Fixie's Shelf

Twenty Rabbit Drawings

I tried another exercise in Drawing Lab: draw 20 cats from your imagination while sitting in bed. I drew rabbits instead, and I had so much fun with this. I learnt a lot too, especially about what eye and mouth shapes make what facial expressions. I like best the blobby shapes rather than clearly defined shapes. I rendered some of them with quite a bit of detail - pencil shading and polkadots. When I'd done them I didn't like them much. But when I came back later with fresh eyes they ended up being my favourites.

Blind contour portait

I'm so loving these contour drawings. This is a portrait of Kasper, who lives in our street, holding up one of my lil chooks.

Carla Sonheim suggestes writing with the left hand for more childlike text. I like it.

Chickens for meat update

You might want to skip this post if you are vegetarian or squeamish. I did it - slaughtered my very first chicken for meat. I'm not going to go into all the how-to details here - leave a comment if u want to know more, and I'll email you.

The main thing for me has been the emotional journey. Could I really raise a flock of adorably cute chicks, fall in love with them, spend hours watching their antics while tending to them several times a day, and then somehow kill them and still enjoy eating the meat? I desperately wanted the answer to be yes, because it's a way to make sure the animals I eat have the best possible life.

I chose two of the biggest roosters, but not the biggest healthiest one because I'm still hoping there's a chance I can raise my own chicks from eggs. I spared the little 'doomed' chicken that follows me around. I sequestered them in a small cage overnight, so they'd miss dinner and breaky (cleaner to slaughter if their guts and crop are empty). I felt a bit mean, but Paula pointed out that the hunger was the least of their problems.

Roderick came over to show me what to do. I was all business and determination - I refused to allow sentimentality to get in the way. Roderick did the first one, pulling its neck. But when I tried that, mine didn't die. I tried a couple more times but no go. Roderick held him on the chopping block for me, and I cleavered off its head - fast, calm and decisive.

Blood went EVERYWHERE - very gory. But somehow I remained steely-nerved. I stayed detached right through plucking and butchering, both of which were easier than I'd expected. Once the chickens were processed, they looked just like the ones you see in the shops, and weighed 1.1kg (size 11), which is small, but pretty amazing I think, for a chook that was only reared for 6 weeks. Also, with my no waste policy, I kept a bag with giblets and feet, which I'll use in stock. We plucked the feathers into a pot of soapy water - they are now zipped into a pillowcase, ready to be turned into a coat for winter.

Roderick told me the livers would be good fried with herbs. After he left, I was still in such sturdy shape emotionally, that I decided to eat the livers for lunch! Paula fried them for me in butter, garlic, and herbs (all home produced) and they tasted STUNNING. I remembered eating a chicken liver salad in France, which tasted like this, but when I tried to reproduce it at home with liver frpm the market, it tasted awful. Now I know the secret! I've got plenty more chicken liver delights coming up. I wonder if thr meat will be as amazing, too? The chickens are in the freezer now. We'll try one in a week or so.

So, it seems I CAN do it, and I can't tell you how relieved I am. I think it helps that I've been practising killing things. First I watched a rabbit slaughter in Italy, 2 yeas ago. I felt ill afterwards - nauseous and horrified. The next day I watched s chicken slaughter. I was much better prepared, but it still made me feel pretty queasy. Fast forward to this year: I went yabby fishing and cooked up my catch. I couldn't enjoy eating them though - all I could see on my mind as I chewed was the image of them archig away from the boiling water, and clutching my tongs. Yikes. A few months later, I killed 3 fish. It might not sound like a big deal, but to me, fish are as alive as chickens, and I really had to steel myself to do it. But I did, and ate the fish on the same day. I managed to enjoy the meals, and mentally was able to separate the kill from the food. Now, it seems the practise has stood me in good stead.

I did head upstairs for a big lie down after I'd eaten the livers. And at the end of the day, when I was feeding my 12 remaining chickens, there really did seem to be fewer in my flock - I felt a real pang of sadness, and a sense that my babies were incomplete: an urge to go searching for them.

