Yippee Yupo®

Though I have long used a nice French cold-press paper on which to paint watercolors, I have been frustrated by cold-press's quick absorption, its fading of color.  I'll load on a cadmium red only to find that it's lost its brilliance by the time it dries.  So I've tried smoother, less textured hot-press paper.  I've also tried the technique of applying a layer of acrylic gesso (a polymer medium found in any art supply store) to a sheet of paper, letting that dry, and then painting on that.  I like the slipperiness of the application, the little surprise elements that appear within the painting itself.

Because of the rather mysterious effect this technique produced, I named this "Petunias Out of a Parallel Universe"

But it wasn't until I took a painting workshop one autumn in southeastern France (in the Rhône Alpes region)  that I was introduced to a synthetic paper called Yupo®  made from polypropylene.  So it's not really paper but plastic.  It's also waterproof.  Which brings up the rather intriguing question:  "So you use watercolor to paint on a waterproof paper?  How does that work?"  I'll answer that by saying that it seems similar to skating on ice.  You slip and slide a lot.  Far from being absorbed into the paper, the water pools in odd places, the paint skids across the top.  And, the colors keep their brilliance!  Having much less control over the process, you find yourself with some happy accidents.  And, though I've never painted on porcelain, it seems not dissimilar.

As many watercolorists know, once you apply paint to hot- or cold-press paper, you can't lift it off.  Which means that though you can go back into the area with a clean damp brush and remove a little paint, you can't take off all that much.  It's there to stay.  (Or, at the very least, there's always a palimpsest.)  Which may be one reason people say that painting in watercolor is more difficult than painting in oils.  (Oils allow you to paint over something.)  But Yupo allows you to lift the paint off at any time.  In fact, you can wash the entire painting down the sink and start over on the same sheet.  Lifting a bit of color here and there can be handy when you want to open up an already-painted area--for sky, say, or a highlight.  The beauty of it, then, is that you are not committed to keeping what you have set down.  You can play with it.  (It can take several applications to get the paint to adhere exactly where you want it, but that's part of the fun.)

Here are four examples of my Yupo work--plus the photos I painted them from.

"Afternoon in the Abbey Gardens" (Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France)

"Blue Bridge" (Dieulefit, France)

Poles, wires, and all

"Le Pègue"  (Le Pègue, France)

"House on Dickinson Road" (Vermont).  Though one can plan out an entire painting and then apply a masking fluid (to later rub off) to parts that are to remain light, such as the sky between the leaves plus the sunlight down the left-side of the tree trunks, I paint in a less regulated style and so quite dislike the masking technique.  Here, I achieved the same result by simply lifting paint off wherever I wanted.

"One" Cookies

It's too hot these days to think about much ... certainly not turning on the oven as this recipe requires.  But when the weather moderates, stir these up and see how heavenly they smell while they're baking.  They also go beautifully with a chilled glass of your favorite summer refreshment.

There are times when I like to pore over recipes, note a few that look tempting, and make up an appropriate grocery list.  And ... there are times when I just want to dive in and make something.  For me, making cookies always means hunting out a just-right recipe which can take some time.  So ... I made up a recipe that was easy to remember because it calls for just one of everything.  I call it "One" Cookies.  These are coconut and orange flavored but the recipe lends itself to just about anything.  Cardamom and chopped nuts.  Cinnamon and nutmeg.  Ginger and molasses.  Bits of an organic chocolate bar.

"One" Cookies

Blend 1 stick of (preferably softened) butter with 1 c. brown sugar (hoping it hasn't solidified since you last used it).

Mix in 1 egg.

Add 1 c. flour plus (and here I've cheated a little, but these do add up to 1 teaspoon) ½ t. salt and ½ t. baking soda.  Mix.

Add the zest of 1 medium-size orange plus its juice.  (I like to use an organic orange, especially since I'm using the zest ... which we used to call the grated rind.)

Finally, mix in 1 c. shredded sweetened coconut.

Place in small spoonfuls on a greased or parchment-covered cookie sheet.

Bake 365º for 12-15 minutes.  

Yum.

