Alizarine

Paris Part 6

Wednesday was Louvreday! We were excited to return to the museum Jeff had seen twice and I had seen once before, but after walking in the rain all day Tuesday, Jeff had developed a sore throat, not a good sign. He was determined to enjoy the day, and we took the Metro to the museum.

Jeff's sore throat made me think about the thousands of disease-spreading opportunities in the Metro system. I have germophobic friends who would shudder at the thought of us holding onto Metro poles, pushing buttons, opening doors, using escalators and walking up stairs while grabbing handrails, and so on, and then tearing baguettes apart with our bare hands and eating them on the street without even bothering to wash our hands first. What can I say? I probably have hepatitis now.

The Louvre, finally open after three days, was an instant mob scene, and we had made a point to get an early start. We had also read about some secret side entrances, found one, and avoided the line inside the pyramid.

If you've never been to the Louvre, its three multi-floor buildings/palaces are arranged in a U shape around the pyramid entrance. Each building could keep an art lover occupied for an entire day, and it's not like there's much "filler" going on. But here are the things that make the Louvre daunting.

• 15,000 visitors per day = crowd fatigue
• 652,300 square feet = foot fatigue
• 35,000 works of art = eye fatigue

With a starting-to-be-sick Jeff in tow, I made sure we hit the biggies, and this was enough to keep us busy for two or three hours (lost track). Highlights of the highlights:

The Nike of Samothrace (gorgeous photo by Jeff), my favorite Greek sculpture. It's at the top of a huge staircase. When I encountered it for the first time years ago, I approached it through a side door, and while I still cried when I saw it, talk about anticlimactic. I wanted the Nike from Funny Face!

So that's what we got this time. Bonus points to me for wearing red in the Louvre.

I was also reaquainted with Dying Slave by Michelangelo, which is the sexiest thing in the Louvre if you ask me, and Jeff and I don't think he's dying.

The Mona Lisa was in a different room than I had remembered, and she was busy being Bono.

Meanwhile other Leonardos went virtually unnoticed, such as La Belle Ferroniere.

She is soooo jealous of the Bono.

It is always a thrill to see this beautifully-painted, extra vertebrae-having Ingres:

I'd love to paint a portrait this beautifully direct (Ingres' Portrait of Louis-Francois Bertin):

One massive room contained two mural-sized art history favorites...

Eugene Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus. His kingdom is under attack and he is about to drink poison while his possessions are destroyed (Jeff: "that white horse is like, I want no part of this"), and...

...The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault. Boating disaster, dead bodies, life raft, tiny rescue ship on the horizon incredible composition. And because we were in France and this post needs more nudity...

...it's Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People.

My main man Akhenaten (compulsory visit must be made to any Egyptian exhibit containing him) and his hot wife Nefertiti:

One ancient Egyptian scultpure I had missed the first time around was Seated Scribe, and I was so happy to see him (surprisingly small; I thought he was life-sized).

We got turned around and passed a row of identical Egyptian baboons a few times...

...all of whom seemed to be saying...

I am obviously leaving out so, so many others, and I feel bad about it, but how can you possibly hope to cover the Louvre in a blog post? How? These were the ones that amused us that day. We had covered two of the three buildings, Jeff was thirsty, and the hoardes of people were getting to us. Feeling like we'd had a good-enough dose of the Louvre, we decided to skip the third building. Again, we'd already seen it, and while I missed the Vermeers and Rembrandts, something about taking off gave me a playing-hooky kind of feeling.

Our vacation! We make the rules!

Plus we were hungry. Jeff led us to La Regalade Saint Honore, a small, slightly more upscale place than the previous day's restaurant. He found it on Paris By Mouth. While we waited for our table, we looked inside Gosselin, the patisserie next door, and I took many photos of their gorgeous cakes (I'm obsessed with these four)...

...and many other treats. Such as:

...and...

I was so blinded by the beauty of the green figs that I'm only just now noticing the little sign that says "DIVORCE." What kind of sweet thing calls itself Divorce?

At La Regalade, we were seated at the table by the left window, great for people-watching. Two waitresses who could switch from French to English *like that* took good care of us, smiling when they changed our spotless plates. The lunch menu was in French:

Excuse me, you printed your menu in Comic Sans?! Suddenly this place was slightly less intimidating.

We were offered a giant amuse bouche in the form of some pickles and chicken terrine, which we spread on baguette slices. It reminded me of something Mom used to make when I was a teenager, and I ate it for breakfast many mornings before school. Tasty and oddly familiar.

We threw caution to the wind and ordered things containing words we thought we recognized. Me: tartlette, supreme, chocolate/caramel/praline/Toblerone. Jeff: coquilles, supreme, souffle chaud a Grand-Marnier. We didn't realize we had ordered identical plats, as I had vascillated before deciding, but all in all it was fun to order this way. Trust the chef!

Jeff received on-the-shell scallops with herbs and Parmesan (he loved them).

My "tartlette" consisted of a flaky rectangular crust topped with an olive/tomato tapenade. On top of that was beautifully sliced, rare salmon, lightly dressed greens, and a parmesan crisp. It couldn't have been more delicious. Trust!

Oh my. This was our main course. Chicken breast wrapped around foie gras with gnocchi, mushrooms, and asparagus in a cream sauce. The gnocchi were extraordinarily delicate little pillows, the sauce was positively voluptuous, and the vegetables perfectly cooked. The portions were exactly the right size, too.

I don't think I'll ever get over this photo. That chocolate thing? That chocolate thing was mine: caramel pudding topped with a milk chocolate layer (ganache?). Inside: some kind of praline cookie and triangles of Toblerone. And look at Jeff's darling, perfect souffle, the first he'd ever eaten. I want to go back to there!

 

And do you know what we did next? We hit the patisserie next door and got more sweets (a chocolate tartlette for me, and a Paris brest for Jeff), which we ate while sitting beside a sunny Tuileries fountain. I was merely doing research--what were their tart crusts like? And Jeff wanted to eat a brest.

