glazed onions - not a recipe

I have been learning a new skill (glazing), and thought it would be comfortable to relax and paint like I normally do (sloppy) for bit. I was wrong. When you're in the middle of developing a skill, you are terrible at everything. Or you think you are, which is kind of the same thing.

I am at the bottom of that yellow line right now

I picked up some persimmons because they looked nice and simple, and started a fight which has lasted two weeks.

My first painting of the persimmons was messy and boring, and I wiped it out with a rag.

nailed it

Tried again on Monday. They still looked weird. Are persimmons dusty or brightly colored? What is going on with those crumbled leaves with rubbery nubs in the middle? They look fake. Get yourselves together, persimmons.

the beer tea towel is coming along, anyway

Threw the persimmons in the fruit bowl and worked on my onion, instead.

This onion has been slowly built up, layer by layer, for a few weeks. I am beginning to love glazing, now that I'm not doing it completely wrong.

4 layers of thin paint. Only 2-100 layers to go

Zenny likes the onion because it looks like a blossoming flower. I like it because it looks like an onion taking its bra off after a long day at the onion office.

I'm going to switch back to portraiture soon. My kids want me to paint them as 18th century vampires like the guys from What We Do in the Shadows, and that style is all about the glazing.

official vampire portraits by artist Freeman White

This might be a niche I'd be willing to fill if I turned to portraiture as a career. "You, as a distinguished dead person." Like those old-timey photo booths, but for $5,000 a picture.

But first I have to get good at glazing, so I'm back to digging in produce bins. I found chestnuts at the grocery store and decided they would make nice models. I didn't know how to choose attractive chestnuts for a painting (do you pick the ones with interesting cracks or dents? Skinny ones? Lopsided ones?) but finally decided it is fair to judge a food by how much you want to eat it, so I fished out the most delicious-looking ones and came home with a bag of chestnuts that were so huge, my family thought they were... things that were not chestnuts. At this moment I can't think of nuts that are bigger than chestnuts, but I am not about to do a google image search for "huge nuts" to find out. I learned my lesson with the "Prince Albert" tobacco cans. And the time I looked up "used tissue".

Google, show me images of "handsome chestnut".

good thing I didn't add "carved with X and roasted"

Nevermind.


Opportunity

I like painting my kids, but it would be nice to practice on some non-family members so I can comfortably screw up their likenesses a bit more, and I haven't made good enough friends with anyone at the library to invite them down into my basement to dress up as a vampire for "art". Luckily, a couple of old friends are coming to visit this weekend, and I can probably get them to pose for me. Without the neck ruffs, maybe. (I don't have any neck ruffs, I have tea towels with beer bottles printed on them that we can wrap around our necks like cravats.) Have been tidying up and doing yard work to get the place presentable for company.

Veteran's Day weekend is usually a time I am flying off to a painting workshop (cheaper than going back to grad school), but I couldn't do it this year, so it will be good to have friends over to distract me from impulse-booking plane tickets to Seattle. Or to talk me into impulse-booking plane tickets to Seattle. I'm flexible.

Dead hibiscus

I've been sick this week. Quacked at babies for toddler time and then went home to work on freelance illustrations with a giant bottle of ibuprofen. When my tablet got too hot, I gave myself a few hours to paint a dead hibiscus. I get one blossom a week, and I was too late on this one. I picked it out of the dirt and shook off the bugs, deciding it could be a companion piece for the live one I painted last week.

Of course, as soon as I was busy painting the dead flower, the hibiscus plant popped open another fresh blossom. Too bad, I like the dead one better.

For the last few weeks I've been slowly dabbing away at a painting of Leif. This child is impossible to paint, but I finally got a reasonable likeness of him.

CLOSE ENOUGH

Another one of our patrons died, having somehow drowned after falling off a surfboard. I looked him up to see if his obituary had been posted yet, and found a newspaper article from 1999 about how he witnessed his friends murder two drug dealers, disposed of their cars, helped hide their bodies for maybe a month, dug a pit to bury the decomposing corpses, dug them back up a few weeks later, and weighted their rotting remains with cement tiles before chucking them into the ocean.

Holy shit, Mr. L.

And here I was getting excited about not getting eaten by a shark.

hibiscus and varnish trouble

Unexpected day to myself. 

