few new paintings that I'll be posting about soon.  I'm really excited about this series. :)

One of my most recent watercolors, Parthenope.  

 ^^ freckle details. 

I haven't painted portraits in years, and Parthenope was my mermaid muse in helping me dive back into it (get it, dive? harhar…okay I'll stop).  I don't know about other artists, but painting faces make me nervous…there's so much stress with using the right lighting, skin tones, and making sure facial features look accurate and natural.  Obviously there are many many different ways to portray the human form from completely realistic to completely abstract, but I'm somewhere in the middle and the middle is where things get fuzzy.

Nonetheless, I loved painting my siren, and there's more to come…female and male.  Mermaid and non-mermaid.  So many ideas brewin. 

Parthenope is also available in the shop here. 

I've been painting a lot of skulls lately (can you tell?!).  I suppose I've always had a bone obsession ever since my dad (who's a bit of an eccentric) would collect animal skulls, femurs, feet, etc.  He finds the coolest things at flea markets in Oklahoma.  One day I told him of this dream I had involving piranha, and about a week later he surprised me with a piranha skeleton that he picked up at a sale.  So like I said, this bone obsession runs in the family.  Expect some more bone paintings in the future, I have a few more skulls to paint and there's a floral skeleton hand in the works. ;)

 (All images painted by me, Trisha.  The first and last one are watercolor, and the middle one is in oil.  The middle is also available for prints here.)

I'm currently in that art mode where you have so many ideas you don't know where to begin.  Maybe this is a good problem to have, but it still feels daunting not knowing where to start.  I have plenty of sketches and pieces sort of mapped out in my mind, but I've been very hesitant to start putting these ideas on canvas... I feel like I need some sort of push to get me going. 

I've also been extremely stressed with trying to get smaller works ready for the holiday season as well as preparing for a few commissions.  I'm hoping to knock some of this out over the weekend because it's building up fast and my nerves can't handle it.