New Baked book. First chapter. First recipe. Authors Matt and Renato said it was one of their all-time favorite recipes, and normally they don't play favorites. The name is way too cute, and the list of ingredients made me think that I'd be making glorified rice krispie treats, but the Baked guys have never given me reason to doubt them. And so I made these tonight.
They're like the very best treats that awesome woman leaves on the lounge table at work for no reason, only better. They're like Whatchamacallits, only way better and there's 24 of them. No butter. Gluten-free if you use Rice Chex! You can whip them up in 15 minutes. No baking. And when your teeth scrape that caramely, peanutty residue off your mixing spoon, you will know that this recipe is a game-changer. I have no interest in rice krispie treats anymore. These are just stupidly good.
INGREDIENTS
6 cups crunchy, plain cereal such as Rice Chex
1 1/4 cups salted peanuts, coarsely chopped
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup smooth peanut butter <--wanna make your own? Consider trying the bonus recipe below!
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
6 ounces milk chocolate, chopped <--or half a bag of chips
DIRECTIONS
Butter the bottom and sides of a 9x13 baking pan. Line the pan with parchment paper so that the paper overhangs the pan on two sides. Butter the parchment. All I did was line the pan with parchment paper and spray it with Pam.
Place the cereal and peanuts in a large bowl and use your hands to toss together until mixed well.
In a medium saucepan over medium heat, stir together the sugar and corn syrup. Bring the mixture to a boil for one full minute. Remove from the heat and stir in the peanut butter, vanilla, and salt. Stir until the mixture is combined.
Pour the sugar mixture over the cereal mixture and use a spoon or well-greased hands (be careful as the liquid may still be very hot) to toss until the cereal is completely coated with the sugar mixture.
Turn the mixture out into the prepared pan. Grease your hands (spray with Pam!) and press the mixture into the bottom of the pan, being careful not to crush the cereal. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature (if you wish to speed this process, you may place the entire pan in the refrigerator for 15 to 20 minutes).
Melt the chocolate in a microwave or double boiler. Use as spoon or piping bag to decorate the tops of the bars in a stripe or zigzag pattern. Allow the chocolate to set.
Lift the bars out of the pan using the parchment paper overhang, and cut them into approximately 3 by 1.5-inch rectangles, i.e. candy bars.
The bars can be stored at room temperature, in an airtight container, for up to 3 days. If the weather is hot and humid, you might want to keep them in the refrigerator instead.
I MADE PEANUT BUTTER!
(I've always said that our living room floor is the exact color of peanut butter, and this photo proves it.)
The substance I created was too dry (Play-Doh texture) to qualify as spreadable peanut butter, but it's a tasty-enough peanutty condiment. I would have done more to make it smoother, but our 22 year-old food processor began overheating and couldn't handle it. Feeling sorry for the food processor, I suspended the peanut butter project. Maybe yours can do a better job...?
I used a 50-50 mixture of this and store-brand smooth peanut butter in the recipe above. I also keep my homemade peanut doh by the couch in the living room and have been known to eat it right out of the jar. Using my fingers. Don't be like me.
INGREDIENTS
2 1/2 cups home-roasted or store-bought roasted peanuts
1/2 teasoon salt
2 teaspoons honey
1 to 3 teaspoons peanut oil, as needed
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel, to taste (optional)
DIRECTIONS
Place the peanuts in a food processor. Sprinkle the salt and drizzle the honey over the peanuts. Pulse in 30-second bursts 4 to 5 times until the peanuts are reduced to a thick, pastelike consistency.
Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, replace the lid, and process while slowly adding 1 teaspoon of the peanut oil through the feed tube. Continue proessing for another minute or two until you reach the desired consistency. If the peanut butter is too thick, slowly add more peanut oil while pulsing. (I also added more honey and--sorry, Baked guys--a bit of sugar along with the oil. Still too thick! I think my peanuts must have been exceptionally dry.)
Once the preferred consistency is reached, sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon of fleur de sel and process again for 5 seconds. Taste, and add more fleur de sel if necessary.
Homemade peanut butter can be stored in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for up to 45 days.
The new cookbook from Baked (I've writtenaboutthoseguysbefore) is here, and it is tremendous. It arrived at my doorstep on Friday, filled with a stupefying number of recipes that demanded to be tried. Baked Elements is organized into ten chapters, each starring one of Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito's favorite ingredients, such as banana, malted milk powder, chocolate, booze, and so on. Chapter one is peanut butter. I've already made two of its recipes, with another one in the works for later today. The peanut butter chapter is so compelling that I haven't even read the rest of the book beyond a quick breeze-through.
Why oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chip scones first? Number five in the book, this was the first recipe for which I had all of the ingredients on hand. Any suppertime plans I had went out the window. "Do you mind if we just have these tonight?" I asked Jeff, who had no problem whatsoever with this idea, and he helped me make them.
As you can see from the photo above, this is only kind of a scone. It's more like a cookie. Scookie? YES IT'S THAT. The oatmeal gives the scookie a nice chewiness and provides a speed bump for those of us who might be inclined to inhale it otherwise. The peanut butter has a definite presence, and the beyond-generous amount of chocolate chips will have you muttering things at it like, "Oh you son of a bitch."
And they're easy to make and not all that messy! Reportedly good with coffee! Less butter than you might expect! Buttermilk binder instead of cream so whoop-de-doo!
Make them and then buy the book. Matt and Renato deserve your love.
1 cup semisweet or milk chocolate chips <--we cobbled together some chunks and regular chips
2 tablespoons raw sugar <--we used granulated sugar instead
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 400 and position the rack in the center. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and oats. Add the butter and use your fingertips or a pastry cutter to rub or cut the butter into the four mixture until the butter is pea-size and the mixure looks like chunky, coarse sand.
In a glass measuring cup or small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and egg yolk until combined.
Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the buttermilk mixture into the center of the well. Add the peanut butter. Using clean, dry, lightly floured hands, gently mix and knead the dough in the bowl until it starts to come together. Add the chocolate chips until just incorporated. Do not overwork the dough.
Turn the dough out directly onto the prepared baking sheet and shape it into a disk 8 inches in diameter and about 1.5 inches high. Beat the egg white slighty, brush the top of the dough with the egg white, and sprinkle with the raw sugar, if you wish.
Cut the dough into 8 wedges--but do not seprate the wedges--and bake for 18-22 minutes (mine took 22), or until the scones start to brown, rotating the baking sheet halfway through. Alternatively, check for doneness by inserting a toothpick into the center of the scone. If the toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs clinging to it, the scones are done.
Remove from the oven, let cool for 5 minutes, and re-slice and separate the scones. Serve slightly warm or transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Scones taste best when consumed within 24 hours of baking, but you could store these scones in an airtight container for up to 2 days.
Did you notice my fancy new plate up there in the top photo? I bought it for $1.50 at a garage sale in Jeff's tiny hometown last week. Jeff grew up about 35 miles south of our house, and 95% of the drive looks like the photo above.
When I taught my beginning art students about perspective, that was the scene I described when introducing the concept of vanshing points. "You know how when you're driving *basically anywhere in Champaign county* and you look at the road in front of you, and it seems like the sides of the road come together at a point on the horizon? And it looks like the road just disappears?" [nods all around] "That's an example of a vanishing point." [Huh! That thing has a name.]
