Dereliction of Duty

Political rant warning. Feel free to click away now...

It's the 4th of July weekend, one of the centerpieces of an American summer. Independence Day. Beaches and barbecues. Hot dogs and hamburgers. Swimming pools and fireworks. Beer and wine and family and friends. Group gatherings.

In normal times. But these aren't normal times. Or even close.

The rampant a$#holery coming out of the White House never ceases, or even slows down. In a couple of national speeches (thinly veiled white supremacist political rallies) this weekend that only sought to further divide us, the current occupant of the White House assured the American people that 99% of Covid-19 infections are "totally harmless". A direct quote. "Totally harmless". An odd statement, one might characterize it, given that we have 129,000+ dead and 2.874 million confirmed cases. So...if you round the numbers to make them slightly better, we have a death rate of 4.4% of confirmed infections. 4.49% actually (or 4.5% to round it mathematically). To say nothing of the other people who get sick and stay sick for a couple weeks or more, some of whom require hospitalization. So I guess that "99% harmless", compared to the actual number of less than 80% "harmless" is..what?...a rounding error? A$#holery.

So we get white supremacist political rally speeches in lieu of Presidential holiday addresses. And we  get flyover parades of military might that would make the Kremlin and North Korea proud. The only thing missing were the convoys of truck-mounted missile launchers trundling down Pennsylvania Avenue to the accompaniment of goose stepping soldiers. Which, to be accurate, the current occupant of the White House has previously stated his desire for. The tanks and armored vehicles anyway. Fortunately, the mayor of Washington DC didn't want her streets chewed up by tank treads.

We have a self-proclaimed "wartime president" who has surrendered and left the battlefield, leaving us all to fend for ourselves. He can say some of the stupidest and most irresponsible things ever uttered by an American Pre$#. And the public health officials won't call him on it because if they do they will get fired. Which is part of the reason we are where we are.

Pravda over on the Fox News Channel barely even recognizes that Covid-19 exists anymore. I'm sure they have more important things to do, like continue to dig into the critical current issue of Hilary Clinton's email servers, or trying to answer the age-old question "why do Democrats hate America so much?"

Large population states with republican governors, eager to appease this person and toe the party line, ignored the science. Florida. Texas. Arizona. They are now paying the price, setting records for new infections every day. Hospitals are at or nearing capacity. To be fair, there are blue states like California that are also going backwards. People need their SoCal beaches, bars and restaurants in the summer after all. We have freedoms.

The rest of the world must be looking on in horror as we spiral out of control. I would say that they are laughing at us, but pity is probably more accurate. Europe is opening up, but not to Americans. Not that I can blame them.

Almost all states are going backwards at this point. A lot of that is driven by pretty much no states meeting the federal guidelines for reopening, but we are reopening anyway. Or we were until just recently, when more and more states have started clamping down again. It's July. We should be reflecting on all the good things we did to flatten the curve and get this under control. Celebrating the sacrifices we made, and the positive impact they had. Instead, we are looking at another round of shutdowns. We are back where we were in March. Although, to be accurate, we are in worse shape as a country than we were in March. Did we do all that for nothing? The numbers say probably, yeah. We made all the sacrifices and reaped little of the intended longterm benefit. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong.

I get that people are tired of this. I'm tired of this. More than I can express. But this Covid-exhaustion has made us complacent (if you believed that this wasn't a democratic hoax in the first place). I get it. The only social thing I have done since March 12 is to sit on someones's deck one time with 4 other people, wearing masks and seated many feet apart from each other as we discussed what the marching band season might look like in the Fall. This Covid weariness puts us in a bad spot as much as anything.

Ugh.

Happy birthday, America. Land of the free.

Billy Squier...Nobody Knows

YouTube's suggestion algorithms are...scary good? The rathole sucked me in again tonight, but presented me with a gem that I had not listened to, or thought about, in...maybe almost 39 years?

I was doing some work on my laptop this evening, with a few Rangers of Shadow Deep battle report videos playing in the background on the iMac (related to my solo gaming experience last night). Then there was an email that I was thinking about regarding the upcoming (we hope) marching band season. Which reminded me of Ozzie Osbourne's Crazy Train, which the band does a version of after the end of games (lots of teenage screaming and dancing). So I searched for Crazy Train videos and had that playing. For some reason YouTube equated Ozzie Osbourne and Black Sabbath with Billy Squier, which suggested a whole bunch of early 1980's Billy Squier videos, from both the Don't Say No (1981) and Emotions in Motion (1982) albums (which I should note that I have both of on vinyl in the basement...with nothing to play them on).