Jeff also wanted me to see the Orangerie, a small jewel box of a museum that is home to eight of Monet's large-format water lily paintings. I had seen these (or at least some like these) in Chicago years ago, so I knew what it was like to stand in front of them, but the Orangerie has two oval-shaped rooms built especially for them. One showed the lilies at sunrise, and the other showed them at dusk.

Up close, the paintings approached pure abstraction, with their complex, luminous surfaces composed of many colors scumbled on top of each other. If you go to Paris, you simply must see them.

I'm so crazy about that turquoise section.

Jeff and I have an ugly gray wall on the west side of our house, and the water lilies inspired us to possibly paint a similar mural on it. I think I might--might!--be able to pull that off.

The Orangerie houses many other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist second-stringers, but talk about having a hard act to follow! We toured the other galleries, but I was so blown away by the Monets that I can't remember much about them.

After another leisurely walk through the gardens, we went home. The apartment was becoming home to us! We hit a pharmacy near our building, where Jeff got some French cold medicine.

Later that night, in a snacky mood, we walked up Rue Moufettard in search of crepes. I have never been all that impressed with crepes, especially when you fold them into cones and wrap them in sweaty pieces of paper. They're useful as Nutella delivery devices, and I like watching people make them, but for the most part I found that night's crepes to be tasteless and rubbery.

Ohh, Paris spoiled us so thoroughly. Just looking at that photo makes me want to eat about 25 of them now.

Thanks for reading--only one or two more! You can find the rest of our trip to Paris using these links. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Paris Part 1

For those of you who have been on pins and needles over the past two weeks, wondering how my Jacksonville show went, it was terrific. My best show so far! I wanted to post about it right after it happened, but I had a cartoon to make followed by a week in Paris, and I didn't have time to add blogging into the mix. But it will happen after this Paris series is over.

So! Paris! How about that?

Jeff and I (mostly Jeff) planned this trip for almost a year. He used his internet-fu to find a modern, inexpensive apartment and credit card frequent flyer mileage-fu to ensure that our flights were free. A former project manager, Jeff figured out a daily plan of action designed to pair places we wanted to visit with nearby, incredible food. I was happy to let him take over because (a) he does it so well, and (b) preparing for two one-person shows in nine months was kind of overwhelming for me. Jeff has helpful travel advice that he will either dispense throughout my posts or write as a stand-alone guest blog. He was sick during the last third of our trip, and he still is, and right now he wants to curl up on the couch and watch Lonesome Dove, and who can blame him?

Both of us had visited Paris before with other people. Jeff was in the process of breaking up with his person, and I had broken up with my person many months before the trip, but tickets had already been purchased, and how often does one get the opportunity to see Paris, anyway? Jeff spent a cold, drizzly week in November walking around by himself during a Metro strike, and I endured blasts of record June heat sandwiched between dutiful visits to every art museum in the city, plus the most important churches and a side-trip to Chartres. All that slogging around meant nonstop McDonald's haute cuisine eaten on the run for me, so I left with no real idea of what French food could truly be, and Jeff's person...let's just say she was a lot more disciplined than some bloggers you might know.

Oh hi.

This time Jeff and I employed a two-pronged plan of attack for Paris. Prong one: romance. Prong two: pleasure. Notice how neither prong involves crying, sweating, angst, boredom, fast food, forced marches, shivering, ennui, disgust, or resentment--I'm telling you, it's hard to have a good vacation with any of those in the mix.

So this time if it was mind-crushingly educational and we had already seen it, we usually skipped it. If someplace fun was a drag years ago, we aimed to right that wrong. Our rose-colored glasses were still firmly on, thank you very much, and we were set to have some damned fun in Paris for a change.

My parents, Melissa, and Jeff's folks kindly offered to watch Bun, Pache, and Q while we were away. Mom and Dad did most of the heavy lifting in that regard as they fed, watered, and medicated the cats (as per my ridiculous three page document's instructions) for five days. I'm so thankful for everyone's help--I don't think I could have boarded Bun at the vet's with a clear conscience. The cats were happy to see us when we returned home last night, and as I type this, Bun is sleeping at my side. We missed them every day we were gone.

Here we are, all smiles and energy at the very beginning of our trip. We flew out of the Champaign airport to O'Hare at around noon last Friday, and from there we traveled to Paris, arriving on Saturday morning.

We packed lightly: Jeff had a backpack and I had a smallish wheeled carry-on and a medium-ish purse. In fact, we packed so lightly that airport officials gave us looks of disbelief on two separate occasions. A Frenchman called us James Bond and Mata Hari--that's right, we pack like spies. I managed to cram four black dresses, extra shoes, and a second coat in my carry on, and I pruned my toiletries down to the bare essentials (tampons had to be included because of course they did).

The eight-hour flight to Paris was tough for me. Jeff fell asleep almost immediately after our kinda-supper. He chose the chicken, and I chose the pasta, but I should have chosen the chicken. A couple of hours later I started to get some low-level "what if it's food poisoning?" feelings. You know the ones. They're sweaty and you feel trapped in your window seat because your darling husband is sound asleep beside you and you can't concentrate on your book and your Kindle's little video game (Bubble Buster, five stars) is making you seasick and you start to think about the best way to throw up in an airplane bathroom and how horrifying that would be and the plane is dark now except for the movie and ugh if it's food poisoning that means you'll be violently ill four or five times before it's all over...what's your only option?

Mind control. Meditation. Go to your happy place and breathe and count. Failing that, watch what's playing on the entertainment screen way over there to your left and try to understand the plot without the aid of your headphones. The movie is a Pixar-wannabe animated feature called Rio and it seems to be about a blue parrot, and there's all kinds of rapid-cut flying sequences involving thousands of birds spiraling down into jungle vortexes and singing a lot...

 

...and best not to watch that anymore so let's meditate. Or maybe watch the moon move across the sky. Spend a couple of hours doing that before you feel like maybe you are out of the food poisoning woods.

We arrived without incident in Paris not too long after sunrise. Charles de Gaulle Airport was alive with a writhing mass of people hell-bent on spending Easter somewhere other than Paris. The intimidatingly long lines gave us no hope for an easy departure a week later, and is it just me or has CDG changed from the futuristic, roomy playground made famous by U2's Beautiful Day video (total dick move at 1:14)...