Anyway, the harvest is happening, and the corn looks particularly sad this year thanks to the summer's drought. Some farmers were hit so hard that they didn't even bother to harvest--they just plowed everything under. But most are in the fields now, getting what they can from the stunted corn with its sad little ears.
Someone with happy big ears is Hypatia. Very Renee Zellweger on the pose there, Pache.
And Bun would like to thank everyone who had nice things to say about her supervised walkabout post a while back. She came into my life almost 11 years ago, and her ability to pose with maximum cuteness at all times and in any situation continues to stun all who encounter her, even in the dark.
A few months before his wedding, Brian (star of this post--please read or at least skim to get some idea of what I'm talking about) wanted to know if I'd like to create a series of 8"x10" caricatures of the wedding party. I said yes, figuring I could crank each one out in about twenty minutes the way I did when I worked at my college newspaper.
Katherine was also involved with this, although she had no idea that I was also working on a surprise wedding portrait of the two of them. The wedding was going to take place in a theater. One wall of the lobby contained a framed poster of the current production surrounded by 24 smaller frames featuring its actors. Brian and Katherine planned to temporarily replace the poster with one of their own. They created several for the wedding (I deleted the wedding party's names at the bottom of this poster for privacy).
They wanted to replace the actors' photos with caricatures of the wedding party and other VIPs. Prints of my caricatures would go into the frames, and the originals would be distributed as gifts during the rehearsal dinner. I planned to tackle the caricatures after I finished the surprise portrait.
As I thought about this project, I started to wonder if caricatures were the best way to go. I can do gentle caricatures, but the essence of caricature is exaggeration. If a person has a big nose, it's my job to make it even bigger, and not everyone has a sense of humor about that kind of thing. What woman wants a constant reminder of how crazy her eyebrows look? I wondered.
So I asked Brian and Katherine if they might prefer a more classical approach--quick but realistic black and white portrait sketches on toned paper at our already-agreed-upon caricature prices--and they were thrilled with this idea. And they should have been: honestly, they were getting the deal of the century. To make this even remotely profitable for myself, I'd have to whip through five heads each day. I'm fast, but this would be pushing it.
The wedding's main players would go inside the top two rows' frames, with Katherine's people on the left side and Brian's people on the right. I came up with an order for everyone else and color-coded the rectangles to correspond with the toned-down paper colors I would eventually use.
I asked Brian to send me photos of everyone involved--begging him no postage stamp-sized photos please!--and a few days later I received pictures, some of which were postage stamp-sized and probably taken from Facebook. Sigh. That was unavoidable, as once again the paintings were going to be a surprise. Brian and Katherine couldn't come right out and ask for new giant photos of their friends and relatives for no reason. And let's face it: not everyone has a portfolio of flattering, interestingly lit digital photos of themselves always at the ready. So I had to do the best I could with what I was sent, sifting through several options for each person until I found the best ones and bracing myself for another trip to SquintTown, U.S.A.
I spent a Sunday afternoon painting 1,920 square inches of paper with solid pastel colors. Katherine's favorite color is blue, so I knew what color to make her portrait (above), but everyone else's was randomly selected.
(Breaking Bad people: note the unintentionally excellent color scheme going on here.) Working as quickly as possible, I concentrated on facial features and used a looser approach on clothing and backgrounds. Ten people wore glasses, and I kicked myself for not charging Brian an Excessive Eyewear Tax.
I worked in order, from top to bottom and left to right, and tried to finish each portrait within an hour or so. I felt like I really hit my stride with these three. I had a rough idea of who my subjects were in relation to the bride and groom and was especially interested in seeing features that were similar to the couple's. I definitely noticed a resemblance between the young woman in the orange portrait and Brian, and the woman on the right is obviously Katherine's mother.
But honestly these paintings came together so quickly that I didn't have much time to concentrate on names or relationships. There were just so many of them! By the time I had finished the purple portrait on the right (she's my favorite of the entire bunch), I was only halfway finished.
As the week wore on, portrait fatique set in. I felt like I was doing a good job with the paintings, but after I finished each one I felt like the Foo Fighters at 3:08 here:
(I wonder if they sing that line 24 times there? Because that would be perfect. Anybody feel like counting for me?)
Complaints aside, I do enjoy painting people with a little character in their faces, such as the ones above (two of whom were residents of SquintTown). I created the highlights by using a combination of white acrylic paint for the brightest spots and white colored pencil for softer areas.
Yay, bottom row, and yay, kids! I think Gray and Blue are sisters. I always say that children are more difficult to paint because they have no wrinkles. These were created during a particularly tense painting day, as I was waiting for mammogram results and did not want to experience retakes/ultrasounds/biopsies again, because what a stress nightmare that was. As I was painting Orange, I received word that my breasts were free to walk the planet for another year, and I was relieved and overjoyed. It was nice to get this good news while painting a happy face.
And get a load of this little party crasher! I added the baby sister, whose official title in the wedding program was "Junior Flower Girl In Training" or words to that effect, as a freebie for the boy's parents. Katherine's grandmother (yellow) is also in the big wedding portrait--she's the one in the center. I used a reference photo from an earlier era for that one.
She is the only grandparent in this painting who is still with us, so I hope she liked the way I painted her (twice).
So that was all of them! I scanned the paintings, stacked them, boxed them up, and mailed them to Brian and Katherine. After that I think I started dancing around the house and babbling about how I was finally free and totally done forever and the burden of this insane wedding project was off my shoulders at last and hey, let's get some Mexican food.
Brian and Katherine were very happy with the paintings, and they were a big hit at the rehearsal dinner. I'm still waiting to see some photos from the big day. Katherine told me later that she and Brian are planning to create a large reproduction of all of these paintings (similar to what you see above), and they will display that in their new home as well.
Make no mistake, this is The Summer of Bun. We've been taking her outdoors once or twice a day on what I like to call "supervised walkabouts." We don't let her out of our sight and stay within a few yards of her--she seems to want us to follow her around and act as her entourage. Bun mostly noses around the patio, where she monitors the comings and goings of chipmunks and our big fat woodchuck. (Heh: nosin' aroun'.)
Our other two cats don't get to go outside. Hypatia becomes confused, and Quixote simply bolts and gets lost. Bun is the only one we trust, and she's been microchipped. I feel bad about the unfairness of this situation because it calls to mind the opening scene from The Royal Tenenbaums. If our cats were Tenenbaum children, Bun would be Richie (ff to 4:19 to see what I mean, although you really should watch all of this).
So I guess that makes me Gene Hackman. Back to the adorable kitty pics.
Bun has spotted a chipmunk!
And I am ruining her chipmunking experience.
Bun spends a lot of her walkabout time lounging in the grass. Please enjoy this Jeff-filmed video of Bun rolling around in the dirt like a grub (sorry it's vertical).
This never gets old. Seriously, I could watch that all day.
I wish that blade of grass wasn't blocking her eye!
Impromptu grooming session.
She is so little!
While I took these photos today, something like four mosquitoes bit me, so I wanted to at least get a blog entry from my time outside. Also, for each half-hour that she spends walking about, Bun devotes an equal amount of indoors-time to standing by our patio door and wailing like a banshee because she wants to go out again. It's awful.
But Bun's just so cute when she's outside doing stuff!
