Creamy. Delicate. Fresh. Light.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm acrylic on paper. The paper is no ordinary paper, it is textured Hahnemuhle 300 gsm 100% alpha cellulose which is acid-free fibre of vegetable origin. 

In this piece I was aiming for a fun, quirky and modern illustrative stencil or screenprint style on layers of lush glazing. In some cultures spinach and other leafy greens symbolise money and and abundant crops. So a money tree seemed appropriate.

By the way, all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store.

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The meatless meals recipe

Hooray, a yummy pasta dish that does not involve tomatoes! I'm sure the spinach sauce here could be turned into a very respectable soup, and minus the pasta the dish would make a rather nice warm salad.

pasta for two (risoni is nice with this)

2 teaspoons butter

250g spinach, washed and chopped

1/2 onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup strong stock

1/4 cup white wine

150ml cream

about 200g broccolini or broccoli, cut into small bite size strips

1 red capsicum, cut into bite size slices

1 avocado, sliced (optional)

100g bocconcini (optional)

Cook your pasta with a pinch of salt and a dash of oil.

Melt 1 teaspoon butter in a pan.

Soften the onion and garlic.

Add spinach, stock, wine and cream.

Simmer until spinach is well cooked.

Remove from heat and puree.

(Add bocconcini)

Meanwhile, put the broccolini and capsicum pieces in a frypan on high heat with the other teaspoon of butter, and basically stirfry until the capsicum has softened and the broccolini is bright green. A dash or two of water may help. If the broccolini starts to grey, STOP COOKING!! That's the sign of impending vege blandness!

To serve, pile the pasta into bowls, top with the veges (plus avocado). Then drown the lot in the spinach sauce.

Feeds 2.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm acrylic and oil on paper. The paper is no ordinary paper, it is textured Hahnemuhle 300 gsm 100% alpha cellulose which is acid-free fibre of vegetable origin. 

This design is known as a kolam. These are drawn fresh every morning in front of each house in southern parts of India with a handheld stream of rice flour. Special events call for really elaborate designs. The designs are learned, usually based around a grid of dots, and handed down in families. There are variations galore.

By the way, all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store.

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Aviyal - the vegetarian dinner recipe

Although this is a South Indian style curry, it could easily pass for a Thai green curry. Bizarre but true.

3 tablespoons desiccated coconut

3 cups stock

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

2 cloves garlic

1-2 green chillies, deseeded

1 cup coconut milk

6 curry leaves
6 1/2 cups mixed vegetables such as pumpkin, carrots, beans, capsicum, zucchini, cucumber, eggplant, all julienned

salt to taste

Put the cumin, garlic, chilli and desiccated coconut in a blender with a little of the stock and whizz until nice and smooth.
Put this paste along with the rest of the stock, coconut milk and curry leaves in a pot.
Add the veges one type at a time, beginning with those that take the longest to cook.
When all the veges are in the pot and cooked, simmer uncovered for five minutes.
Serve with rice.

Makes 4-6 serves.

Where do you get your news?

I get all of mine online. That's right, I've given up on the telly and newspapers entirely. But that's not actually what I meant by my question.

For example, I find it incredibly odd that here in Australia we get next to no mainstream news about our closest geographical neighbours New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Indonesia. Only if there is a major coup or natural disaster or some Australians were killed do we hear anything from these countries. When it comes to what's going on overseas, all we ever seem to hear is English and American news.

So I get all my news online. I read several newspapers online. I am subscribed to a gazillion special interest blogs. I have Google Alerts set up for specific topics that I want to know all about. I rely on Twitter to tell me of any major international incidents. So do I hear from a wide variety of sources? No. I'll explain in a minute.

I was already aware that my sources of information were quite limited. If they weren't then logically I'd hear about what's going on in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Indonesia, amongst others. But I don't and it has bothered me for some time without me doing much about it. And then I watched this TED talk on how we tend to only gather news from sources that are people like us. That cuts out a lot of interesting happenings and points of view and is exactly the trap I had fallen into.

If you're curious about what's going on in the world like I am, it makes sense to look for sources of news outside your country and also outside of your usual social networks. What other way is there to hear from places underrepresented in your mainstream media than to look beyond your own media? What other way is there to gain completely different perspectives but to listen to people who have lives completely different to your own?

In the spirit of seeing a problem and asking 'how can I?' instead of 'why can't I?'...

How can I source news more widely?

Here are some of my suggestions:

Where do you go to hear what's on outside your usual circle?

Photo courtesy of Tony₂

Filling. Rich. Homely. Sweet.