Without bothering to type it all out, Billy Squier had a lot of great songs in the early 1980's. A lesser known (i.e. not a popular MTV video) song, but probably my favorite song of his was Nobody Knows from Don't Say No (1981).

Don't Say No (1981)

How does YouTube know to suggest this one particular song to me? After watching Ozzie Osbourne videos?

Get out of my head.

Adventures of Erindale - Part 1

With lockdown continuing on...maybe forever...the need to get some sort of gaming in has become more and more top of mind for me. So if all else fails, do it yourself. In other words, play a solo game. I've owned Joseph McCullough's Rangers of Shadow Deep (ROSD) since shortly after it was released and have always wanted to give it a go. There's no time like the present.

ROSD is a solo (or cooperative) miniatures games set in a dark fantasy world where the "Shadow Deep" is encroaching on civilization. You (or several of you) play a Ranger and their band of companions, playing through programmed scenarios to defeat the evil rampant in the world. Each scenario defines the game board setup, objectives, random events, clues that can be found that tie in to the multi-scenario adventure paths, treasures available to be found, and gives basic artificial intelligence on how to control the evil creatures you are fighting against. No matter how many players you have, you are all on the same side fighting against the evil.

I would be remiss to note that ROSD is a different-flavored adaptation of the same game engine that runs McCullough's well-received earlier game Frostgrave (published by Osprey), which pits wizard-led war bands against each other in a player-versus-player version of basically the same game, but in a different fantasy setting (and much more oriented toward magic).

Scenario 1 from the rulebook is called The Deserted Village, and pits a brand new Ranger and his companions against swarms of zombies and giant rats while trying to discover clues as to what happened to the villagers. The initial set up is shown below. [I had so much fun fumbling though this first scenario that I forgot to take any more pictures after this one...]

Game Setup - The Deserted Village

A few notes on the scenario (and the setup). The Ranger and his companions start in the center of the 36" square board, surrounded by zombies and rats. There are a few houses spaced around the board, and 6 clue markers (the white beads, some of which are visible in the picture). The good guys need to collect the clues while surviving the attacks of the bad guys and their reinforcements, which come on every turn in the form of random events. I painted the terrain board. The rest are houses and various other pieces from my collection. The figures at this point are almost exclusively D&D figures from the various WizKids lines, although I have a bunch of new Frostgrave figures that I am assembling and painting specifically for ROSD.

I found the rules to be simple but fun, and made for an enjoyable ~2 hours. If I knew the rules better, this probably would have been played in under an hour. The nice thing about the AI for the enemies, and the randomness of the clues and events, is that by some very simple mechanics, it removed the usual issue in solo gaming of how to play the enemy at least somewhat fairly...

As for my mini-campaign, I created a Ranger named Erindale, named for my earliest Dungeons and Dragons character I can remember (an elven ranger from the AD&D days of the late 1970's). Erindale would be supported by his companions Roderick the guardsman, Volko the archer, Irina the tracker, Thomas the recruit and Ethan "Grayblade" the rogue.

In a very quick recap of this scenario, we took some significant damage early, but then had a good run of luck in the mid- and late game, resulting in a smashing success. Nobody dropped to zero Health, and we achieved all of the scenario goals, getting experience points for those, and also killing a bunch of zombies and rats in the process.

The role playing game aspect of ROSD is that your Ranger gains experience (XP) for things that happen in each scenario, allowing you to "level up" after gaining enough XP. This in turn allows you to improve your stats, skills, etc... Your companions can also improve, but at a much slower rate (they get a point of XP if they survived the scenario without dropping to zero Health, and advance at a different rate). A Ranger or companion that drops to zero Health during the game (i.e. out of play) must roll on a chart to see if they are killed, suffer a long-term wound/effect etc...

Since we had such a successful mission, Erindale will advance from level 0 to level 1, gaining some skill points as a result. I can't wait to play the next (and final) scenario in this two part mini-adventure. Which might happen tonight. Or I might work on some terrain, or paint some figures... There are other adventure paths available after this simple 2-scenario one.

Lastly, if you want to see great examples of what ROSD is about, go to YouTube and search for Guerrilla Miniature Games, then look for his Rangers of Shadow Deep playlist and find this scenario as one of the very first videos listed).

