The Fires in Australia

I'm sure everybody has seen this in the news, but I wanted to post it on my blog too. I know the fires are devastating to people and it's horrible and very sad. Whenever I hear about a big fire though, I immediately think of all the animals - especially the wild ones - who get caught in the smoke, confused and trapped, with no chance of surviving. These two little ones were so lucky and I'm thankful for that. I hope they find the jerk that set these fires and give him the toughest penalty their laws allow.

On a differnt note, I struggled with my painting today. I knew in my head what I wanted to paint, but I need to have an actual photo to go by; I'm not very good at getting the image from my own mind onto a surface. So, I started digging through my old painting magazines and being the spaz that I am, spent hours going through each and every one, ripping out the pages that I liked and stacking the rest for the recycle bin. I had just read a very funny post on The Quintessential Magpie about magazine addiction yesterday and couldn't help but think of it and chuckle while I was doing my own sorting. I used to do a lot of painting and these magazines were from 1999-2001. Lately, I've really been evaluating what I actually need and am happy to pare down some of my "stuff". I'll work on my painting again tomorrow and hope it turns out like I want it to. Here's all I've got so far; I've got a long way to go yet.