 

...to a baggage-ridden, concrete hellscape from which there is no escape?

Luckily, we found the right train that would speed us toward our apartment in the 5th arrondissement, a.k.a. the Latin Quarter. I was wearing the coat I wore in Spain--based on weather forecasts (highs in the 50s, lows in the 40s), light wool seemed like my best bet. Except it was red, and every "what to wear in Paris" website suggested that dark neutrals were the way to go. A couple seemed to think that red was borderline acceptable, but one should be prepared to stand out (indeed, this was the case). A few days before we left, I floated the idea of going rogue/rouge on Facebook and received 48 "likes," but by then my mind was already made up. I was wearing red.

Exact shade: effyou red.

We emerged from the appropriate Metro station and boom, we were in Paris, Luxembourg Gardens area. We grabbed an Eric Kayser baguette, rolled our spy luggage down long streets and through a medium-sized open market where some Italian guys applauded my coat, going, "Bella, red!" Ahh, affirmation.

Our apartment was at the top of a building that housed a library on its ground floor. After huffing and puffing our way up 100 spiral steps--Jeff counted--we arrived on time to meet Isabelle, our landlady. Hip, friendly, and speaking impeccable English, she showed us around the tiny but modern and cleverly designed studio apartment (approximately 16 square meters). It included a living area with a pull-out bed, a wee kitchenette, and a bathroom. New appliances. The apartment was spotless and just what we were looking for. A link to it is here. If any of you are interested in renting this space, let me know, and I will pass your info on to Isabelle. You can rent it directly from her if you like.

Everything had a function, and there was no wasted space. Free wi-fi! The ceiling slanted sharply down near the windows, which were flung open to reveal this view to the left...

...and this view to the right.

We were happy, exhausted, and ready to explore Paris.

To be continued!

In case you missed them, here are the other installments. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.

Slipstream

Here's a new addition to my series of Burano buildings reflected in water. Coming up with titles for paintings like this is difficult, and I enjoy bouncing ideas off Jeff. This one stumped us for a long time, and as I type this Jeff is still playing around with words like turbulence. But as of 5:28 pm CST, I'm calling it Slipstream. It's a word I rarely have the opportunity to use but have liked for 18 years thanks to its inclusion in this song (at around 2:35), which is currently the best thing about U2's set list this summer.

 

Below: this is what was going on above the head of the little man who was awkwardly grooving.

 

OK, enough of that stuff. Here's the painting again, in case you've forgotten what it looks like.

If you look at this upside down, you can see a lineup of half a dozen homes. It's 21"x25", and it took me six days to paint. Slipstream also features a boat with a snazzy gold insignia. My sister Emily has a special term for what the boat is doing in the picture: creeping. This boat is a creeper.

Some of the colors here are bright, but most are muted, especially compared with those of my last painting. For some reason these colors reminded me of those you might find in a J. Crew catalog, colors with names like "creamery" and "sap." Most of the upper-right quadrant is in shadow. I painted that entire area a flat blue-gray before adding the other colors and details, and doing so helped establish that section as darker and cooler than the rest.

I painted the lower-left section, where the sky is reflected on the water, in about five minutes. I flooded the space with clear water and dropped in lots of diluted turquoise paint. This is the only way I know how to produce a large flat wash that's free of streaks. The paper went into shock and wanted to buckle, so I had to keep my eye on the paint for a while to keep it from pooling. It took over a half hour (or maybe closer to an hour?) before the paper calmed down and was flat again.

When I started this painting, I didn't think I would fall in love with it as much as I have. I can't wait to see it matted, framed, under (plexi)glass, and up on a wall.

PS Can you find the Italian flag somewhere in the water? It's not an exact Italian flag, but it's pretty close.

Popular Searches

Today I've decided to give the people what they want: search results. Listed below are items that people have tried to find on this blog recently but failed. Some of them make me feel guilty: I should have a carbonara recipe on here by now, damn it! Some of them are nobody's business. And some are just strange and random. Hopefully this post will answer some of your nagging questions about me.

1. Tampax. Somebody keeps searching--many, many times!--for information about Tampax on this blog. I have no idea why. To the best of my knowledge, I have never mentioned tampons at all on Alizarine...wait. One time Jeff and I did blogs about packing for a trip to Italy, and I complained about sacrificing valuable carry-on real estate for a week's-worth of tampons. What a pain in the ass, am I right, ladies? But I'm not some kind of spokeswoman for Tampax. If you want to know about Tampax, please go here.

EDIT: One of my friends has suggested that the post this Tampax person is looking for is I Was Girl X, where I discussed sex education and periods. I don't think I mentioned Tampax, though. It was now-extinct Modess pads.

2. Panda Cupcakes. People come here 30 times a week to read about panda cupcakes, which we made a year and a half ago. I assume they find my recipe and go away happy and/or disturbed, so this is not a failed-search item. I included it here because it's my #1 traffic source from search engines, and it blows my mind that people care so much about making panda cupcakes.

3. Expectation. I don't know what this search means. Expectation about what? If you are the one who keeps typing "expectation" in my search box over there -->, please leave a comment and tell me what you want! In the meantime, please enjoy this Gustave Klimt painting called The Tree of Life. The very cool triangle woman on the left is called Expectation, so hopefully this will help you in your search.

4. Carbonara. I made it for lunch a couple of months ago following this recipe from Giada di Laurentiis, except I substituted chorizo for the usual bacon/pancetta (was desperate). It was pretty good but not blog-worthy. I do want to make a proper spaghetti carbonara for Jeff in the future, though, in order to re-create the classic scene from the movie Heartburn where Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep eat spaghetti carbonara in bed (at around :44 below).

 

5. Wife. Um, yeah, I'm a wife now.

6. What color are Bono's eyes? Blue. With tiny light blue flavor crystals.

And now, here's the one you've all been waiting for, if my search box is to be believed...

