Alizarine

March Commissions

Last month I completed a couple of portrait commissions that shared dual themes: family and gray. On the left is a portait of my brother in-law's grandparents, and on the right is a painting of a college friend's son and father.

Both contain a whole lot of gray paint, and honestly that is my least favorite color to work with because I mix up to seven colors to create just the right shade. I was taught to mix my grays rather than add water to black--I don't use black at all--so it is a chore. Also it was March, and the weather was utterly depressing. But a paying gig is a paying gig, and I was happy to create these portraits for Tyler and my pal.

Tyler's family is from northwestern North Dakota, just a few miles from the Canadian border. His grandparents, the perfectly named Alice and Milo, were photographed at a wedding in late December. It's the last photo taken of the couple--sadly, Milo died about a month later. This 20"x16" painting will be a surprise gift for Alice.

I asked Tyler to write a little something about his grandparents, and here's what he had to say: "Their names are Alice and Milo. They were married for 66 years. Grandpa farmed for so long he actually used horses at one point. Grandma was a teacher at a one room school for a while. She made quilts, gardened, canned her own food, and cooked for a small army on a daily basis. They weren't exactly flashy, just incredible people."

The reference photo and pose is super traditional, but the novelty of painting such sweet, elderly faces is made this portrait interesting. And Tyler's grandmother looks so much like him! Tyler's only request was that I move Milo's glasses up on his nose a bit. This was kind of tricky--in the original photo, the glasses covered important eye details that I had to make up.

Nearly everything about Alice was easy to paint. Her skin, hair, and dress were so light, and light colors take less time to paint with watercolor. All the wrinkles and folds provided convenient stopping places as I painted. It's kind of hard to explain this if you don't paint with watercolor, but trust me when I say that older skin is infinitely easier to paint than young skin. I liked painting Milo and Alice's hands, especially that little skin fold Milo's thumb makes as it pushes into the back of Alice's hand. (I'm easily amused.)

The last things I had to paint here were Milo's (gray! hard! pinstripe! harder!) suit, tie, and rose, along with the background. I especially enjoyed painting the shiny blue tie, and the rose had a droopy petal in front with a light area near the bud that added some interest. I gave the painting a blue drapey background. Tyler and his siblings are thrilled with the painting, and I'm not sure how or when he plans to deliver the portrait to Alice, but I hope she likes it! It was an honor to paint these two. 66 years--how inspiring is that?

My friend L. asked me to paint this 20"x16" portrait of her son Sean looking up at her father with admiration. She planned to give the original to her parents. Sean and Grandpa had spent some time sledding together on an overcast, typical Illinois winter day. Grandpa had hip replacement surgery over the summer but was sledding again by Christmas. That immaculate sled is over sixty years old! I created the reference image above by combining two different cell phone photos. I also moved Sean a little closer to his grandfather.

Little Sean's face was only about an inch tall, and grandpa's was only a bit larger, so once again I had to use my tiniest 000 brush. I think Sean's expression is what makes this painting work, so I painted him first. Note the little snowflakes in his hair and on his nose. What a cutie!

Their ruddy faces are by far the coldest I've ever painted, and I had a good time adding extra pinks and reds to their skin. I eventually darkened grandpa's teeth a bit--always a touchy thing to do, especially when they're so small. I sent these shots to L. ("Perfect!") before working on the rest of the painting.

Clothing, sled, snow, background trees... I masked off the big tree and painted the background, starting with a drab blue-gray that you can see near the top-right corner and adding lots of thin, mostly bare trees over the top. I liked painting the woodgrain on the sled. Woodgrain is one of those textures that are easier to reproduce with watercolor than other mediums.

Finally I added the big tree and the grass peeking through the snow. L. was so happy with this painting that she decided to keep the original and give a print to her parents.

I don't make a lot of print money from portraits like these--most people don't want to buy pictures of people they don't know--but if you're interested in seeing examples of my portraits/prints, click here. You can also see works in progress by liking my Facebook art page.

I've been offered a one-person show at the Decatur Area Arts Council in August, so over the spring/summer I will be busy completing new work to fill that big gallery. But after that I will be able to take on more commissions like these. If you're interested in having me paint something for you, please read this and send me a message any time!