La Cité de Carcassonne

One of my very first exposures to France came in the form of a wonderfully thick-paged paper-covered book of black-and-white photos showing the fortified town of Carcassonne in the South of France, not far from the city of Montpellier.  (In fact, the town is divided in two by the Aude River--the fortified part is called the Cité and the lower, "newer" area, the Ville Basse.)  As a child, I would fetch out the book, open it up, and pore over the photographs of this totally intriguing, storybook-like, quite theatrical-looking place.  I believe my grandmother purchased the book when she and her sister went to Europe in 1928, but whether they actually got to Carcassonne, I don't now remember.

The magical views stayed with me over the years so that when I found myself in Montpellier studying French just five years ago and my hostess offered to drive us there, I was thrilled.

Carcassonne was one of those spots that got a lot of traffic over the ages.  It lay on a route linking Iberia to the rest of Europe and began as a pre-Roman settlement.  After the Romans, the Visigoths came.  The Saracens.  The Franks.  Cathars settled there but were then driven out during the Albigensian Crusade when the Catholic Church considered them heretics and even housed their own inquisition in The Inquisition Tower.  By then, Carcassonne was a fortified medieval city with double ramparts to protect against siege engines, the outer wall connecting fourteen towers, the inner twenty-four.

Later, the kingdom of France took it over.  During the Revolution, it became a supply depot.  Then it was turned into a stone quarry, its walls and towers gradually dismantled.  It was even scheduled for demolition until a campaign saved it and a conservation architect Viollet-le-Duc carefully restored it during the second half of the 19th century.  His successor finally finished the work in 1910.  Now Carcassonne is one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.  It is also the largest medieval town in Europe with its walls still intact.  Today, approximately 120 people live there permanently ... with maybe 48,000 in the Ville Basse, the unfortified section across the river.

Entrance

The double ramparts

The Basilica Saint-Nazaire inside the walls

Inside the Basilica

I took this photo for the beauty of the construction.  It may be a private house, but I have no idea.  The Cité also has a post office, school, hotel, and an open-air theater.

Place du Chateau square

School Museum

A commercial area near the exit

Posted today in honor of France's Bastille Day.

A Gallery of Clouds

I live in a beautiful spot literally surrounded by trees.  Great white pines.  Maples.  Eastern oaks.  Squirrels and chipmunks abound as do crows, cardinals, robins.  But, for me, at least, the horizon around here is too enclosed to see sunsets, moonrises, dawns, plus the wide sweep of both landscape and cloudscape.  When clouds do come, they seem to sit on top of us, simply covering the day.  Once, when dining outdoors with friends in Western New York, off there in the Finger Lake Country, I looked up and said (with great enthusiasm), "Look, a sunset!!"

My friends were amused.  "You have sunsets where you live ..."

"No," I replied, "there are too many trees."

I've always liked Looking Up.  Studying the clouds.  When I lived in Santa Fe, I particularly appreciated this time of year since it brought the sweep of thunderstorms as they advanced from west to east.  And the dry air, the high blue skies proffered a variety of beauties. Cumulonimbus, nimbo-stratus, cirrus, strato cumulus.  I had a cloud book as a child and could rattle the names off better then than I can now.

New Mexico

Illinois

North American Plains

An anvil cloud, New Mexico

Colorado

New Mexico

Colorado

Spain

Stained Glass Jewels

Marc Chagall's America Windows

On my winter train trip to Santa Fe, during the lay-over at Chicago's Union Station, I went off to the Art Institute of Chicago--several blocks (but still walking distance) from the train station.  It's a jewel of a place with a jewel of a collection.  And, this trip, I found one jewel I hadn't seen before:  Marc Chagall's America Windows installed in 1977 in commemoration of the American bicentennial.  (And in memory of Mayor Richard J. Daley who'd encouraged Chicago's strong tradition of public art.)

There are six stained glass panels in all, each commemorating one of the arts.  Each is eight feet high.  Taken together, they are some thirty-two feet wide.

In 2005, the windows were taken down for five years so that they would not be compromised during the construction of a new Modern Wing.  Once down, they were given a good cleaning.  Now they are back in a new spot with even better lighting, the rich cobalt blues sparkling.

The Art Institute of Chicago is very generous in allowing the public to photograph their work.  Here, then, are my shots of the panels from left to right.  Since they commemorate our bicentennial, I decided to post them in honor of our upcoming July 4th celebration.

Panels # 1 and #2

Panels #3 and #4

Panels #5 and #6

Here is an excellent link that gives a brief history of the project, Chagall's artistic technique, and the subsequent conservation.

