I haven't written in a while, so I'm just gonna bombard you with stuff.

Happy Wednesday, everyone!
Today, I went to my church friend's house to help with her little girl, as I have been doing nearly every day for a week and a half now, excepting Fridays and Sundays. Things have been going about like they did the first day I visited.

Sometimes, I'm cranky.

Sometimes, she's cranky.

But I love her, and I could put up with both of our melodramatic bouts all day if I had to.

In other news, I'm saving up to buy my mother and myself an adult-sized tricycle.

And, in some other other news, Saturday was the 150th birthday of Gustav Klimt, the womanizing genius who contributed some of the greatest artwork of the twentieth century between 1862 and 1918. You'll know him best from these two pictures:

"The Kiss"

"Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I"

Both of these paintings are from Klimt's Gold Period, during which, as you can see, he used a lot of gold. During this period he was most popular and widely accepted, and so these two paintings are the most well known of his works. However, he was an extremely prolific artist (though he was prolific in general. He had, like, a billion kids), so you should totally go check out some of his other stuff. I recommend that you read Gustav Klimt by Gilles Neret, which is the book that prompted me to fall so deeply in love with Klimt's work.

As an artist, I love thinking of Klimt's work and how it was made. The motifs, stylization, and color pallet absolutely fascinate me, and I have tried on occasion to recreate that effect on my own. As a tribute to Klimt, I began a sort of "copycat" painting, and I just finished yesterday evening. I would never absolutely recreate anything right down to its subject, but I have made an original painting in the style of one of Klimt's. The painting I made is far smaller than any of his (he used enormous, wall-sized canvases) and also not original to me, stylistically, but I hope that had he seen it, he would have been properly outraged that someone was stealing his thunder.

I made the painting in the style of Klimt's Gold Period, because the stylization is easier to copy and the motifs are more obvious to me. However, I'm fonder of his later works that lean toward expressionism, like this one:

"The Virgin"
I wish the picture was of better quality, because the true colors of this painting are absolutely gorgeous.

Enjoy the rest of the day (which, by now, is not much); I will be in a remote location, watching How I Met Your Mother.