Paint and Pixels

Love The Burbacks.....

but sick of family portraits.

I seriously love this family more than any other family I have never met. Sometimes I think they're like a little mirror image of my own family (oh, except for the extra baby...). Although I've never met any of them in person, I feel like I've gotten to know them pretty well through Cassie's blog. Reading it makes me feel like we are living in parallel universes. I began noticing the similarities the week that I began the flylady program, and then read that Cassie had began the program the very same day!! Incase your wondering, no I haven't kept up with the program... but my shoes are tied right now. And I've read about her 7 year old baseball obsessed little boy, who relishes going to see live games at the baseball stadium with his dad. And her little girl, the artist, who spends her time painting, and tip toeing through nature and creating masterpieces, but could care less about learning letters. All this sound familiar? There's more parralles as well- I can't even start to list them all.

The other night, we were having a typical family evening- Matt and Rocket were watching Rockies baseball, and me and Roxy were at the kitchen table doing something crafty. That's when I overheard the guys discussing the Rockie's oponent of the night- the Cardinals... which normally wouldn't have registered with me, except that I had just recently google searched the word "cardinal" so that I could know what it looked like, so that I could paint the mascot on Cassie's little boy's hat. That's when I began imaging that the Burback household was probably a very similar scene at that very moment- the two boys cheering for the Cardinals and booing the Rockies; the girls making something pretty. So, perhaps I feel like I know this family better than I really do, just because I imagine them to be exactly like my own (well... except for the adorable little baby... which I won't discuss... but I DO have an adorable little doggy that I sometimes pretend is a baby).

On another note... please don't hate me for saying this but... I think I might have to make this my last family portrait project. I actually do enjoy the actual process of figuring out how to best portray a family to reflect their personality and dinamic. The problem is that I spend WAY to much time on it, for the amount of money I charge. The problem with charging more money is that when doing high priced commission jobs, customers begin to demand more a level of perfection that I cannot live up to. I would rather do ten $100 jobs, and receive a lot of grace than do one $1,000 job and be expected to turn out perfection. Matt does a good job at bringing my attention to this issue by calculating the amount of time I spend on each project (...and informaing me about all the other things I COULD have gotten done with that time). Maybe I will return to family portraits when my painting skills have gotten better... or perfect. Don't wait around.