Masks

Americans like to think of ourselves as special, and we certainly have an overly developed sense of superiority. We might be the richest nation on Earth, but sometimes we are just dumb as f#$%.

Masks.

The simplest, most effective way to slow the spread of a pandemic that is devastating our country. If you believe in science. Which apparently many of us do not.

The level of ignorance required to turn a basic public health reality into a political statement is hard to comprehend. For which we have the current occupant of the White House to thank. That person won't wear a mask to set an example. The CDC says wear a mask. The World Health Organization says wear a mask. Pretty much every public health official or medical professional in the entire world says "just wear a mask".

Nope. No can do here in America.

We have rights. We have freedoms. We have liberties. No pesky public health officials can tell us what to do.

So most of us wear masks. Many do not. We have rights after all. Science? Never heard of it...but we're good at Fortnite.

We've made masks a political statement.

Personal freedom. I'm all for that. I'm just not sure how you can reconcile your desire for personal freedoms with the fact that your exercising of your personal freedoms could be killing your family and friends, or your neighbors, or any random person you run into at the grocery store.

Just wear a f#$%ing mask. Please.

A Vindaloo, Chickpeas, Dragons, and Dwarven Halls

It's Covid-19 Day 101 here at home, and it's both (A) a beautiful day, (B) Father's Day, and most importantly by far (C) in the vicinity of Grace's 16th birthday from a blog-posting perspective.

A few weeks ago, I made the Pork Vindaloo recipe from Cover and Bake, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated (I've noted their wide range of books that I own previously - May 7). Today, having a nice leisurely Father's Day ...at home (shockingly)... I needed something to make with some cubed beef stew meat. We all loved the vindaloo recipe, and there's no reason you couldn't swap out the pork and replace it with beef. So that's what's for dinner.

Beef Vindaloo

For a side dish with an Indian recipe, or frankly, any recipe these days, is my modification of a chickpea recipe, which I will post the details of separately for anyone who might be interested in that sort of thing.

Chickpeas with Coconut Milk and Spinach

For Father's Day, I picked out a few miniatures things for myself, and we did curbside pickup from Games Keep in West Chester when we were in the neighborhood to pick up the new Pilot a few days ago. There were 4 large miniatures from the Wizkids unpainted lines, and included a Gargantuan Skeletal Dragon, a Young Red Dragon, a Behir and an Adult Remorhaz. Now I have lots (more) things to paint...

Father's Day minis

From a crafting perspective, I have had the urge to do some EPS foam board crafting, so I have pulled out the Proxon hot wire table and made some more Dungeons and Dragons terrain pieces (modular caverns and passages, as well as some "Dwarven Halls" dungeon tiles). Given that I have all the dungeon tiles I really need (in two color schemes, no less), it made sense to scratch the itch by making a few fancier pieces. A few of these are shown below (work in process), and I'll continue to tweak some of the techniques and colors. Painting red squares onto the piece at upper left in the picture below was way too stark. The very watered down wash on the other pieces looks much better.

Dwarven Halls tiles

Lastly, and most importantly, Grace is now 16. Hard to believe. As with many of her friends who have had birthdays during the quarantine, and mostly Sweet 16s, it totally sucks that she doesn't get a real birthday party surrounded by her friends. We (I) spoil our kids, admittedly. And we would have spoiled her on her Sweet 16th. We do have a few things up our sleeves, and we will make it up to her when things allow. Until then, Happy Birthday, Grace! You bring me joy each and every day.

This and That

...or... A General Update.

If you count from March 13 (Day 1 of self-quarantine for us), it's Day 98 of Covid-19.

It's fair to say that everyone is feeling the strain from staying home for so long (and doing the right thing). I am still working at home full time. Amp is still working three days a week at a Covid-only dialysis clinic. Grace has started working some shifts again at the retirement home she worked at over the last year or so. We are all still healthy, despite having gone through a health scare over the last few weeks. I haven't blogged much because I haven't done much or felt like doing much during that. Blah. But hopefully we are past that and things will get back to our new abnormal normal.

We are still doing the fairly hardcore conscientious self-quarantining thing, despite the fact that our criminally incompetent occupant of the White House no longer seems to recognize that Covid-19 is even a thing. Nothing to see here. Move along please...

We do try to order takeout to support some of our favorite local places which are open again, and place curbside pickup orders where needed from some stores, such as art and craft supplies from Michael's, office products from Staples and some nice-to-have-but-not-necessary D&D unpainted miniatures purchases today from Games Keep in West Chester (a store that I love and want to go out of my way to support). Aside from that sort of thing, we don't go out much.

