Sister Rosy Fish

We had some friends over for dinner on Saturday and as a result the public areas of my house are now clean. Cleaner than they have been since... well, they're cleaner than I can remember them being. It's weird. I look at my dining room table and it's not covered in art materials and I feel vaguely distressed, like I've been robbed or something. I'm not a hoarder but I think I prefer to live my life surrounded by small piles of books and art and pens.

Anyway, I ran around panicking about the quantity of food and the unshoveled sidewalk and eventually people showed up and it was all okay. We had a quiet Sunday and then yesterday I got up and felt like I ought to be productive again. It was a very productive day. I think I've almost got another piece to stick in my porkfolio.

We got a good dump of snow on Saturday and we spent a small chunk of Sunday shoveling the walks. I made a little highway for the local hares through the yard. Yesterday my work was rewarded as we got not one but two hares come through at the same time, looking for hay. Let me tell you, there are few more pathetic-looking things than a hare shuffling awkwardly up your front walk because it's scared of the cars passing by on the street. Every time a car passed by the hare's ears would go down lower and it would shuffle closer in. Finally it gave up and ran around to the back, where it was chased off the hay by the other hare. Very silly.

I spent today finishing that portfolio piece up. I think I'll do some more painting tonight and tomorrow I'll be off to life drawing in the evening again, assuming there's no blizzard or something.

Unbelievable Adapter

So I guess the Wheel of Interest has spun back to acrylic painting. After months of Not Getting Much Done I've finished three of them this week -- the commission and two quick alla prima paintings right after. Lately I've been inspired by Linda Wilder, who also works in acrylics. It's sometimes difficult for an acrylic artist to find work that's sort-of like the work they would like to do. Almost very time I see a painting I like it's in oils.

Anyway, after I finished the commission to my satisfaction (still waiting on word from the client), I decided that I wanted to keep this painting streak going. I mentioned that Ilfy bought some flowers for Valentine's -- well, they were still looking astonishingly perky yesterday so I painted one of them. After one false start it turned out rather well. (Or so I thought. I'm pretty awful at painting flowers so it doesn't take much for me to declare the thing a success.)

So today, after looking at some more paintings, I decided to try out painting with a palette knife. The results were... rather less than awesome. I think it's pretty hilarious that I just expect to try a new thing and succeed at it, and then when I fail I'm vaguely puzzled. Why didn't this work? Bob Ross just does this and that and OH WELL I'm sure the next one will be a masterpiece. The hilarious part is that I've been thinking this for like... 17 years now. It's like being a supervillain. Sure I get punched out every time but NEXT TIME I'm gonna rule the world. Really.

BUT after watching a couple Youtube videos I have determined that what I think is "a lot of paint" is not actually a lot of paint. The guy in the video was smearing acrylic around like it was body mud. So perhaps if I try the palette knife again I should maybe use a lot of paint.

After a short break to contemplate my failures I went back and fixed the painting up a bit with the trusty filbert. Good old bristle filbert, I haven't owned you that long and I'm already starting to rely on you.

But that got me thinking: just how many paintings HAVE I done? I expect that I ought to be doing better than I am but is that justified? So I went back and did some counting, and although my record-keeping is quite awful I have discovered that I've painted about 50 paintings. A few more if you include the few watercolours and the super-quick portrait sketches and the really awful shit I did in Art Fundamentals more than a decade ago.

So for 50 paintings, maybe I'm not doing that badly. I could expect to see a jump in skill every order of magnitude or so, so I need to double my output before I can really expect to level up. That's not so bad.

Readable Parade

Long weekends are rather odd now, since neither Ilfy nor I have a regular job to go to.  This one was quite uneventful.  We went to the library, stopped to see what's up at the Metropolis winter festival and generally bumped around not getting much done.  There was some art hanging up in one of the pavilions, and we had a waffle special at the Eva Sweet waffle booth (we have a card now so there's a free liege waffle in my future!)  I read a lot of books and ate a lot of leftovers.

Today I did some painting, cleaned some dishes up and put more bread dough on to rise.  A few weeks ago I took a photo of the first No Knead Bread loaf I made:

Doesn't that look good? It was DELICIOUS. Every time we finish a loaf I wait a day or two and then put another loaf on.

Ilfy and I used the last of the loaf, the pork bits from soup and the glaze from the yak roast to toss together some sloppy pork sandwiches for lunch:

They were fairly nice. And today I stuck the last of the yak roast into the last of the soup with some stir-fried mushrooms, blanched broccoli and spaghettini and had a nice soup for lunch. That's the last of the leftovers, tonight it's completely fresh pizza for dinner. And tomorrow there will be bread again.

I feel guilty because I've been kinda lazy lately but the painting is going well, it should be ready to go out in a couple of days at the most so things aren't completely in the crapper. I'm going to have to start getting those tearsheets printed, though.

Applejack Yak Attack

All I can really say about today is that Ilfy's yak roast was delicious.  We roasted a kilo of yak/Angus cross in a cider mustard marinade and had it with roasted root veggies (including the onions from the marinade).  Our meat expenditure for the week was like... $12 and we got a good four days of soup, three days of roast and probably some assorted pork-bit lunches out of it.

