Alizarine

Emily 2.0

Brand new on my YouTube channel: it's another speed-painting video of my sister Emily, a.k.a. Poof! Three years ago, I painted this portrait of her:

And just for fun, Jeff and I attempted to make a video of me painting her face for about an hour. Our technology was not that great: my workspace is small, and the only way we could get a camera in there and have any kind of light was to position it sideways. There were focus problems at the beginning. But, whatever, we sped up the video, popped it up on my mostly-unused YouTube channel, showed it to friends, and let it sit there for three years.

 

And that crazy thing proceeded to accummulate almost half a million views!

I liked the small amount of ad revenue that started to trickle in (don't get too excited; this makes me a dollar a day at the very most), but I felt bad that the quality of the video was barely acceptable.

Three years later, Jeff and I have rebooted the channel, named it Art Food Kitty, and improved the technology--as inexpensively as humanly possible, with lots of MacGuyver stuff going on. After warming up with some how-to videos (see my last few posts), I'm finally ready to post a new Poof video: Emily 2.0!

This is a collaboration with Emily's Beauty Broadcast channel--and I'm so glad she wanted to do this because, um, she's basically a YouTube superstar. She's been a big help in the development of my channel, too. We've been talking about it a lot since I had the idea to create Art Food Kitty earlier this year, and we thought it would be great to introduce her fans to my channel via a collaboration.

So here is my speed-painting video of a quick portrait I made of Poof last week. She came up with a speed-makeup video, and I painted her based on some selfies she took immediately after she shot her video.

 

As I mentioned in the video, this has been sped up ten times, and it is also me painting at my absolute fastest. Most portraits like this take me a day to a day and a half to complete. The reason I hurried to complete it in a couple of hours was simple: our camera can only store so much video, and I didn't want to make a 30-minute video or speed it up to the point where my hand became an absolute blur. So two hours was about my limit.

And here is Emily's speed makeup video!

 

By the way, that thing I'm doing with my mouth at the beginning of my video? I don't know what that is, I find it impossible to control, and I'm working on it. I assume this is just the way I talk either all the time (I hope not!) or when I am nervous (please?). If you don't know what I'm talking about, please disregard this and don't go back up there looking for it.

I've never felt comfortable on camera, ever, and that was one reason why I've shied away from YouTube all these years. People massacre my sister in comments and on message boards on a regular basis, and she's so much more capable than I am. Poof does her best to learn from constructive criticism and ignore abuse, but she's been making videos for almost eight years, and every once in a while someone will say something that will get to her. She's a human being! It's simply an occupational hazard at this point, and I'll have to get used to it, too. So far people have been very nice to me on YouTube, and that's terrific, but it's not going to last.

So yeah, you guys, I get it: my mouth does that sideways thing, I am very pale, I am old, my clothes are not interesting, my hair is black and I don't do anything cool with it, my makeup is always the same, I have several moles on my arms, my voice is weird and I talk like some kind of stoner robot, my palette is a mess, I am a crazy cat lady, I'm not a size 0, my paintbrushes suck, I don't have children and what's that all about?, I like to bake things that are not good for me, my fingernail polish is wrong in some way, my paintings are too realistic, my paintings are not realistic enough, I'm taking all the joy out of watercolor, I'm obviously just trying to make a buck, I'm a lousy teacher, I have no business being on YouTube, and I'm not uploading mockable new content quickly enough.

WAY AHEAD OF YOU!

Sorry. I'm nervous. I just checked my mouth and it's doing that sideways thing. So yeah. Please try to enjoy these videos by my sister and me. Please subscribe to my channel. I'll be in my safe room.

Oh yes: prints! They are here.

Favorite Parts

Almost every watercolor I paint has a sweet spot--an area that makes me breathe easier once I've completed it. Sometimes this is a section that "makes" the painting. Sometimes it's the hardest part, and if I'm satisfied with it I think, Well, if I can paint that, the rest of this will be no problem. And sometimes it's one of the painting's unsung heroes that nobody ever points out as being especially good, but it's one of the places I focus on.

