The Quicksilver Workaholic

Sheesh. I set up the painting plein air Flickr pool at http://www.flickr.com/groups/plein_aire/ a year or so ago, with nice, clear rules about what does and does not fit there. I require people to read and agree to the rules before joining the group.

Our focus is PAINTING AND SKETCHING ON THE SPOT, yes? Not studio work, not portraits (unless outdoors on the spot), abstracts, illustration, allegory, fantasy, etc. There are lots of lovely places to share that kind of work, but "Painting Plein Air" isn't one of them.

Granted, the term "plein air" isn't universally understood--quite!--that's why I explained in careful detail in those rules I mentioned above.

I’ve asked, begged, suggested, and aimed people at the rules, over and over, for the past two years. I’ve contacted artists privately and asked them to remove material that didn’t fit, and explained why. I’ve removed them myself, over and over. I made Joseph a moderator so he could help. I have reminded, and reminded, and REMINDED. Today’s full frontal nude photograph was the capper. (Mind, I’m no prude and I’ve seen and painted nude males, but…?!?! It was a PHOTOGRAPH, dude.)

(And you needn't look so pleased with yourself about it!)

It’s more work for us, but it’s now moderated. Things will sit in a que there until we get around to passing on them.

RATS, I hate doing that, but I’m done explaining and asking nicely. Tired of being a Hall Monitor! Soooooooooo frustrating...

We've been up to our eyelashes this week in computer issues--check out kateslover 's journal for the grisly details, unless computer stuff makes your eyes just glaze over entirely!



My ancient custom-built critter really was on its last legs...didn't realize how close to kaput it was till we were trying to make the transfer between machines and first the graphics card died and then the old monitor blew up with a great puff of smoke! Happily, we were home and quickly dealt with it...

So here's the handsome new baby in our household...a powerful HP laptop . J. did lots of research and decided that as many graphics as I deal with, and heading toward videos, I needed something built at least in this century. It's PRETTY, it's compact, and it's lightyears ahead of my old machine in RAM and storage capacity. Faster, too..

And did I mention compact? My desk actually has ROOM now.

I MISS XP, though--the new baby is Windows 7 and wants everybody to be as modern as it is. Doesn't want to play nice with my venerable and dependable programs...so I'm learning A LOT, FAST.

We're still not all the way back to letting me actually get my WORK done efficiently, but we're getting there...

So since it's been frigid the last couple of days I decided comfort food was just what I needed. Beans and ham, and grandma's cornbread, YUM. My husband is not fond of this stuff, but I am, so for a change I made something just because I wanted it, with an offer to fix him anything he wanted, too. (He DESERVES it, with all the work he's been putting in! My hero...) He even braved the snow for me yesterday and brought back dry beans, which I soaked overnight.

Um. Well.

I had some rather robust smoked ham that was a bit much, by itself, so figured I'd use it in the beans. We bought organic yellow onions, couldn't find the lovely sweet ones--they're a tad strong . I forgot to pour off the bean-soaking water. Some combination of elements resulted in an incredibly NASTY mess! The aroma rising from my longed-for pot of beans smelled more like lighter fluid!

Joseph said "er...does that really smell good to you??"

NO, it smelled AWFUL. Chemical.

I tasted it.

Seriously AWFUL.

We decided it was the ham, so our local raccoons are going to have a feast tonight! The rest can compost!

I had half the bag of beans left, and I just started over. Soaked the beans in hot water, brought them to a boil, used up the last of the hog jowl browned a bit, and still needed ham.

This time I braved the cold, dug out the Jeep, and ran to the local mom-and-pop for a plain, lovely, lightly-smoked ham steak.

I diced about 2/3 for the beans, added a bay leaf, and let it simmer.

Meanwhile, I mixed up a batch of my grandmother's cornbread and popped it in the oven...

He Who Doesn't Care for Beans and Ham had two bowls, plus two pieces of cornbread. :-)

We NEEDED that comfort food! It's been a solid week of messing with my computer switchover, in addition to teaching my class and writing lessons and PDFs. And I can have cornbread and milk for breakfast.

You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl!

Oh, neat! One of my artist friends told me that my upcoming book now has the "search inside" option on Amazon! (Thanks, Donn!) That is SO much fun, and for visual beings like us, really why we buy an art book. This is my revision of one of the first books I did for North Light, over 20 years ago...a whole lot of new materials and surfaces and techniques since then! It was a lot of work, and a lot of fun exploring. (Who doesn't love an excuse to play with new art supplies?!)





Click on the link to go directly to the book on Amazon: Watercolor Tricks & Techniques: 75 New and Classic Painting Secrets

If you hit the "surprise me" option, you can see more...

I've been teaching a new class on keeping an artist's journal and haven't had a lot of time to browse Amazon or post here...a GREAT bunch of people, but I've been writing the lessons and extra articles JUST ahead of the wire each week. Whew...I could use a breather, but you know what? As a freelancer, too LONG a breather makes me anxious.

What IS it with this book?! Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but I'm still getting quite a few orders from my website catalog. Does anyone have a clue why??

I suspect that a teacher or class is recommending it, and I'd love to THANK THEM!