This is a figure drawing from a few weeks ago. It isn't the subject of this post, which is the big still life I spent Friday and Saturday setting up and plan to start working on tomorrow, but I couldn't imagine a post without an image so I dug this one up and I think it looks pretty good for a 20 minute pose.

About the still life. You would think that an artist with four paintings already in the works would finish at least one of those pieces before starting a new one and indeed I wish I had done so, but the still life impulse came and I knew I had to go with it. The figure ideas will still be fresh when I get back to them in a few weeks: figure ideas keep forever. The seascape needs to marinate anyway. I'm not sure how to continue with it and just have to wait until I know what to do. Still life inspiration, on the other hand, doesn't last: it perishes just like fruit or flowers - though not as quickly, thank God!

I notice that I get the urge to do a still life when the seasons change. The last time I did a big still life was last fall; now it is spring. The change in the season must cause a shift in some internal tectonic plate - Aristotle would probably call this a Movement of the Soul - and the result is an eruption of artistic energy for still life: the desire to paint something immediate and physical and part of the changing natural world.