I realize I have done this color combination before, but the blues and oranges make me happy. 

I planted a double-hibiscus a few months ago just for this purpose. The flowers only bloom for a day or two before dropping off, so I stalked this one and nabbed it at the right moment. I dig the delicious red shadows in these flowers.

Advice welcome

 This week I put on my chemical mask and varnished some paintings. 

Here is the thing about varnish: it combusts if you ship it by air. Possibly. So if you live on an island, you are stuck using whatever varnish the overpriced art store has had shipped in by boat, because you can't order anything else online. I'm okay with this, because I am a fan of not blowing up airplanes, but I am just really bad at using Damar varnish. If I put it on thin it catches every surface irregularity, if I put it on generously it puddles. This time it did something worse:

It went on smoothly and then it crackled. I don't know what went wrong. Surface problem? Brush problem? Could I cheat and use deck varnish, or does it all turn yellow over time?

So annoyed. 

Somebody put a jar of semi-gloss art varnish into a little canoe and send it over for me.

Avocado

The cat had his procedure, so I took a day off to make sure he didn't bust a stitch. Painted an avocado while listening to a crime-solving podcast, wondering if it's too late to quit my job and become a pathologist. Probably I'd have less time to paint produce if I had a job that didn't let me take a day off to babysit my cat's balls.

I painted a bunch of boards in different colors to use as backgrounds. A blue background looked good, but the kids went nuts for the shiny gold, so I went with it.

My ward, unbothered

I'd like to be a painter who gets the form down in thick, lovely stokes, but I am a terminal dabber. 

In other news

Got screamed at by a shirtless guy for closing the library. He came back a few days later and tried very hard to be charming, hoping I would not recognize him with a shirt on. Nice try, Ed.

Tried to have an inspirational Banned Books Week story time, but dropped a book truck on my foot at the outset and it went downhill from there. 

A few more cat procedures may be in order before I feel like going back to work.

bulbul

Some guy on a black motorcycle is on the loose in our town shooting people (ok, just one person. In the leg. But still) and the police haven't come by yet to interrogate the big black motorcycle sitting in our driveway. Or the big black motorcycle in the neighbor's driveway. Or... ok, it looks like the guy across the street has one in his driveway, too. It seems that everyone in Wahiawa has a motorcycle, actually. Sorry about that, detectives. Good luck.

Demotivational painting 

Have been feeling uninspired, painting sloppily and then wiping everything off with a rag. Got mad at a seed pod and a shriveled nut, threw them out the back door, and painted one of the rescue birds, instead.

Fidget the Red-Vented Bulbul

This is not a happy picture. This particular bulbul escaped the aviary, panicked, and drowned in the toilet. It was a bad way to go. My mother, the local Bird Witch who rehabilitates these guys, was very upset about the death, and so she opened up the flight cage and released her other young rehabbed birds - then worried that she had made a mistake and doomed them to die in the wild. She did not doom them. They have been returning every day for dinner, chasing her from her car to her front door when she gets home from work. It's good for her, and it's funny for me. We're still really sorry about Fidget, though. 

Currently in rehab: Spike the Red-Whiskered Bulbul, who has undersized wings and flies like a chicken. He smiles, which is weird for a bird. 

I need to take a break from plants and birds and paint some faces and bodies again. People with faces or bodies are encouraged to come sit for me. I have a kegerator and cookies. There's a cupcake in it for anyone with tattoos.

Wilted purple flowers

I love these aluminum panels, but the little bastards are hard to get an accurate picture of because the oil doesn't sink and there's a lot of glare. They look like candy when I varnish them, though.

One of our library patrons picked these flowers from her yard and left them like a little wilty offering on the reference desk. I don't know what they are. Spent the afternoon piling all kinds of crap up on the table, trying to make an interesting still-life that would trick people into thinking I was cool, but I just couldn't get into it. Ended up sweeping the table clean and just dropping the wilted flowers onto a blue piece of paper. DONE.

Glarey glare glare

Someone gave me shit for not signing my art, so THERE, it is signed. Am a real artist now.