Along those same lines, and in the hopes that we will play Dungeons and Dragons again either online or eventually in person again at some point, I ordered a bunch of painted D&D minis from my go-to online source, Kings of Light. I love these folks. And with several hundred figures purchased from them, they probably love me too.

D&D minis from Kings of Light

In spite of Covid-19, some facets of normal life continue on in their appointed pace. One of these things is that we are nearing the end of the 3 year lease on our 2017 Honda Pilot. Loving the Pilot, and not being particularly interested in shopping for other things under current conditions, we talked with our salesperson at Scott Honda and told him we just wanted to roll over to a new Pilot with a minimum of physical presence required on our part. In other words, we picked the exact model and exterior/interior color and told him to go find one and do all the paperwork. This was safe enough to do since the only difference between a 2017 and 2020 Pilot is a few minor exterior trim changes (front grill, rear lights and rear bumper), and the addition of lane change warnings and some other electronics as standard.

New 2020 Honda Pilot EX-L

Short summary, we got a great deal, only showed up at the dealership for an hour today to check out the new car and sign papers, and drove home in our brand new Pilot. The process took a week and a half from end to end, with most of that being waiting to get the exact vehicle we wanted brought in from another dealer. As always, I like that Amp and the kids get to spend most of their in-car time in a big heavy tank. This is our 5th Honda lease for Amp's car, and we have now had a dark red Pilot, a dark blue Pilot, a white CRV, and a black Pilot. And now this medium/dark blue Pilot. This one isn't as dark as the very first blue Pilot back in 2008/2009, and is brighter and more metallic in the sunlight. I like it.

Anyway, life continues on (fortunately), and I have gotten back to doing some hobby painting and hobby crafting. That should make for another post in the near future.

Until then, stay safe, and don't listen to the brain-dead morons that are trying to tell you that the virus is "dying out". Look at the numbers. Be smarter than that.

Gaming Plans

After a hiatus of the better part of a year, we had just begun to make plans to revive our role playing gaming, and had played a session or two to get things going again.

Then quarantine happened and everything stopped.

Zoom and Skype and the like have taken over work as well as leisure pastimes, so we are taking baby steps toward seeing what we can do use online technology to enable gaming of some sort. There are a bunch of virtual table top options out there, but I am thinking start very modest. Get a few people together on a Zoom call and play something simple, without the aid of a VTT. For now.

This may or may not end up happening, but in anticipation of it, I have scribbled some map drafts. A borderlands region "beyond the mountains" from a fading kingdom... Semi-wilderness. Rugged terrain. Frontier laws, etc...

Borderlands

And the town of Oren, center of the modest Duchy of the same name. The town is divided into Orenspire, or the more affluent section of town built atop a defensible rocky hill, and Orenlee, the lower (and poorer) section of the town built on the level ground in the lee of the hill.

Orenspire and Orenlee

I have no idea what any of this means at this point; it's just a few rough maps.

I'd like this to be the basis of trying out Index Card RPG from Runehammer Games. It's simple, and I think my players would like it. And it is straightforward enough that I think we could play over a Zoom call without any difficulty.

We shall see...

Junior Year

Having finished her sophomore year this past week, Grace is now technically a Junior. I wonder what her Junior year will look like...

Grace's two main extracurricular activities are the Drama Club and its 2 (or 3) per year musicals, and the marching band.

The Drama Club is scheduled to do The Addams Family in the Fall and Newsies in the Spring. All of that depends on social distancing, what can be done in person, etc... We are hopeful, but...

Thing 1 and Horton the Elephant

As far as the marching band goes, the Hawaii trip this year was canceled and then postponed until next spring. So it should still happen. Maybe. If we are lucky.

The year end marching band banquet this year was replaced by a Zoom call (Monday June 1) where we played videos, had a slide show, honored our seniors, and unveiled next year's show (Western Side Story - a western themed show).

2019-2020 Band

One thing that wasn't included as part of the year end banquet, but which the kids have been clamoring for, is the naming of band leadership positions for next year - drum majors, field majors, section leaders and other positions. Drum majors, of which there are 3, are the student leaders of the band. Field majors, of which there are generally 2, are assistants to the drum majors, and are sort of drum majors in training (at least if they are underclassmen who will be around the next year). Grace was very anxious for these announcements, since she had applied for and gone through the interview process for a field major position. A bunch of people had applied for field major, and I told her just to wait and see what happened, but not to be disappointed if she didn't get it. She was also in consideration for a clarinet section leader position if field major didn't work out. Which I didn't expect that it would. There were a lot of good candidates.

