29 Faces in September

Boom. Done. Gotta run.

Peace.

Face Twenty-six

I prepped today's journal entry with a face. Now all I need to do is add feeling in the form of words. Or whatever strikes me when the moment arrives. I've prepped similar blocks for the days ahead since I'm already aware that filling pages will be a challenge with all that's coming up in the next several days, and having "boxes" ready within the journal pages makes it easier to ensure a daily entry in image and in word.

As for 29 Faces, I have three more to go and I plan to capture some more gesture drawings while on the road tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to get them posted too.

Peace.

Faces 21 to 25

Face 21

Face 22

Faces 23, 24, 25

When pressed for time and space, quick gesture-style drawings work. Plus the challenge of drawing from life, barely glancing at the page to capture the gestures of folks who are moving and talking is great fun and a skill builder. So today I started catching up on 29 Faces in September.

That's what I made today.

Gotta run!

Peace.

Green Tomato Cake

Today, among other things, I made a green tomato cake. That's right, a green tomato cake. It's an adaptation to a recipe from an old Connecticut Herb Association friend who I haven't seen in years. I wonder where she is? In any event, another member had the recipe and shared it with me. Score! It's as good as I remember it. And it's good!

Besides, in this season who isn't looking for something to do with green tomatoes besides pickles, relishes and salsa, right?

My adaptation …

Green Tomato Cake
3 cups flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
½ cup olive oil
½ cup extra virgin coconut oil
1¼ cups cane sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup walnut pieces
1 cup raisins
2½ cups green tomato dices

Mix the dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, oil, vanilla and sugar together. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet, add the nuts, raisins and tomatoes. Pour into a greased and parchment lined 10" springform pan and bake for 350°F for 1 hour.

I sprinkled a little extra sugar on the top before baking. The original recipe called for 2½ cups of sugar, so you might want yours sweeter. To me, this is plenty sweet enough. It had something like half the spices too, but I like big flavor, especially in a treat like this.

And by the way, in my first go at this the other day I forgot to add the oils and … that came out pretty good too! So, for a "fat free" option, don't be shy to experiment with my mistake!

Tomorrow I'll be catching up on my 29 Faces.

But for today, that's what I made. Peace.

A Face, Fermented Tomato Juice and Green Tomato Preserves

29 Faces, #20

Fermented Tomato Juice, batch #1 (started 9/18)

Green Tomato Preserves, not my favorite, but better than last year's batch.

It's been a crazy busy week, and I see the pace continuing, dare I say quickening, over the next two. In this moment I can say with confidence that I have neither time nor keystrokes to spare. So … that's what I made today. So far. Still more to get to. 

Peace.

A September Day Cornucopia

Today I started my first gallon batch of fermented tomato juice. I made a small batch of last year and promised to make more, much more this year. This fermentation was inspired by this fermented bloody mary cocktail. Need I say more? Except, perhaps, that this is so simple and so delicious, with or without the spirits!

I've been up to other things these past couple of days. After all, this is the season of urgency - in my corner of the world anyway.

Tomato puree was canned and kale dried, both from Dineberg's Farm. Another round of calendula infused coconut oil was strained and bottled, though this jar will get topped off with the next ready batch. I use this oil mostly for soaps, scrubs and assorted balms.

Peppers from Dineberg's were combined with carrots from my gardens and assorted herbs and spices to start a ferment. And fermented green tomato salsa and hot peppers are also percolating, so to speak, on the kitchen counter.

Peppers, also from Dineberg's, were chopped and dried to help see us through the winter months. 

More tomatoes were harvested along with assorted garden finds to add to this evening's salad and frittata, which The Boy is making with our backyard hen eggs, of course. And, I swear, one of our chooks laid an ostrich egg today. Biggest egg laid on my little acre so far. Could be a double yoker! 

I did manage a wee bit of time to art journal and prepare a new journal for the coming days. More on that another day.

As for today … and yesterday … that's what I made. Peace.

Quick Sketches and More Preserves

An extra early rise has given way to a very productive morning. Kale, eggplant and peppers are dehydrating. The giant pot of tomatoes that were cooked down yesterday are warming on the stove top in preparation for the food mill and the puree will be canned shortly. I have more to harvest, including more calendula to start another batch or two of infused oil.

I banged out three quick sketches, pen on newsprint, numbers 17, 18 and 19 for 29 Faces.

There will be more as the day rolls on, but that's it for now. Figured I'd better post now before the day gets away from me and I crash-n-burn as I've done the past couple of evenings.

So, yeah, that's what I made today. So far.

Peace.

Momentum

Yesterday was all about setting 'em up. Today has been about knockin' 'em down.

Yesterday was all about putting plans of action in place, about filling the cauldron and starting the fire. Today has been all about taking the action that stirs the cauldron to manifest momentum.

One of the patterns that creep into my life and into my artwork, like in today's face for 29 Faces, is that of horizontal lines. I've come to recognize them as (among other things) symbolizing upward or forward motion … like evolution unfolding … like the patterns I see in meditation or in dreams when passing through a gate or stepping over a threshold.

The horizontal lines in this simple drawing were not intentionally placed with this awareness in mind. Rather I noticed them after returning home from … stirring the cauldron … and I recognized them. I acknowledged them. I honored them.

And, hey ~ merry Friday the 13th!

Peace.

An Unequivocal Plan of Action

The return to the doodle has been suiting me well these days. Days busy with all manner of thinking and planning, considering and doing, dreaming and manifesting. I have a task at hand that I could have started last week, but I've put it off. Today I asked, as I placed the task unequivocally in my planner, and this 29Faces image in my journal, if I was hiding from it, or it from me. Today will know.

Peace.

