. . . gathered the neighbors

Cropped and enlarged segment of photograph of something unidentifiable but cool

Since I have moved my center of operation of my furniture painting assignments from my newly-painted and beautiful back porch and deck to the garage at the front of the house, I have had a steady stream of neighbors dropping by to see what I'm doing. Yesterday I purchased two cheap plastic stacking chairs for the front of the house. Now the neighbors and I no longer have to sit on the concrete driveway to chat and wait for paint to dry. Kids come by often, too, on their bikes or big wheel trikes. I used to work with a young father who lived on a corner lot in a big development. He told me that he could tell "cul-de-sac kids" from other kids. He was nervous when his kids had friends over who lived on cul-de-sacs. . . he claimed they had no concept of staying safely out of the street. I guess I kind of understand that. Most of the kids on this street know that the entrance to the cul-de-sac is as far as they can safely travel. There isn't a lot of traffic on our street. . . mostly it's the people who live here and are aware that kids are everywhere in the summertime.

The weather people warned us that Monday would be the hottest and most uncomfortable day of the year so far. . . temperatures in the mid- to high-90s and the heat index of 107 degrees. But it was cloudy and rainy all day, only got to the mid-80s. We here in Kansas are feeling the last bits left of Hurricane Dolly; it's supposed to storm again this afternoon. So we'll probably have temperatures in the 100s and unrelenting sunshine. I hate those summer days when its so hot that even the blue sky looks white and the light is just so flat.

Today I plan to do something artistic to the red painted bureau. . . I am going to experiment with mixing glaze with a dark brown paint, hopefully making it a bit less opaque, and doing something painterly over the top of the red. You know how you can put a coat of medium over a part of your painting and then experiment over the top of it, and if you don't like what happens, you can just basically wipe it off before it dries and you're back to where you started? I wish there was something like that for furniture (there probably is, but I just don't know about it) but I don't want to waste my expensive art media on this furniture. I will try the technique on a small area and if I don't like it, I will just paint over it again. But sometimes you can't get the full effect until the whole object is painted. Just another small arc in the learning curve.