And for lunch I had homemade bread with the lebanese green beans.  My stomach has died and gone to heaven.  I regret the years I spent eating (mostly) crap at the Uni food courts.

Stealthier Summer Surveyor

Well, today was slightly surreal. Just before lunchtime I was getting ready to turn out the bread dough in the kitchen for its second rise when the phone rang. It turned out to be my dad. After the preliminary "how are you"s and "have you thought about going to school for drafting so you don't have to be a homeless bum"s, he got down to family news. So apparently, my grandfather died in 2010. My extended family said something about it to my brother, but as my brother doesn't speak their language very well he may or may not have understood the message and the rest of us remained completely ignorant of this fact for a year and a half.

Now, I've been trying to get in touch with my grandfather on and off for the past few years, but as nobody ever answered the phone I didn't try very hard. Apparently they all changed phone numbers at some point so... it's not like it would have worked anyway. But here's the strange thing -- I'm on Facebook, my cousins have friended me on there, surely SOMEONE could have said something at some point if they really wanted me to know.

I guess now there's some additional hoohah about inheritance because my brother and I own a share of the family apartment and we will have to officially renounce our claims on it.

BIZARRE.

My grandfather was 85 and we weren't very close since my immediate family emigrated. I've always felt bad about the relationship because we were the first grandchildren, the favourite ones, and then we moved away and started new lives in a different culture. My immediate family was never terribly close, my brother and I grew up independent and without much need for family contact. My grandparents didn't see me through my rather troubled teenage years and once I moved out on my own I had no real wish to have very close ties to any part of my family. I think all of us found the relationship trying. So while I'm sorry that my grandfather is dead I also feel like that is one more duty that has been lifted off my shoulders.

While I was getting all this news I was covering the kitchen in flour and myself with dough. I had some lunch, baked the bread, went for a jog with Ilfy and didn't get much done otherwise. I guess I'll have to make up the work tomorrow but my thought processes have all been derailed and it'll take me a little time to get back on track.

Respiratory Power Gremlin

Today was pretty quiet. My hands were sore in the morning so I didn't do much in the way of drawing. Today was mostly about chores. I was going to make loubiya b zeit (lebanese green beans with olive oil) for lunch but I started them too late and they weren't ready until this afternoon. I think this is another one of those recipes I am slowly becoming addicted to. I guess it's difficult to resist oil and onions and garlic, even if there's green beans stuck in there.

While they were slowly burbling away I started a loaf of no-knead bread, made some pita sandwiches for lunch and then took care of the godawful mess in the kitchen. I don't think I washed a single dish yesterday so it all had to be done today. And of course tomorrow there's going to be flour from the bread all over the place so it all gets done again tomorrow. BUT I should have fresh home-made bread to go with my beans so all is forgiven.

The pork stock turned out well, I had a small bowl at supper (I couldn't wait for Ilfy to come home so I started in on the beans) and I zipped it up a bit with soy sauce, sesame oil and mirin. There was a lot of meat left on those bones. I think our butcher loves us.

I worked on comics this evening and I'm all caught up with those (at least the ones currently running). Tomorrow I guess I'll paint, jog, bake bread and scan in the sketches from figure drawing. And maybe take some photos of doughzilla, which is always very impressive after having grown all night.

Productive Clink

Man am I tired and sore.

I expected to be a little more productive today but I woke up really stiff. The morning was really slow. I spent far too much time yelling at the Internet, then Ilfy and I went to the butcher's for pork bones and came back with three pounds of bones plus a yak roast.

Ilfy's been on my back to eat some pierogis I froze at Christmas. I didn't cover them properly so they got freezerburnt really badly. I was going to throw them away when he wasn't looking but I ended up feeling really bad about wasting food that we put so much work into. So I ate most of them. The filling made it through pretty well but the dough was kinda disgusting. I hope they don't kill me. But if they do I won't care any more, so I'm not sure I'm all that concerned.

While I was cooking my rather awful lunch I put the soup on -- pork bones, an onion, a chunk of ginger and about half a bulb of garlic. It's been simmering all day and it smells wonderful. Tomorrow we'll season it up and have it with noodles, green onions, cilantro, boiled pork bits and whatever else I can think to put in there. It's sitting outside right now in the great Canadian refrigerator, bleeding off some heat before I stick it in the fridge.

After soup I worked on comics for a while, and then this evening I went to life drawing. This week's model was pretty awesome, he struck a bunch of dramatic poses to begin with so I got some practice doing twisted and curved torsos, which I think I've been lacking in my work. This session went much better than the last, although I think that drawing is going to kill my back. I'm considering getting a corset to prevent me from slouching. The model had an odd bowl haircut, a prominent nose and a chiseled, angular sort of face. He reminded me of an actor playing Julius Caesar and I wonder if he'd gotten that haircut for a play...

And that's about it. Went out, got back, going to read or maybe play some games now. Hopefully Ilfy's raid will end soon because I'm dog tired and I want to sleep.