Ribbonscape Anxiety, Anne Boleyn and Chapel Trains

I've been working on this new painting:So far I really like it, and it seems to be coming along more easily than my birdcage landscapes. Ribbons are much more forgiving than birdcages; no ellipses or mechanical perspective formulas to wrestle with, no painstaking, unforgiving invention.  So far, I just set up my ribbons in the studio and paint directly from them, adding in imaginary vegetation (critters coming soon) as I go.  To be honest, I actually feel kind of guilty and a little bit worried about the relative ease of this piece.  Is it O.K. for work to be painless?  I've been operating under the assumption that struggle leads to depth.  Without challenge and discomfort will my work be any good?  Will it be as interesting as my more embattled compositions?  I'm thinking of the difference between Benicio del Toro and Matthew McConaughey and I'm feeling a tad nervous.  But I'm probably getting ahead of myself (as I am often wont to do).  I'm still in the early stages of the piece, and there's still plenty of room left for agony.  

I should really take up chain-smoking and start wearing all black.

In other news, I started playing around with my Henry VIII paper dolls:

There is a good chance that this will turn into nothing more than a goofy personal shrine to my obsession with Anne Boleyn and everything else Tudor, but I've learned not to dismiss my creative impulses.  And it might turn into something interesting.  The book pages that I collaged onto her dress are pages about Anne Boleyn, taken from an old used book I had that had fallen apart.

On a personal note, when I look down at myself, this is what I typically see:

So I think of myself as being kind of scrubby and low maintenance.

But I've been discovering lately that I am secretly fancy.  We went to try on wedding bands.  I thought I wanted the plain circle of platinum.  Left with the circle of diamonds.  Went to try on wedding dresses, thinking I  wanted something very simple.  Left, giddily, with the chapel train and veil. And not just a short, little veil, a fingertip veil.  Notice my frightening familiarity with wedding attire terminology.  Chapel train.  Fingertip veil.  It's O.K.  I'm scared too.  Luckily, my future husband seems to think it's hilarious.  This morning he even mentioned something about writing a book....