I thought it might be fun to explore some of these. Readers who are familiar with my work: see if you can recall the painting from which I've taken each chunk! Here they are, in absolutely no particular order (click on the links to see the entire paintings and read more about them, and click on the images to see them a little bigger).

Apple Blossoms: This is the best leaf I've ever painted. I like how the shiny spring green on the top contrasts with the velvety khaki underside.

Glass Gems 3: The area under the red gem seemed molten, and I loved playing with that color range.

Planets and Foil: I like the way this marble seems to be grinning, and I'm especially happy with the window reflection near the top-right. I painted it with pink-yellow-orange, and it felt weird at the time, but I think it really works.

Mushrooms: Ugh! Those little purple fingery things were so hard!

Abandoned Knowledge: Most people focus on the apple, but I'm happiest with this vinyl seat. This was a one-shot, wet-into-wet situation. I really had to nail it. At a juried exhibition a couple of years ago, I was told that the judge pointed at this part and said, "Yep."

The Graduates: This little blue pot was tough. The colors shifted from cool to warm in a very smooth way that, like the vinyl seat, required wet-into-wet. Similar color problems are happening with the plant, too. This whole painting has a lot of individual still-life moments.

Dale's Super 400. The couch my uncle Dale is sitting on had a bunch of velvety pillows, and that's a tough texture to achieve with watercolor. Plus one of them was floral!

Married With Cats. This is Bun's happy pose, and I liked how her tabby pattern makes her blend in with the rug. Plus cute little belleh, sweet haunches.

Mabel. The Roger Ebert book is to the right of this section--I think I did a better job on these books than I did with his, but whatever, he loved it! I was thrilled to paint the magazine that was shoved in there backwards near the left side of this chunk. It featured a truck ad, I think.

Dr. Terry Sherer: I thought this was a cool intersection of patterns: his plaid tie, checked shirt, and the studs on his leather chair. The chair's arm features yet another softly shiny surface that required wet-into-wet.

Art Theater: This painting was very dark, so the bright areas really popped. These are just some orange/yellow lights on the left side of the street.

Ruby Liberty Dragonfly: I like this whole section, but I'm especially proud of the disco ball-looking glass earring. It was hard to draw, and I had to consider each segment individually in terms of color choices. I had the 15-minute version of Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix on repeat as I painted it.

Emily and Cupcake: When my sister was little, I loved the way she looked when she slept, and a lot of that innocence is still there in this picture.

Last Meal in Italy: I painted this watercolor during a couple of snow days back when I was still teaching. I liked this white shell and the way it reflected the turqoise building nearby. Painting those tiny ridges was no joke!

Self-Portrait: I really need to scan this painting. What you see here is from a photograph, and in real life the titles, etc, are more precise. Anyway, this section was such a speed bump, and for a while there I completed one square inch per hour. But I loved the spines of these books, some with creatures and famous paintings and sculptures, some old and falling apart, and some instantly recognizable based on color alone. I painted this during my "I will never use masking fluid" phase, and I made myself paint around all of the white or light-colored words. That really slowed me down.

Treasure: This painting featured several orange glass beads that were incredibly tricky. The darker areas called for muted purple-orange-browns, and as with the earring from Ruby Liberty Dragonfly, the many diamond shapes had to be dealt with one at a time.

Sunflowers: When I see this part I instinctively squeeze my fingers together, mimicking it. I rarely work with this much yellow.

Wilting Parrot Tulip: The challenge here was to paint extremely bright colors in shadows. I toned them down a bit with some greens and browns, but they're still pretty blazing.

Hey, I enjoyed that! I have lots of other paintings I'd like to chunk-ify, so maybe this will turn into a series.

Imagekind update: as of right now (Sunday, May 5), it's still having problems, so in the meantime please visit my merchandise store for all your Cinco de Mayo/art-related needs. Thank you as always for your support!

