well here we are again. the day after monday.
pretty bad week, i think we can all agree. so i’ll do a little complaining up top and then try to keep things light and interesting for the rest of this week’s edition. and if civilization still exists next week, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
and actually, i’m going to limit even the complaining up top because ultimately it doesn’t really matter what i think. the situation is well and truly out of my control, which a lot of situations are, but for whatever reason this one has done a lot to remind me just how big the gap is between people like you and me and any real levers of control in this country. i can tell you war is bad, but it’s not up to me. i can tell you that even if it seems like the right thing to do right this very second, flooding a country with weapons and munitions (using the still-astonishingly glib moniker “lethal aid”) has historically only ever made the situation worse in the medium and long run. i can tell you that it really, truly, freaks me the fuck out how quickly seemingly every “liberal” forgot about all the evil shit the united states has done in iraq, afghanistan, libya, somalia, yemen, etc etc etc on and on forever, and how quickly the democrats have embraced becoming the party of the defense industry. i can tell you it is never good to give the defense industry more money for any reason.
i can say i think it’s extremely fucked up to be comparing a situation like this to any kind of Marvel movie, to imply or insinuate that NATO or the USA are the Avengers, that we need to get in there with our fancy weapons tech and start tossing air-to-air missiles and quips around in equal measure. i can go a step further and tell you that it’s suddenly extremely clear why the defense department and the state department and the CIA and every US-based agency whose core mandate is to ensure the protection of capital and the proliferation of profits, globally, at the expense of human life and happiness and freedom everywhere, why they have been dumping so much money into the Marvel cinematic universe over the past decade-plus. i can tell you i think it’s nauseating, not in like a metaphorical way but actually on a very powerful physical level, how quickly the president of ukraine became a meme, an epic badass, an object of thirst, a fun cartoon, a character. despite being a very real man in a very difficult situation.
i can tell you that although the situation is horrible there is no universe in which direct military involvement by NATO or the US makes things any better. i can point out that this is probably how a huge chunk of the world felt when they saw the US invade iraq and afghanistan earlier this century - furious, sad, hopeless, but ultimately unable to do shit about it because we spent all our money on bombers and nukes instead of healthcare and housing and we were demonstrably unafraid of flattening anyone we disagreed with. i can point to thousands of examples of US politicians, advisors, public figures, and journalists who are now expressing wildly hypocritical opinions on this conflict, given their own track records of sowing misery around the world.
i could tell you to shut up about airstrikes, about establishing no-fly-zones, about cheering on brutal and devastating sanctions. i could tell you that all those things have a very real chance of leading directly to a very real nuclear war and that it’s absolutely beyond my comprehension that any adult would be furiously advocating for them. i could tell you that any outcome, no matter how horrible, would unfortunately still be better than ending all life on the planet, and that although neither of us has any say in whether or not that will actually happen, it might be worth asking yourself why you are so incredibly blasé about the realities of nuclear war.
i could remind you that you all have so much more in common with the working people of both of these countries than you do with anyone issuing any of the orders or selling any of the guns or imposing any of the banking sanctions.
but who cares. like i said, anyone reading this is so far removed from these decisions that it just doesn’t matter. sure, it’s depressing to see liberal bloodlust on full display in a way it hasn’t been since John Kerry. sure, it’s horrifying to see people that i previously considered to be sane and rational human beings absolutely lose their shit, in a way that almost approaches glee, because they have been submerged in a slowly simmering rachel-maddow-cable-news-rich-comedians-SNL tank of anti-Russian propaganda since the instant Clinton lost in 2016, and who now therefore are incapable of seeing working-class Russians as human beings instead of objects of revenge. sure, it’s probably not good that even tepid expressions of anti-intervention sentiment by progressive politicians in this country are essentially being called treasonous by members of their own party.