This is an ancient recipe in our family, too rarely trotted out. I have this in my recipe collection in my grandmothers handwriting on a faded and beaten up piece of paper. It makes a fabulous dessert for a group of people.  I remember eating it when I was a kid. I was fond of it then and still am now.

2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 1/2 cups mashed, sieved pumpkin
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup milk (or evaporated milk or light cream etc)
1 x 9" unbaked pastry shell (shortcrust)

Mix filling ingredients in order given.
Pour into pastry shell.
Bake in a hot oven (425F) for 12 mins (omit this step for a prebaked pastry shell)
Reduce temperature to moderate (350F) and continue baking for 45 minutes until filling is set.

Garnish the pie with whipped cream, toasted coconut , chopped nuts etc.

Serves at least 8.

As the final installment of my investigations into artist's canvas, this time I'm looking at canvas keys, gallery wrapped canvas vs traditional profile canvas and the idea of unstretched canvas.

Previous related posts cover all about painting substrates, all about the types of artists canvas and stretching your own canvas.

Canvas Keys

Some stretched canvasses come with little wooden wedges. What are these for? They are known as canvas keys. They should fit into slots in the inner corners of the canvas stretcher. They are a traditional method for tightening up a canvas that has begun to sag. Unfortunately, they are not a very good method for doing this. Any canvas that has developed a sag should be carefully taken off it's stretcher and re-stretched.

Using canvas keys to take the sag out of a painting risks damaging the painting. It is possible to accidentally hammer the back of the painting if the keys are missed, breaking the paint. Using keys puts a great deal of stress on the corners of a painting which can eventually tear the canvas. The keys will invariably change the shape of the stretcher and it will no longer be square and the painting may no longer fit into it's frame, if it had one.

Skip the dodgy canvas keys. Traditional, but not very smart. Take the canvas off the stretcher altogether and re-stretch it!

This video explains the same information in visual form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSLhkuFO3G0

Bracing a Stretched Canvas

A canvas stretcher or strainer is under quite a bit of tension once a canvas has been secured onto it. They are usually made from timber and so are prone to warping under tension and changing atmospheric conditions. It is recommended that they include a cross-bar every 60 cm (or 2 feet) or so in each direction to help prevent any warping.

Traditional Stretched Canvas

A traditional stretched canvas requires framing. The tacks or staples show on the sides of the finished piece. Traditional canvases also tend to have a shallow profile. They are usually only about half an inch thick from the back of the canvas to the front.

Gallery Wrapped Canvas

This is a very modern style of stretching canvas. The canvas is wrapped around two edges of the stretcher bars and secured at the back where the staples or tacks can't show. Often the sides are painted.  No visible staples or nails means a neat finish is achieved and no framing is required.  Usually this style has quite a deep profile, more than an inch thick from the back of the canvas to the front, though they can also be shallow. The deep profile is the current trend.

Artists love gallery wrapped canvas as their artworks are ready to hang as soon as the varnish is dry. Many art collectors prefer it too as it allows them to skip the often substantial costs of framing. Anecdotally, gallery wrapped canvasses nearly put many framers out of business when it first came out as so many people suddenly didn't require their services. Though if you prefer your art in a frame, as some do, gallery wrapped canvas can be framed if you want.

Unstretched Canvas

It was a revelation to me when I was introduced to the idea of working on unstretched canvas. I was at the exhibition opening of a local artist who had oil pastel paintings on massive canvasses about 1 x 2 m. They were unstretched and looked wonderful.

Depending on your point of view, unstretched canvas is either fabulous or awful to paint on. It has a very different working feel to the drum-like bounce of a stretched canvas. To me it's wonderful and predictable. The give in the surface of a stretched canvas is something I find disconcerting. Different artists, different preferences. I guess it's like working on fabric textured board or paper.

For the artist there are some significant advantages to working on canvas unstretched. There are time savings as no pre-stretching is required. There are financial savings as no stretchers need to be bought. There are space savings as unused canvas can be stored rolled and once painted, can be stacked flat. Believe me, plain canvas takes up a LOT less room than a stack of stretched canvasses. And lastly, unstretched canvas is cheaper to post for a buyer as it weighs less.

For the art collector, unstretched canvas can be presented in a number of already familiar ways. It can be lightly stretched onto stretchers/strainers and ends up looking just like regular stretched canvas.  Or it can be framed just like any paper artwork. For extra rigidity, it can be mounted (glued) to board before framing. All very normal procedures for your framer.

The only downside to unstretched canvas that I can see is that someone needs to frame it.

More art technique articles

This article is one in an ongoing series of technical articles for artists, all archived together and accessible from here. The topics range from details on materials, to the business of art, to specific art techniques. Please make use of this resource.