Going, Going, Gone the Way ...

As a spin-off from last week's Cursive Lament, here are some more on my endangered list.

*  Shoe polish and shoe repair shops
*  Wrapped gifts (now replaced by little gift bags with loose tissue paper plopped on top)
*  Film
*  "Hi" (now, "Hey")
*  Onion-skin paper, carbon paper, typewriter erasers
*  Typewriters
*  Adverbs (more on that another time)
*  Charge accounts
*  The non-invasive clicking/whirring sound of a hand-pushed lawn mower
*  Ship travel across the Atlantic
*  Kids toys made out of wood
*  Telephone booths
*  Receiving prints of family/friends photos that you can stick in a photo album
*  Understanding clockwise.  (A friend was telling his students about a geographic force that rotated clockwise over the northern hemisphere.  "What's clockwise?" a student asked.  The friend noticed that the student was wearing a watch so went over to point it out on his dial.  It turned out to be a digital watch.)
*  Happy car trips with young 'uns.  Now junior car seats not only keep families small, they also make long family car trips impossible.  After all, children need space to fidgit.  (Not that I'm advocating it, but our daughter spent a portion of one car trip to the West Coast standing on her head in the back seat.)
*  Having a live person answer the phone
*  Looking nice.  Looking nice in a grocery store.  Looking nice when traveling on an airplane.  Even--hey--looking nice when walking down the street.
*  Men's shirts and trousers that fit
*  Skirts and dresses
*  Shoes that look as if they're made out of something besides recycled tires or bottles
*  An attendant who pumps gas and washes your car windows
*  Going into a store, dentist's office, car dealership, anyplace and finding it peacefully quiet without some sort of "music" in the background
*  Finding a personal letter in the mail

A file of personal letters once found in the mail.

Is It Bye Bye, Cursive?

Remember in the early grades, when we school children practiced the Palmer Method to get ready to write cursive?  We'd already learned to print both capital and lower case letters.  As we'd already learned not to arbitrarily mix the two.  (As can now occur when someone wants to trade-mark a name.)  So, as the Palmer Method instructed, we children sat at our desks with paper and pencil making continuous ovals over and over--not stopping--in order to get the arm and shoulder muscles appropriately tuned up so that we could then join the letters into cursive script.  Then, as a special refinement, we sometimes drew a line down the middle of each letter as a test to see if the lines were parallel and the letters were thus all angled in the same direction. 

Here's my recreation of what it looked like.

Making the ovals ... then writing the script so that it all angled in the same direction

Learning to write cursive was simply part of our preparation for joining the adult world.  There was no question as to whether or not we learned it.  We all learned it.  So I had a bit of a set-back not long ago when I took my written list of movies to the local video store and asked the young man if he had any of them.  He looked at the list, handed it back, and said, "I don't read handwriting."  (My penmanship would take no prizes, but it is legible and neat.)  So I stood at the counter and printed everything out for him.

But as I did, I also grumbled to myself about how one could consider oneself to be an educated person if one could not write or read cursive?  (He probably never gave it a second thought.)  I also wondered about a school system that allowed anyone to graduate without that basic knowledge.  Of course, I realized that keyboarding--what we used to call typing--has taken over.  And I've subsequently heard that cursive is no longer being taught in some schools.  What a pity!  Don't we still need a degree of refined as well as practical skills?  

Of course, someone always comes up with new methods to take over the old.  I don't know what method has replaced the Palmer Method (or if the whole thing has totally collapsed), but sometime in the 1890's, it took over from the Spencerian which was considered too full of flourishes to be practical.  The Palmer Method was faster; it didn't require lifting the pen off the paper.  Now, of course, there is no pen and paper.

On thinking about it, I also realized that a lot of "handwriting" these days is simply printing.  And this seems particularly true for men.  The men of my generation (educated by the Palmer Method) can write a very readable cursive ... but younger men all seem to print.  Have you noticed? (Perhaps those oval-practicing drills did more to establish good cursive neural pathways than we realized.)

I suppose hand-written thank you notes, condolence notes, bread-and-butter letters will all go the way.  Maybe meditative journals, too.  Save your old ones.  They may become curiosities and go for big bucks--that quaint old custom of putting pen to paper.