All rollin' around on the rocks and everything.
And we're back on chipmunk watch. She pays attention to every sound and movement around her. She spent her kittenhood (before she decided that I should be her mama) outdoors fending for herself, and I often wonder how much she remembers from that time.
After a successful walkabout, Bun settles into her "happy pose" and takes a nap.
Jeff says Bun is more than just a pet. He calls Bun my "animal familiar," and witchay-woman BS aside, I love that idea and know that it is true.
On Friday Jeff and I drove about 2.5 hours north to Chicago (specifically the Oak Park Art League) for the opening of the Illinois Watercolor Society's Small Waters show. My Mushrooms painting was accepted for this national juried exhibition of small-scale watercolors.
Earlier in the week IWS director Tony Armendariz called me and asked if I was planning to attend the opening. Jeff and I hadn't really given the matter much thought, as we were still wiped out from Los Angeles (it takes us a while to recover from travel). But when Tony calls to ask this question, it's usually followed with, "...because you won an honorable mention" or something like that. At least that's happened to me once before, and calling winning artists has become Tony's standard operating procedure.
So I looked over at a nodding Jeff and said, "Yeah! I think we'll come!" before Tony could tell me why he wanted us there: he needed somebody to help out with the treats. I said sure--I love making cookies for art shows and was happy to lend a hand. Tony added that the show's juror hadn't picked out the show's award winners yet, but if I'd won anything, he'd give me a call Thursday night. Cool. I started planning to make a double batch of sugar cookies while Jeff searched for hotels.
The last-minute hotel possibilities were not good. Oak Park is a pricey area, and public transportation was going to be sketchy, especially if we decided to stay in one of the more affordable but distant hotels. Driving up there would mean a $50 gas (and major time) commitment. Add the cost of food and whatever else to an overnight stay, and we were looking at a $200 price tag to see one of my small paintings surrounded by 39 other small paintings, all of which we were already able to view here. So we decided to tell Tony that we wouldn't be coming, which I felt bad about doing, but that's the way it goes when you're a downstate painter in an upstate art world.
Then Wednesday morning we had a change of heart, and Jeff was feeling bad about me missing a show. What if we drove up to Chicago early Friday afternoon, did some low-key activities, attended the opening, and drove back home that night? Let's do that! I contacted Tony again, told him we were coming to the show after all, and that he could once again count on me to make cookies.
On Thursday I rocked out a double batch of cookies (various animals and fruits). It's a stupidly long process, but I worked as fast as I could in a hazy, assembly-line blur. I didn't even bother to photograph them. I figured that I had produced maybe 50 or 60 cookies, but I had in fact made over 100.
Thursday night came and went without a "you won something" call from Tony. This was not a big surprise, but it would have been an awesome way to end the day, given all the cookie-fueled good karma I thought I might have been attracting.
We took off for Chicago at around lunchtime yesterday, just as a severe thunderstorm rolled through the area. I was entranced by the big shelf cloud you see rolling across the horizon; for about ten minutes, it looked like we lived in a state with mountains. This storm produced downpours and lots of spectacular cloud-to-ground lightning, but it was out of our hair once we exited Champaign County.
Once in Chicago, Jeff wanted to try the Belgian fries at the French Market, which is an indoor marketplace featuring gorgeous produce and artisanal foods. I thought the fries were great, and talk about a generous portion (this was the smaller size!), but as usual they did not match the legendary fries Jeff had when he was in Actual Belgium: not thick enough, and not creamy inside, apparently. We tried two other European specialties while we were at the French Market. The gelato was too firm and the macarons were too dry. Ain't no pleasing us! We ate the hell out of everything we bought, of course.
While in Oak Park we toured Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio. Our charming guide provided exactly the right amount of information, if you know what I mean. Sometimes tours like this are exhausting academicfests. This was just a breezy little tour. The home and studio were quirky, strange, and beautiful.
After that we had some time to kill, so we found a Five Guys and shared the same kind of burger we had in L.A. It was terrifyingly great. Thus fortified, we drove to the show.
Also arriving early to the show were Tony (above), his lovely wife Virginia, IWS assistant director Carole Hennessy, artist Irma Pocius, and Oak Park Art League member Ted Strandt (also above--he called someone to let us in the building). We set up the treats and looked at the paintings.
Irma (center) was adorable, and she and I talked about art for quite a while. Carole (above, in blue), Jeff, and I had a wonderful conversation about some of the TV shows we love: Friday Night Lights, Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood, and, incredibly, Justified. Carole is the first person we've met who even knows about this show. We recently convinced my parents to watch Justified, and they flipped over it. You people who are getting over Breaking Bad's cliffhanger last week: give Justified a try.
My mushrooms were in the center of a long wall devoted primarily to plants. The space eventually became crowded with a surprising number of people, so I was glad I took a few photos early.
Within minutes of meeting him, Irma told Jeff he looked like George Clooney, and there was much swooning over the cuteness of Jeff, much to his embarrassment.
I was forced to pose with my painting, which was flanked by two intimidatingly exquisite floral paintings by Janet Doll and Cherie Hauptman. I can't get used to taking photos like this--they remind me of school pictures for some reason, and I always look uncomfortable.
My painting's frame was something we had been storing, unused, in our guest bedroom--it just happened to be the right size for the mushrooms. Jeff thinks the frame may be valuable, but the back was kind of beat up, and it looked like a kid had written his name on it. I loved the warm color and the tiny dark holes in the wood because they mimicked the speckles on the mushrooms.
But knowing that my painting was not one of the ten winners made me feel sorry for it. It was a good painting, but looking around I saw five, then ten, then over two dozen other paintings seemed like winners. Loose, painterly watercolors made me question why I had to be so damned tight. Abstract expressionist pieces made me miss that imaginative way of working. En plein air landscapes seemed to ooze an integrity that made my mushrooms appear twee and overworked. And yet I thought I hadn't worked hard enough when I studied paintings that were more realistic than mine. I felt like such a novice when I saw work by well-established art professors and painters much older than me who had been working their entire lives.
Jeff saw me gazing at my painting with an "oh you poor thing" expression on my face and asked me what I thought. It was hard to put into words, and I'm not a mother so I really have no idea if this is a fair comparison, but I felt like I was watching a beloved child doing his best in a competition where he was clearly outclassed. And I felt proud of my child for trying, but I knew we were going to leave disappointed and had a long ride home ahead of us.
This is just the way it goes when it comes to art competitions. I'm used to it now, believe me. But the straight-A student in me can't help feeling frustrated sometimes. It's also hard when loved ones travel long distances to see shows like this, and you don't want them to be disappointed in any way. Humble me is honored to simply be included, but awful Tracy Flick me also wants to win at least occasionally.
And then you have to remember that this is art, and the judges' decisions are their own and completely subjective, blah blah blah. In conclusion, art shows are emotional roller coasters, and they're not for sensitive people, i.e. artists.
At least the cookies were a hit. People were taking photos of them and telling me how cute they were.
The evening wore on, and shy Jeff and I actually mingled with people, even strangers. About an hour into the show, Tony and Carole got ready to present ten awards. Judge Suzanne Hetzel made a few remarks, saying that she tried to pick winners who attempted to take watercolor as far as it could go. "Some of the artists are here, and they don't know they've won," Tony mentioned. Argh! A twist! Another fun chance for my hopes to be dashed!
