Celestial cheat for APR

That's celestial cheat

not serial cheat,

just wanted to clarify that.

I had planned this ethereal painting

with a nebula all bloggy and gloopy

in the middle of the universe

and a sextant, with a person peering

at the stars, in the bottom corner.

But that didn't happen,

so you get this
for this weeks APR's celestial theme.

Yes that is a lousy cut out sextant just stuck on

and no I didn't get to the person, you will have to use your imagination.

I tried using salt but it didn't work and it got stuck to the painting.

It does make pretty stars though.

 Here's a galaxy of iodised salt stars and

here are some twinkly sea salt stars.

I have good reasons why I didn't have time to finish this painting.

No1 excuse (er reason) is 

look what arrived!!!!!

I know I can't afford them but I got them anyway.

These are Silks Acrylic glazes and they are so bright and pretty.

I can't get the sparkle to come out in the photo, so you will have to take my word for it.

I can't wait to use these to embellish my coral and underwater paintings.
Had to sit and stare at them for a while.

No 2 excuse is:

I finished my commissioned pet portrait (picture of it in my sidebar under pet portraits)
and the lady ordered another one (yippee)

but I had already promised to start this gorgeous little girl
and so I started her today.

It's only at rough in stage.

She doesn't have pimples, they are the dots of gloopy stuff that you put on to stop the white getting coloured.

This beautiful girl is called Berkley and she used to be a pet owned by our lovely

Jenn, so you can see why I have to do her justice and not waste time on salty paintings.

My third and very important excuse is that my Charlie parrot 

(there is a portrait of him on the right hand side of my blog down a ways)

had to have surgery on monday.

The silly boy hurt the inside of his bottom eye lid and had to have surgery to fix it.

Not thinking, I took him to the vet (his first ever visit and he's 22 years old)

in a cardboard box.  Well that was destroyed when we were half way there

and I had to hold him for the rest of the way in the car.

 He fell in love with the ladies at the vet surgery,

the little suck up, and they were all over him, cuddling and tickling.

I didn't think he would want to come home.

We had to go and buy a steel super strength carry cage to bring him home.

That was the easy part, he came through the surgery with flying colours and came home.

They gave me some drops for his eye and a syringe to administer pain killers

via his mouth.  

It's easy they said, just wrap him in a towel and hold his head

and there you go.

Who do they think they are fooling.

That bird knows when it's medicine time and he goes up and hides in his box

(I can't reach it). I even used my little miss as bait to lure him out

(he doesn't like her and attacks if she comes too near).

When I do catch him, and wrap him

I swear he can do a 360 deg turn with his head 

as it just won't stay still.

I have learned to let him grab onto my shirt and quickly squirt the medicine into his mouth

then when he lets go in disgust,

I grab his beak and hold it down just long enough to get a drop in his eye.

An hour later it's all over, but I have to do this two times a day for a week!!!

So you can see I have three valid reasons why I don't have a 

good painting for this weeks theme.

After all, they can't turn out all the time 

can they.

If you're still awake after all that,

hop on over to Jenn's 

Artist's Playroom

and see what 

the others have done for

celestial.