Month: December 2007

Crankypantsing, Meta

508

Shelly

I’ve got 508 posts to go.

I had planned to paint today, but I got sidetracked by other things: washing the dog, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the studio, and straightening up my coffee table mess. And then, I spent some time fixing bad links, until I got so tired that I literally fell asleep in front of the computer. At that point, I decided it was time to go take a nap. When I woke up, The Amazing Race was on, and now it’s bed time. Where the hell did my day go?

The litterbox is clean, though, and the dog smells like Garnier Nutrisse, so I guess it wasn’t all wasted time.

Crankypantsing, Meta

Rain and Links

Shelly

It’s been raining all day. I’ve been on the computer for most of it, fixing broken links. This is the only room you can really hear the rain from, because the downspouts are right outside the window. Over the past couple of hours it’s gradually been raining harder and harder.

I keep hearing sirens, too. They’re distant, but close enough to be distracting. It must be pretty crappy weather to be out driving in. In fact, I just heard an enormous crash, like a dumpster being dropped or two trains connecting. I haven’t a clue what it was, but yikes!

Fixing all those broken links is a tedious and thankless task. I’ve been working on it for a couple of hours, and I think I’ve got about 100 entries done. Going backwards, I’m at 682, which means nearly 700 entries to go. So, to repeat, if you are looking at older posts, and you try to click on an image, to embiggen it, you will likely be taken to a random image. I’m working on it, but it’s going sloooooowly. In the meantime, everything is working properly within the gallery, so you can easily access images from there.

Art, Collage, Drawings, Journals

Asian Pear

Shelly

Asian Pear
Asian Pear (detail)

I (sort of) tried the pear crisp recipe, as promised. I used Bartlett and d’Anjou pears, and substituted sucanat for brown sugar and old-fashioned rolled oats for quick oats. It worked fine. The oats were a bit chewy, which is to be expected, but it was damn tasty. However, in the future, I think I’ll dust each layer of pears with flour, because the juice was pretty runny.

Pear Crisp
1/2 C rolled oats, uncooked
1/4 C packed brown sugar
2 Tbls flour
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 C cold butter
3 sliced pears
2 Tbls lemon juice

Preheat oven 375F
Combine first 6 ingredients in bowl, cutting butter with knives or a pastry cutter. Toss sliced pears with lemon juice. Layer pears in 9 inch pie pan and top with oatmeal mixture. Bake for 20 minutes.

Art, Collage, Drawings

Saint Mary of the Pears

Shelly

Bosc Pear
Bosc Pear (detail)

I used graphite on another page from the patent book, but this time, I primed it with a thin coat of gesso.

Every time I see a Bosc pear, it makes me think of the Gothic S curve. If you look at the figure of the Virgin, you’ll see that it’s just about impossible to stand in that position. Her hip is thrust out in the opposite direction from both her feet and shoulders. Bosc pears have much the same sort of, um, stance.

(Apologies for the moire. I tried descreening the scan, but the image of the Virgin and Child was taken from an auction catalog, and the print quality was pretty bad. You can easily see the dot pattern with the naked eye.)

Crankypantsing, Meta, Photography

Comments

Shelly

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I’ve been a bad blogger lately. Most of my free time has been taken up with genealogy crap. I’ve also been inundated with a spectacular amount of blog spam. I’ve installed several filters on the back side, but a large volume of spam is still getting through. Not to the blog itself, but I get e-mail notifications for all the ones that the back-end filters miss. That number has gone up to hundreds each day, which means I’ve had to filter my e-mail, too. Some of the notifications for legit comments have gotten lost in that mess. Not the comments themselves, just the notifications.

That’s all by way of explaining why I did not realize there were comments. Oops!

And now, another random pee-chur from last Sunday. This one without pretty cyan skies. I don’t know why I’m fascinated with electric poles and pylons, but I am. It’s hard to believe that something so primitive could have such a huge impact on our everyday lives.

Art, Collage, Journals, Paintings

Pear Crisp

Shelly

Bosc Pear
Bosc Pear (detail)

I like the way this one turned out. I glued down a page from an 1850s patent book, using acrylic medium, then topped it off with a layer of medium, to seal it. Otherwise, as soon as you add water to it, the paper peels and rolls up.

The under-layer of pigment was done in a really wet wash, with the upper layers being finger blended, without adding water.

The detail is about 50% larger than usual, which shows the texture pretty well. The swirly marks are from the underlying layer of acrylic medium. The sharp chisel marks around the dark edge of the pear are from an Xacto knife. Scratching into the paper not only mimics the reflected light, but it also creates a barrier, stopping the watercolor from flowing outside the area.

Tomorrow, I’m going to make pear crisp. Mmmm!

Pets, Photography

Work Bench

Shelly

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My messy coffee table slash work bench. It used to be a desk, but I took the legs off and turned it into a coffee table. It weighs about a million pounds and is really beat up, but it’s functional and I don’t have to worry about trashing it because, hey, it’s already trashed.

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It sleeted, iced, and snowed last night. This morning, there was just a thin film of snow on the patio, so it doesn’t seem to have amounted to much. Right now, I can hear water dripping outside, so it must have warmed up. I should go out and clear the little bit of snow that’s left on my car’s windshield and front bumper, but I’m not feeling too motivated in that direction. Maybe I’ll do it when I check the mail.

Photography

Fog and Sunrise

Shelly

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Taken from the 3rd floor of the Wells Library.

I looked out the south windows, and could see the sun coming up, so I went out in the hallway and took a couple of pictures. As I was going back to my desk, I was facing the north windows, and the view there could not have been more different. It was foggy and wet, without a hint of orange or pink anywhere to be seen.

It’s about 11:30pm now, and the sky is spewing ice. Not good! Thankfully, I don’t have to go in tomorrow.