Fourteen of Twenty-nine Faces

The return to the doodle is perfect for days like this one … a day filled up with many planned activities that get skewed by unplanned activities. So when I had the Sharpie out to label preserves I figured I grab a drawing pad. My uni-ball pens are always handy, so I employed one of them as well to create my face #14 for the 29 Faces challenge.

There's more, but time is, as they say, of the essence ~ today. Peace.

Furiously Fast Faces and a Return to the Doodle

Yesterday was a full day, the kind that left me with little time, energy or inclination to blog. My morning-into-afternoon was enjoyed at the Connecticut Pagan Pride event where I mustered mere seconds to scribble four furiously-fast faces. The rest of the day involved various harvesting and preserving, ale on the deck, a grilled dinner, and restful evening.

Today I returned to the doodle. It's like an artful coming home, something I've done for as long as I can remember. Plus it was simple and fast, freeing up time to cook, puree and can tomatoes, harvest more garden love and plant more autumn greens.

That's what I made today. Peace.

Collaged Gesture Drawings

Last night, while sitting around a fire in a beautifully magical space, listening to Wise Fools, I played fast-n-furious with some gesture drawing in the fading light. The setting sun didn't matter, since I barely glanced at my journal pages. I love doing that kind of drawing … challenging the eye, brain and hand to sync up. This kind of exercise, I believe, forces us to draw what we see and not what we believe is there.

In any event, I quickity-quick-quick sketched several faces, faces that were talking and laughing, in constant motion. It was fun and today I looked at what I had produced and collaged two suggestions of faces into my art journal for todays' 29 Faces post. In doing this kind of drawing I realized that I want to revisit this practice as well as some of the other old drawing exercises that I recall from college.

I suggested to my spouse that we go out once in while, someplace public, like a coffee shop or tea house, with out sketch pads, to capture drawings of places, people and environments outside of our own familiar realm. I said it might be like a nice date. I'm still waiting for a definitive response. I have a feeling I'll be dating myself, and I'm cool with that.

Peace.

A Day of Doing and Face Six

Today has been filled with doing. This morning I blocked in this face, I went out to pick up our fresh five pound stash of organic, fair trade coffee at Coffee-Tea-Etc, hit the bank, filled up with gas, picked up some flints and lighter fluid, got home, did a little art, prepped beans and got them canned, did a little more art, prepped tomatoes to cook down for puree, did a little more art, laundry, more art. Somewhere in there I ate, tended to the dog and chickens and whatever else.

Tonight I'll be able to unwind with the finest Fools I know when we get together for our monthly discussion group to tackle the topic of reflections. That will be swell.

That's what I made today. Peace.

Love, Grexing and Trust

Today I made my way north, over the border to Northampton, Massachusetts with my dear friend, Kate. I hadn't had a day like this in I-can't-remember-how-long. I was a day of Good Medicine, complete with loving conversation, lots of laughter and the occasional musical interlude. I wandered around a cool college town, sucking in the youthful verve with someone that I love.

I had a feeling that this might happen today, so this morning I called on my Muse to help me with today's face for 29 Faces. She chose the palette, and I responded with a "what-the-hell?" She said, "quit your grexing." So I did, and the trust produced this interesting genderless face.

That, my friends, is what I made today.

Peace.

Two Faces of Reflection

This morning I revisited the concept of reflections, since it is the topic of this Thursday's Foolish Wisdom discussion group, so when I sat down to begin my journal page for the day, I recalled Picasso's "Girl Before a Mirror," and knowing I wanted to include a face for 29 Faces, I figured, hey, I'd use Picasso's image for a some artful inspiration.

I really loved the sense of query that creating this image conjured for me, and was pleased that the mood of query carried over to the finished image. For me, anyway.

I wanted to add more layers of color and interest, as well as detailed embellishment, but I had things to do and places to go, and was pleased enough to have filled a journal page, explored some personal inquiry, conveyed some ambience, and to have produced two faces for the effort of one.

That's what I made today. Peace.

An Outcome - Face Number Two

In between labeling and putting the beans in the pantry, preparing tomatoes for cook-down, sorting through more mom-boxes, I found myself shuffling back and forth between the studio and whatever task was at hand in the moment. I had a journal page prepped with some partial-layers of stamping, gesso, acrylic, but none of it covering the entire watercolor page. I pulled out my oil pastels and just began to play. I was reminded of how nicely oils blend and how easy it is to suggest shadow simply by melding complements. Not that I was doing any such blending. I realized that I don't work much with them, not because they aren't cool, 'cause they are, but because I don't care for the smell.

All the same, like the colors, I melded with my inner muse-child and let stylized fancy make manifest. I sprayed some alcohol ink, wiped, rubbed, played, just to witness the alchemy. I finished up with a little meditative Souffle dot-making.

The process felt good. And the outcome, such as it is, reminded me of a conversation with a friend that brought up one of my mantras: "It's cool to have expectations ~ vital, even ~ so long as one is not attached to any perceived outcomes."

So there it is, my face for 29 Faces. And I hope you'll check out some of the other fab faces in the links below and at 29 Faces!

That's what I made today. Peace.

The First Face for the 29 Faces Challenge

Merry September!

Today commences my next challenge that I'll be pleased to meet half-way. Know what I mean? Today begins 29 Faces Challenge and I'll be playing along as best as I can. I encourage you to join us, whether you draw or paint on a regular basis, or haven't attempted such a thing since your grammar school days. You know what I say ~ creative expression is vital to our wellness ~ and you'd be hard pressed to find a friendlier, more supportive group with which to play, explore and express!

So this morning, in between making my bean salad and beet salad to take to a friend's today I created my first face for this challenge.

So, yeah. That's what I made today.

Peace.