7. Infertile. Months ago, one of you searched for this. When you type something in my search box, the searched-for word becomes a semi-permanent part of the list of other words people typed in. The more a word is searched for, the larger it appears in relation to the other words. For example, "cake" is my most popular search right now, so it's a lot bigger than the rest of the words. Here's what I think happened with "infertile." It's a juicy, juicy word, isn't it, even juicier than "cake." Other readers saw "infertile" with the rest of the searched-for words, clicked on it, and made it bigger each time. That caused more people to notice it, and they clicked on it some more. It got to the point where over on the right side of my blog you'd see my face, a few links to recent posts, and followed by a huge, screaming

INFERTILE.

Which is depressing! I'm a lot of things, but is "infertile" really chief among them, you guys? I hope not! I was so annoyed by looking at this giant word every day that I blocked "infertile" from appearing in my list of popular searches. You could still search for it, but it wouldn't appear on the list anymore. But every week without fail since then, at least one of you searches for "infertile" and its good buddy "infertility." And the reason you couldn't find any stories about it was because I didn't want to write about it.

But your whining has been heard. HERE'S THE STORY.

[deep breath]

Almost 20 years ago, Jeff had a vasectomy. Amy, his first wife, had health complications following the birth of their daughter Melissa, and in order to protect Amy from a potentially dangerous second pregnancy, Jeff had a vasectomy. They divorced when Melissa was in her early teens, Jeff married Nicole (who had three children of her own), she sadly died from cancer, and eventually Jeff married me.

I was almost 39 when I met Jeff, and I wanted to have a baby. Tick tock tick tock, went my uterus. After our wonderful first date, I was floating on air and beginning to imagine our bookish, brown-eyed, lushy-eyebrowed future child. Twenty-four hours later, Jeff called me and told me the vasectomy news, which he said was difficult for him to deliver, but he was serious about me and wanted me to know before things went any further. I thanked him for telling me something that would've been a dealbreaker to so many women my age.

After I hung up the phone, I cried on the couch for about an hour. I called two ex-boyfriends, and they calmed me down, especially Jeff's predecessor (and unlikely Jeff enthusiast) James. He said this about a woman he knew in a similar situation: "She just went ahead and had a genius baby." That is, she browsed through anonymous genius sperm donors, picked one, and nine months later: genius baby. That became a sort of Plan B mantra for me over the following months: "I can always have a genius baby." It would be just that easy.

IF Jeff and I were even going to work out, that is! I had about a week (the days surrounding Christmas) to think about how I felt before our second date. I kept coming back to the fact that we seemed to click in a way that felt absolutely right to me. I had spent years searching for this man. Even then, I knew he was The One.

We quickly fell in love. We quickly got engaged. We quickly got married. Marrying Jeff was the best decision I have ever made. It wasn't even much of a decision. It was utterly obvious, even with the vasectomy problem. Every once in a while during the first year that I knew Jeff, I would mourn the fact that I couldn't have his child. As our love grew, I decided that I didn't want to have a random genius child. I wanted Jeff's child, no exceptions. I dug deep and also realized that I didn't want to adopt, either. Right or wrong (and I know several adoptive mothers who disapprove of my decision, so join the club), I wanted Jeff's baby or no baby. I chose my husband over a child, basically after one date, and I have no regrets.

Sometimes I find myself reminising about The Woman I Could Have Been (watch this later; it's awesome).

 

That woman would not have been able to quit her job and devote all of her time to painting. That woman would not paint at all--at least not the kinds of pictures I feel the need to produce. That woman would spend her newlywed years stressing out over hormone injections, sitting in hospital waiting rooms, and obsessing over a theoretical being who is not Jeff. That woman's body would never be the same and her life would be turned upside down for good, and so would the life of the man she loves.

I didn't want to be that woman.

Also, what about the very real possibility that our dream baby might turn out to be an asshole? Or even worse, two assholes?

 

I love our life. Honestly, when we walk hand-in-hand beside the baseball diamond a block away, all I can think is, "I am so glad I don't have to sit with these parents watching those kids play ball." I love how quiet our house is. I love being able to read anytime I please. I love cooking whatever Jeff and I want and not having to cater to somebody's oddball allergy or childish preference. I love going to the movies and traveling with Jeff. I love painting all day and not having to teach everybody else's children how to do it anymore. If loving these things makes me a bad, selfish person, I guess I'm a bad, selfish person. But I am also a blissfully happy, bad, selfish person. And it's my choice.

So there's your information about infertility.

8. "my cookies crust is burnt but not baked entirely." [sic] Maybe you should turn your oven down to something more like 350 when you bake them next time. 

Home for Lunch

...At least that is its tentative title. I can't quite figure out what to call this new painting (want to help?). It's an 18"x24" watercolor of Burano, and I loved the variety of colors I was able to work with: basically the entire spectrum plus some neutrals. It's not often that you get the opportunity to put hot pink next to blazing orange in a realistic landscape, and the colorful boat reminded me of something Vincent Van Gogh would enjoy. I'm pretty sure Burano would have sent him into a painting frenzy.

I'm trying to incorporate Vincent or Van Gogh into the title, as a matter of fact and am having problems. Here's an unrelated idea that Jeff shot down because it was obtuse: Light and Variable. Because you can see a breeze in that striped curtain/door...? Eh, I've just always liked the idea of light and variable winds.

Anyway, was this ever time-consuming! Three weeks. There was so much fiddling. Those awnings just had to be striped. The walkway just had to be tiled. The plaster walls just had to be textured. The water just had to have that soft-edged, shimmering quality. Those ubiquitous shutters again...argh. I didn't mind painting all of those things--I love the challenge of pattern and texture--but it seemed like whole hours would pass and all I had painted was a couple of square inches, and the entire painting was like that.

At the end of each painting day, when I'd normally take a photo of my progress, I was so tired of the picture that all I wanted to do was watch the juvie* Decorah eagles play in their nest. Have you seen them lately? They're about to fledge! The juvies are currently hopping around from branch to branch, gaining strength before they take their first flights. Sometimes they remind me of Joshua Tree-era U2 as they perch on the cottonwood tree's limbs, often dead serious and often facing in different directions.