Spring Flowers

After a month of gray-dominated paintings involving grandparents, I was overjoyed to return to vivid colors. In August I'm going to have a one-person show at the Decatur (IL) Area Arts Council. I had applied for a 2014 exhibit, but their August 2013 artist had to back out due to--I think it was a house fire...? Talk about one of my greatest fears. If our house was burning down, I know which paintings I'd try to save first, but I definitely wouldn't be able to rescue all my work. I can't even imagine how that would feel.

Anyway, the Decatur people asked me if I could display my work in just a few short months, and I said yes. So between now and then, I'll be producing as many new paintings as I can to bulk up my body of work. That kind of rules out creating month-long paintings like Treasure or Ruby Liberty Dragonfly, although I plan to paint more jewelry still-lifes for the show. But each of these paintings will feature four or five sparkly things instead of something like eighty.

But back to the flowers! This is a wilting parrot tulip after I had worked on it for a couple of days. I planted ten of these frilly, fancy tulips a year and a half ago and was beyond excited to watch them emerge last spring. They were even more beautiful as they wilted, and their petals created interesting and dynamic shapes. I took several dozen photos and saved this one, the queen of them all, for the next time I felt the urge to paint something floral.

That super-hot red is a combination of opera (out of control pink) and cadmium red light (stupefying orange). I can't tell you how pleasing it is to mix those two colors. Something scientific/magical happens.

I tightened up the petals a bit and added some freckly spots. The background came together quickly, and I painted some of that during my watercolor workshop a few weeks ago (also at Decatur). It's been a while since I've had an audience, and it took me back to my teaching days when students would watch me work. I took some photos of people at the workshop, and here is my favorite one:

On to painting two! This is a passion flower I spotted at Kevin and Natalie's home in Orlando. Jeff and I visited them last month, and as soon as I saw this strange blue flower/mini-spaceship, I knew I would paint it. To create its dozens of stringy blue petals, I masked off those parts and painted the petals and leaves behind them.

Next I worked on the flower's amazing center, a fun combination of magenta and acid green, and painted the petals a flat blue (with dark purple and white areas). I don't even want to know how many petals are on this flower.

I added shadows to each petal (painstaking!) and lifted some highlights with a combination of tiny brush/water/paper towel. That took the better part of an afternoon, and I fell into assembly line mode. Done, done, on to the next one.

 

And here's the finished product!

It was smooth sailing once I finished that flower, although I began to suffer from dark green fatique. The bud/pod and the little springy things provided some relief. Both of these paintings are 10.5"x13.5", and I'm eager to pop them into frames.

We've reached the part of my new-painting posts where I link to Imagekind and beg you to buy prints, but Imagekind has been having site-wide technical problems for several weeks (!!). They've assured their artists that they are working on solving the problems, but many of us are understandably disgruntled. I make most of my money in November and December with a little Mother's Day bump in the spring. So the timing here is bad for me, especially now that I'm in portfolio-building mode and not painting people's grandparents for cash.

While we wait for Imagekind to get its act together, I have this gifty alternative for you:

It's my CafePress merchandise store, and last night I spent three hours uploading images and creating new products for you to peruse and enjoy. I'm sorry, but I want that bag so damn much! Please consider supporting me by picking up a thing or two, and I'll let you know when Imagekind is back to normal.

Please like my Facebook art page if you haven't already! I update it every few days with in-progress paintings, and let's face it, commenting is easier there than it is here. No stupid Captcha thing, and I respond to just about everybody, too!

Thanks for your support. :)

PS It's Bun's birthday today--she is 12!

Specul-YUMs!

Here is a 10-minute recipe that will rock your holiday party to its very foundations. It's a take on the popular teacher-gift that my former students called "puppy chow," a term that always made me wince as I ate the chocolatey stuff hand over fist.

Jeff found the recipe last week, and, similarly dissatisfied with its name ("sandy buddies"), he came up with the abomination you see above, Specul-YUMs!, so named because its key ingredient is Speculoos. Also known as Biscoff spread or simply cookie butter, Speculoos changed our lives when we were killing time in Los Angeles a few months ago. You may remember this photo:

We went through a phase where this was all we wanted to eat, but since then we've scaled back on our Speculoos consumption, conceding that when all is said and done, Nutella is our nutritionally-bankrupt spread of choice.

