This weeks Garden, Studio and Kitchen update

I seem to be running late on everything the last couple weeks. My excuse is getting ready for the trip this weekend. And I'm sticking to it :)

The greenhouse is all planted for the Winter: Mesclun lettuce, Tyee Spinach and a mix of orange, yellow and red Carrots. I transplanted the 3 Celery and 4 of the 8 Artichokes. I left 4 of the latter in the garden as I'm told by a friend in N.VT that sometimes they will over winter outside. And the ones I transplanted didn't seem to like it much. I'm hoping they will revive.

I put a layer compost and composted manure down, seeded and then a shallow layer of chopped straw on the seeds and a couple inches around the plants.

You'll also see in the above picture that there is now a drip irrigation system which is great. I just have to remember to turn it on and off. I'll get a timer set up at some point. I'll have to remove it in a few weeks so it doesn't freeze but for now it makes life easier.

Studio update:
I got 3 8"x10" canvases finished and a fourth drying. The fourth I'm trying out crackle paste and it needs to dry a couple days in this weather. I'll post it when I'm done. Below are the two I did Tuesday and Wednesday. The first is in the previous post to this one.

Both of them I was just "messing around" with color as well as gluing duck cloth torn to fit the canvas; then painted. The first I then glued tissue paper over that and continued to paint and embellish with oil pastels and crumbled gold leaf. Then I varnished it with Satin Varnish which seems a bit shiny to me for Satin.

I'm going to try experimenting with different varnishes now to see.

The second one I like a lot. Done the same as above only I stretched and glued cheese cloth under the tissue paper and then collaged. And instead of varnish I used a faux bees wax acrylic formula over the top. This gives it a very nice, soft look. Much better then the shiny varnish.

Here are the images:

Kitchen update:
Big thing out of the kitchen this week was Coq au Vin. Chicken cooked in wine. I've tried it a few times and not been satisfied but this time it came out great, if I may say so. (others do too :) )
I'll post the recipe sometime I promise. There are a lot of recipes out there: beware the really complicated ones. It's basically chicken cooked in a wine/broth reduction. Here is an image (beans are from The Garden):

All in all a fun week. Again: I'm off until Tuesday. Back to Maine (yay!)

Day Three of 5 Days/ 5 Canvases

Day Three of my challenge! This one is rather simple and I'm not sure it's totally complete but it may be so I'm going to leave it alone for a bit and come back to it in a week or even more. Sometimes one finds that yes it's done. Other times you'll be sitting there thinking about something else and it will pop into your head exactly what the next stage is.

The other thing about it is I'm playing with color. Color can be a scary thing. I was raised in a beige house with the occasional colonial blue. I'm very color inhibited and I find I can escape this in my painting. I remember as a child my father gave me a “real” water color pan (rather then a kids). And I fell in love with yellow. He had a hard time understanding why I used it all up painting yellow all over a ton of paper but I just couldn't get enough of seeing it come out of the pan, onto my brush and paper. Unfortunately, by the time I was a teenager I was too inhibited color wise to do such a thing. Also by that time Art was now spelled with a capital “A” and I had to be Serious.

As Picasso is constantly quoted “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” There is a reason that is one of the most common quotes you'll find in art books.

The back ground of this painting is green/blues and yellows... which is very shocking to my eye but I love it. Contrasting it with reds was really daring for me :) But I like how it turned out. Acrylic, alcohol inks, water soluble oil pastels and india ink.