 

* Juvie is my favorite word to describe anything young, small, and/or cute these days, e.g.: "Aww, look at juvie U2 up there!"

I Wish I Knew How To Quit U2

Q: Where are U2 today? (U2 = plural noun in my opinion.)

A: If you have no idea that U2 are in Mexico City today, you probably do not visit @U2, the award-winning website that employs me as a cartoonist (for free; don't get too excited).

@U2 is pretty much the last word in U2 news and information, and I created its monthly...I guess you could call them cartoons. This feature is called "Achtoon Baby," a name I kind of hate, but I really had no say in the matter as I was taking over for its creator when I got the job.

Nearly every A.B. image was a hand-painted, realistic watercolor like the ones you see above.  So they're not little doodles I can slap together in five minutes and get on with my day. My U2 cartoons are clearly the work of a crazy woman, and being crazy, I even got my cat involved. I painted the cartoons for seven years until life got too complicated, i.e. I actually did things with other people during my free time. Overwhelmed, I had to stop in 2009, and that was the right decision for me at the time. Now that my schedule's a lot looser than before, I recently decided to start painting and mocking these lovable geezer rock stars again...only this time I'm doing it four times a year instead of twelve. Because, come on, twelve is insanity.

Before I get going with this, I want to thank my friend Matt McGee, @U2 head honcho with whom I am laughing my ass off in the blurry photo above. Matt was kind enough to link my art website with his U2 fan juggernaut, so hopefully I'll be seeing an increase in traffic and my Google page ranking (and sales? please? I hope?).

You can view the newest cartoon in its entirety, with normal-sized illustrations, here.

As you can see, the watercolor portrait illustrations dominate each panel. I cropped them so they seem to burst from the frame. Each little painting is 5"x7" (or so), based on my constantly evolving library of U2 images. Two of these were painted from concert shots where I removed the colored lighting and dark backgrounds (including Larry Mullen, above), one is a from a grainy, postage stamp-sized paparazzi photo, and one is from Q magazine. Can you tell which is which?

When given the choice between painting an older face and a younger one, I'll pick the older one every time. I love wrinkles, and the wrinklier someone is, the easier he or she is to paint. It's hard to explain why if you haven't painted with watercolors before, but wrinkles give my brush something to grab onto and a place to pause while I'm painting. Children's faces offer no such luxury. So as U2 have aged, like good ol' Adam Clayton (above), I've had an easier time painting them. This might also have something to do with the fact that I know their features on a near-molecular basis.

Especially this guy.

• Fact: Bono has more freckles on the left side of his face than his right side.
• Fact: Bono's sunglasses make painting his eyes at least five times harder than they ought to be.
• Fact: Bono's mouth has become thinner over the years, and if you make his lips too fat, he stops looking like present-day Bono, and this is hard to get right.
• Fact: Bono has two major neck wrinkles.
• Fact: Bono's eyes are the color of cornflowers.
• Fact: I can paint two Edges in the time it takes me to paint one Bono.
• Fact: I could throw about 75 more similar facts at you.

Yes, Edge is easy like Sunday morning. Dependable hat means no hair shenanigans. Big face means lots of room to play with. He looks like no other human being. There is something deer-like about him. Today somebody asked me how I manage to paint his eyes exactly right. My secret is that they're kind of triangular. The only hardship when it comes to painting Edge is the fact that guitars will often be involved. Watercolors and guitars don't exactly mix, but I can tolerate painting them because he has some really cool guitars.

Sometimes a cartoon idea will demand that I draw U2 in a more cartoony way, and I call those guys Li'l U2 (the original here is about 2 inches tall, hence some sloppiness):

Random example (they were making handturkeys in May to celebrate an upcoming album's November release date):

Sometimes I'll have Bun draw them (she put them on my couch):

Sometimes I will sculpt them out of clay:

And sometimes, when I'm desperate, I will sculpt them out of food:

So...yeah. Four times a year, I'll be doing this stuff again.

It's going to be awesome.

Oh yeah, Jeff, who for years has pouted that I have never drawn him for Achtoon Baby, made a cameo in today's cartoon.

PS: If you'd like to flip through some of my old U2 paintings, you can find them here. And if you have a lot of time on your hands, my Achtoon Baby archive is here. Please note that my imaging programs have improved vastly since then. And my updated staff bio is here.

Dale's Super 400

"Today I'm starting a portrait of my late uncle Dale (Dad's older brother)," I announced on Facebook a few weeks ago. I posted the reference photo below of Dale and asked if my friends or family knew any details about the guitar he's holding. I wanted to find a clearer image online to help me figure out the dark areas.

Within a few hours several of my musician friends had chimed in with plenty of information.

From Jay: It is a classic C/W/Gospel axe! These deep, archtop electrics of a certain age are highly prized! I think Uncle Dale went the extra mile for this guitar: it has a fancy diagonal bar motif (matching the fret markers) on the tuning head... and the ivory inlay around the head are fancy additions. The trim around the guitar itself may be a higher quality than in the link picture but I really can't see it even when the photo is blown up. There is a 'bell shaped' adjustment rod cover between the tuners that even has the diagonal motif. The scatchplate down by the pickups seems to have an ornate pattern or a fancy tortoise shell design too. I also noticed that the diagonal bar inlay on the head and the Gibson name appear to be made of mother of pearl with more natural looking changes in color and contrast to the standard 'keyhole' and Gibson inlays in the link photo. I sure hope your family still has it!

From Jimmy: It is a Gibson Super 400CES with a Florentine cutaway and in flamed maple. Please have it appraised and insured. A very rare guitar.

From Nicole: According to a local guitar shop here it is a Gibson Super 400. He said it's a very rare version with the way the Florentine cutaway is done. Manufactured between 1960-1970.

Later on I heard from my cousin Deanna (Dale's daughter). She was thrilled that I was painting her dad and had this to say:

This Gibson guitar was probably his most prized possession...he called it a "Super 400". It was beautiful and I really can't remember him not having it --so I'm thinking he bought it in the early 60's...sadly, he felt that he had to sell it when he started getting ill. Dad loved music of all kinds but especially gospel (Dale was a pastor at the community church in the tiny Illinois town of Webster--K), and any guitar musician--from Chet Atkins to Eric Clapton.

