Irish Soda Bread

My first try at Irish soda bread using buttermilk and baking soda, no sugar.  I added two tbsp pumpkin seeds to the dough and sprinkled one tbsp chia seeds on top.  Messy! The chia seeds fell off. My X’s were not very good and it is a little misshapen, but it works. My wife would have preferred something sweeter, but the bread is good with butter.

Sonar Tide

Taken for independent class project.

Sonar Tide, a sculpture created for Peoria Civic Center, Peoria, Illinois.

Illinois River Shore

HDR image along Illinois River.

Madison Theater balcony

My wife’s favorite! Balcony of the Madison Theater going to weeds.

Painting With Light

Do we really need more long exposures? Here’s a couple of photos: one daytime, one nighttime in beautiful downtown Mossville.

 

Winter Gardening

The bokashi bucket needed to be emptied, winter or not.

The bucket on the right has been aged two weeks in the bucket and needs to be dumped because the bucket on the left is almost full.

Might as well bury it in this raised bed if the ground’s not too hard.

Dug.

Dumped.

And covered.

Just for fun, trying to winter sow some native plants for wildlife. Got some of the seeds at a native seed exchange last fall at Forest Park Nature Center in Peoria Heights, Illinois, others from a “Wildlife Gardeners” friend. No, I didn’t use any bokashi juice in the planting mix. I use the dry bucket/newspaper method.

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 22 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Mountain Storm

A couple of washes, then Derwent watercolor pencils for the rest; some put on dry, some using pencils dipped in water, and some put on dry, then brushed over.

Bluebird

Bluebird on Channel Iron Post

Here’s a bluebird that I painted using my Winsor and Newton travel set with 14 half-pans of watercolor.  A damp brush across a pan produces vivid colors, although the background was made using dilute values with a glazing technique.  This is a Western Bluebird (no orange or yellow on the breast).

Cherries

My latest effort. I was attempting to focus the foreground and have the background less in focus.