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It's. . . The Final Day of Summer Vacation!

The blue squadron of my composite cavalry regiment with silk bags newly highlighted with Scarlet on top of darker Cherry Red.


Sadly, today is the final day of summer vacation 2018.  Classes begin tomorrow bright and early at 8am for yours truly with my Henrik Ibsen and Society course on social problem plays since the late 1870s.  

Syllabi have all been revised and uploaded to the cloud where students can access them after 1am Wednesday morning.  I've also uploaded various supplementary readings to the respective online course schedules and grade pages.  It has been a flurry of activity around here for the last two weeks, which explains the slow-down in painting and related updates here.  

However, I have been able to return to the painting table during the last couple of days and pick up where I left off back on August 12th.  After finishing the medium-dark gray highlights on the black leather horse tack yesterday, I decided to give myself a break and see to the much easier dark blue coats and red silk bags atop the squadron's bearskins.  If there is time this evening, I'll either add the light Royal Blue highlight, or begin the many small silver and brass bits of metal on the horse tack.  We'll see how it goes.

The first few weeks of the term are fairly easy as far as my workload goes, so I hope to squeeze in an hour or so pf painting most evenings before free time disappears about Week 5 when the first round of student projects will be delivered.  Until then, a few more glorious weeks of relatively free evenings and weekends.

-- Stokes

Comments

Matt said…
Splendid looking fellows. I remember sharpening pencils and polishing my shoes on the night before "the return" - I guess it's a case now of charging the Ipad?
Peter Douglas said…
Good led, teaching before Labour Day - what hell is this? I thought Yankee Uni's got a break for several weeks while we Canadians start back next week.

Cavalry look good, hopefully you'll be back to them soon.
Cheers, Peter
Looking very fine Stokes. Re finding time for painting, I was given a tip many moons ago and when I worked I would get up an hour earlier than necessary and would use that time for preparation. At night I would be ready for the good stuff. It worked.
Thanks for the advice, Robbie! I'll try it. Some still start after Labor Day, Peter, but more and more, children's schools and colleges/universities here seem to start before the holiday. I would happily trade a few days in December if we could enjoy a few more days of summer vacation though. Psychologically, it is very odd starting for a couple of days, having a long weekend, and then another shortened week before we truly start in earnest. Yep, Matt. Laptop and phone all charged.

Best Regards,

Stokes

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