Guavas

(note: lots of weather happening, bad news coming in - I'm watching with concern, Atlantic folks)

Very helpful 

So the library art show is going well, getting lots of feedback. Someone said, of my lychee branch, "Wow, I thought it was from Ross." (Ross is a discount home furnishing store.) Another person said, "OH MY GOD - what a nice frame.” (The frame actually is from Ross. We really love Ross around here, it seems.) Someone else looked very hard at me and said, "You're wasting yourself." So that's nice. Art critiques are fun.

I don't think I'm wasting anything, though, because I'm producing stuff. I kind of like having a salary with pension benefits, and the freelance work with New Zealand pays for art travels. Which leads me to:

ART TRAVELS 

There will be no art travels this year. It had been narrowed down to Whidbey Island or McMinnville, but in the end I went out of my head and bought a pork chop, instead. I have been thinking about this pork chop painting all year. It had to come live here.

THE BEST PORK CHOP

This supports an artist I would have been studying with, and I don't have to drive a rental car into an icy ditch in January. Everyone wins. Except my mom, who laughed and said it was a stupid painting and I should put it in the fridge. She and I are both in favor of stupid art, though, because this is the latest thing in her house:

6 of 16

This week's painting: Strawberry Guavas and Jumping Spider.

panicked spider was relocated to a nice safe bush once she was done posing for the painting

(screaming in spider)

The goal is to paint 16 sort-of-cohesive paintings with a mind to sell them. Maybe I'll ask around the galleries, or maybe I'll figure out Etsy. Gotta make the things, first. 

Do not want

The neighbor's dog got loose while they were out and I babysat him in our yard for three hours so he wouldn't get flattened by a truck. He is a nice young dog, but he rubbed his doggy ding-dong on my bare arm, and that is entirely more attention than I am interested in from anyone, let alone from someone who smells like they've been eating dirty diapers.

In the end, the neighbors came home and he dashed through the gate behind them without their noticing, so they never even realized what a goddamn hero I had been. See you next time, little dog. I'll be wearing longer sleeves.

Monday painting - ex-limes

A few weeks ago, someone at the library gave me a branch of kafir lime leaves. I was all set to paint them when my model was tragically murdered.

victim and suspect

Luckily, that is why I take back-up pictures, and I had already drawn it out, so I went ahead and started painting it anyway.

First step: get it covered with paint. Second step: fix it. Will work on it in the evenings.


In other news

* Someone dropped the porta-potty key down the toilet hole. Also the lock. And the cleaning guys stole our hand sanitizer. Some helpful person has been locking the stalls in the open position for an endless line of liquor store customers to use - will figure out who's doing it and shake my finger very sternly. So the portable toilet situation is starting to get some results.

* The man decided we needed to cut down a tree that had gotten too big and was breaking up the back wall, so he had me stand and hold the ladder while he chopped the top off and pushed it onto the roof of the garage. I put on a tiny child's bicycle helmet in case a tree trunk and a concussed man and maybe a collapsed garage might come crashing down onto my head. There was a broken saw blade, a horrible crack, a thunderous crash, and then a terrible moment when the trunk swung wildly as it went down and hit the edge of the building - but the roof and the ladder and our brainpans all survived. I went straight inside and had a Cocoweizen, which tasted a lot better spiked with adrenaline.

This is fine, I will just stand down here and see where it falls

* My favorite and best Canadian librarian came to my house. While we were standing around taking pictures of her fairy project in the banana tree, a streaking light made us turn around, and we watched a meteor burn across the sky and flare out. "That was a fucking fireball," I said intelligently. Sarah laughed, because this happens wherever she goes. She is very relaxed for someone who keeps getting space rocks lobbed at her. Next summer, Sarah. We will take out Lake George with a meteorite.

* Went rollerskating and was the only person not to bust my butt, owing to my A+ strategy of pottering around the perimeter very, very slowly and getting lapped by preschoolers with walkers. Preschoolers who ended up on their backs like flailing, screaming turtles. Ha. I win, babies.

It's official

I am "griping about my medication" years old. After suddenly puffing up like a bufo toad, I have  given up naproxen and salt and also food, just to cover my bases. Deal with it, shitty knee.

Body parts are the kind of problems where if you ignore them, they will eventually go away. I’ve got it  sorted.

Heading out for evening walk

Coming home

Dept of good news: everyone had gone snorkeling with dolphins when I got home from work, so I had an empty house and time to paint. I decided to paint another horcrux. This was a good idea.