Mufnuts and Frunch Toast

I can explain.

The night Jeff and I returned home from Orlando, all stocked up on groceries, cuddling with the cats, and awaiting the snowstorm, I hate to say it, but my husband became a little whiney.

He wanted donuts, you see, and we had neglected to pick up any of those when we were shopping, but he didn't feel like getting back in the car and returning to the store. And anyway, the donuts they'd have to offer wouldn't be the apple-cinnamon donuts upon which we gorge once a year at a local orchard.

I make a perfectly good muffin, but Jeff just isn't into muffins. I half-heartedly offered to make some muffins instead and got a dismissive shrug. You guys, my muffins are fantastic and I could eat about five of them now.

I'd been sitting on a Pioneer Woman recipe that seemed like it would be similar to those local orchard donuts, only shaped like muffins, plus no deep-frying. I'd been sitting on it for over a year! The reason I hadn't made it yet: too much butter. Too effing fattening. I'd glance at the photos of her "French breakfast puffs," study the one where she's rolling muffins around in two sticks of melted butter, and scoff. Obscene. It's like they've never even heard of cholesterol out there in Oklahoma or wherever.

But after a few failed crock pot experiments (thank you so much, Pinterest), I wanted to make something that I was confident wouldn't suck in every way, and I wanted to prove to Jeff that muffins are worthy of his love. I made that sat-upon recipe the next morning and fed them to a mind-destroyed Jeff.

They are evil perfection. They are the bastard children of muffins and donuts. We're calling them mufnuts.

The only way we can justify making them is to eat one mufnut per week. We have frozen the rest (they reheat beautifully in the microwave) and--I say this with pride--we still have a small stash in the freezer.

The recipe is here. Proceed with caution.

And then there's this thing:

The next weekend Jeff felt the need to dazzle me with breakfast.

 

His recipe's original title: the unweildy Crunchy French Toast with Cap'n Crunch Coating, which we shortened to Cap'n Crunch French Toast. This further devolved into Frunch Toast.

 

Not Franch! Frunch.

The recipe, which you can find here, reminded us of a slightly classier version of this:

 

Jeff substituted a loaf of white bakery bread for the recipe's challah (it's expensive around here). The recipe produced enough custard to soak a dozen slices, i.e. the entire loaf minus the heels. We elected to bake eight--oh yeah, you bake this!--and freeze four.

It took about 30-45 minutes for Jeff (with light assistance from me) to produce the Frunch toast. It's now our go-to French toast. No question about it. And look: you get 8 pieces all at once! Plus you are left with a mostly-full box of Cap'n Crunch, which you love but never buy!

IT WAS SO FANTASTICALLY CRUNCHY.

You'd think that the Cap'n Crunch flavor would dominate, too, but no. It reminded me of the time I made Nigella's Nutella cake, which required an entire jar of the stuff along with other rich ingredients (shocker, I know). When I tasted the end product, the Nutella flavor had all but disappeared. Unnerving. That is sort of going on here with the Cap'n Crunch. You get a bit of the flavor but a ton of the texture.

We each ate a couple of pieces and froze the rest of the baked Frunch toast along with the aforementioned four pieces of raw Frunch. When microwaved later, the baked Frunch was not crunchy anymore, but it still tasted good. We haven't baked the raw Frunch yet, but I'll let you know how it goes.

I think this recipe would be great if you're serving a crowd at breakfast. Serve it with a side of mufnuts!

Nah. Do one or the other. You don't want your guests to think you're a murderer.

Roger & Us

Roger. Oh my.

Jeff and I learned about Roger Ebert's death last Thursday about an hour after everybody else did. We had spent most of the day away from our computers and were enjoying one of central Illinois' first truly springlike afternoons, reprising our role as The Couple That Walks Around St. Joe Holding Hands.

Jeff found out first. We were sitting in the living room and getting set to watch Justified when he gasped. "Roger Ebert died," he said, looking up from his iPad sadly. Oh no. Instinctively my arms and legs bent in toward the center of my body--sort of a seated fetal position--as sadness swept over me.

