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.