I'm deeply grateful to Roderick for showing me what to do. This journey has been years in the making, as I've worked up to this point. He made it possible, and it feels like a major milestone. I reckon I'm confident now to go it solo next time. Just gotta buy a cleaver and sharpen it by next Thursday.

Blind contour drawings

I have borrowed a copy of Drawing Lab For Mixed Media Artists by Carla Sonheim and I'm in love!

First exercise I tried was blind contour drawings of my chickens. The idea is that you don't look at your page while the pen is moving. I was rapt with the way some of mine turned out, though the first few were pretty wonky.

I rendered some by adding watercolour.

One little chook is marked - he is destined to become dinner this week. He has a very sweet habit of following me and sitting at my feet. Poor little thing. I don't know if I'll be able to go through with it - maybe I'll pull out an anonymous unmarked chook for the pot instead. Anyway, I drew him as he sat at my feet. Doomed.

Meat Chickens update

Here's my meat chickens at 3 and a half weeks of age...

 
 

Developing my own Art Journal Style

 

I really love my art journal - it feels like my friend. At the end of the day, while the bath is running, I often do a quick page about my day. Sometimes at night in bed I do a page before I turn off the light. When I get a day off, I love to set up all my paints at the table and go for it for a few hours. I often go back then, and fix up pages I've done that week - adding colour and collage elements.

I'm always searching for more inspiration. I have a handful of favourite artists, and when I'm stuck (which is fairly often), I copy elements of their style in my journal.

I love the vintage style and colour palattes of Pam Garrison's work.

I've done page after page following Teesha Moore's journaling process.

I am inspired by the grids of symbols by Lisa Kaus. I've been working with grids since long before I discovered her work - but she really makes them look good.

I often leaf through my copy of 1000 Art Journal Pages and pick a style to try out.

The thing I've really been wondering though, is when I will develop my own journaling style. I try out the styles of other artists, become really inspired, and then suddenly I'm completely over it and move on, looking for my next inspiration fix. Other artists seem to develop their style, and their range of colour palettes, and make their own distinctive mark. What is mine?  Is there any style that could sustain me beyond a brief fad?

This week I read Corey Moortgat's The Art of Personal Imagery. She describes an exercise to help us identify symbols in our own work. I shifted her exercise ito help me search for my own journaling style as well as symbols. I looked through my current journal and bookmarked all the pages that I felt were truly MINE, not copied from another artist. I ignored the pages where it was mostly writing and I just added some colour/decoration later to make it look a bit better, because these pages didn't really resonate with me. I was very surprised to see what themes emerged with my bookmarked pages:

- Most of my pages were a kind of vision: black ink line drawings of scenarios I might one day create: an aquaponic fishpond, a simple life, an amazing garden, the projects I'll work on this summer... And almost all of the visions were domestic in content.

- My colours were mostly dirty - ochres and smudges of black with dusty greens.

- The pages I did when I was unhappy were by far the best - expressive and rich with colour in ways that I hadn't planned.

So I asked myself, how can I develop these themes into an art journaling style that is MINE and that appeals to me?

Here's my plan:

- Focus on dirty colours with lots of layers, to create more texture in my work. The pages with a lot of texture are the ones that appeal most to me, so I'll try to expand this. I've been creating colour palattes for myself: when I see a collection of colours I like well together, I save them in palatte format, and later deliberately use them in my work. Now I'll try to expand my colours to incorporate some of these new palattes in layers along with the ochres, blacks and greens.

- Continue creating pages that are a form of vision, often presented in a kind of grid. This style feels very natural to me, so I'll do it a little more deliberately.

