Paintings and Pie

Friday was Tau Day (where \(\tau=2\pi\)), so for Journal Club that morning I and another guy at Swinburne brought in two (homemade) pies. I can't, to my knowledge, remember baking a pie before, but it turned out to be really easy: I settled on a blueberry pie (which I haven't had in ages), and with a pre-made frozen pie crust the rest of the pie-making was surprisingly simple. It came out tasting amazing, so I'll probably experiment with more pie-making in the future. I've noticed that fruit pies seem to be somewhat rare in Australia compared to the U.S.; they're not unknown, as I came across pre-made frozen apple pie while looking for pie crusts, but they're definitely not a common thing.

Delicious blueberry pie.

On the topic of painting, I recently finished a small landscape painting I started back in February and didn't get back around to working on for a few months. It's going to be…either a highly belated or an extremely early (depending on how you look at it) Christmas gift for my housemate's parents who had me over for Christmas last year.

“Dandenong Nighttime Vista,” canvas, 10”×8”.

I had some silver paint leftover from another project, and as I'd been planning to do a sort of moonlight-on-the-forest-leaves effect I tried using silver for it. (I also used it for the stars, where I think it works quite well.) I'm not 100% convinced it works—I probably shouldn't have spread it horizontally so much in the background as that makes it look more like moonlight on water—but it does make for an interesting and perhaps unconventional approach. I am pretty happy about the trees in the foreground, as I spent quite a while painting all the vertical lines making them up.

Finally, you may remember my Easter painting from back in April. Although my original intent was to try a looser, more impressionistic style for it—as seen in the sky, the first part I did—it morphed into my more usual meticulous, detailed style along the way. I was never quite happy about the sky, therefore, so although I had intended it to be finished by Easter, I ended up going back and reworking it. It fact, I reworked the sky twice before being satisfied with it, and ended up detailing some of the mid- and foreground more as well. It's still recognizably the same painting, but I'm a lot happier with it in its current state now:

“Easter Morning,” 40×30 cm.

I've also been working on some space-related paintings for an exhibit I'll be participating in in honor of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 next month, but things are all in the final stages of coming together for that, so I'll get some pictures of the works I and others have contributed for that soon. I'm looking forward to seeing it all hung and ready for exhibition! A hui hou!

Painting Phosphorescent Penguins

Two weeks ago I finished a painting for a fellow student's birthday, and as it was the first time I've made use of phosphorescent paint and it came out pretty well I've been meaning to show it off. The intended recipient really likes penguins, so I decided to paint a frigid Antarctic scene with some penguins in the foreground and the Aurora Australis in the night sky.

Mouse over to see how it looks in the dark! (“Antarctic Night,” acrylic on canvas, 8”×10”)

I'm quite happy with how the penguins came out, even as small as they are. I was surprised, actually, at how easy it turned out to be to paint them, and I'm now thinking about doing a larger animal painting (and I may even have an idea of what…).

I'm also pretty happy with how the glow-in-the-dark effects came out, though I don't feel the aurorae look particularly great. To be fair, I've never seen an aurora myself, and it was my first attempt at painting them—I was afraid they'd be too faint, so I really laid on both the colored and phosphorescent paint.

Speaking of which, I realize that I've never mentioned my phosphorescent paint here on the blog before. It's called “Lit,” and is from a specialist paint maker in the U.K. that I discovered back in January. It's billed as “the most powerful light emitting pigment on the planet,” and I can certainly believe it. In fact, it's so bright that more than one person has asked me if it's radioactive! (It's not; it's just the product of a careful search for “the most powerful light-emitting pigments and rare earth activators.”)

Here's the glowing dark version again in case you're reading this on something that can't do a mouse-over.

The mix of pigments is such that it both glows brightly immediately, but also easily continues glowing at moderate brightness for an entire night. And unlike the typical glow-in-the-dark materials that's we've all seen, this particular paint is so bright that you can start to see the effect at just slightly dim lighting conditions rather than it needing to be completely dark. (And when it is completely dark, the brilliance is remarkable.)

Interestingly, you can't get this as premixed paint, only as a pigment that must be mixed with a little water and some acrylic base to make paint; even in a sealed container the pigment will react with the acrylic and harden. I've got some ideas for how to use this phosphorescent paint in the future, but it'll probably be a while till any of them materialize. (If you have any ideas for things I could paint, do let me know!). Yet again, I find the possibilities of modern paint to be pretty incredible. A hui hou!

Lamb, Chopped (Minced, Really)

Last week I went to an interesting fund raiser at church: a company called “Tastepoint” runs taste-testing sessions where they'll pay the organizer for getting enough people to participate. During the sessions everyone gets a number (seven in this case) of different cuts of meat of differing qualities and prepared differently as well. You rate them based on several factors such as flavor, juiciness, and tenderness. I have no idea whom this research (into…consumer preferences, I guess?) benefits, or how, but it's apparently a pretty established thing.

Anyway, for that session they were serving lamb (they also do beef), something I didn't grow up eating much—or at all, really—as an American. Pretty much my only exposure to it comes from eating shwarma in Israel (or kebabs, as they're known elsewhere). I've actually had goat meat more often—it makes pretty good sloppy joes. I rather liked some of the cuts of lamb that I had, so while I was grocery shopping yesterday I decided to try cooking with it for the first time. I did some quick searching for recipes and decided on making some shepherd's pie with lamb mince.

After assembling the ingredients, I started making it for lunch after church this morning, but failed to realize just how much work was involved, so I ended up having it for supper instead. (It basically requires making lamb stew and mashed potatoes separately, then combining them and cooking them further on top of that.) It came out pretty well, though I think I didn't boil enough liquid off while making the lamb-and-vegetables mix, so I had to leave it in the oven a bit longer. I also added some shredded cheese on top which went very, very, brown and crispy from the extra cooking, but all in all I think it came out all right. The sort of “lamb stew” intermediate product was interesting (and smelled delicious) on its own, so I've got some ideas for using lamb in the future. We'll see where it goes, I suppose. A hui hou!