But then along came Specul-YUMs!. We have been enduring a brutal, three-day diet that ends later this afternoon, a diet so strict that our heads have become heavier than the rest of our bodies and this is happening:

 

Not really. We lost a few pounds but were hating life.

So when we made this recipe today and sampled a few weeee bites in the name of quality control, we lost our dang minds. This stuff not just some gimmicky snack. It is a savior that has delivered us from eating a cup of cottage cheese studded with five saltines and a hard-boiled egg and calling that some kind of lunch.

The recipe is from here. This is our doubled and slightly altered version (it's for a party).

INGREDIENTS

• 4 1/2 cups rice Chex cereal
• 4 tablespoons white chocolate chips
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 cup Biscoff Spread/Speculoos
• 4 tablespoons butter
• powdered sugar for coating, something like 1 cup

DIRECTIONS

Place cereal into a large bowl. In a separate small bowl, microwave chips, Biscoff spread, cinnamon and butter for 1 minute. Stir. Heat for 30 second intervals, stirring between each, until mixture is smooth. Spoon mixture into cereal and gently mix to combine all ingredients.

Place powdered sugar into a gallon resealable bag. Spoon in half of the cereal mixture and shake to coat. Then spread this on wax paper to cool. Repeat with the rest of the cereal mixture. Place in a festive bowl to serve!

Representation!

Good things are happening in my art world! Last week UGallery took me under their massive, cuddly wing, and that is where you can buy my original paintings now (not prints, not merchandise--I'm talking about the actual piece of paper with the actual paint on it).

UGallery is an online art gallery that's received positive reviews from CNN, The Economist, InStyle, USAToday and others. If you search for "buy art" on Google, it's right up there near the top if not the very top. I had to apply to be accepted, and I waited and wondered for over a week before I received a happy email and phone call. They accepted all of the paintings I offered, and the gallery manager answered all of my questions in a friendly, welcome-to-the-family kind of way. I'm currently being featured on the site's front page along with other artists with new work ("A Forest of New Art") and on the UGallery blog in a short article introducing artists new to the site. You can also view my art and profile here.

Unlike my art website, UGallery receives lots of traffic from people who are serious about buying art, and I want those eyes on my work. UGallery is currently--like, it ends today--having a 20% off sale, their biggest event of the year, so please check them out.

Anyway, I'm happy to have my work up at UGallery--wish me luck there!

I also have a couple of paintings at Cureeo, including Planets and Foil, above. Cureeo is smaller and more boutique-y than UGallery. They said no to everything I offered up for sale except for Planets and that second portrait I painted of Mabel with the little-kid background. So I don't really understand Cureeo's selection process other than the fact that the work they seem to go for is a bit more avant garde than mine, but it's nice to be included there in some way.

We'll see how things go at both of these online art galleries! I can continue to sell my paintings independently, so feel free to contact me personally if you want an original. Last week my friend and former colleague Dave bought Apple Blossoms for his wife Sandra (don't worry; she was in on this) from me on the day before it was about to appear on UGallery--thanks Dave! Nothing makes my day like a sale.

In other good art news, The Graduates (above) won an Award of Excellence at the Illinois Watercolor Society's annual members' show. After Best of Show, three Excellence awards are up for grabs, followed by some honorable mentions and merchandise awards.

People who won awards included (l-r) Carmelo Schifano, me!, Sylvia Aruffo, Sally Konley, Bret Steinhaus, Tom Herzberg, Robert Krajecki, and Rochelle Weiner.

So this was huge for me, and Jeff and I were very happy that we made the long drive up to Oak Brook for the Thursday night opening earlier this month. I provided a boatload of cookies for the opening. If you'd like to see my painting along with forty or so other watercolors, please stop by the beautiful Mayslake Peabody Estate in Oak Brook before the show closes on December 5.