People complain about Facebook all the time, but I just love when the Hive Mind helps me out like this. Unable to resist the urge to Google this guitar, Jeff and I discovered that similar Gibsons sell for at least $14,000 these days. So Dale is holding a gently used Ford Focus, basically.

No stranger to painting guitars...

(above: it's a long story) ...I devoted an entire day to the preliminary drawing and was especially careful with Dale's beloved Gibson. Guitars have so many tricky components, and most of them make a watercolorist's life difficult, particularly the strings and fretboard, but I decided to put painting them off until after I had finished Dale's face. Because if my Dale didn't look like the real Dale, what was the point of painting his guitar exactly right? Here's Dale after a day of painting.

This section is about six inches tall. I always begin with a lot of wet-into-wet work in order to create convincing, smooth skin tones. Once those are dry, I add darker details and textures. Dale's face was so easy to paint that it almost seemed like he wanted to help me paint him. The glasses, for example, divided his face into two medium-sized sections that were a breeze to manage. Here's the second day's work (it's a bit dark):

As I painted, I was struck by my uncle's Eddington-ness. His eyes, mouth, eyebrows, and the section between his nose and mouth are just like my father's. And I've seen my dad geek out over golf clubs, computers, and even axes in a way that brings to mind Dale's apparent obsession with his special, custom-made guitar. The Eddington clan is populated with many gentle, talented, good people like Dale and Dad. After Grandma Eddington died in 1977, extended family get-togethers pretty much came to an end and some relatives moved away, so I don't know the Eddington side of my family as well as my mother's (the Sharpes). But in my heart I think I've always felt more like an Eddington than a Sharpe, and this portrait gave me plenty of time to appreciate and meditate on my heritage.

Once I was satisfied with Dale's face, I slowly began to work on his guitar, which was so painstaking that I could only tolerate painting chunks of it in the morning, switching to his tie (a hoot) or the floral-patterned couch (double hoot) in the afternoon. I was amused to discover the upside-down cat pillow in the lower-right corner.

I dreaded painting the afghan as much as I loved its down-home unpretentiousness--the hallmark of my Dad's family's style. It took me nearly three days to complete. I had already finished everything below it, and as I began adding those screaming oranges, yellows, and seafoam greens I thought, "What am I doing? This looks horrible!" Once I laid out those flat colors, I created multi-directional yarn textures to mimic the afghan's complex tic-tac-toe pattern. I wasn't satisfied with it until it was completely finished. I secretly hoped that Dale's wife Marilyn was responsible for the afghan. Aunt Marilyn (who is still with us) was always more colorful and exuberant than low-key Dale, and I was thrilled to learn that she had in fact made the afghan and is indirectly part of my painting.

I was able to date the photo to the mid-80s thanks to the small VHS rack on the right side of the picture. The titles of Dale's videos were impossible to make out in the photo except for something called "Rodeo Bloopers," which I couldn't bring myself to paint. Instead I took my cousin Deanna's tip and made up videos by Chet Atkins, Eric Clapton, and Johnny Cash. Dale had reportedly seen one of Johnny's drug-fueled live performances in the Sixties, and one of my Facebook friends had remarked about Dale's resemblance to Johnny.

Dale died of Parkinson's disease over ten years ago. I have always been haunted by the memory of his trembling hands as he held a plate of food at a rare family get-together during the last decade of his life. Those tremors caused him to sell his beautiful guitar, since he couldn't play it anymore. I feel like this portrait, which I painted with a hand so steady it scares me sometimes, returns Dale's Super 400 to its rightful owner.

4-Hour Body book launch!

Well, this is HUGE.  My artwork, specifically a future portrait, is being offered as a prize by Tim Ferriss as part of a mega-promotion for his new book. 

Let's break that down.

OK, who is Tim Ferriss?  He is this guy:

 

He is the author of the NYT bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek, and this is his new book The 4-Hour Body (so cool it requires a trailer):

 

Jeff has been a Tim admirer for years.  We watched his show Trial By Fire together when it was on the History Channel and were impressed with this man's determination to become a Renaissance Man of Pure Awesome.  He's got a phenomenal fan base of, well, people like Jeff.  About a month ago Tim Ferriss tweeted about his upcoming book launch, asking his readers to donate goods/services that he would offer as prizes to his top buyers.  And here's what's so great about Tim Ferriss: a single mention on the man's blog--read by his legion of cutting-edge followers-- would be worth the free goods/services.  So Jeff urged me to offer up a free portrait for the good of the cause.

Last week I received an email from one of Tim's people, who said that my offer was shortlisted to be a prize out of 449 proposed giveaways.  And then it was listed...as part of the TOP prize package.  Somebody out there is going to spend a cool $160,000--buying 10,000 copies of the book--and a painting of that person by me will be one of the thank-you gifts from Tim.

Let's all pause to consider who the heck this $160K-to-drop-on-books person might be. 

So I'm thinking, yeah, I'm probably going to paint Bill Gates.  Or Bono!

If so, I'm way ahead of you.

Cancer scare playlist

My friend Jay requested a playlist of songs that I listened to or at least thought about during the last couple of weeks, similar to the one I posted on my last day of school.  Jay is a cancer survior, a retired choral music teacher, and a mentor of mine at Unity.  He's currently living his life with gusto as he travels around the country.

The playlist!

Well, Did You Evah? by Iggy Pop and Deborah Harry. This goofy song was playing in my car as I drove into the hospital's parking garage a few weeks ago.  I had to take care of some annual checkup-related bloodwork, and on that same morning I learned that my first mammogram images indicated asymmetry and they'd need me to come back for more. 

