Happy Halloween 2024!

I love seasonal candy mixes and snack cakes. For Halloween this year, I made double chocolate cookies with “Ghoul's Blend” M&Ms. And Jon set up, and photographed a beautiful still life with them.

Blueberry Scones

For breakfast, I made Blueberry Scones and Amaretto Blueberry Sauce. I attempted to make clotted cream in the slow cooker. This was only moderately successful, as it tasted really good, but it didn’t get as thick as I’d have preferred, even after 12 hours. I will try it again later in my oven.

New Ceramic Pieces

I have spent time this summer learning ceramics. I am interested in combining handmade ceramics with some of my other interests, like painting and printmaking to create mugs and functional bakeware with illustrations.

Experimenting with ceramics

I recently took a class at Fountain Square Clay Center and have been playing around with making pieces at home and firing them at Alley Cat Ceramics.

I would like to be able to incorporate printmaking and painting into some functional ceramic pieces that I can use for coffee and baking.

"Watch Party"

16x20 PanPastel and Pitt Pastel Pencils on Colourfix Optimum board. I made this to celebrate the solar eclipse this year--it was such a big deal. Lots of events around the state, and businesses and schools closing so that everyone could enjoy it together. Very positive! Several years ago, we drove to Carbondale, Illinois for a solar eclipse, and I made a small wall quilt about our trip when we got home.

Baking and playing with new camera

I recently bought a Nikon D750. I really love the beautiful pictures Jon captures with his D850, and wanted to try to improve my own still life photography. It will take me a while to get comfortable with the camera and figure out how to balance F stop, shutter speed, ISO, etc. to get the results I'm looking for. But, so far I’m enjoying the camera.

Peeps Family Portrait

"Peeps Family Portrait" reduction screenprint. I layered yellow, then green, then blue, then magenta using screen filler. Then, I completely cleaned the screen and used the print at that stage and my reference photo to add a shadow layer that I drew as a positive with Speedball drawing fluid. With the 2nd screen, I created two values of shadows and the Peeps' eyes. For the shadow I mixed a blue-gray ink with a lot of Speedball transparent base.

86th Annual Student Show, IAC

The 86th Annual Student Show at the IAC has just closed. I was absolutely elated that two of my prints and a painting were juried into the show, and my watercolor still life, “Knife with Shallot and Pepper,” won Best in Watercolor and a Blick Materials Award for Merit in Painting or Drawing as part of the 86th Annual Student Show at the Indianapolis Art Center. So excited! That piece was especially fun to create as the knife in the painting was one I made in a Blacksmith Blade Making class, also at the Indianapolis Art Center.

More Reduction Screenprinting!

I recently finished two reduction screenprints, including “Chicago-Style Hot Dog,” an 11-color 11x14 print. I worked on this one for several weeks at the Indianapolis Art Center, as the screen is too large to handle in my sink at home. I also finished “Yellow 6, Red 40, Blue Solo Cups” for Pressing Matters Blue and Orange challenge.

KAF Recipe of the Year

This weekend I made the King Arthur Flour Recipe of the Year—a really big chocolate chip cookie! It has a lot of steps, including a tangzhong, browning butter, and a long rest. You also have to chop the chocolate and it includes milk, but no white sugar.

It was good, and a very fun bake, but it's not my favorite. My favorite chocolate chip cookie is a modified version of the Tollhouse recipe.

Sweet Breakfast at My Desk

Daniel Smith Watercolor on Fabriano Hot Press. I really enjoyed making this painting of a coffee and a homemade “pop-tart" created using homemade jam and the Pâte Sablée recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking with a simple cookie icing.

DQ Chocolate Dipped Cone Pastel

I am planning a much larger pastel piece, and it’s been a little while since I have worked in panpastel so decided to do this small piece of a DQ cone.

Last summer, we stopped at a really cool old Dairy Queen with old-school signs. We took a lot of reference photos of the building, and our treats. I got a chocolate dipped cone. I thought the imperfection of the cone, with the vanilla ice cream dripping through the chocolate coating looked interesting and really delicious, particularly compared to the very perfect versions in DQ ads.

The food subjects I like to paint and draw usually aren't perfect versions, but very typical versions. The messiness can be more real and charming and nostalgic.

Acrylic Painting for Reduction Screenprint

"Chicago Style Hotdog" acrylic painting for reduction screen print. Liquitex Basics and Golden Open on Arches Oil paper.

I will be working on turning this painting into a screenprint. I don't usually use acrylics for anything but crafts, mixing with textile medium, or mixing with silkscreen medium for printmaking. Generally, I'm a lot more comfortable drawing than painting, and when I do paint I like watercolors. Acrylic dries really fast for me. This go-round, I used open medium, and blending wasn't an issue since I did large blocks of color, in anticipation of the screenprinting.

For Christmas, Jon made me a much larger screenprinting board with hinge clamps and bought me a new screen and squeegee. This one will probably take me a while to finish, because I usually work smaller with fewer colors. I'm excited to get started!

Cherry Cake

Homemade Maraschino or “Cherry Chip" Cake.

This is a modified white cake, similar to a box mix cherry chip cake. I added 1.5 cups chopped marachino cherries, replaced the 1 cup of milk with 4 tablespoons powdered whole milk and juice from the cherry jar, and replaced some of the vanilla extract with almond. I also added cherry juice to the buttercream frosting. The taste and texture were very nice, but the cherry flavor could be stronger. If I were doing it again, I would add 2 cups of chopped cherries, and a small amount of cherry extract to the frosting.

Yule Log

I made a Yule Log/Buche de Noel for the first time this year. I worked on it over two days. Lots of work went into this project, but it was worth it. I had a lot of fun creating it, and would love to do another version in the future . I made mushrooms from meringue, cocoa powder and melted semi sweet chocolate . I made modeling chocolate with Lindt white chocolate for the other decorations (except the holly berries, which are peanut butter M&Ms). The filling is a stabilized peanut butter whipped cream, using Hard Truth Peanut Butter Whiskey.

Royal Riviera Pears

We received a box of pears from Harry & David as a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law. Really sweet, and really pretty. I made the pears into pear sauce and painted a watercolor still life for my mother-in-law as a birthday present.

Skittles Candy Cane

Quick drawing in Caran D'Ache Luminance pencils with Dr. Ph Martin Bleedproof White. These are my favorite candy canes for our tree.

Wool Painting

I have been playing around with wool painting/needle felting and used that technique to create the illustration for our Christmas card this year. It is lots of fun and something that I would like to try to do more involved projects with. In a lot of ways, it works like colored pencil or pastel where you create a very general underlayer, then add detail and shading on top.

Reduction Screenprint

I created a 4-color reduction screenprint, entitled “Yellowtail Snappers at Sombrero Key Reef.” The piece depicts yellowtail I saw during a trip to the Florida Keys last Spring while snorkeling.

I am happy with the piece overall, but the edges are a little uneven. I used a smaller screen than I’d have liked because I’m limited with respect to sink space to wash out the screen. The practical printing area of the screen is much smaller than the edge to edge measurements.

Dark Chocolate Brioche Rolls

I had leftover Jacques Torres chocolate discs, but not enough to make a batch of cookies. And a bunch of brioche dough in my fridge from the Artisan Bread in Five series. I used about 1/3 of the dough to make 9 dark chocolate rolls. I topped them with sparkling sugar, proofed for about 90 minutes and baked for around 30 minutes. They were good, but maybe over-the-top. The brioche dough is very rich and dense for the addition of chocolate. I’ve used this dough for blueberry rolls in the past, and I prefer that.