Finally, please *like* my art page on Facebook--I'm currently 8 likes away from 500. I regularly post in-progress photos of my paintings and let you know about print/merchandise sales. Thank you!

New York City Part 4

Sorry for the long wait between posts! Among other things, Jeff and I were busy with a flooring project during the past couple of weeks, and it ate up my afternoons. But it's finished, it looks amazing, and it is one of something like five blogs I need to write.

So! Back to New York City with Jeff, Mel, and me. As you can tell from the photo above, we spent our last vacation day at the Museum of Modern Art, where Mel caught me interacting with a man painted on a mirror. My expression probably explains why I had to wait until age 39 to get married.

But first we needed to try the best bagels in New York at a place called Ess-A-Bagel. So much time has passed since we ate these, but boy did my brain imprint a taste-memory that will make every bagel I eat in the future seem inferior. Because they will be inferior. These were perfection: not rubbery at all, but yielding and warm with a perfectly crisp exterior. Once again we ate them while standing on the sidewalk like a buncha hobos.

I also discovered that several years of walking on Dr. Scholl's gel insoles will cause them to disintegrate, so I bought some more and, and to be even more of a hobo, I did this whole boot-takeoff-insole-switcheroo bit while squatting in the entrance of a drugstore.

It was an unseasonably warm and humid morning, and as we walked toward MoMA, I took off my jacket. The dress I wore came in a fuzzy mystery fabric that seemed to promote active sweating. My ponytail became its usual awful black frizz pom-pom. So I was miserable but attempted to take on the devil-may-care attitude of the female sculptures we saw frolicking in the middle of a busy intersection.

Once we arrived at MoMA, we were disappointed to discover a giant line of people waiting to enter. We joined their ranks and prepared ourselves for boredom. Museum workers patrolled the line and said that some of the blockbuster paintings were not on display, and also people who downloaded the MoMA app and used it to pay online would get to skip the line and go inside. Jeff didn't have to be told twice--he got to work downloading and paying, and whoooooosh, we swooped inside like a trio of VIPs.

That museum worker was right about some of the museum's pieces being unavailable. It seemed like 75% of the things I wanted to see (1900-1950) were gone, but their gallery tags were still in place as if to mock me. This was a shame because those paintings are in my art teacher wheelhouse, and I was all set to bombard young Mel with interesting painting tidbits all morning long. Unfortunately we were treated to a mere handful of masterpieces (such as the fantastic Rousseau and Starry Night, above) followed by a dollop of Pop, a whole lot of Minimalism, and some Abstract Expressionism. I bemoaned this, but Mel had a grand time anyway.

Andy Warhol's Gold Marilyn, a woman by Willem de Kooning, and my tribute to my sister Poof. :)

I told Mel about Rodin's portrait of Balzac--she said it was one of her favorite things in the museum. And I love the photo she took of a Jackson Pollock painting viewed from the side.

We had lunch at Tina's Cuban Cuisine, which was relatively nearby, and Jeff took this photo of the straightest leg in the city.

The place was packed, and we sat in a kind of so-what dining room with what seemed like fluorescent lighting--it made me feel like I was back in a school cafeteria (PTSD!). We shared everything, including a Cuban sandwich and some ham croquettes. Jeff and I were hoping that these would match the ones we had in Spain, and while they were crispy-creamy-tasty...yeah, sorry.

These little guys were fun: empanadas with chicken filling, a Twinkie-looking item that I can't remember, and a red ball of mashed potatoes surrounding some kind of ground beef situation. I'm pretty sure I had a mango (?) shake. Sorry so vague--it's been over a month!

After lunch we headed to the Hirschl and Adler gallery on 5th Avenue. Sara, a friend of mine from grad school, told me that her husband Peter had a small show there, and I was curious to study his exquisite oil paintings in person--I'd only seen them online. The above photo doesn't do them justice--here's an example of his work.