 

Heroin by The Velvet Underground.  It's one of the best rock songs ever, and I listened to it on the day they told me they wanted to do a biopsy.  I then had a week to sit and worry about it, and that afternoon I sat on the couch looking at stuff on YouTube that reflected my dark mood.  I've never done drugs and I've never been drunk, but this would have been a great day for those things.  I landed on "Heroin" after watching the aforementioned "Under Pressure" by David Bowie and Annie Lennox.

 

Numb by U2. This is their best video.  For some reason I watched it five or six times in a row on that bleak afternoon.  And I did indeed feel numb at the time.  Because of all the breast smashing.  Men, you have no idea.

 

Open House by Lou Reed and John Cale.  It's from an album about Andy Warhol, and it describes his early commerical art career, his loneliness in the big city, and the Czechoslovakian customs he used to make friends.  This song helped me breathe when I was panicky.  I'd try to align my breathing with its slow rhythm.  And Lou Reed's voice has always had a calming influence on me.

 

The Waiting by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.  For obvious reasons.

 

How? by John Lennon.  I re-watched a documentary about him while finishing my painting of Terry.  You know life can be long / and you've got to be so strong / and the world is so tough / sometimes I feel I've had enough.  I've always loved John and Yoko as a couple and now, at last, that's what I have with Jeff, and I so want to keep it.

 

Send One Your Love by Stevie Wonder.  Every night I'd wake up at 3:00 with an Uma-in-Pulp-Fiction adrenaline rush that made it impossible to get back to sleep, so in an attempt to relax myself, the soundtrack in my head played songs like this one.  It's a classic from my childhood with its dreamy melody and my favorite Stevie harmonica solo of all time.  It wrapped itself around me like a warm blanket.

 

Mother's Little Helper by The Rolling Stones.  The "what a drag it is getting old" line was just so right, and I thought of this song whenever I longed for the escape that drugs and booze would provide.  But instead I endured every last second of the waiting game and bore the full brunt of its stress.

 

Can't Help Falling In Love by U2.  Oh how I miss Weird U2.  This is another one of those mental lullabyes I used to calm myself down at night.  You know how your mind wanders during bouts of insomnia?  I used my time awake to think about how stressful life must have been in the German concentration camps, and how I would never have survived one of those because even during optimal conditions my feet and hands are always so, so cold.  Since I was forced to really fixate on my breasts last week, I concluded that I'd probably die of either frostbitten extremities or raw nipples as I stood out there in the cold wearing some kind of rough, itchy garment that would rub up against me all the time.  I am such wuss.

In the Still of the Night by the Neville Brothers.  One beautiful morning last week, I drove into town for some groceries, and I listened to this gorgeous, smooth song in the driveway once I arrived home.  I watched painted lady butterflies feasting on fallen apples near our doorway, and all I wanted was to live in this house with Jeff for decades and decades, watching those butterflies every fall.

 

And now I'm glad I can keep doing that.

My little troublemakers

I was standing in line for lunch at the cafeteria, and distracted because I could not get Michael Jackson's Rock With You out of my head. The girl behind me, a classmate named Shelley, was having a conversation with some other girls comparing the breast sizes of her peers.  I was just barely paying attention, too busy privately grooving to Rock With You, but my ears pricked up when Shelley declared, "And Kelly's just so flat-chested."  And she was right, probably because I was ten years old at the time.  But this proclamation marked the official beginning of my youthful dissatisfaction with my non-stacked body.

Throughout junior high and high school, my longed-for breasts did not arrive, although I was an Amazon woman in every other way--5'8" at age eleven, size 10 shoes, "luxurious" eyebrows, really long arms.  I loomed over the seven smallish boys in my class for years along with Terri, an equally Amazonian creature whose perfect breasts, superior blonde/blue color scheme and winning smile assured her popularity until (and undoubtedly past) graduation.  Meanwhile I was a spelling bee champion and a straight-A student...actually, I was a straight-AA student until maybe sophomore year.

But, you know, I was pretty in my dark, unapproachable, Audrey Hepburn-like way.  Unfortunately I didn't know of her existence at the time, and that would've helped.  One night when I was in high school, my (busty) friend Reva and I were walking around our little town's pathetic summer carnival.  I was wearing an all-white shorts jumpsuit with a zip-neck and a black and white animal print scarf that I wore as a belt.  It was unquestionably the best outfit of my teen years, possibly life, and I felt like a million bucks in it as it made its offical Summerfest debut.  Reva steered us to a crowd of borderline-sleazy boys and for some reason pointed out my fashionable ensemble to them.  "It'd look a lot better on you, Reva!" one of them laughed, staring at her chest as usual.  So high school was like that, but believe me by then my escape-from-Jerktown plan was already well in place.

My college and adult years were populated with a handful of romantic interests who tolerated the fact that I was a handful at best.  A couple of them even loved that I was small, and I eventually made peace with my breasts.  Even though the sexiest Victoria's Secret bras were too big for me, I was still beautiful, and when a sugardaddyish boyfriend offered to buy me implants, I became the guns of the Navarone on his ass.  When an online dating prospect, who had spent weeks "enthralled" with my writing and my face, requested a full-length photo of me, I sent him the two you see above.  And when he dropped off the face of the planet immediately afterward, I viewed it as his profound loss.

Finally Jeff found me, and as if by magic I started to develop breasts and crossed the A-cup Rubicon into B land.  I remembered the following conversation from years ago when I bought a gorgeous, expensive bra. 

"What a lovely bra," the cashier said. 

"I'm just glad this brand comes in an A."

She grinned.  "Oh, I was small when I was your age, but once I hit my thirties..."  She puffed out her estimable chest triumphantly.  "Maybe it'll happen to you!" said my department store fairy godmother.  And what do you know, it kind of did, and over the past couple of years I have proceeded to love and even glory in my new, curvier body.

I had my first mammogram after Jeff and I were married.  It was a stressful runaround to be sure, with communication breakdowns, near-faints while my "dense" breasts were being smashed, second trips back for additional images, and waiting waiting waiting with my dear husband who had already lost a young wife to breast cancer.  Ultimately, I was fine.  No one in my family has had breast cancer, I don't drink or smoke, I've never been on birth control pills or any other drugs, and I seem healthy in every other way.

