Early starts

And hot coffee

I’m busy on an art commission for the Caplan Art Designs Gallery but there are times, while I’m working, when I need to wait for paint on the commission to dry but I don't want to stray too far from the main task at hand. During those times this week I worked on this painting pictured below. When I finished it I titled it “Red Eye Gravy Train”.

“Red Eye Gravy Train” was originally a limerick poem and a fountain pen ink line drawing in my poetry sketchbook. One morning as a creative exercise during breakfast I played with combos of these ideas: red eye plane/train travel, coffee too hot to drink, red eye gravy and the ‘gravy train’ cultural idiom.

So when I needed subject matter to paint during my “waiting for a commission to dry” time I flipped through my sketchbooks till I found something.

If you have trouble reading my handwriting in the photo my poem reads:

Porker went early in the rain / For a trip to northern Spain / but the coffee was too hot to drink / so Porker sat and had a think / the ticket said “Red Eye Gravy Train"

I hope your coffee today is just the right temperature.