Irma won an honorable mention, and a few other artists in attendance were named after her. Finally Tony reached the top awards (third, second, and first place), and HOLY SMOKES I WON THIRD PLACE YOU GUYS.
*my mind exploded*
People clapped, I got a certificate and prize money (!), and Jeff gave me a kiss.
After the awards presentation, I shook a lot of hands and thanked Sue very much for choosing my painting, and she said something about loving the composition and colors, and Jeff thinks she said "it was obvious," but I don't remember that because my mind had exploded and I think Jeff's had too, a little.
Eager to get home before midnight, we said goodbye to Tony and Virginia, who were happy for me. We took an empty cookie container and left the rest of the cookies behind before leaping and skipping into the night air and out to the car. What a great night.
Thanks as always for reading! If you would like to purchase a print of Mushrooms, please click here, and you can always find prints of everything else here. I love receiving compliments about my work, but it means so much to me when people put some money in my tip jar. :)
[Note: last August, groom-to-be Brian asked me to paint a portrait of his fiancee Katherine and himself. He planned to give the painting to Katherine as a surprise wedding present, and he managed to keep the entire project under wraps for a year.
The portrait was presented to Katherine at their wedding reception, but while she was getting ready for the ceremony, Brian sent her a book that I put together introducing myself to Katherine and describing the project step-by-step, including reference photos and my pictures of my studio set-up. As she flipped through the pages, she was able to watch the painting evolve slowly, and by the time she reached the end, she had an idea of what her surprise was going to be.
I wish I could have seen her reaction in person, but staying in Los Angeles for another week after the portrait was framed was not in the cards for us. A bubbly Katherine was sweet enough to give me a call after the wedding, and she told me that she loved the portrait and that it was "the jewel of the wedding." So that was incredibly gratifying and (honestly) a major relief for me.
What follows is the text of the book I wrote for Brian and Katherine along with the book's photos. Don't worry, it's not a BOOK book. It's about the length of a children's story. I made it online with Mixbook, which is one of those fun sites where you can self-publish hard- and softcover versions of scrapbooks or other photo collections. They're astonishingly fast--I submitted my book design on a Thursday, and it was in my hands on a Monday. If you're interested, you can buy a copy here. I recommend buying the large sizes; the text will be easier to read. I'm making no money off the books--I just think they're gorgeous. :)
On with the book!]
--------------
Kelly, I would like
to commission a portrait painting of my fianceé and me. We are getting
married next September at a theater and are recreating our first date
for the wedding. I took her to the Sky Room for dinner and then
surprised her with theater tickets. So I was hoping you could
incorporate all of our first date's elements and our Art Deco wedding
theme into a painting. Also, I would need a fruit fly and a dragonfly
included in the picture. She is a professor of genetics studying fruit
flies, and I collect dragonflies. This painting will be given to her
while she is getting ready on our wedding day. Anyone can give the bride
jewelry, but I wanted to do something special.
--Brian
Following this request were...
279 emails
24,893 words
26 Photoshop layers
11 figures
10 stairs
15 Art Deco sculptures
107
triangles
298 diamonds
55 zigzag patterns
151 ceiling tiles
8.25 gallons
of water
116 paper towels
6 paint brushes
1,260 square inches of
painting
348 hours of work, and
1 over-sized watercolor wedding portrait
of Brian and Katherine by Kelly Eddington.
My name is Kelly
Eddington, and I am a watercolor artist from eastern Illinois. I
specialize in highly detailed portraits. Brian discovered my work online
last summer, and I was very happy to take on this challenging wedding
portrait commission. I set up a makeshift studio in my bedroom, as my
regular studio's table was too small for this painting.
The
Pantages Theater lobby was to be the painting's setting, and Brian
requested that I include nine grandparents as background figures in
1920s garb. Unfortunately, none of the reference photos he provided had
arms and legs, and I had to invent those later. I selected an engagement
photo of the couple, and through the magic of Photoshop (and my husband
Jeff's wizardry), everyone was standing in the lobby, waiting to be
painted.
Above is a detail of the complicated preliminary drawing, which
took six hours to finish. Excuse the darkness--I draw extremely
lightly, and my lines are nearly impossible to photograph.
Knowing that while I had months of work ahead of me, nothing would
matter if I couldn't capture a likeness of the bride, I began with
Katherine's beautiful face. I wanted to capture the serenity and
contentment I saw in her engagement photos.
Brian was next. I
liked his heroic pose, and he and Katherine reminded me of a classic
movie couple. Their blue eyes would be a contrasting focal point in a
painting dominated by gold.
Satisfied with the way the bride
and groom were turning out, I began the difficult work of painting the
grandparents' faces. Even though the painting was unusually large
(35"x36"), the cavernous lobby dictated that figures in the middle
distance would have to be very small to make sense in that space.
This meant that I had to be extremely accurate in my painting. When a
face is only a couple of centimeters wide, tiny errors can make a huge
difference. I worked slowly and used a size 000 brush.
After a
couple of days with the grandparents' faces, I was ready to tackle the
unbelievably daunting background, beginning with the gold figure on the
left side, the first of fifteen Art Deco sculptures that decorate the
Pantages' lobby.
As I got to know every nook and cranny of the lobby, I marveled at the artistry it contained. What a treasure!
The sculptures were glorious and a thrill to paint. Once again I used
my tiniest brushes.
The reference photo of the lobby was taken with a
lens that caused all of the vertical elements to curve into the center
slightly, so each one had to be drawn without the aid of a ruler or
T-square.
The vaulted ceiling was a riot of gold and brown
arches, ceiling tiles, and funnel-like structures that took a month to
complete.
Painting them was repetitive and sometimes boring, but I knew
my patience would pay off with a background more complex than any I have
ever painted.
As the painting grew, I covered
already-completed portions with pieces of plastic and watercolor paper
to protect them from spills and our three cats.
I paint on a flat
surface and was physically unable to reach the top of the painting from a
seated position, so I had to turn it upside down and sideways to paint
the ceiling comfortably.
The various squares, rectangles, diamonds, and
zigzags were tedious to say the least, and I kept myself amused by
listening to dozens (hundreds?) of podcasts.
A massive
chandelier dominates the center of the painting and is attached to a
fixture shaped like an eight-pointed star.
As I painted it over the
course of three days, I thought, Watercolor isn't supposed to do this.
Similarly stupefying: the niches, red columns, and dozens of hexagonal
shapes on the back wall.
I complained about the background section to my Internet pen pal,
film critic Roger Ebert, who was familiar with the Pantages Theater, and
he said, "Architects from that era were inflamed."
This
staircase was relatively easy to paint--I used an assembly-line approach
and kept a steady hand.
I was nearly finished with the background and
didn't want to make any fatal mistakes!
I thought the gold
movie-making sculptures at the top of the stairs were amusing, and I
finished the background with the dark diamond shapes on either side
(along with a charming garbage can).
Finally I was ready to
give the grandparents, who had existed as floating heads for weeks, some
bodies.
Once again I have my husband to thank: Jeff did an exhaustive
image search for period clothing and used Photoshop to create costumes
for everyone. Nearly all of the clothes were taken from Boardwalk Empire
and Mad Men screen shots. Several times a set of feet or hands were
taken from other photos. It was not easy, but eventually he created full
length figures out of head-and-shoulders shots. Painting the clothing
took about a week, during which time I became extremely fond of these
nine grandparents.