- Look for and reuse the symbols that have been developing, and consciously make use of more symbols. Corey Moortgat uses lots of arches in her work, which I really love. Almost everything I've ever built or created with an architectural slant has gothic arches, but it hadn't occurred to me to use the gothic arch as a part of my journaling grids. I love it. Also I've been wanting to incorporate wings in my work for a while, but haven't found much context for them. However, right now they symbolise the changes that are happening in my life - the hope that I'll fly upwards to something new and wonderful.

- Learn to make more of my ink drawings - use water and paint brushes as well as my ink pen, to create dirtier and more textured lines and images.

Here's my first page, created with these ideas in my mind:

This page represents a snapshot of what's happening in my life right now. My home is at the centre of my heart, the basis from which everything else fans out. I think I'm so tired of touring that it's a major relief to be centred at home. The arch and wings symbolise the doorway and flight into my new life, as we've no tours for a looong time, thank god. The items in the grid represent my main projects at the moment: working on an outline for book three, raising chickens for meat, the upcoming book launch of Hatched, my angora rabbit, the flat I am in the middle of buying, preparing for Paula's birthday, homeschooling my son, and tending to my garden. The bust in the upper left corner represents me. I experimented with smudging some of my ink with a wet paintbrush before it dried, and I'm liking the heavy, smudgey look. Before I started this page, I used a pencil to jot down everything I wanted to include. Then I painted and drew over the top of that. But in some places the writing shows through and I like that.

I don't feel this page is "there" yet - but I'm liking what could be emerging. I like better the page at the top of this post, about finding my style. Again I wrote in pencil first about my discoveries, then painted and drew over the top to represent all I had learnt about my journaling style. The wings represent flying into new artistic territory.

And BTW, after about five years of failed efforts, I think I have FINALLY learnt how to use yellow in my work! The pale lemon yellow in both the pages here actually works. Wow.

What about you?  Do you keep a journal?  How do you stay inspired?  Do you have a style that is distinctly yours?  What are the signatures of it?

Alcoholic Apple Cider - Homebrew

I've been unveilling the mystery of making alcoholic apple cider versus apple cider vinegar. I left a batch of apple peelings fermenting in water and honey, intending them to turn to vinegar, went away on tour, and came back three weeks later to find I had a delicious alcolic cider - not sour at all. Sweet and warm from the alcohol. Yum! I immediately started a new batch, but strangely, this next batch turned sour really quickly, before it passed through that delicious alcoholic stage. Why?

Sandor Elix Kratz provided the answer in his fantastic book, Wild Fermentation. It seems that when you put a sweet, fruity liquid on the bench, wild microorganisms from the air get to work on it quickly to ferment it. Within a few days it's bubbly, and slightly alcoholic, thanks to the work of these microorganisms. At this stage, a different kind of microorganism is attracted to the brew - one that consumes the alcohol and remaining sugar and turns it into vinegar. If you want to make alcoholic mix, then you need to stop the vinegar-creating microorganisms from accessing your brew. You can do this by putting it in a bottle with a narrow neck (so there's not much air exposure at the top), and putting on a lid. As the alcohol microorganisms work, they create carbon dioxide (the stuff that makes it fizzy), and if this carbon dixioxide isn't released, the whole thing can explode. I can vouch for this personally - on my last tour I left something to ferment for more than a few days, and it exploded all over the hotel kitchen - yikes!

Anyway, now I know why my first batch of cider turned alcoholic, rather than to vinegar: before I left, I put a ziplock bag filled with water on top of my cider. I did this to keep the apple peelings immersed while I was away. Usually I stir every couple of days and that does the trick. If the apple is exposed for more than a couple of days, it tends to turn mouldy, which is not good. My ziplock bag obviously prevented air (and the vinegar-creating microorganisms in the air) from accessing my brew, but happily it still allowed the carbon dioxide to escape out the sides - when enough pressure built up, it pushed the bag out of the way, and the bag flopped back once the bubble had been released. I didn't repeat the bag arrangement though, because I lost half the brew as it floated above the bag and overflowed. That's why my next batch turned quickly to vinegar.