Cursed object #2: the skinwalker knife. This is the very knife dropped under our bedroom window by the dark figure staring in at us for three nights, before shooting his brother in law, getting mired in the mud, and eventually taking his own head off with a shotgun. I leave that last bit out when I tell the story to kids.

It doesn't feel bad handling the knife. It doesn't give off creepy vibrations or a menacing aura - it has always been just a battered old knife. It feels like a thing that wasn't, a broken thread that led somewhere bad.

I have feelings about it, though.

Pine cone

Summer reading is DONE. The magician has been paid, the children have been stuffed with pizza, and I am free again for another year.

The family was out with the visiting mother-in-law when I got home, so I threw all my stuff down, pushed everything off the table, and painted a tiny pinecone as fast as I could.

Finally found my carmine pencils. I kind of dig how the red shows through where I left the paint thin.

Gavin brought me this pinecone from Point Roberts a couple summers ago, and it has just occurred to me that my teenager accidentally smuggled undeclared agriculture into the state. I'll have to burn the thing before it destroys the eco system. Unless it is too late.

Important chicken update

Chickadoo came around for cake and I figured it was a good time to go steal her eggs, but when I went down into the basement there was an entirely different chicken sitting on the clutch of [mostly stolen and replaced with plastic] eggs. WHAT. Who is THIS? Where are my chickens laying eggs? Why are wild chickens living in my BASEMENT? This is all terrible.

painting, bossing, swatting, and a recipe

I am just slopping around on oil paper until my next shipment of ACM panels arrives. Look, I made myself put in a background. ACHIEVEMENT.

A+ Bossing

While I am temporarily paperwork-filer-in-charge, the library has been assigned an extra employee and I thought, oh no, I should dress like a boss so this person thinks I know what I'm doing. So I put on a big necklace with my tank top and jeans. 

Should probably buy some slacks or something.

A+ Parenting

Introduced the kids to video games circa poor-kid-in-1988, the flyswatter, and Zenny was focused for a solid 2 hours. 

plastic eggs and tennis ball are tactical lures

D- Homesteading

The lychees are late, the lilikoi isn't fruiting, and I finally got an egg out of Chickadoo, but then I thought it would be cute to take a picture of it with her and she looked so offended that I had to put it back.

The banana tree is still standing, at least. 

Guava Cake Recipe 

While I admire fancy cake bakers, my baking style is "hot and on the table". Baking makes a place feel like home, and baking on Mondays makes everyone feel a little better about it being another goddamn Monday. 

This is an easy cake you can make with a can of juice. It's a subtle flavor, but a really nice and simple weeknight kind of cake.

Guava Cake

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 lb butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup guava juice

Preheat oven to 350, grease & flour a little 8x8 cake pan. In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Cream the butter and sugar, add eggs and beat well. Add flour mixture and guava juice, mix until just blended and creamy, don't overbeat. Pour it into the cake pan and bake it for about 25 min, until edges pull away from the pan and top is springy. Cool and serve with whipped cream, or frost with cream cheese frosting. 

Cream cheese frosting

Half a block of softened cream cheese

3 tbsp softened butter

2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

a couple tbsp of guava juice, as needed

Mix everything together until it's spreadable and get it onto the cake.

Mandarin orange

The skeleton story in the previous post went over well with my bloodthirsty 1st graders. Kids are ghouls. I love telling them stories when their parents aren't around to make cringing faces at me. 

Stubbornly carving out painting time. 3 hours, interrupted by banana bread, batches of cookies, kitten milk bottles, and lego mediation. By the end I was flapping like a muppet when they veered too near with “can I have -” on their lips.

 It could have used another 3 hours and some background, but OH WELL. 

I put the last dab on, called it done, and took Zenny to the thrift store, where I had to use our code word for "stalking pedophile, get back over here" only once, and managed to find a silk hippie skirt for $5 - which the kitten immediately took a flying leap at, got stuck in, and tore.

look at this monster

And everyone will be very excited to know that I procured a very handsome ginger for my next painting. Everyone except the produce guy at Tamuras, who aggressively rearranges all the ginger after I paw through them every week. I don't even hold them up like antlers anymore, geez.

 

I'll be hiding in the basement studio with my ginger if anyone needs me, thanks.