The lace and pinstripe details were so tiny I
couldn't quite believe it.
Some of the grandparents hold copies of the
Playbill Brian designed for the wedding. This really pushed the limits
of how small I could paint.
The background and grandparents
finished, it was time for me to paint Katherine's wedding gown! I had
asked Brian for feedback regarding the style of the actual gown. Did he
have any ideas or any way for me to find out about what it looked like?
He did not, and he didn't want to tempt fate and/or Katherine's wrath
by digging around for information. So I searched for something suitably
ornate. I came up with an Art Deco-like gown by Jenny Packham, a
designer whose creations I coveted when I was looking for my own wedding
dress.
The gown contained many sparkling elements that I
wanted to stay pure white. In watercolor, all white areas are simply the
paper showing through. There is no white paint. I coated all white
areas with masking fluid (it's a rubbery yellow liquid) to protect them.
Then I painted the dress with warm, creamy colors created by the
reflected light of the lobby.
Once it was dry, I brushed off the masking
fluid with an eraser and revealed the white areas.
Finally I added
decorative details with darker paint. I would eventually paint an Art
Deco fruit fly pin and further refine and add details to the jeweled
bodice.
In contrast, Brian's suit was much easier and took a
couple of hours to paint. I added a period-appropriate dragonfly pin to
his lapel. It paired nicely with Katherine's fruit fly pin.
I
wanted the hands to be in a slightly different position from the way
they were in the engagement photo. So the hands you see here are in fact
Jeff's and mine. I wore a large turquoise ring for the reference
photo--it served as a place-holder for Katherine's stunning engagement
ring.
I painted Katherine's hair using four or five layers of dark
paint and created a simple headpiece based on the blurry one from the
Jenny Packham photo.
I eventually turned the dangling elements near Katherine's ear
into an abstract lowercase B and K. Finally, channeling Vermeer, I
painted Katherine's lovely pearl earrings. And then...I was finished!
[Click the pictures to see lots of details.--K]
Katherine and
Brian, I want to thank you for allowing me to be part of your special
day. Katherine, you are about to marry a true romantic, and I hope you
love this painting. Brian, if Katherine is half as wonderful as you
described her to me, you are a lucky man indeed. I wish you many happy
years together. --Kelly
----------
And that was my book!
Thanks for reading and wading through these pictures. It looks a lot better in book form. If you'd like to look at and order prints of this painting, please click here. I'm also offering prints of the grandparents and a close-up of Brian and Katherine.
Please feel free to contact me if you'd like me to paint something special for you.
Finally, these are the brushes I used for the painting, including my workhorse, the one on the far right. I've used it for years, and after this project...well, it died. R.I.P., little Cotman round brush!
Friday was Jeff's birthday and our final day in Los Angeles, and we had decided to play it by ear. Still wiped out by the previous two days, we slept in and felt content to lounge in our room, eating cookie butter and waiting for our 5 p.m. appointment with Brian at the frame shop. We thought about visiting the Getty, but as far as Jeff could tell, it was pretty far-flung and unreachable by bus. This seemed elitist and cruel of the Getty, and as I began to settle in for a delicious day of resentful sloth, Jeff discovered that no, wait, we could get there by a combination of long bus rides after all. Okay, The Getty, this had better be worth it.
Our bus lumbered slowly north along the interminable Sepulveda Boulevard, stopping every fifteen yards or so. After about an hour of that, we switched buses at UCLA and continued north. The route took us on a hilly, serpentine tour of Bel Air, where we saw many gates, dense hedges, lush vegetation/shade, and other signs of extreme wealth including glimpses of mansions. This was lots of fun to see, but the bus ride was so profoundly bumpy that I was forced to clutch my breasts with both hands to keep them in my dress. "Be still, my wee ones!" I said to them as an amused (Jazzy) Jeff looked on. So ladies, here's a travel tip you won't find anywhere else: wear a sports bra if you have to take a bus through Bel Air. Once we left Bel Air, the bus unceremoniously deposited us in the midst of a construction site. We could see the Getty's gleaming white edifice at the top of a hill about a mile away.
"I think we're gonna have to walk up there," Jeff said, and I emitted a heartbroken cry of betrayal. We trudged through one of those covered walkways common to urban construction areas, and when we emerged--hooray! A TRAM!
Let's all go up on the tram together, thanks to this video I just found!
We had been told that the Getty would be an oasis, and it certainly was. The cars, the noise, the buses, and the sprawl were replaced with mondernistic architecture, Zen gardens, panoramic views, and oh yeah, some art.
Herb Ritts photography (yay) and Gustave Klimt drawings (double yay) were that day's special exhibits along with the museum's permanent collection, and, unbelievably, everything was free.
This garden was a zig-zaggy maze of beautiful flowers, trees, succulents, and water features. I could imagine plenty of people coming to the Getty solely to escape the rest of Los Angeles and enjoy the architecture and gardens.
Above is part of the Getty as seen from that garden.
We thought these gigantic planters were ingenius and wondered how many years it took the plants to grow up through the centers before spilling out the tops.
It a treat to see Klimt's drawings. I wrote an independent study honors art history paper about him when I was in college--like many post-adolescent art girls, I was dazzled by his glamourous, richly-patterend paintings from the early 20th century. Many of those paintings are in Vienna, and I've only seen reproductions.
Above is one of his very fine academic studies from early in his career. His lines were razor sharp and frighteningly confident. (That black-and-white-on-toned-paper technique is one of my favorite ways to draw.)
Drawings that would inspire his dreamlike later work were also featured.
I was especially touched to view drawings that found their way into finished paintings, such as the above study for Klimt's Medicine. I left with a better understanding of his process and the way his mind worked.
"I'm not familiar with Herb Ritts," Jeff told me.
"Oh yes you are," I said as we entered his "L.A. Style" exhibit.
Photographer of supermodels, celebrities, athletes, and beyond-perfect anonymous male and female bodies, Herb Ritts is responsible for many iconic images of the 1980s and 90s. Skin is rarely photographed this lovingly. I remember seeing his above cluster of women in Vogue when I was in grad school. Unlike the overly-photoshopped pictures of models you see today, Herb Ritts' women never made me feel inadequate. They made me happy that creatures like that were walking the earth.
And then, perhaps in an attempt to remind us that art is more than just naked bodies, the permanent collection included THIS.
"Oh Jeff..." I said, tears in my eyes.
I've written about Vincent Van Gogh's Irises before, but this item bears repeating:
The Getty was such a lovely experience, and if you're going to be in Los Angeles, I urge you to do whatever it takes to get there, even if that means riding multiple breast-jangling buses. For a couple of hours, we felt like we could breathe again.
And then it was back to our construction zone bus stop. We arrived about 30 seconds before a bus arrived, but for whatever reason the bus driver blew right by us and a handful of other people. We fumed for half an hour.
Somebody had tagged the curb by my feet with "STATE," and this reminded me of Coach Taylor's whiteboard on Friday Night Lights, S05 E02, an episode to which I cannot link easily. But you people who watched that show: you know what I'm talking about, and I took it as a vote of confidence.