sure, all of that stuff sucks total ass. but what are you or i or anyone we know going to do about it on any kind of timeline that will change anything. the only path forward, as usual, is a long, slow, and winding one, beginning wherever you are right now and ending in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and all of that. so yeah, it feels good to scream at people online who say things like “what’s the big deal, just establish a no-fly-zone and shoot down some Russian jets. they deserve it” or “the Russian invasion of Ukraine is another iteration of the age-old struggle between single-family housing and dense market-rate construction” or “i just don’t see that we have any choice but to start world war 3” or “check out this epic viral clip involving actual human death that looks kind of cool though, like one of the guys did a cool move, like a video game, like captain america!”
but at the end of the day where does that get you. like twain said about wrestling with pigs. and if the pigs in this case get their not-so-secret wish and we end up provoking putin into launching 2000 ICBMs at various points on the north american continent, it would be kind of embarrassing to have spent my last few days on earth freaking out about something that was totally out of my control.
anyway that’s enough of that let’s look at some mountains.
1. painting
mountains!
super simple sketch starting point. usually when i paint mountains the vantage point is on the bottom of a valley floor. but i wanted to try capturing more of a up-on-a-high-saddle type of vibe on this one. the big mountains in the back dropping away into a steep valley that we are not quite looking down into.
first pass of colors, blocking things out with the sketch still on.
starting to refine the shapes of that main back mountain. it’s going to change quite a bit over the course of this painting so keep your eyes on that. one fun thing about big mountains in the distance is finding a good balance of overall shape and detail, light and shadow, and how much detail to put into shadows.
a basic approach is to keep things very simple on the shadow side. there’s less light there, and doing it that way emphasizes the detail on the sunlit side. but if you look at mountains, of course there are things happening on the shadow side that your eye can see. so how do you capture that without going too far in the other direction. what color should the snow be, for example. or the rock. or the rock further down, where it’s in the valley.
i found a new brush that i sort of like. it does a pretty good job of acting like an oil brush when you’re working on a pretty fresh canvas, when the paint still slides around and mixes and feathers and stuff. you can see that looseness coming through.
another thing about mountains is that it is very hard to make myself actually sit down and zoom in on reference photos and figure out exactly what’s going on with all the ridges and rocks and crevices and shadow lines. i do do some of that while painting, but there is also a whole lot of just “going for it” and seeing what happens and then tweaking / nudging / faking the result into something more realistically approximating a mountainside.
more detail. the middle third of that mountain is still kind of blurry tho huh.
big jump in the foreground and from here we’re almost done. i still need to make some better grass brushes. there’s no real easy midpoint right now between big wide blurry streaks of vegetation and going through and individually painting every little stalk.
scroll up to check out the final cloud shapes and a color overlay.
2. poem
trail poem - march 2022
the cloud snuck up the valley like a dog
sidling up to a half-watched coffee table
every bend in the trail wondering,
did i sign up for this?
people have shown me photos of big slugs
people have shown me how one plant is different from another one
i usually think: what if i was the type of guy
who wanted to be the type of guy who knew that stuff?
it’s getting serious about rain
and i usually think: hell, we need it
3. birria ramen
this week’s food is completely totally 100% someone else’s recipe! usually there’s some blending or hybridization. nope! not this week. sorry.
it’s from eat figs not pigs which if you are the type of person who delights in watching several hours’ worth of cooking instagram reels / tiktoks at a time is an extremely worthwhile follow.
i will admit at this point that i don’t really know what birria is, not really. i think it’s making big inroads in the foodie taco scene recently but i think it also usually involves a lot of cheese, in some capacity, maybe melted or crisped or something, and that kind of stuff doesn’t really usually translate that well to vegan food. vegan cheese is still firmly in the “huh, this is OK” zone.
here’s the stuff. not really even sure where to start on this. trumpet mushrooms, onion, garlic, a ton of different kinds of peppers… i linked the recipe up there, just go read it.
the mushrooms get sliced and then peeled into strips, and they sort of have a “meaty” texture if you peel them apart like string cheese. which is fun. they marinate in some garlic powder, oil, and apple cider vinegar while the other stuff comes together. marinate seems like the wrong word since there isn’t much liquid involved. but what do i know.