Sophomore Clarinet

Those leadership positions were announced today. We have 3 great drum majors. A wonderful bunch of section leaders. And I am bursting with parental pride to say that Grace is one of two Field Majors for the GVHS 2020-2021 marching band season.

Now I just hope we actually have a 2020-2021 marching band season...

America Burning

America is burning and the current occupant of the White House needed a photo opp. So... tear gas and rubber bullets on peaceful protestors.

I guess First Amendment rights are subjective. God forbid we infringe on anyone's Second Amendment rights, because we all need assault rifles, but the First Amendment.... meh... when it's convenient.

It's astounding to me where we are as a country. And saddening. We are 50+ years after the historic days of the civil rights movement, and this is what we see on the news. Maybe we haven't made any progress at all.

We watch current events on the news. We try to stay informed. And we try to have a meaningful discussion with our kids. Looting is bad. Burning cars is bad. Throwing stuff at the police is bad. Anarchy and chaos is not the answer. Maybe understandable in a way, but not the answer.

But we also make sure that our kids know that every American should be outraged. And we should all protest the racial inequity that still exists. If we aren't in a place to be able to literally join, arm in arm, with our fellow human beings that are actually out there standing in the streets, we should support them. Support them with our voices and more importantly our votes. Not just to make ourselves feel better, but to actually hope to affect a real change.

Every American should support the protestors. Not the burning. Not the looting. But support the peaceful protesters. We Americans like to think of ourselves as great. Because we are a rich people. A dominant military power. For what that's worth. If anything. History will be a more objective judge, and perhaps not so kind.

If we truly want to be great, we need to lead. Lead ourselves toward a future that is better than today. Or sadly, at least keep pace with most of the rest of the world, which seems to be more socially advanced than us.

Most police are good. The story of the Flint Michigan sheriff who laid down his baton and helmet to peacefully march in solidarity with protestors warms my heart and gives me hope for the future. Celebrate the good. Weed out the bad. For the benefit of everyone.

One people.

Change is good. Righteous change is great.

At the most basic level, all people want the same thing. A roof over their head. Food to feed their families and keep them from hunger. Safety from persecution. Protection from living in fear. Shouldn't this be the most very basic thing that we can all agree on?

Let's teach our children in the hopes that their generation will be better than ours.

Senior Sadness and the Little Things

It's quarantine day 64 in our household, and instead of having an end-of-year Drama Club banquet tonight to celebrate this school year, there is a one hour video on YouTube, followed by a Zoom after-party for anyone who wants to join. It's the best that can be done as an alternative to the usual, but just another example of the great many ways that this spring is a very different and disappointing one for our Seniors.

The involvement that Amp and I have with school activities drives this point home very strongly. Amp is the creative head of costumes for the Drama Club, and I am a board member for the Band Parents Association. Amp has been doing costumes for 7 years now, and has known all of these graduating seniors for years. I did some volunteering for the band last year, and had my first year as a board member this year. I've gotten to know the students in the band pretty well. Band camp. Evening practices throughout the fall. Bus rides to away football games. All the games, home and away. Competitions. A multitude of hours spent with these kids for both of us.

Seussical Costumes

The seniors don't get their spring semester as usual, or the Senior Prom, or the various end-of-year activity celebrations, or graduation. Or any of it. It's a shame, and I wish it could be different for them. They are good kids, and like everybody else affected by these world events, they deserve better. I'm sorry, Seniors, and I wish I could tell you that in person.

I suppose the best we can do now as we get through each day is to recognize and appreciate the little things in life. Which I suppose is a good reminder that you should take the time to appreciate the little things in life each day no matter what. This afternoon, while finishing up the week's work at my desk in my home office, I looked out my window and saw the picture below. It's the warmest day of the year thus far (84 degrees at 4pm) and Grace and Ryder were sitting in the grass, basking in the sun. Regardless of what else is going on in the world, this makes me happy.

Grace and Ryder

Please stay safe everyone, and take a moment to think about something you can be thankful for.

