Coffee And A Little Breakfast

An Autodesk experiment, and a first smart phone post. Dam this was challenging.

Resurrection Gallery 16-19

Considering I'm still rocking a flip phone it's seems odd that I'd be so selfie happy. I had one for a minute. "Pot Lid Selfie" is 8 x 12 inches in acrylic on plywood. It's black and white (ok, grey scale) except for some of my yellow layout pencil leakage on the stove top. I was tempted to de-saturate the picture but what tha hey. That should be the worst flaw.

"Surface Unit" is 6 x 8 inches in acrylic on plywood. It is another portrait that if I don't tell them they probably won't guess who it is. It wasn't working well I was about to re-prime the board till I thought "What about glasses?)
Huh, I meant to do that. Hey, boards I got.

"Hazmat Chicks" is 12 x 16 inches in acrylic on plywood. It is the fourth painting on this board. A couple of attempts at a soft focus portrait working from a badly focused photo, then on the third run at it boom there's Helen Mirren. Also not one I wanted to look at much, but during the knock down I started experimenting. Hey, it was already broken. I ended up with Eon Flux-Modigliani, hazmat Helen.

"Rockabilly Nell" is 6 x 8 inches in acrylic on plywood. This time I tried a portrait from a photo on Ancestry. The person in question had a beehive like hairdo but the high exposed forehead and baby face eluded me repeatedly. I'm not even sure how many times I re-primed the canvas board. I eventually wore a hole erasing on it before going small and switching to primed plywood. The board wasn't the only change. I found another picture of her in a formal, looking tall and straight. So I found a kinda rockabilly girl in leather whose beehive swooped across her forehead and blended them. I showed it to her , and she kept it!

Resurrection Gallery 10-15

"Margret 39:06" is 6 x 8 inches in acrylic on plywood. The name has a time code from "The Patriot." Her house is burning, but fortunately I don't think she saw this painting.
No really she was already having a bad day.  The faces still taunt me. but at least the paint likes me. I'm having more fun with the painting, if not a lot more success.

"Head Ache" is 6 x 8 inches in acrylic on plywood. It is a variation on an photo composite several years old called "Geisha Ladonna". Yes it's weirdly distorted, and looking at it too long has made my eyes ache a bit, but I'm not disliking it.

"Free Millie" is 8 x 12 inches in acrylic on plywood. Like the cacti Millie got off pretty easy and looks enough like herself in this portrait. If she'd come out from under the bed , I think she'd be quite appreciative..

"Sleepy Shark" is 12 x 16 inches in acrylic on plywood. Originally shot in the bathroom mirror, wearing a slicker, holding a big paper shark mask. This one time smart phone selfie has seen some revisions.

"Logan And Sandy" 6 x 8 inches acrylic on plywood was an oddly challenging painting.  The picture I referenced from was so overexposed that Sandy was mostly just one shade-o-pale. Fortunately I remembered Sandy so I could use the picture and references from the web to fake his color pretty close. I remembered he stuck out his tongue out a lot too, but I don't think we ever caught that in any photo.

Resurrection Gallery 6-10

So far I've used a book of thumbnails to keep up with what order these paintings came in, but this should be a handy reference. "Monkey Bar" is 12 x 16 in acrylic on plywood. This one is the first acrylic paint I'd used on a very smooth plywood.

"Clump of Iris" is 12 x 16 in acrylic on plywood. This was my fourth "botanical", you'd think I'd have learned by now. The subject matter seemed so straight forward but really turned out to be a bit of a tangle, like a bunch of irises playing Twister.











"Ssst, Toaster Versus Squid" this 12 x 16 inch in acrylic on  plywood is the first of a series of cartoons documenting the long running feud between Toaster and Squid.

"Buffalo Mao" is a 12 x 16 inch acrylic on plywood version of a 5 inch square book cover. The booklet contains definitions the 36 math symbols and descriptions of a set of 27 arithmetic blocks. To quote Buffalo Mao (a famous native american mathematician) "Power flows from the point of a pencil."

