while the soup cooks

A quick tiny sketch of yesterday’s tomato bisque simmering . . . I bought this 4 qt. Dutch oven for making sourdough bread, but it’s also busy making soup for these rainy, wintery days we’ve been having.

Once again, I wiped up the palette mess before remembering to take a photo.

yesterday’s sketch from McLane’s Children’s Hospital

Yesterday we spent some time with our grandson, Quen, who has Crohn’s disease. He went home from a recent surgery only to end up back in the hospital fighting an extra tough infection. I drew this mess of equipment, missing a tube or three, as Q snoozed. Easier than drawing him.

which ink color for Cream?

I am back to using my old favorites, Lamy fountain pens. They work better on the rough watercolor paper I filled this sketchbook with.

I love matching pens with the same color inks. These Lamy LX pens in Marron and Ruthenium are perfect for brown and gray inks. But my favorite Cream Lamy Safari pen, a gift from grandson Quen, has long puzzled me. What color ink? At first, I tried samples of pearlescent and shimmering inks from Goulet Pens — sort of reminds me of Quen’s personality. But when they began to stain the pen, I quickly flushed them out.

I drew the cream pen with J. Herbin Lie De The ink (a light brown ink) which is slightly water-soluble, giving sketches an antique look. Maybe that would be a good match?

I sometimes give my pens names. Our first Maine Coon cat was originally named Cream (his brother had been named Coffee) though we called him Kippy. Obviously, I call this fountain pen Cream.

early morning view

Recently I was sitting in the Morris chair early in the morning, looking out one half of our French doors. The striped patterns of the front pasture’s half-dormant grasses caught my eye, along with part of the Arizona cypress, so I snapped a photo (my iPhone was handy but my sketchbook was not) and later sketched what I saw.

I wanted to ink this in with the “sepia” ink I once mixed using brown and black De Atramentis Document inks — I filled two different fountain pens but neither would write. I usually fill ink converters while attached to the pens, dipping them directly into the ink bottle. But apparently the ink level was lower than I thought, and a bit sludgy. The lid must have been loose and some evaporation thickened what ink was left. I cleaned my pens thoroughly, threw away the ink dregs, and filled this Pilot Kakuno demonstrator pen with the “dark red / burnt sienna” mix instead.

whhhaaat?

This is what we woke up to early this morning — my Corgi, Butters, didn’t know what to do! Several times, she ran out in a semi-circle then ran back to the front porch. This first photo was taken when she got brave enough to venture further away.

Snow used to be a rare occurrence around here; recent years have brought more. A couple of years ago, we lost a lot of prickly pear cacti. They can handle the cold temps but we didn’t know to brush the snow off of the pads. As it melts, the pads keep drinking it in and eventually drink themselves to death.

On a side note, that rock form on the lower right is the Williamson family “camel rock” (I have always thought it looked more like a plesiosaur, like Nessie in Loch Ness). The rock was found on Bill’s great grandparent’s farm in SE Kansas — and has been located at family homes ever since. Many generations have had their photos taken sitting on “her” back! So of course she came with us when we moved to Texas.

goin’ crackers

Today’s baking: sourdough rosemary crackers with Parmesan cheese and kosher salt sprinkled on top, made from the discard after feeding my starter. I meant to add a bit of garlic but forgot. Next time I hope to roll them even thinner.

The Demi Palette that lives in my bag with the 2” sketchbook is what I call my “muted winter palette” — simple, basic colors that capture the color of winter.

a hunk of bread

A quick directly-in-ink sketch of today’s baking effort: I made a large round loaf of sourdough baked in a cast iron Dutch oven — which is too heavy for me. Bill generously offered to handle the oven part . . . except that when I said 450°, he thought I said 350°. I should remember he is a bit hard of hearing!

It turned out okay. Next time I’ll do a smaller loaf in a regular bread pan that I can lift easily.

first samplings

Our daughter Kristen left one of the purple pens she uses for work over at our place (a Pilot G-2 gel pen) and it made me want to fill my purple Lamy fountain pen — with purple ink, of course. I mixed mine from red and turquoise with a touch of black, all De Atramentis Document inks.

And my subject? While getting my sourdough starter to grow, some is discarded each day before the remaining starter is fed. I used yesterday’s discard to mix up some biscuits, to go with the bacon & egg sweet potato hash that Bill made us.

He just happened to put mine on a purple Fiestaware plate.

preparing to bake . . .

About the only bread we eat is sourdough from H-E-B’s bakery because it doesn’t give me heartburn. But I’ve been curious about making my own. Years ago when we lived in Kansas I tried to get a starter going but it died — Bill thinks the fluoride in the water was the problem. Now we have well water with no chlorine and I think it would work, but I was advised to use bottled water at first.

I recently bought some “very active” starter on Etsy. It has taken several daily feedings to recover from being lost a few extra days in the mail system, but it looks like it’s now ready to try making some bread. The sourdough starter in the sketch is right after removing the “discard” and mixing in new flour and water; afterwards it just about doubled its volume from what is shown.

I sketched this with an Elegant Writer, using a wet paintbrush to tease out some washes from the water-soluble ink. That round thing in the center is a scale to weigh the added flour and water. The funky thing in front is a Danish dough whisk. The lined basket is for proofing the loaf before baking.

Molokai

We have a new member of our extended family: meet Molokai, our granddaughter’s new dog. She is currently attending Texas A & M vet school and was told to practice on her pet — and if she didn’t have one handy, they had vet school animals up for adoption. Who could have guessed that adopting a pet was a classroom requirement?

Actually she has pets here on “the farm” but most of them object to examinations. Butters doesn’t mind, but corgis are just built wrong (so says our vet who was examining her for a joint injury). So this sweet 6 year old hound has moved in to Mikala’s apartment.

I took a couple of “process” photos of this sketch . . . but once I began painting, I forgot to take any more. Most of the time, I put down an idea lightly in pencil, then begin inking it in — often jotting down some text before moving on to the main sketch.