Copying Art, and Different Media

As I've been spending all of this time drawing, painting, thinking about drawing, thinking about painting, watching YouTube videos about.....etc, a couple of questions keep lingering at the fringes of my consciousness. The first question is...should I be concentrating on one kind of painting instead of dabbling in oils, acrylics and watercolors? Second, should I be spending less time copying other peoples' work and more time on creating my own original works?

At least at the moment, I think...

Dabbling in a number of different media is an invaluable learning experience. I might end up being better at some things than others. I might end up enjoying some things more than others. But you won't be able to get a feel for that unless you try different things. In that respect, I literally am a middle school or high school student. At this point I am content to immerse myself in as many different media as possible in the expectation that a path forward, at least in the immediate term, will reveal itself. If not, the dabbling continues, which is also fine, and will continue to be valuable.

Oils. I am loving painting in oils. You can blend for days. Literally. They are forgiving in the sense of being correctable while still wet (which again, is for days). There is a richness that you can't get from watercolors or acrylics. They are the classical media if you are into the snob-appeal thing. But they are finicky. And they are the one media that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing on my desk in my office or on the kitchen table. They are messy and complicated. But they are soooooo good.

Acrylics. I alternately love and am immensely frustrated by these. It's great that they dry so quickly from the perspective of adding to your work in layers. But they dry so quickly. You need to know what you are doing and commit, or the moment is gone. Blending is hard. I know there are various mediums and additives that will prolong working time, etc, but I am not that sophisticated yet. Quirky but fun.

Watercolors. Perhaps the most mysterious of the three painting media that I am fiddling with, at least to me. So simple looking. So hard to do well. Perhaps even more so than acrylics, you get one chance to do it right. In my very limited experience, you can fix errors in oils or acrylics, but not so much so in watercolors. Or not at all really. I have to admit watercolors intimidate me more than oils or acrylics. Easy to do kinda OK. Probably the hardest for a beginner to do well.

As for the second question, copying versus original pieces, that's a simpler answer, at least for the moment. I am so early on my learning curve that I just want to try as many techniques and styles as possible. I don't want to spend too much time worrying about composition or other considerations. I just want to practice. Almost everything I do these days is simply an attempt to answer the question "can I do that?"

For now, that's fine. It won't be forever. But it is for now.

Mother's Day and a Painting

Today is Mother's Day, and we had a nice relaxing morning.

While Amp enjoyed coffee in bed catching up on some TV watching, I went into the basement to attempt another rendition of the messy little abstract Provence painting I did in acrylics the other day. About an hour later, I had this little 8 by 10 in oils.

Provence (oils, 8 by 10)

Later in the morning, we had a nice Mother's Day brunch. I made buttermilk biscuits for this first time, which turned out wonderful. I'll have to do that again. The dough came together in the time it took to preheat the oven, and they baked in 10 minutes.

Buttermilk biscuits

Along with the fresh biscuits, I am omelets for everyone. In this case, a ham, mushroom and cheese for Julia.

Mothers Day omelet

For the rest of the day, we'll probably just.....stay around the house.

Happy Mother's Day to everyone out there. Stay safe.

Acrylic Sketching

I'm too far down the road to stop posting anything and everything at this point, no matter how insecure I might be about sharing these, so...

I have done (and posted) some simple impressionistic marker sketches. I wondered after dinner today what the equivalent would be in painting. So I got out some acrylics and a small 8" by 10" canvas and painted the below in about 20 minutes. I used only a #14 (about 1/2 inch) flat brush and a half dozen colors (mostly the 3 primaries and white).

Lavender fields in Provence

This was incredibly fun and freeing, regardless of the quality of the result. (Inspiration photo below - everything brighter...)

Provence...

I need to do more of this. Perhaps on canvas paper pads rather than actual canvases to cut down on the cost, but...

Castello Banfi Progress May 8

This is where this painting is at the moment, and this is where it will probably remain until my Jerry's Artarama order of more Golden Heavy Body acrylic paints arrives.

I am roughing in the midground of the painting, which mainly consists of vineyards and fields in the middle distance. This section isn't done yet, but it gives a better impression of where I am headed than the simple color blocking that it is layered over.

Roughing-in the midground

There is a lot of detail that needs to be added, but it's starting to feel better. Some shading, some highlighting, and more work in the very middle...

Roughing-in Vineyard detail

Getting there. Maybe half done. Maybe a little less than that...