Does it go without saying that the ride back to the hotel was soul-destroying, and that once we were there it was nearly mid-afternoon, and after we'd had just enough time to freshen up and attempt to print boarding passes using the hotel's Pliocene-era computer, we had to turn around and get on two more buses to return to the frame shop, and that was also lousy? And before we hit the frame shop, we walked pretty far out of our way to try Beligian fries (Jeff's holy grail) that were, as usual, not everything they should have been?
It does go without saying any of that? Good. Let's consider ourselves at the frame shop. It's 5:15.
I was flustered and sweaty from our mile of sprint-walking in the afternoon heat. Luckily Brian wasn't there yet. I positioned myself beneath the Sherman Gallery's ceiling air conditioning outlet and fanned myself like crazy with a pamphlet. I was happy to meet Mike, my gallery worker and email pen pal for over a month, who came out with the painting, beautifully framed and wrapped in plastic. He had done such a speedy, great job with it, and again this cost me hundreds of dollars less than if I'd gone to the shop's many competitors. Check out these guys if you need to frame something in L.A. I took a photo and enjoyed a few final moments with my--soon to be Brian's--painting.
Brian appeared at around 5:30 in his SUV. I'd made sure that he had a vehicle big enough to transport the painting. It was wonderful to finally meet the man with whom I had exchanged nearly 300 emails (no joke) during the course of this project.
Brian took us out to dinner at Fig restaurant in Santa Monica. Fig is a young, hip place that--let's all say it together (especially you, Caroline)--Jeff had researched on the internet. Birthday boy had the beet risotto...
...which he loved, and our pal Brian...
(hi Brian)
...enjoyed a nice-looking plate of fish (halibut?).
The gentlemen did not take any photos of me, probably because I was a blur of tornado-like eating action. That was the best chopped salad of all time.
Unfortunately, Fig was packed and very loud, so we almost had to shout our conversation. But we still had fun talking with Brian about his upcoming wedding, the house he and Katherine had recently purchased in Colorado Springs, and our misadventures on Match.com, where we had all eventually found love.
Brian was supportive and enthusiastic as I completed this painting--I couldn't have asked for a better client. I'm lucky that he had discovered my work while searching online for portrait artists last year. He is also a true romantic and obviously in love with Katherine. I wished I could have met her in person, too, because she sounds amazing! Brian told me my painting was phenomenal, and he knew she would love it. He dropped us off at our hotel--what luxury to be in an actual car for a change!--and we wished him a happy wedding and marriage. Brian said, "I hope we'll be even half as happy as you two." D'awww. See what I mean? Great guy.
Mission accomplished, we went to bed early in anticipation of our 4:00 a.m. wake-up time.
That wake-up time came about as quickly as this new paragraph did. We took a speedy cab ride to the airport at 5:00 and were waiting at our gate at 5:20, a new record for us. Repeat: from hotel to gate in 20 minutes. Most of that time was spent curbside where we checked the gun case. This time it contained Jeff's extra shoes, cookie butter, and a bottle of Belgian beer he had purchased at Trader Joe's.
Baggage check man: I'm going to have to open that. What's inside the case?
Jeff: Alcohol, shoes, and peanut butter [It was just easier to call it that.--K].
BCM: [quizzical, smiling look] You don't need to open it. [waves us through]
Jeff: [a minute or two later, to me] It's like they want us to get out!
Me: It's like an apology.
(I will never stop loving the Pac Man-shaped fields Texas. I'm guessing that was Texas, anyway.)
We flew from LAX to Dallas/Ft.Worth to Chicago to Champaign. Nothing much happened on our flights, except for a Dallas passenger whose eye-watering halitosis had a radius of about six feet. As the day wore on, Jeff and I became slap-happy, laughing our heads off over signs like this one.
Jeff: "Caution! Do not trip over tiny hat!"
Me: "Beware of smashed sombrero!" "Extra dangerous if you have no hands or feet!"
Each layover lasted at least a few hours, so by the time we were back home, it was 9:00 p.m. A very long day of travel!
Three joyous cats met us at the door. Each had many needs to meet and many things to tell us. Bun walked around nervously for about an hour before finally settling down, satisfied that we weren't going anywhere else for a while.
That was pretty mean of me to show the painting wrapped in plastic up there, wasn't it? All will be revealed in my next post! Please *like* the heck out of my Facebook watercolor page, and I'll see you soon. :)
On Thursday, our first full day in L.A., we took a bus to Hollywood. The weather was cloudy, misty, and cool. In other words, it was ideal for me.
The bus ride was easily 45 minutes long. I was impressed with the overall condition of the buses: clean and new-seeming, all had digital signs and computer-generated voices that announced upcoming stops. The bus voice that morning was Generic Affectless Male, but as the bus lurched onto Hollywood Boulevard, he perked up. "Now approaching: HOLLYWOOD!!Boulevard and La Brea." "Now approaching: HOLLYWOOD!!Boulevard and Vine." We got a tiny laugh out of it, anyway.
Jeff and I exited the bus and I found myself standing on Sammy Davis Jr.'s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The star was directly across the street from the Pantages Theater, which we had come to see. The Pantages Theater is an art deco movie palace, and its lobby is the setting for my portrait of Brian and Katherine. Their first date was at the theater. YES I CAN paint that theater!
The theater was busy setting up for The Book of Mormon, a musical I would love to see, but we were a couple of weeks early for that. I asked one of the workers at the box office if I could peek inside the lobby, as I had painted a watercolor of it recently, but she said, "Sorry! We can't even get in there ourselves." I figured as much. Too bad, but understandable. I took a few shots around the box office.
The ceiling of the lobby features a chandelier suspended from a complex structure like this one. Just amazing craftsmanship.
Every conceivable surface in the lobby was decorated, and the box office area definitely gave us a taste of that. Speaking of taste, how about some breakfast?
We ate at The Waffle, a place on Sunset Blvd that Jeff had researched. We ordered some waffles and waited at an outdoor table for our food. Which looked like this:
Um, that is a red velvet waffle with cream cheese frosting, and believe me, I annihilated that thing. Jeff had a waffle topped with a brown sugar and pecan concoction that tasted like a liquified sticky bun. The food could not have been tastier. The weather cleared dramatically while we ate.
We walked down the Hollywood Walk of Fame, pointing out stars to each other (including Godzilla)...
...and getting accosted at every turn by bus tour huckster guys.
The above mural decorates one of the buildings on a cross-street. It looks alright from a distance, but when I got close to it the painter in me wanted to improve--is there any way I can say this *without* sounding like a jerk?--just about all the faces and bodies. Especially the noses. I'M SORRY.
This part of Hollywood Blvd was loaded with people dressed up like movie characters and superheroes looking for photo opportunities, including maybe six gone-to-seed Spider-Men trudging about in the noonday sun. While I took photos, Jeff observed a fanfic fantasy: a Johnny Depp Willy Wonka "pointed to the package" of a Matt Smith Dr. Who. He also heard someone call a Catwoman a bitch "but in a friendly way."
We caught a couple of buses en route to our next destination, enduring the requisite, tiresome waits for each one. Then we realized that we had forgotten to see the Breaking Bad art show. We had read about it the week before our trip, and for us this show was unmissable. We hopped off the bus in the vicinity of Beverly Hills, shared an iced tea, and regrouped.
