A Day as a Retired Artist.
Morning
OMG! It’s 7:30 already?
Hi, I’m Verne Ayers, a retired professor of art and art teacher (aka: prof.verne). Well, better get going. Those eggs and bacon aren’t going to fry themselves. Oh yea, my coffee. I need my coffee. I think I’ll check the weather outside my apartment door first. Crap, it is cold out there. I should have expected that in Ohio in the winter. I taught at a college in Florida for several years but returned to Fairfield County, Ohio, where I was born and raised. Why? My family and friends were in Ohio – not Florida.
After downing the eggs and bacon, I will finish my coffee as I get out my card stock and draw. Mostly I draw with markers. Some will be illustration and some will end up as a cartoon. I never really know when I am drawing the characters where they will end up. Some end up in a pile of original art stacked in the corner of the studio. Many are scanned into the computer where I add color, alter things and do anything else that will improve the art. Then print on good paper and add the finishing touches by hand.
If I don’t feel like making my own breakfast, I will head to the local coffee shop for breakfast where I do the marker drawings and watch people. I research there. I talk with people there. I write there and I think there. I do a lot of thinking there. Hey – I thought – that might make a good children’s picture book. Now, it is back to the apartment.
Afternoon
Lunchtime — a sandwich and, of course, coffee! Now it is to the studio where I study the paintings in progress for more work or start a new painting. More thinking! I must, I must, I must put pigment on that new bright white canvas. I can’t stand pure white on a canvas. I spend a few hours in the studio while the washer and dryer do their thing.
Okay, to be honest, a nap usually follows my studio work.
Evening
It is now time for dinner. Now I watch the news. I watch a little TV. I listen to some easy listening music and I read. But at 76, soon to be 77, I fall asleep in my favorite – oh, so comfy – big chair. I wake up just in time to go to bed and start all over tomorrow. Start all over tomorrow? Hey, this would make a good plot for a movie.