Spanish-Style Chicken and Rice

We've had plenty of time to browse through our fairly extensive cookbook collection, and I have found many things that I want to make. Some easy, some less so. This is one of the easy ones: Spanish-Style Chicken and Rice from The Best 30-Minute Recipe by the Editors of Cook's Illustrated. We have a half dozen or so books from these folks (they do the Cook's Illustrated, as well as the America's Test Kitchen TV series).

From the editors of Cook's Illustrated...

OK, I just went and took a picture and it turns out we have 8 of their books (the 7 shown above plus a baking book that is currently on the kitchen island since we are making focaccia again as I write this...).

Without copyright infringing on their recipe, your brown some chicken, then saute onions, peppers, garlic and some chorizo sausage.

Chorizo, onions, peppers and spices

You then add stock, rice and some seasonings, and simmer it long enough for the rice to cook in the broth. Then you add back the chicken near the end to finish cooking. Frozen peas get warmed into the mix at the very end.

Result (after we ate some!)

It was simple and delicious.

I can't recommend any book from these folks highly enough. In addition to well-tested and easy to follow recipes, they are chock full of good information on why they did what they did, and what else they tried and rejected before ending up with the final recipe. They are absolutely invaluable for someone who wants to learn more about the art of cooking beyond simply following a published recipe.

Castello Banfi Progress May 6

I've made a little progress on the Castello Banfi acrylic painting over the last couple evenings. I am taking it slow and steady, but I am pleased so far. I think it looks good.

I have focused on a small but critically important area of the painting; the buildings at the top of the hill, and the trees and bushes along the painting's horizon. It's been a challenge in that I don't have that many different colors of acrylic paint, and I have had to mix all of my greens from a base of chromium oxide green, or blue and yellow primary colors. I have a lot to learn about color mixing. I watch artists on YouTube paint with 3 or 4 colors and I am dumbfounded...

Castello Banfi Detailing - Close Up

As I look at it now, and in pictures, the shadows are more red than I would like. I will either have to attempt to correct them to a more brownish shade, or live with them as they are. On the one hand, it nags at me. On the other hand I should probably leave well enough alone at least until the first pass at painting everything is complete.

The foreground remains simple blocking in of placeholder colors. Don't worry, it will get better. I hope. On second thought, as I said yesterday, hope is not a plan. So... It will get better. Promise.

As an aside about the whole color mixing issue, I am helping to keep some tiny part of the economy going by mail-ordering 10 tubes of Golden Heavy Body acrylics from Jerry's Artarama (my 5th order in the last 2 months...). Since my main interest is in landscapes, I have picked out a nice selection of greens, browns, tans, grays and a black. Easier starting points for color-tweaking, if not color mixing.

Quarantine Day 54...Blah

March 13 seems like a very long time ago. We've settled into a routine, and adapted well enough that it almost seems hard to remember sometimes what it was like when it wasn't like this. Which is both good and bad.

We are fortunate to be in a school district that was well positioned to move to some semblance of online learning (everyone in the high school already had a Chromebook), so Grace's schoolwork is moving along, if somewhat slowly. Julia's work training programs through the Special Ed department can't continue, so they are giving Julia some around-the-house assignments with life skills things, but she is impacted more than Grace. Amp and I are both still working, at least as of now, so we take that one day at a time. My company may be doing more Covid-19 testing than any other lab in the country, but not many people are going to the doctor for anything else, so overall testing demand has crashed (which is all public knowledge). Our leadership has put measures in place to help us ride things out, at least for a while, so there are no guarantees but so far so good. Dialysis isn't optional, so Amp's company forges ahead, and I must say that they have been terrific in taking care of their employees from what I can see. She's only been with them for a few months, but I am very impressed.

Most importantly, we are all still healthy. Knock wood.

That being said, it's undeniable that some days are "blah".

Ryder says "blah" too

Grace asks sometimes what I think the summer and fall will look like. Impossible to answer of course, but we don't try to sugar coat anything for her. Some things will likely begin to move a little bit toward more normal as states take different approaches to reopening, but it isn't going to be anything like normal for a long time.

I fully expect the disruption will carry well into the next school year, if not well into 2021. It's very unlikely at this point that we will be going to the Shore for a week in the summer as we usually do. Band Camp that runs for 2 weeks in August is no sure thing. For that matter, we may not need a marching band routine because there may not be a football season in the fall, at least not the way it normally would be. Or band competitions. School may not be back to normal by when they are supposed to go back the week before Labor Day. The Addams Family is the musical scheduled for the fall, but who knows about that either. In other words, who knows about anything. The message to Grace, then, is don't count on anything and just take things one day at a time.