Man-with-a-plan Jeff figured out which buses we'd need to take to get to the art show using his iPhone. It proved indispensible many times during our visit. Yesterday one of my L.A. friends on Facebook said she couldn't believe we managed to use public transportion in this part of the city, describing it as an all-caps BOONDOGGLE. She deserves a Nobel prize for word choice. So thank you and way to go, Jeff, for getting us through the BOONDOGGLE. Let's take another look at Mr. Capable (photo by me, Ms. No-Sense-Of-Direction).
We reached the show by early afternoon. Along the way I snapped a photo of an L.A. business typical of the ones we saw while on buses.
If you study the center of that photo, you'll see a mural that (if you removed the lavender shapes) looks almost exactly like my much-loved Fine Line Design, an art project I did for years with my high school students.
The awesome, often hilarious (and free!) Breaking Bad show was at Gallery 1988 on Melrose. This was a small space that even during a weekday afternoon managed to be filled with young-ish fans. I'm going to post a lot of photos of the artwork now. If you don't watch Breaking Bad, I apologize, and also what's wrong with you?
Lab installation.
A tour-de-force.
DING DING DING! Jeff's favorite.
Too much!
Adorable.
Wow. (Hard to take photos without reflections.)
A watercolor! Ohhh the physical need to paint some BB fan art--it hurt!
Heh! Go Mike!
Masterful.
Oh Jesse. Oh Saul.
I was so glad we turned around and saw this, and so was Jeff. We walked out exhilarated.
And then we had a choice: we could take three or so buses back to the hotel, hang around for an hour, and then take a couple of buses back to the sushi place in Culver City where we had reservations later that night, or we could just go to the sushi place and have a late, late lunch. We opted to do the latter. Bus, bus, walk to the sushi place.
Except the sushi place was closed and wouldn't open for three hours. We were near a small park, a Trader Joe's, a Mexican restaurant, and not much else. We decided to hang around that area until sushi time. We bought a baguette and a jar of cookie butter and had an impomptu picnic under a tree. I've been curious about Trader Joe's cookie butter for months, but the nearest store is in Chicago. I was thrilled to finally try this stuff, and it was a revelation. Imagine the texture of Nutella, but it tastes kind of like gingersnap cookies. Smooth, smooth spreadable cookies. Incredible. We couldn't believe how good it was as we sat on the roots of a big tree, ripping off pieces of bread, plunging them into the cookie butter, and watching the world go by. We were having a summah, in the words of Howard Kremer (a necessary reference I doubt people will recognize, but it's so right on).
Later on we loitered over drinks and guacamole at the Mexican restaurant, wandered around the area finding nothing to do, and called Mom to see how the cats were doing. (They were just fine.)
The expensive sushi experience at K-Zo was "EH, but fun" as I wrote in my little notebook. We went omakase that night, which is where you ask the sushi chef to make whatever he wants, and you eat it until you're full. Our chef was a sweet young man who served us barracuda, prawns, fatty tuna, halibut, crab, and salmon, among other things. Insipired by watching Anthony Bourdain eat it many times on his show and proclaim it a miracle food that tastes like the sea and, like, GOD, we tried uni (sea urchin roe but kind of not, look it up) for the first time.
(ff to :47 to see what I'm talking about.)
Our uni tasted like the sea, all right, but in a way that we can only describe as troubling. And at $10 each for essentially one bite of uni, it was insanely troubling. Looking back on the sushi experience, it was special and an adventure, but oh man, another Five Guys burger would have been twice as satsifying for a fraction of the price.
The chilly breeze (accomanied by a strong and inexplicable stank that smelled like a pig farm) coming off the unseen but nearby ocean made us shiver. We waited an unprecedented amount of time for the first of two buses back to the hotel, where we were more than ready to collapse into bed.
Champaign's Willard airport is not exactly a bustling travel hub, and its surrounding countryside is so perfectly flat that I'd imagine a pilot could land a plane anywhere within a 75-mile radius of the airport with no problems. Nearly all of Willard's flights are half-hour commutes to and from Chicago. Our plane took off on Wednesday morning at the same time that the "kids may enter the building" bell rang on the first day of school at Unity High School, where I used to teach. Even though over two years have passed since I was a teacher, I still keep track of this kind of thing. As our plane rose into the sky, I was able to see Unity, a beehive of activity, and I felt profoundly free.
Before we knew it, we were in Chicago. Our flight from O'Hare to LAX was uneventful, and after we passed the Mississippi River, I managed to sleep a little. I woke up and looked out at the amazing southwestern landscape peeking through the clouds. This eventually morphed into the massive sprawl of Los Angeles: its warehouses, neighborhoods, rooftops, and main arteries were a bland shade of greige. "I feel like the Joads," Jeff joked. No bumpkin, Jeff had visited L.A. something like twenty times for work, and it was his least favorite west coast travel destination. I was willing to give it a chance, but from my window seat I wondered where the trees were and knew my pale skin was in deep trouble. A stoned-sounding female voice in my head told me, "This is El Ay," and from that moment on this song plagued me.
I don't have a problem with Sheryl Crow. She has a few songs that I like, and she's faced some terrifying health issues with aplomb. But I do have a problem with her breakthrough hit All I Wanna Do. Here's why:
The cloying strings/synths that begin the song seem to sigh "aww Sheryl" in an obsequious way that seems old-timey to me.
Beyond the poor grammar, the "this ain't no" spoken section that also begins the song is unoriginal (Talking Heads did it better), and it clashes with her "apropos of nothing" line: who says "ain't" and "apropos" in the same breath?
My classes listened to the radio in the mid-90s when this song was popular. It put my teeth on edge when I'd hear 15 year-old girls softly singing along to this drunk slacker manifesto, especially the line "I like a good beer buzz early in the morning" because some of them really seemed to mean it. I also hated the repeated references to bottles of Bud.
So that song was in my head for most of the trip. It was just the worst.
LAX was smaller than I thought it would be, and I was prepared to spend a nervous hour at the baggage carousel waiting for my painting in a gun case to arrive, and then what if it had been lost? Then what would we do? Luckily it was the first item to hit the carousel, and we were out of there in no time.
Determined to use public transportation while we were in Los Angeles, we took a bus to another bus to a sort of bus depot about a half mile from our hotel (the Four Points Sheraton) in Culver City. A passenger on one of the buses saw our gun case and asked what kind of musical instrument was inside. Jeff got a kick out of that: in the Midwest we're hunters/murderers, and in L.A. we're musicians.
The above map shows the three spots in L.A. that we needed to visit that day: the airport, Culver City, and Marina del Ray (home of the frame shop). And look at how convenient that cluster of blue circles seems: the hotel is just up the street from the airport, and the frame shop was a mere hop, skip, and a jump to the west.
Except no.
That map came with no mileage legend probably because Los Angeles doesn't want its visitors to become clinically depressed. Jeff knew that the city was enormous, but I had no idea. L.A. is a behemoth of a city that reminded me of the final frames of this.
Miles and miles separated my map's cluster of blue circles, and for the next 72 hours Jeff and I were at the mercy of the L.A. Metropolitan Transit Authority's buses. Three different bus systems criss-crossed the areas we explored, none of which shared universal metro cards.