Gorgeous and Hopperesque! Peter is my age, and I couldn't help feeling like I was so far behind him in terms of art production. He was fortunate to have been born into an artistic family and has painted professionally for his entire adult life, whereas I've only been at it for two and a half years. But this is nothing new: I feel insecure pretty much every time I walk into any gallery at all. I'm such a newbie!

And then in an adjoining room: enormous watercolors by Alexander Creswell. This artist counts among his patrons THE QUEEN OF FREAKING ENGLAND. He is so good, you guys! Included in his show was a series of giant (4 feet across, maybe?) paintings of Venice at night with fireworks, and they were color-drenched and masterful, with a sort of effortlessness that only supremely confident painters can pull off.

I was in awe, intimidated, and in love with these, and I wanted to go home and paint paint paint. I walked back into Pete's room, and yes, please just let me go home and paint. I start to feel not right if I go too long without painting. It's kind of like my need for chocolate. Speaking of...

We bought some fancy-ass desserts and hot chocolate at the Francois Payard Bakery (ground floor of The Plaza hotel).

We were feeling glamorous (at least I was) as we sat at a tall table and savored macarons and other gorgeous creations. A woman of a certain age stopped by as Jeff and I were digging into that shiny chocolate dome, and she exclaimed, "What is THAT?" We told her where she could find one. It was almost as fabulous as it looks--there was something hazelnutty going on inside, if I remember correctly.

And then Jeff's phone buzzed. A text from Southwest Airlines told us that our flight home had been canceled. Whut.

Jeff was a hero as per usual and got on the phone with the airline, and after about a half hour, we were booked on a new, slightly earlier flight. GO JEFF. He said that Southwest did everything right and were actually surprisingly soothing about the whole thing.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around, working our way back to the hotel. Along the way Mel took some photos of Bergdorf Goodman's windows--they were a purple tribute to fashion over the past 111 years.

Above and beyond, Bergdorf Goodman!

Our last meal in New York was at a Cambodian sandwich shop called Num Pang. It was close to our hotel and, like all of the restaurants we visited on our trip, vetted by Jeff weeks in advance. Mel and I shared a meatball sandwich while Jeff abstained, claiming he was still full from lunch. Num Pang was decorated with fun graffiti, and we stood at a little bar and inhaled the sandwich and a couple of refreshing tea concoctions.

Soon enough we were on our way back to Laguardia, where the Southwest chaos meant that we had nowhere to sit once we reached our gate. Actually I found one seat, which Jeff and Mel insisted I take while they sat on the floor, during which time Mel took the above self-portrait. As you can see, she was still full of energy and happiness.

I'll spare you the description of the flight home, our hotel shuttle that decided to not pick us up because our flight was cancelled but then after an angry call from Jeff and an hour of waiting, they came to get us after all, and then the two-hour drive home through the absolute middle of nowhere and the bag of Tato Skins I ate to stay awake and didn't exactly share.

If you wanted Tato Skins so much maybe you should have bought some for yourself, Jeffray.

We dropped Mel off and were reunited with our confused cats at around 1:30 a.m. Everyone was fed, watered, and adored. Cat boxes were cleaned out, and my wonderful husband and I fell into deep, dark comas for the rest of the night.

In conclusion, New York is awesome. You should go.

New York City Part 2

Oh, New York.

Jeff and I have been watching the coverage of Hurricane Sandy's devastation from the safety of our home in Illinois. It's so hard to wrap our minds around the images we've seen, especially when we were there just four weeks ago. To all of our friends in the northeast: you're in our thoughts, and we hope things return to normal for you soon. And we love New York very much.

So...I'm going to continue writing about our time there with Mel. The first part is here in case you missed it, but this is the condensed version: we arrived on a Sunday morning and walked all over the place the entire day, visting the Frick and Central Park and gorging on sweets and pizza along the way.

Jeff's credit card point accumulatin' fu allowed us to spend the rest of our time at the Grand Hyatt New York. It's next to the Grand Central Terminal and boasts a sprawling, impressive lobby starring two enormous, slightly elongated white heads that we thought were alternately freaky and soothing. We left our luggage in our new room and set off on foot to meet my friend David at a little deli near the Apple store and Bergdorf Goodman.