"Stormy Cacti" is 12 x 16 acrylic on plywood showing Maddy on her trampoline. The cacti are the real stars here and even they aren't particularly recognizable. The experience was very useful and I thought "huh faces aren't so hard." Uh huh, of coarse this one isn't much bigger than my thumbnail. 

Resurrection Gallery 1-5

 The paint inspiring truck rides again. After a bit of a false start on the installation, I had it towed to the people who supplied the replacement engine (North Birmingham Truck And Auto Parts). They squared away the wiring harness, changed the oil, and repaired a transmission line for a quite reasonable fee and it's on the road again.

Meanwhile during the wait for the new life of the truck to begin I began my own renaissance. "The Blue Irises" to the right were the first thing I'd painted since the truck. It is 8 x 10 inches in latex on stretched canvas.





It was followed by Angel Fish and Irises a larger 21 1/2 x 24 inch also latex on stretched canvas. Instead of tripping on the lack of transportation I began to push as hard into the painting as possible, and began another painting as soon as I finished one.









Still working in latex on stretched canvas, "Butterfly Hiss" is 12 x 16 inches.





                   

         Still working in latex (house paint) "This Is Not A Wrench" is 12 x 16 inches on plywood and was painted while the engine was still being installed.














"Ye Old Shade Tree" is about 12 x 16 inches in latex on plywood. This was my first painting on wood, a plywood  scrap I'd had for years. It's thickness made it stiffer than the plywood I've used since but it's rougher surface worked me. I only got one picture of this one, then I gave it to the guys who couldn't get my truck running. That was still July 2019.

Cafe de la Fourmi Mobile Studio

As indicated by the phone number leaking through the "Time Lab Remodel" scene on the passenger side of my truck, I couldn't quite let go of the idea of taking on the odd construction project. I had however gotten over looking at a truck covered with advertising. This wasn't the first panel to get the treatment. 

It was the driver's side that got me started. I kinda day-dreamed how a big green Clark Gable-ish head I drew would look on the side of my truck, instead of the add it would cover.   

Then came the sight gag gas cap, followed by the siding, window. and the time conscious flying mouse, who apparently startled the Blue Bird of Happiness.  

It turned out that painting over the adds was a lot more fun than scraping them off with a razor blade.

This painting on the truck thing was a lot of fun. Pretty soon all the adds were covered. I even experimented with an ant cartoon on one door.

Then the motor died. I was already  roughing out some drawings for the fenders, but the idea of painting a doomed truck didn't have much appeal.

All Natural Peanut Butter Coconut oil Cookie

 Ta da, finally a really good, simple, chewy, peanut 

butter cookie that works just right with a short ingredient list peanut butter ( peanuts, salt). This is 

a coconut oil , butter milk, pumpkin seed, version of the "Peanut Butter Chews", a recipe I found on the King Arthur Flour website.

Before beginning to make the cookies, the pumpkin seeds were spread out on sheet pan and baked @ 325 F for 45 min and allowed to cool. The 40 grams pumpkin seeds were then weighed out and ground in a coffee grinder.  The green on the right foreground are the unbaked pumpkin seeds.

 Combine
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

40 grams baked, ground, pumpkin seeds

3/4 teaspoon salt
and 3/4 teaspoon baking soda

Mix well with a whisk and set aside. 

3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon Crisco Organic coconut oil

3 tablespoons buttermilk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/4 cup dark Karo corn syrup

were blended together then combined with

1 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

and  beaten until smooth then combine with

2 large eggs

2 cups peanut butter (Smucker's Natural) 

I used the whole jar after removing the separated oil.

Combine the oil, buttermilk, vanilla, egg, peanut butter, sugar and syrup mix with the flour, baking soda, salt and ground pumpkin seeds and blend well. Place rounded over 1/2 tablespoons about an inch and a half apart on a parchment lined pan. I added 3-4 semi sweet chocolate chips each while making to 2 pans worth. Bake 15 minutes @ 350 degrees f. This recipe made 48 cookies. I also tried this recipe with the Smucker's Creamy Natural peanut butter. Not quite as much oil poured off, but the results were still excellent.     

After allowing them to cool on the pans for 8-9 minutes I moved them to a plate upside down and let them cool for another 15 minutes then froze them. Even frozen, they won't be around long.