So.. how to make an alcoholic cider without losing half of it to my bag method? I simply put it in a plastic mineral water bottle with a narrow neck, and put the lid on. Several times a day, I loosen the lid enough for the carbon dioxide to escape, which it does with a little hiss, and then retighten the lid. This is called burping the bottle! You can do this with a plastic bag too. Simply put your brew into a plastic bag and secure it with a rubber band or drawstring. Every few hours, burp it - squeeze out the carbon dioxide but don't let any oxygen in. Another way is to put a balloon over the neck of the the bottle, instead of a lid. As the carbon dioxide is created, the ballon blows itself up. But you need to burp the balloon every now and then, so it doesn't pop.   

My burping plan was foiled when I woke up the other morning and realised that since I'm going away for a few days, I won't be able to burp my cider! I didn't want to risk it exploding, and I didn't want it to turn to vinegar. I did what the pros do: use an airlock. It's a little plastic tube that winds up and down, and can be secured to the top of your bottle. Water sits in the s-bend of the tube. When carbon dioxide is created, a little bubble of it flows through the water and pops out the top. But no oxygen can get in thanks to the water. An airlock is amazingly cheap - this one cost $3.

While I was at the homebrew shop, I also bought a bottle capper for $12, and a bag of bottle tops for $5. With this grand outlay, I can now recycle beer bottles by giving them a wash, filling them with my cider once it's suitably alcoholic, and tapping on a new cap. Right now the apples at the farmer's market (and in the dumpster we visit from time to time) are old: they've been in cold store all winter, and they are starting to turn. We've been rescuing them by peeling and coring them then stewing them. The peels and cores go into a bucket with water and honey, and that turns into cider. I hope to make a batch that will last us the summer, and store it all in beer bottles.

By the way, when I was at the homebrew shop, as soon as I mentioned apple cider, they rushed me over to their apple cider kits. where you buy some special yeast and other various formulated ingredients and follow a very precise recipe. I'm sure that works, but I love the simplicity of my method: making use of the wild microorganisms as they do their thing, putting some food scraps to good use, and ending up with a slightly different flavour for every batch. It's healthier too - those wild microorganisms are fantastic for our digestive tracts, and it's better for the environment to use them than some that have been packaged up and shipped to us from god-knows-where.

Recipe for Wild Alcoholic Apple Cider and Wild Apple Cider Vinegar

Put apple cores and peels into a bucket with water and enough honey to make it nice and sweet.
Put a plate on top to keep the apple pieces immersed, or stir it every two days instead.

After a few days it should be nice and bubbly. At this stage you can leave it in the bucket, stirring intermittently, until it turns into vinegar - this could take a few more days or a few weeks, depending on temperature. Alternatively, you can pour it into a bottle or bottles with a narrow neck, and utilise one of the following methods of burping it:
 - buy an airlock from a homebrew supplies place
 - put a balloon over the neck and burp it from time to time
 - screw on a tight fitting lid, and burp it frequently by loosening it briefly.

Taste it every now and then and start drinking when it tastes good. If you have any left when it no longer needs to be burped (not sure how long this takes - could be a few weeks), then you can pour it into screwtop bottles for drinking soon, or you can age it.

If you want to age it, put it into a clean beer bottle and affix a new cap. You can put in another teaspoon of honey at this stage, and I'm told that will make a nice fizz when the bottle is opened. Label and date your bottle and store it till you are ready to drink it. By the way, if you put this in a wine bottle and cork it, you run the risk of the cork popping out if more carbon dioxide is created. That's why you use the beer bottle and cap - they should be strong enough to withstand a bit of fizz.

When bottling it, there will be sediment sitting at the bottom of the vessel you used to ferment the brew in. Apparently if you siphon off the liquid into their bottles for aging, and leave the sediment behind, you get a finer flavoured cider once it's aged. But I was too meanfisted to shell out $16 for the siphon, so I'm drinking my sediment.