005 tuesday february 23rd
misty hills / starfish poem / enchilada pile / writing like an architect
monday II: the tuesdayening
last week i finished assembling this thing in a cabin in the woods north of Olympia on some very bad wi-fi. reading it back again, it could have definitely used another pass before going out the door. sometimes, that’s part of the fun! sometimes, it’s annoying. in this case it was annoying.
the cabin turned out to be one of a little grove of cabins. not quite what i was picturing based on the, uh, pictures of it. but still nice. it was still a little bit too cold to sit outside and write and sketch, which was 40% of the reason for going in the first place, but a very nice temperature for getting drunk in a hot tub (another 40% of the reason).
the little tidal inlet, the trees, the mud, the light, the distance from one bank to another all reminded me of the tiny cabin my family has 45 minutes by boat up a river in the middle of Alaska - a place we spent a lot of time, relatively speaking, growing up - and which i am sure is no small part of the underlying wiring of my brain and the way i look at the world. yes it is an a-frame cabin. yes the trees are coniferous.
so: a good trip. plus you cannot beat going for a midweek trip and coming back to work on a friday.
here are the four things this week:
1. painting
last fall i moved from the east side back to the northwest. i haven’t lived on this side of the river since i was in grad school, which, frighteningly, was about 7 years ago now.
the east side is “better” in a lot of obvious ways. more bike-able. more variety of vibes. some other ways too i’m sure. but one thing the west side has in spades is dramatic views of the hills framed by buildings.
misty pine-covered hills have been one of my go-to painting subjects for a long time now, but usually i don’t paint them framed by buildings. i don’t actually make art of chunks of cities that much, and when i do it’s generally more of an “illustration” vibe but it’s one of those things on my mental list of “things to figure out how to paint” that’s been sitting there, quietly blinking for attention, off and on, for years now. right under “learning how to draw people.”
one challenge has been capturing the scale you ~feel~ when looking at a dramatic view of the hills framed by buildings, without getting too mechanical about the reproduction. as i’m sure you’ve noticed, when you take a picture of something that strikes you in a particular way, and you look back on the picture later, all of a sudden the thing that struck you is a very tiny portion in the middle of the picture and there’s all this other shit happening around it that you didn’t really clock because it wasn’t the important part.
i take a lot of pictures of things that strike me, and looking back at these reference pictures and using them to set up a composition that actually reflects the ~feeling~ of what i saw is then always a challenge.
but this whole thing is about challenging myself to take a little more time and care from time to time when making art. so let’s check out the process on this one.
see what i mean? the part that hits you when you’re out there in the chilly air is that hillside way off in the distance, filtering mist across and through the trees, framed by those brick boxes. but that’s like a tiny chunk of this image.
so the first step is to figure out how to compose this in a way that got to what i was going for.
these all look pretty similar and they are. here are the main factors i was adjusting:
height of that building on the left side, specifically in relation to the line of the hillside
horizon location
some foreground elements, like the power lines and the branches
the first one, the hills are dominated by that tower off to the left. i thought there was something there but i didn’t like how it turned out. scratch.
the second one is a little more of the ~feeling~ i was going for and the lines falling from left to right were kind of working for me. but the focal point ends up being the telephone pole, basically, which is not really what i was after. also there’s way too much street in the foreground.
the third one, the tower comes down (don’t say it), the horizon line comes down, and the hills get way bigger. bigger than they are in real life for sure, but that’s how they should ~feel~.
then, it’s time to spend a very long time throwing colors together until something feels like it clicks. no big mystery there.
finally, a few tweaks to the foreground and the overall color balance. the left one is where i ended up. the right one is where i almost stopped, but something about the tree in front was a little too dominant. luckily, painting digitally, those things are easy to grab and re-scale.
i will say i don’t love how this turned out. the colors are not quite right and the foreground is off. i think it’s too washed out. probably need some darker darks. but that’s okay for now.
2. poem
“starfish poem” - fall 2020
the pressure of your fingers like a tide
five limbs,
just like us
if you cut them in half, they regrow -
just like you
3. enchilada pile
this week i had a hankering for some enchiladas, and i also had a hankering for using up some leftover taco-size tortillas that have been sitting in my fridge for way too long.
also, i’ve never made enchilada sauce from scratch - the stuff from trader joe’s is very good - and after a little research, it’s way easier than i was expecting.
the problem with the taco-size tortillas, though, is that they’re a total pain in the ass to roll up and keep the stuff inside, and then the proportion of tortilla to stuff inside is way off anyway because of diameters and cylinders and stuff like that.
so:
pile it up, baby.
filling: beans, mushrooms
sauce: chili powder, flour, oil, cumin, oregano, salt, garlic powder, pepper
dressing on top: corn, red pepper, tomato, onion, lime juice
also on top: chives, lime cashew crema
bean and mushroom filling. lightly seasoned with some salt and pepper.
i didn’t really take pictures of the sauce making, but basically you make a roux with the dry stuff, let the spices get toasty for a minute, then whisk in tomato paste and veggie stock. let that simmer and thicken for 5 minutes ish. very simple.
assembly station. just imagine trying to roll some filling up in those tiny tortillas. couldn’t be me.
layer 1.
one thing about being vegan is you realize how architectural cheese can be. i was worried about this whole thing holding itself together - in the past, melted cheese solves that problem.
layer 2. and so on and so forth.
this is as high as i went. the remaining tortilla was a snack while this cooked.
this goes into the oven for about 10 minutes.
getting the corn and the peppers softened up. the onions and tomatoes are already sitting in a nice little bath of lime juice and salt and a couple other spices. once the peppers are softened and the corn gets a little color to it, they get mixed in with the onions and tomatoes to make a nice little dressing / topping.
cashew crema. i used cashew butter, lime juice, and water, and blended it up with my stick blender until it was the consistency i wanted. this adds a nice creamy element.
the pile after baking. it holds together really well! i know it looks like a toad, you don’t have to tell me.
and here it is all dressed up. yum! also very easy! no idea if it’s healthy but probably not!
4. writing like an architect
i have a couple other ideas i’m still firming up for this fourth section, but for this week, i’m including this little game / toy / tool i made this weekend. if you read about architecture at all, i’m sure you’ve encountered this horrible stilted writing style that’s somehow way too vague ~and~ too jargony at the same time.
i broke down 3 or 4 actual project descriptions to establish the framework, and then filled in a bunch of random garbage that gets shuffled around mad-libs style into beautiful project descriptions.
hope you like it, here’s a link.
and here are a couple of examples too. have fun!
that’s all for today. next week i think i’ll be looking at some hills again and maybe talking a little bit more seriously about architecture in some ways. but then again, maybe not.
see ya next tuesday. have a good week. bye.