David works as a makeup artist for Estee Lauder at Bergdorf Goodman, and he is a fan of Beauty Broadcast, my sister's YouTube channel. He Internet-met me through that, and last year he was kind enough to send Poof, Mom and me custom-engraved lipsticks from Estee Lauder. We've become Facebook friends as well and have amazed each other with arcane pop cultural references and various wisecracks. I was excited to meet him in person.

If you've never met an Internet friend in real life, you're missing out because it is an experience unlike any other. You understand the way your friend's mind works, but you've never seen them move around in space as a three-dimensional being. So as you marvel at your friend's actual person-ness, you're able to jump right in wherever it was you left off when the two of you were online.

And this was the case with David. He was smart, sweet, down-to-earth, and a million laughs. Jeff, Mel, and I immediately recognized him as a member of Our Tribe, and an instant lovefest commenced between the four of us. David is originally from central Illinois, so we have that in common, too. He was just the best. I mean, look at me grinning like an idiot up there. I know this sounds cheesy, but when he gave us goodbye hugs, it felt like he represented the entire city, and we parted ways filled with goodwill for the people of New York.

(PS David weathered the storm by watching a marathon of scary movies in his Brooklyn home. He's just fine.)

Up next: an obligatory trip to the top of the Empire State Building. We stood in line (or do you prefer on line? because I don't) for about an hour. The line wound through one room after another, and as soon as we worked our way through one, we'd get our hopes up that it was finally elevator time, only to face another room filled with more line.

The noon-time view from the 86th floor was tremendous and worth the wait, of course, and we took it in from all four sides. Stunning and worth the wait!

We also took the photo that's at the top of this post--please note that my hair is threatening to take over my entire head. It's been about six months since I've had it cut, and while we were on the trip I gave up on trying to tame it. The wind (and later, the humidity) caused me to tweet and Facebook the following:

(David responded: "I think of this moment EVERY TIME it rains in New York!!! We share the same thoughts!")

The observation deck was a mob scene, and Mel began experiencing some mild agoraphobia. We headed back down in search of sustenance. Jeff had planned to take us to Ippudo for the best ramen in town. This involved a mile-long walk (I'm guessing) south (also kind of guessing; I have no sense of direction). Along the way Mel and I spotted the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck and begged for an ice cream pit stop. Jeff, who hadn't seen the truck, agreed in a hurry.

From what I could tell, the BGICT sells normal ice cream novelties (I guess--no ice cream trucks come to our town) along with some exclusive ideas such as Mel's waffle cone that I'm holding for her. They coated the cone's interior with Nutella.

Jeff and I shared a Salty Pimp, which is vanilla soft serve drizzled with dulce de leche, sprinkled with sea salt, and dipped in chocolate. Look at it stalking Melissa! A while later, we saw a photo online of Anthony Bourdain devouring a Salty Pimp, too.

We weren't eating as much as we were feeding. And then off we went in search of more food.

Ippudo! It took us a while to find its hidden entrance, but once we were inside, we were treated to a very special meal in a rowdy but cool atmosphere.

I liked the ramen-under-glass counter near the front of the store. The cooks yelled whenever new customers entered, and small parties were seated together at a communal table. Jeff, Mel, and I somehow scored a posh booth.

Mel was wearing the cutest ensemble that day: vintage Batman shirt tucked into a yellow pencil skirt, knee high socks, Doc Martens. I wore my usual dress and big necklace, and Jeff had on his classic black shirt/black jeans combo.

We shared an appetizer of pork rolls (right) and a two kinds of ramen (one is on the left). The ramen was perfectly cooked and topped with tender pork and an egg. The rolls were phenomenal and stole the show in my opinion, with spicy pork and, if I remember correctly, some cabbage. The roll itself was so light, soft, and squishy that it didn't even seem like food. Mel and I talked about its texture for days to come. What was going on with it? How was it made? We don't know.