My Facebook and Twitter notifications started erupting with "you're the first person I thought of when I heard" posts, and I responded to them for a few hours. Thanks so much to those of you who contacted me--Roger would have appreciated the immediate, easy way people were able to reach out to each other. I would love to see a map of the world dotted with those whose lives he affected and the amazing web of connections he spun between us.

My husband knows too much about cancer, and Roger's "leave of presence" message from the previous day had caused him to remark that the end was probably near. We had no idea it would happen within 24 hours, though.

As some of you may know, Roger and I were Twitter and email friends. Not wanting to waste The Great Man's time, I only communicated with him when I had something on my mind that I thought he would appreciate. And he would contact me as well. My Gmail says we had 92 conversations.

One of my favorite exchanges with him was in 2011 regarding the movie Crumb, a documentary I've loved and rewatched on VHS countless times. I had received the Blu-ray edition that included Roger's commentary track for Christmas. I listened to it as I painted one day and told him about how I appreciated his insights and how great it was to hear his voice for a while. We talked about R. Crumb's brothers and their "stupid mother" (Roger's words). It was fun and more than a bit surreal to talk about one of my favorite movies with Roger Freaking Ebert.

He especially liked it when I sent updates about nature, farming, and the weather in this part of the state. I live a few miles from his boyhood/college hometown, and I'd let him know when the corn was sprouting and show him photos of things like a cluster of mushrooms I'd found growing beside a tree stump in the yard.

As time passed, his email messages became shorter--sometimes just a sentence or two, but always cordial and often humorous. Ignatiy Vishnevesky explained why his notes were so brief in his wonderful letter to Roger from a few days ago:

"You communicated largely through your computer, but you typed slowly, your hand hovering over a key before pressing down. It could take you thirty seconds to type out a sentence."

 

Last month Roger asked me for a digital copy of this painting, which I'd sent him as a thank you gift a few years ago when he first started tweeting about my work.

He wanted to include it in a blog he was writing and credited me there, mentioning (incorrectly) that he owned two of my paintings. I sent Roger a quick "I'm pretty sure you just have the Art Theater" message, and he responded with,

I believe I have that one and the child with the book shelf. I've been in the hospital so it's hard to say…

Anyway, I feel like I have 2. And it sounds better  :)

Cheers,

R

Sometimes he'd send emails to me accidentally--meant for other people--and I'd let him know. In February I got one containing some confidential information regarding Ebertfest and his health. He had some big, wonderful plans for the last day. I told him his secret was safe with me and he called me a dear friend. Imagine!

It's hard to describe what it's been like to have known him even in my minor way. He had over 800,000 followers on Twitter and followed 255. I had the extreme good fortune to be one of them. Whenever I tweeted something, I asked myself, "Is this Roger-worthy?" So there were no "going to the library LOL" tweets from me. He was my writing's conscience, the little voice I heard and continue to hear before I hit "post."

Just when I thought he wasn't reading this blog anymore--the man was beyond busy--I'd get a comment (!!!!!!) or a retweet. He even read at least one of my recipes. He made my month when he told his Twitter followers that "damn it, she's right" when I ranted about how most fruit crisps contain too much fruit and nowhere near enough crisp. Roger Ebert cared about the fruit-to-crisp ratio!

So the past few days have been loaded with Roger memories.

I was in the right place at the right time when he discovered my watercolors. He gave me confidence to pursue my dream. I've made new friends because of him. I've sold watercolors and prints because of him. He gave me the idea for one of my best paintings. He sent me messages from the hospital asking me how I was. He told me "I'm there with you--thank God for Jeff" during my cancer scare.

I was lucky to have met him in person two years ago. He looked at me and applauded. He wrote in his notepad that I was an artist and underlined it. I'll never forget it.

Roger did so much for me, and he didn't have to do any of it. But he did. He did, and I'm one of many, many people who have been saying things like this over the past few days. I can't thank him enough, but I think the best thing any of us can do to remember Roger is to try to be as kind, thoughtful, and appreciative of beauty as he was.

What a life. What a hero. I miss him very much.