I consider the photo below to be the signature image of our little vacation:
The following film illustrates how we spent the bulk of our time out west. Disclaimer: the film makes it seem like L.A. is crawling with buses that magically appear every few seconds. This is untrue. If you want to experience what it's really like out there, hit pause after each bus and wait 30 minutes before you hit play again. It would also help if during those 30 minutes you stood outside under direct sunlight, because that way you'll get an even better taste of L.A.
On a positive note, I found the people of Los Angeles, including (and especially) the people on buses, to be altogther endearing. I saw examples of kindness on virtually every ride: new mothers were helped with strollers, strangers talked to each other about books, a rider called out "that was nice of you" when the bus driver pulled over to pick up someone who was late to the bus stop, etc. I saw people complaining to each other when passengers didn't say thank you. All races and lifestyles mixed peacefully. It was a joy to behold.
High, aging hippies were uniquely charming. One man noticed a zebra on a TV monitor playing some kind of bus news program. He pointed at it and chuckled knowingly, "Huh huh!...zebra." Another dude blatantly smoked marijuana at a bus stop and offered a hit to a man in a wheelchair. Later on the bus, he sat beside a similarly wasted woman, and I couldn't help overhearing this exchange:
Man: Wanna see something funny?
Woman: Yeah.
Man: [opens backpack, finds beaten-up spiral notebook, flips through it until he lands on a picture torn from an animal calendar that looks almost exactly like this:
Woman: [cracks up]
Man: [cracks up] I just thought that was funny!
We eventually made our way to the Sherman Gallery and dropped off my painting to Andy, a young, capable-seeming man who was a colleague of Mike, my main email contact for the shop (it was his day off). The shop was busy but had a casual, laid-back vibe that was typical of everywhere we went in L.A. Relieved that the painting was safe at the framers, we did what you're supposed to do when you arrive in Los Angeles.
We shared an In-N-Out burger and some "animal style" fries. The burger was like a Big Mac if the people who make Big Macs actually tried, and the fries were topped with thousand island dressing and minced, grilled onions. I wasn't a big fan of the fries, which were not fresh from the fryer, but the half-burger hit the spot. We had noticed a Five Guys burger place near our hotel, so we decided to hit that on the way back and share another burger.
We walked to Venice Beach (a long, long walk directly into the sun that left me with a burn on my chest and shoulders even though I used sunscreen). The beach was beautiful, though. We walked barefoot on the sand, and I shrieked with delight when the waves hit my toes.
We strolled along a couple of blocks of Venice Beach's touristy shops that sold sunglasses, hats, junk food, and medical marijuana. We did not buy any pot, as we do not do drugs, but I found some great $10 sunglasses to replace the ones I broke earlier this summer. For one brief, shining moment, All I Wanna Do left my mind and was replaced with this song, a favorite of mine for twenty years.
Exhausted after our day of travel, we broke down and took a cab back to the hotel. Our driver played international smooth jazz hits, such as Julio Inglesias' take on My Way and Sade's Smooth Operator. Along the way I enjoyed the different kinds of palm trees, including my favorites, the bushy ones (below):
They remind me of the guy on the right:
Second hamburger time!
Above: a Five Guys cheeseburger styled by Jeff. Simply put, it wiped the floor with In-N-Out. We shared it, and it was the best fast food burger I've ever had, made even better because I was exhausted and starving. It haunts us. I can hardly bear to look at the photo or talk about the experience today. This lovely soul does a much better job than I could.
So that concludes my long-winded account of our first day in L.A. Thanks for reading--more to come!
And if you've read this far, I'd like to ask you to do me a favor: please *like* my Facebook art page. I tried my best to make it likeable. In the photos section you'll see lots of paintings, sketches, photos from art shows, and random observations from me. Click here!
Over the past few months I've written vague sentences describing my so-called monster commission--the largest, most complex watercolor I've ever painted. I spent the bulk of the summer working on it and almost a year planning this 35"x36" painting. Since the end product was meant to be a surprise wedding present from a groom to his bride, I couldn't blog, tweet, or Facebook about it at all (sorry for using Facebook as a verb). And let me tell you, this gag rule has been killing me.
Well, Brian and Katherine are getting married today, and now I can finally write about it! But I thought it might be fun to save the big reveal until the end of this series of posts about Los Angeles. You see, that's where the wedding is taking place.
During the planning process for this painting, Brian said that he wanted to be able to open a box and take out a painting that was ready to hang. He didn't want to mess around with framing the watercolor himself, as that's not really his thing, and he wanted my input. Fair enough. I've had no problems framing my own work, and I figured that I could do this myself and ship it to Brian.
(Note: the next four paragraphs involve framing minutiae and will probably bore you. Feel free to skip.)
Except since the watercolor was oversized, I needed to special-order a jumbo mat to go around it, and I couldn't find a place that sold those one at a time. They were only available in bulk. The online place where I buy my nicer frames said that it would cost $180 to ship an assembled frame to me--again, the oversized nature of the project was making things expensive. Maybe I could save money by having someone in Champaign-Urbana frame it...? Prices ranged from $400 to $600.
Then to ship this monster to Los Angeles, safely packed by professionals and insured, I'd have to pay an additional $500+. And money was indeed an object in this case, as it was coming out of my profits from the commission. I had estimated paying around $500, not over $1000.
I asked my friends and acquaintences on Facebook to see if anyone might be headed to California during July or August--I came close, but no dice.
What if I rolled the painting in a tube and shipped it to a framer in Los Angeles? That seemed smart! Brian helped me search, and after dealing with framers who were more than happy to frame it for low, low prices such as $1,200, we finally found a framer (with excellent reviews) in Marina del Ray who could do it for $275. However, this tube-shipping idea was not going to be cheap, either, running around $150. And honestly, I didn't feel all that great about putting this irreplaceable painting in a tube, hoping that it reached its destination safely, paying some unknown framer to do the job without seeing it myself, and so on.
Jeff had an idea: what if we flew the painting to L.A. ourselves and took it to the framer personally? Earlier this year, he used his credit-card-points-accumulating-mojo to get us to Paris for (essentially) free, and we still had a lot more points waiting to be used. So after a tense hour or so looking for flights and hotels, that's what we ended up doing. We traveled to L.A. ten days before the wedding, delivered the painting to the framer, stayed in town for a couple of days while the painting was framed, and finally met Brian and gave him his painting. And by using points to pay for flights and our hotel, we did so for sorta-free, and happily Jeff's 45th birthday coincided with this trip.
Above: a dubious Bun hates to hear zipper sounds and watch carry-ons being packed. My parents generously offered to cat sit while we were gone last week. Jeff would like to point out that our carry-ons are small: mine holds 2.5 Buns and Jeff's holds 1 Bun.
My brother Ryan travels to China a lot for work, and sometimes he takes golf clubs with him in a padded gun case. He kindly let us borrow the case to provide a further layer of protection for the painting. The tube (4" diameter, 40" long) fit inside the case perfectly.
And I'm no gun person, but there was something so completely badass about carrying that case through airports. We were fully prepared to be thrown to the ground the second we set foot in our local airport, but nobody batted an eye. "Is that a gun?" the woman working the bag-check desk at American Airlines asked us casually.
"No, it's a painting!" we said giddily. We checked the case and were on our way to Los Angeles.
