Speaking of cranberries...

Discovered a great cake recipe in my mom's recipe box for Thanksgiving/Christmas-time, so I thought I'd share:

CRANBERRY CAKE 3 eggs 2 cups sugar (I use raw sugar) 3/4 cup butter, softened (I use Earth Balance buttery spread from Trader Joe's) 1 tsp. almond extract 2 cups all-purpose flour (I use unbleached) 2.5 cups whole fresh cranberries (you can also use frozen, thawed, but fresh is better) 2/3 cup chopped pecans Beat eggs with sugar until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Add butter and almond extract, beat 2 minutes. Stir in flour just until combined. Stir in the cranberries and pecans. Spread in a greased pan (13x9 or a largish springform), bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour. (Stick a toothpick in it--if it's clean, it's done. I let it brown a bit longer.) The perfect combination of tart and sweet. Enjoy!

Los Olivos

Lunchtime in Los Olivos: On the last day of my trip, I went with the rest of the gang up to Los Olivos, where they were going to paint in the afternoon, and had a farewell lunch with them before I drove back to Los Angeles. (I had to go to work the next day, so I cut the trip a day short.) For an appetizer, Karen treated us to a big flat bowl full of all different kinds (and colors) of olives, and I thought it was so beautiful, I took a photo before we devoured them, so I could paint it when I got home (which I did, today). I was inspired by Jennifer Lawson's beautiful cranberry paintings. http://jenniferlawson.blogspot.com/2010/12/good-intentions.html Thanks, Jennifer! You reminded me to save those highlights. This one counts for EDM challenges #306 (draw a snack), #116 (draw something green) and #111 (draw a bowl).

Forgot this one

This was from our first day, at "La Arcada," a small shopping arcade off of State Street in Santa Barbara. We parked ourselves there to do vignettes of various architectural elements, and I just stuck all of mine into one piece, which wasn't really the assignment, but meant I didn't have to keep moving around. I was happy with elements of this--the shadow on the large pot, the water coming from the dolphin's mouth--but I seem to have suffered from tipsiness all day that day (even though the winery tour came later in the trip!)--my courthouse tower leaned to the right in the day's first picture, and in this one the fountain has a definite list to the left! Well, that's why it's in a sketchbook and isn't a finished work destined for framing, another valuable lesson I attempted to learn on this trip--not every painting has to be perfectly executed and shared, some are for practice, which is to say FUN. I have to work on that. It sounds like two mutually exclusive things--work at having fun--but learning to release judgment is a big deal. Someday...?

Vineyard painting

On the first day of our stay in Solvang, we went on a wine tasting / painting "crawl," to three wineries in the Santa Ynez Valley. We didn't have a lot of time to paint at each location, so after messing up a painting at the first place, I re-thought my methods, and at the second winery I decided to do a finished sketch to come back and paint later, and took a photo or two to remind me of colors. Since I was using my Droid as a camera, the colors weren't the greatest on this one (though some of my pictures came out better), but it was enough to remind me of the things I liked about it--the house, the stripes of the grape arbors, the perspective from far away to close up.

I also wrote the colors directly into the drawing, erasing as I painted, but on Tuesday morning back in the garden at our B&B, where I actually painted the picture, I forgot to remove a few; if you look really closely, you can find the word "purple" embedded in the mountains.

It was Theresa's suggestion to us to do the close-up of the grapes at the side of our paintings and use that as a framework, and it reminded me that painting isn't just about duplicating what you see, it's also about design and layout and the thought processes leading up to making something more. Other people on Every Day Matters have also illustrated that, with their borders  through which parts of their paintings intrude, and I love the effect. Thanks, everyone!

This is my last post for my watercolor trip (although I have some photos that I hope to use to paint more scenes from it). It was great--I would encourage others to take one. What a wonderful treat to sit outdoors all day long and capture color on paper.

Quotes for the Teen Scene

I mostly don't talk about work here (I like to keep this blog separate for art), but I was so excited by the day's events, I just had to share. The new furniture for my teen section at the library is finally arriving next week, so I'm scurrying around trying to get ready. One thing left undone was to apply the wall quotes I ordered from http://www.wallwritten.com. This company is fantastic--on the website, they provide a design function so you can create your own quotes, and I really went to town. The colors of the front sides of our new chairs are going to be teal, purple, and lime green (the backs are blonde wood with chrome legs--very trendy), so I went for an overall color scheme of the same with the quotes, with orange accents. Being the typeface maven that I am (my former career was movie title designer), I was excited to get to be artistic in selecting typefaces, colors, and layouts.

The package of quotes arrived awhile ago, but I haven't made the time to do the work--it's difficult to do it when the library is open, which it is 9:30 to 9:00 daily. Also, I knew I probably couldn't do it by myself (too right). I finally decided today was the day, and told my friend Patrice (head of the reference dept.), who promptly volunteered to help me put them up. She is the best combination of calm, resourceful, and practical, and I knew she would be the perfect collaborator, so I gratefully accepted. It took us all day, but we did it! Here are photos:

This is the prep work. The quotes come as three layers: backing grid on heavy paper, the vinyl letters, and then a thin sticky layer to which the letters adhere. You first hang everything up, as we did here, to find placement and get them level. Then you take them down, burnish them thoroughly from the grid side, then peel that off (which takes a long time and a lot of patience) and stick them to the wall (a harrowing experience of trying to get them straight without ruining them!). Then you burnish again, and peel away the sticky layer to leave the vinyl letters on the wall.

Some of the quotes were in two or even three parts, and WallWritten obligingly puts diamond shapes on each layer so you can apply one and then match diamonds to place the other parts. Here are all the quotes. (Sorry, some are a bit blurry--I took these with my Droid.) I surveyed the teens by sending out a list of about 30 quotes and asking them to pick their top three; we ended up choosing five quotes (getting permission from the authors to use them). Three are from young adult authors (Diane Duane, Cornelia Funke and Stephen Chbosky), and the other two from people who just said something clever about reading.

In two weeks or so, the new furniture will be installed, the rest of the art will be done (I still have some stenciling to do--there will be an area rug with a paisley pattern, so I got some paisley stencils to put a pattern on the walls and the bookshelves), the poster hangers will be mounted, the computers will be there, and it will be a real teen section at last!

Dion Dior and More!

An online friend from the Every Day Matters group has had her blog nominated in a contest for Top Blog of the Year. She makes beautiful artwork and writes wonderfully about it--here is her blog:

http://diondior.blogspot.com/

And you can vote for her here:

http://www.blogguidebook.com/2010/11/round-one-vote-now-elimination-round.html

First elimination round ends THIS FRIDAY, so don't hesitate--VOTE!

State Street Casual

Sunday was our "transition" day--we moved from our hotel on the beach at Santa Barbara to a B&B in Solvang. We had no plans until a 5:30 gathering at the new place, so I had a brisk walk and a leisurely breakfast at the beach, then packed up, checked out, and went wandering around State Street looking in the shops. Along about lunchtime, I parked myself at an outside cafe table next to this arbor entrance to a shopping alley, and spent an hour or so painting bougainvillea before driving the 35 picturesque minutes through the San Marcos Pass to Solvang.

Painting like this day after day really tunes you in to everything from an artist's perspective, and made me realize that I live in a city (Los Angeles) with a wealth of "views" begging to be documented. Instead of waiting years to go on a week-long vacation somewhere else, I have made myself a promise to spend at least one weekend a month finding and painting the many aspects--both beautiful and mundane--of my own home town.