The 8th and 9th Innings...

The 7th Inning Stretch is history. Here's what happened today:

For starters, all the existing painted surfaces are masked off and we smush down some paint...



Dribble some more ....



And finish this set of boxes ...



You wouldn't think, to look at it, that it's finished, but it is. At least for now. Then mask it off...



Smush down some paint...



Smush down some more...



And the final set is done and next step is to unwrap the damned thing--almost a moment worth savoring, good or bad ...



This, as a still shot, is what we unearthed:



Some corrections get us to here...



Interesting. I'm troubled by something about the forearm that occupies the lower third of the picture. So I mess around with it a little bit more...



At which point, I go home to stew (in a good way). Somebody said she thought my palette was pretty. Truth be told, I might have been better sticking with the version just before this one. But hey--never up; never in. One must strive.

As Herm Edwards once testily said, "The reason you play the game is to win."

We're all pretty excited. Tomorrow is the end--I'll maybe mess with it a little bit more, sign the thing and then throw down about five layers of varnish. Which might, actually, take more than a day. But I don't count the varnish as the painting process. I view it as something else.