Sunday, January 29, 2012

Brownies, Doc Martin and Twilight Eclipse

All of a sudden people are talking about Doc Martin - it's the English comedy starring Martin Clunes and is filmed in Port Issac in Cornwall. Such a funny, sad, painful romantic comedy. But I also enjoy very much the lovely scenery in a special place on the coast of England that very few people ever get to see in person. Plus this is my first introduction to Martin Clunes who is great in this show. This program is now in it's 5th or 6th season on the regular (PBS) network programming. We found it on Netflix and are enjoying watching it - just into Season 2 right now.

So, last night I had a friend over to watch Twilight Eclipse, (having finally got her to read the books and see the first 2 Twilight movies) plus 1 episode of Doc Martin so she could get on board with this comedy. I had fresh made "Saucepan Brownies" and Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream. These brownies are from a recipe book entitled Woman's Day Cooking For Two and the nice part about these brownies is there are just enough brownies for 2 people - not a whole panful that dry out or have to be eaten all at once. Plus they are really easy to make in about 5 minutes on the stove then they're ready for the oven. And you can add 2 more kinds of chocolate (and dried raisins or cherries or cranberries if you're wacky like me) to make the popular triple chocolate brownies so much in vogue.

Saucepan Brownies - from Woman's Day - Cooking For Two
3  Tablespoon butter
1 square of unsweetened chocolate (I use unsweetened Bakers Chocolate)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup coarsely chopped nut - pecans, walnuts

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Melt the butter and the chocolate in a saucepan over low heat, stirring; let cool. Beat in the vanilla and the sugar. Add the egg, beating well. Stir in the flour and salt and then the nuts. Spread in a small buttered pan or baking dish - I use a glass bread pan that's 8 inches by 4 inches. Bake for about 15 or 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center emerges clean. Cool and cut into squares. Makes 4 good size brownies depending on size of pan.

(If you want to make this the triple chocolate kind that everyone is so fond of now, add 2 more Tablespoons of butter and 1 and 1/2 Tablespoons of unsweetened coco powder (Dutch processed if you have it, otherwise Hersheys Cocoa) to the batter as you are melting this over the stove. Then just before you put this in the oven to bake add 1/2 bar of Ghirardellis or Special Dark Hersheys semisweet chocolate broken into chunks and stirred into batter.)

Enjoy a movie night!

Friday, January 27, 2012

Painting with Friends

During the winter months it's especially hard to get out into my garage studio space where I do my encaustics because even tho it's heated with a space heater, the wax behaves differently in the cold and it's harder to keep the heat on the wax just where I want it when it's 45 degrees inside!

So the alternative I've chosen is learning to paint in oils and that is what you see to the left. It's one of the oil paintings I've been working on in the company of my painting group, on Thursday afternoons from 1-4 at the Picture Attic. We have a group of about 10 to 12 artists, of which 6 or so usually join us and paint. Some are watercolorists, one is a chalk pastel artist, several are acrylic artists and a couple are fluent in several mediums and switch around. It's always very lively, humor filled, artist and art centered and keeps the isolation at bay.

Linda Bean, a great oil painter working and showing in Bothell, WA is a good friend and painting mentor and she helps critique my paintings as I work along. I email her my photo reference and a picture of my work in progress and then we Skype together at least once a week and get a chance to discuss all art that's happening and recent paintings. Such fun since it's like having a nice cuppa tea with a friend in my living-room.

So based on a nice conversation we had about this painting, yesterday I reworked this painting and now it looks different with some of the obvious mistakes corrected. (Picture will follow once it's dry to the touch and I can get a second picture). Oils are so easy to rework compared with acrylics and watercolors and doing so even develops a richer surface with more depth, per Linda. I see what she means.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Wild Weather



We're still watching for some wild weather to come. With our snow of 2 inches last week and our 70 mph wind gusts on Sunday though we're expecting less wind today and possibly some thunderstorms.

Along with the high tides which traditionally happen in winter (allowing for some fine low tides and great clamming activity here) these high winds cause storm surges that can be seen on Willipa Bay. Areas that are never under water any other time of the year, are now fully inundated. The birds disappear for safe havens and come out when the water calms and the winds die down.

Off to framing job this morning and I'm bringing some new music to listen to - Story Boards by Sleeping, Twilight-Breaking Dawn 1 and Downton Abbey. Should keep me cheerful and whistling during the day.

I'll be shortly posting my new workshop schedule for 2012. I'll be doing 3 so far, 1 here in Long Beach, 1 in Bothell and then in the summer 1 in Seaside/Gearhart Oregon.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Transitions

Hope you got here from my other blog site. This will be my new blog "Waxing Rural". Yes my other blog site was named this but when I originally set it up, I didn't set the url to the very simple words www.waxingrural.blogspot.com so it was really hard for people to find or "guess" my blog. So welcome to my new blog and to my new postings. Bear with me and I will get all my encaustic up on site and some of my oils as well. Welcome