After lunch we walked around the Village and saw a mural of pets that made me miss Bun, who was being cared for by her grandparents (thanks Mom and Dad!). Jeff wanted to visit another place that specialized in Belgian fries--that's all they make--but ONCE AGAIN they were not up to Jeff's par. We didn't even finish them. Repeat: we did not eat something that was fried.

Jeff, care to explain?

Belgian fries (frites) are a completely different experience than American fries. If you travel in Belgium, you'll find them in upscale restaurants and on the street, often arriving in a paper cone and accompanied with homemade mayonnaise.

If you want to know how to make Belgian fries, this is the best resource that I know. It's tricky and to do it right, you need to use the proper potato and fry in a mixture of duck fat and oil.

But when done right, GAH! They're fried twice (and sometimes thrice;-))--first in lower heat to cook the inside, then in higher heat to crisp the outside, and this creates a fry that is almost completely creamy, not crumbly, on the inside, protected by a salty crust. Heavenly. Game-changing. Haunting.

I've found quite a few places in the U.S. that serve Belgian fries, but with one exception, I've never had a fry that came close to a true Belgian fry. But that exception was on this trip.

But that exception was not this place, Pommes Frites.

I'd been to Pommes Frites before and enjoyed the fries, though they weren't quite the fry I sought. However this time, while ordering, I overheard that it had changed owners. The first bite confirmed it was not for the best. The fries were burnt and bland. Do not recommend.

Afternoon shadows were closing in on us, so we took a subway down to the financial district. Jeff wanted to see the gorgeous new Gehry building and the One World Trade Center under construction, and he took the photos above, which I thought were beautiful. I love the way he composes his shots.

As we entered Battery Park, we saw a sculpture that had formerly been installed near the Twin Towers and was damaged during 9/11. Its theme was world peace, and it was so touching to see that it had survived that awful day. The piece was more poignant and meaningful due to the ordeal it had endured.

We sat on benches and looked out at the Statue of Liberty for a while--such a lovely day--before we headed back to our hotel via the subway.

Grand Central Terminal is huge, with a large open area that reminded me of Chicago's Union Station. The vaulted ceiling is blue with gold constellations.

In an attempt to broaden our horizons, we ate at a German pub called Bierhaus. Oktoberfest had just begun, and the place was crowded and very loud. Monday Night Football was on the various televisions, polka music played, and we could barely hear ourselves speak. Melissa is used to this kind of party/bar atmosphere, but Jeff and I aren't. At least I'm not anymore--minus the beer, it reminded me of a junior high school cafeteria. PTSD, ahoy!

Jeff and Mel ordered some special-seeming beers and I had a sparkling apple cider. We shared a platter of meats and some German potato salad. The food was just so-so and appeared to be nothing more than some rolled up cold cuts (I have a love-hate relationship with that term) and a warm hot dog. This was the most disappointing meal of the trip, but we still had a good time.

We stopped by Baked by Melissa (how could we not?) on the way back to the hotel and each of us had a microcupcake. They were delicious one-biters, and mine was so good it made me mad that it was so tiny. We took a pit stop at our cool-looking room before heading to the Hyatt's 16th floor.

Jeff had jumped through some kind of hoop that allowed us access to a special lounge where nonstop snacks and beverages were available. We had it all to ourselves and, exhausted, we lounged on the outdoor furniture and admired New York at night. I took a photo of a shimmery Chrysler Building reflected on another building. I felt so fortunate to be able to spend time with Jeff and Mel in such a beautiful city.

Oatmeal Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Scones

The new cookbook from Baked (I've written about those guys before) 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.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups flour
• 1/3 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 3 ounces (3/4 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubs
• 3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk
• 1 large egg, separated
• 1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
• 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.

Los Angeles Part 3

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.

Kind of fun encountering this place!

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.

Thanks again or reading! More soon! Please *like* my watercolor page on Facebook! Happy Labor Day!

Los Angeles Part 2

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.

And even this guy seemed fun in his own way.

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!