I spent the day scanning and editing all the little birds.  Time consuming, boring, but necessary work.  The birds are now boxed up, ready to leave my nest and be divided by Lauren and Andrew for the Trenton CSA exchange being held next week.  As a result, I didn't paint... yet... I'm not sure I'll get a painting in today but it feels good to know I have documented and packaged all the work that I have to let leave the nest.    

Creating oil paintings with a fast approaching deadline is a bit nerve racking.  Especially when you do not use any mediums to quicken the dry time of oil paints.  I asked googled for some tricks to speed up the process of oxidation and came up with some odd solutions, including the use of my oven and black lights.  I don't know if those techniques work, as I didn't try baking my art for fear of fire and fumes.  However, what I did, worked.  And thus, I now share my success with others who might be struggling to speed up the dry time on an oil painting.  

The suggestion I followed involved a warm/hot dry environment and light.  This was supposedly the optimal environment for oxidation of oil paints.  I turned the heat up in my studio to 74 degrees and left on all the lights.  I also turned on the ceiling fan to increase air flow and closed the door to keep the heat in the small space.  I left my work in this warm/dry environment for a week.  The results are pretty crazy.  The paintings are almost completely dry.  The areas with high concentrations of Titanium White - a notoriously slow-drying color - are the only areas that remain unhardened.  I feel confident that even these areas will be dry by the deadline of April 24.  

I do not claim to have the answer, but I can attest that this solution helped a great deal.  Good luck to you if you are trying to speed up this process in your own work.