States reopening too early could make the summer bad in places (if not everywhere). A second wave could make the winter bad. I read an article with loads of historical graphs and charts that detailed a sobering scientific reality. Epidemics invariably come in waves, and the second wave is invariably the worst, not the first...

I hope I am wrong about all of the above, of course.

But it would be nice if we believed in the science. It would be nice if we were planning and preparing better than we seem to be, rather than incompetent leadership sticking its head in the sand and hoping everything turns out OK. Unfortunately, we seem to have moved into the "I can't get reelected unless the economy gets better so the death count no longer matters to me" phase of the proceedings.

We hope it just goes away in the summer (despite the fact that the virus thrives in the tropics).
We hope that it won't come back, despite the fact that they all come back.
We hope that a vaccine that is safe and effective is developed faster than any vaccine has ever been developed in the history of humankind.
We hope a lot of things.

Hope is not a plan.

Art Bits

A couple of art bits.

I finished the 16" by 20" oil painting over the weekend, after giving the first pass time to (mostly) dry. I like it. It does suffer from the fact that I didn't really know where I was going when I deviated from the Clive5art acrylic painting tutorial that it was based on. Composition is an issue. That being said, it was a good practice piece for using oils. I'm wondering if I can add a faded tiny sailing ship in the distance...

Finished oil painting?

Earlier tonight, while half watching a random show on Food Network, I did a couple of quick, loose, impressionistic sketches.

First is a 9" by 12" piece using mainly Artist's Loft alcohol-based markers, with a few pricier Copic markers mixed in. As an aside, the Copic markers as SOOOOO much nicer...

Distant Mountains (markers)

Second is a 6" by 8" colored pencil sketch using Prismacolor Premier pencils.

Distant Mountains (pencils)

I figured as long as I was just killing time, I should at least do some doodling. Better to practice than to just think about practicing. Which I still do too much of.

Starting a new Painting - Castello Banfi

My next larger effort will be a 16" by 20" acrylic landscape based on a photo of Castello Banfi in Italy. This is a beautiful hilltop winery in Montalcino, in the Brunello region of Tuscany. Amazing pictures from all angles are easy to find.

First step is to sketch in the basic layout of the painting, and then to put in a basic sky. This is too monotone at the moment, but it will get some additional detail.

Sketch and Sky

The second step was to block in the building colors of brightly lit, shadowed and rooftops before the sketch detail of this got lost under the paint. It did occur to me after painting to the point covered by these pictures that I didn't spray the under-sketch with a workable fixative prior to painting. It will be interesting to see how much graphite bleed-through I end up seeing. (I wonder if I could spray it now without harming anything...)

Blocking in Hilltop Buildings

Close up of the color-blocked buildings.

Color blocking the buildings

The third stage is to do the first stage of underpainting, blocking in some of the ground colors.

Rough color blocking

I tend to look at this and say "blech", but I need to keep reminding myself what most art tutorials on YouTube are telling me - most paintings will look bad most of the way through the process until they start to come together near the end. That's an encouraging thought.

I would estimate that I am no more than 10-20% done this one. Probably closer to 10%.

Watercolors 5 and 6

I'm still finding watercolors puzzling, to say the least, but I continue to learn, so that's a good thing. I also continue to find copying a variety of other artists and styles to be a worthwhile endeavor.

The two shown below were painted this evening over the course of about an hour, sitting at the kitchen table and chatting with Amp and Grace. The ink drawings were done a week of more ago for the lighthouse, and earlier today for the castle.

The first (watercolor #5) is a heavy-handed ink and wash sketch of the iconic Eilean Donan castle in Scotland. I see this as more of a fail than not, since the first thing I did was the sky, and that went pretty badly off the rails. Discouragement set in and I kinda moped through the rest of this. I want to do this one again.

Eilean Donan castle, Scotland (after Lois Davidson)

The second (watercolor #6) is another lighthouse sketch, copying directly from a Peter Sheeler work. I love these lighthouses. I like how this one came out. Not without issues, but not bad over all.

Lighthouse (after Peter Sheeler)

One thing of note is that the lighthouse was painted on 90 pound Artist's Loft watercolor paper that warps like a potato chip. The castle was the first I have painted on my new stash of Strathmore 140 pound watercolor paper. The heavier paper curled just a little, but performed much better overall.

Tomorrow I have an new acrylic painting sketched out that I want to get started.