peppers rehydrating. one point ashley at eat figs not pigs made in this recipe is that taking the seeds out of peppers does not really impact the spice level, but it does impact the bitterness level. is that true? i have no idea. but it sounds true! she seems like she knows what she’s doing! so i took as many seeds out as i could.
meanwhile i roasted some jalapeño and pasilla peppers and onion.
the rehydrated peppers, the roast peppers, the roast onion, some spices, a little oil, and some Not-Beef broth all go into a high-speed blender and get blended up, then set to simmer covered for 45 minutes with some bay leaves and more broth. then for 30 minutes uncovered. and when it’s almost finished simmering, the mushrooms get cooked up in a big skillet with a little hot oil so they get kind of crispy. and of course please cook your noodles.
am i abusing this gif technology? absolutely.
ta da! i will say that calling this “ramen” is maybe a little misleading since the flavor is not very ramen-y at all. it’s mostly just the noodles! but it is incredibly good. very warm. very cozy. not too spicy although of course that depends on what kinds of peppers you decide to use i imagine. topped up with some cilantro and white onion and lime.
4. i heard you won an award
it’s been a while man how’s it going? yeah? yeah same here man, pretty much the same as always. yeah so good to see everyone again, i know. hey i heard you won an award? i heard you won an award for that building up on, oh what’s that street, it’s over by, ah. that bar with the big patio, you know. ah. doesn’t matter i guess. but that building up there that you did, i heard you won an award. was it for how symmetrical the windows were on the front? or was it the tasteful asymmetry of the windows around the side? did they mention that at all?
it was probably the siding, i’m guessing, knowing that building, if i had to guess, it might have been the siding. i heard it was pretty innovative, it was, was it some kind of panel or something? panel system? rain screen with panels? it was metal, wasn’t it? aluminum? or maybe it was terra cotta? i could see that, for sure. definitely the detailing around the windows was top-notch though. really slick.
i heard you won an award for the way the roof meets the wall, how it was just barely a corner, how it looks really sharp and crisp for almost all of the angles you could be looking at it from. it just turns right down, zwoop, roof, wall, bam. super slick. and they gave you an award for that. i’m sure they did. i mean looking at the other buildings, it’s just like, yeah. yeah, okay, this one is, this is something special here.
i heard you won an award for how the ceilings were just the right height. that’s really hard these days, right? i mean even in my own work, which, okay, no way is it up there with yours, but even in my own work, in our office, we have trouble with that. sometimes it’s just too tall, you know? and then of course sometimes it’s just a little bit too short. but you nailed it, you must have, you won an award.
i heard a big part of it was how many people can live in that building, and how gracefully they can climb the stairs. i heard you don’t even have to switch hands with your groceries, when you’re coming up the stairs, i heard it’s not annoying to pass someone else on the stairs but because of the way you set it up, the sight lines, the materiality, it’s a pleasure. people were telling me, that building, up by that bar, near the patio, did you see the floor plans? they were asking me. did you see them? just great. just a great amount of people in there, kind of the perfect amount.
i know some of your innovations must have played into it for sure. they love that type of stuff, when they’re thinking about awards. not that you don’t deserve it! i’m not saying that. matter of fact those innovations, i mean, some of them just blew me away. i never thought of using metal like that. i never thought of orienting a refrigerator in that direction. i’ll tell you that for free. i can say that right now.
i’m going to hit up the bar but it was really great to see you, man. i gotta go check that building out. for sure. for sure, i gotta get up there, i’ll probably head up, i think i’ll be up around there anyway, weekend, Saturday i think i’ll. really want to see those windows, looking forward to seeing the windows on the other side. the roof of course. the innovations. great seeing you dude, take it easy. and hey congrats again on the award.
okay well that’s gonna do it. have a good week everyone. see ya next tuesday, ideally. bye.