Everything changed on September 7.  I had another (now-dreaded) yearly mammogram.  I felt victorious in the fact that I didn't faint and the technician needed only four images.  Two days later, however, I learned that they needed to do the mammogram equivalent of photo re-takes due to asymmetry found in my right breast.  This had happened the last time, so even though I hated the thought of going back, I wrote off my breasts as being unphotogenic in some way. 

Last Tuesday, then, I went back for the re-takes.  Jeff was with me, as was my friend Laura via phone, who wanted text message updates.  I got changed into a hospital gown and sat in a waiting room with four other nervously upbeat women, all older than me.  It was then that I realized the importance of stylish shoes and a pedicure when you're having a mammogram.  Those gowns and capes erase any sense of style you might have had, but at least you can keep your shoes on.  And there's a lot of staring at the ground in the waiting room, which had a TV that was inexplicably tuned to the Weather Channel.  Luckily I wore my nice sandals and a fresh coat of lavender nail polish.  One by one the women were led through the labyrinth of the gleamingly new Mills Breast Cancer Institute (such a fun name).  Then it was my turn.

The technician doing my images seemed instantly familiar to me.  I couldn't say how other than the fact that she was stunningly average, the kind of muffin-shaped, cheerful thirtysomething in the process of growing out a Kate Gosselin reverse-mullet that you see at least twice a day in this part of the country.  She was soothing and said that getting more images is "very normal."  I thanked her when she was done and told her "good job," which I always tell medical professionals.  It can't hurt.  I was directed to a room where I could sit with Jeff as we awaited results.  I alternately texted Laura and curled up nervously against him.

Ms. Stunningly Average appeared about fifteen minutes later and said to me in a stage whisper, "They need to do an ultrasound--still very normal."  Instantly the back of my neck felt hot and I bent over, looking at Jeff.  I wanted to stay strong, but this seemed bad and not normal at all.

A while later I was led to a private examination room with a bed/table.  The ultrasound technician instructed me to lie on my back.  She was a plain, middle-aged woman with a brown bob.  "Now lift your right arm over your head and lean to the side a little, that's it," she said, helping me maneuver into what was honestly a very glamorous-looking pose, the kind I liked to draw when I was in life drawing class.  She further explained the process and how oh-so-normal everything was while opening my gown and squirting that ultrasound lube all over my right breast.  I tried being chatty with her for a while but ultimately became silent as she glided a cell phone-sized object over me and looked at a computer screen.  I studied the ceiling, where one of the tiles had been replaced with a photo of waves crashing against a rocky shoreline.  One of the rocks was a natural arch whose cut-out area resembled the Native American profile once featured on old nickels.  The white part of the biggest wave looked like a fleeing chipmunk.  After I felt that I had completely exhausted the photo's potential for hidden pictures, the technician was finished and went to consult with another doctor while I mopped up the lube on my chest.  She said that this doctor would come back and probably do an ultrasound herself, which was, let's all say it together, "still very normal."

So the doctor--and I can't remember her name, which is insane as I usually remember the names of everyone who feels me up--came in.  She was middle-aged but obviously still really trying to look fabulous.  Good for her.  The doctor and the technician re-lubed me and re-ultrasounded me, murmuring quietly to each other as they continually passed the instrument over the top of my breast.  I couldn't make out a word they were saying.  Then it was over. Thanks, good job everyone.

Finally I was allowed to get dressed and sit with Jeff as we awaited results in a suspiciously well-decorated room.  A framed reproduction of one of Georgia O'Keeffe's red poppies sat on an ostentatious brass easel near the couch where we sat.  A coffee table featured a few untouched-looking magazines.  Jeff was exactly the kind of person you'd want by your side in a situation like this, strong and encouraging, but concerned, and once again I cuddled beside him as we sat in silence.

The news was not good.  They wanted to schedule a biopsy to see what a tiny area is.  It's probably nothing, but the biopsy would tell them one way or another if it's something to worry about.  Or I could wait for six months, have another mammogram, and they could see if anything had changed.  Jeff, who knew from experience that a lot of bad things can happen in six months, encouraged the biopsy.  I was glad he was there because I couldn't think anymore.  A bubbly-but-not-too-bubbly young woman came in and scheduled the biopsy, which I will have tomorrow morning at 7:45. 

As soon as Jeff and I reached the parking garage I burst into tears, which I did off and on the rest of that day.

So the past seven days have been devoted to the nightmare that is Not Knowing.  I've talked with my mom, who has had two similar 6-month-wait-and-see areas that turned out to be nothing.  Jeff has been my rock and I adore him.  We've gone on epic walks together, comforted each other, distracted ourselves with everything we can think of, worked hard on our various projects, and engaged in gallows humor.  I've taken to calling my breasts "my little troublemakers."  Last season on 30 Rock, Nathan Lane guest-starred as one of Jack's roudy Irish relatives.  When referring to his fists, he held them up one at a time, yelling hilariously, "Say hello to Bono! And Sandra Day O'Connor!"  So I've also been calling my breasts Bono! (left) and Sandra Day O'Connor! (right), but this isn't exactly catching on like wildfire the way I'd hoped. 

And so, in approximately 19 hours, my right breast will be numbed with lidocaine, a needle will be inserted, and cell samples will be extracted.  A hair-width bit of titanium will be permanently inserted into the area as a marker indicating the location of the problem area for future mammograms.  "Most people tell me it's not even as a bad as a trip to the dentist," the doctor informed me.  But there will most likely be bruising, and oh how my body loves to hold onto a bruise, and I have to decide which bra of mine can hold an ice pack.  Probably none of my pretty ones.

I wish this were merely a treatment that would cure the problem area, because then I'd have no trouble enduring this biopsy, but it's not a treatment.  After it's over we get to wait for several more nightmarish days to see if it's cancer.

A song has been in my head since last Tuesday, and it's not Rock With You.  It's the Annie Lennox/David Bowie live performance of Queen's Under Pressure.  The part at the end, where she's clinging to him, that's how I feel.  I'm trying to be strong, but that's who I am right now. 

Thank you for reading this.