the blog of alicia weller

This radish is inspired by a photo of one I pulled out of my garden. Very pretty, but I didn’t really like how they tasted so I’m not growing them this year.

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I am now half way through the winter figure drawing session at the Durham Arts Center so I thought I would post some of the sketches from the last two sessions. Still very much enjoying myself. I acquired some new pencils with some birthday gift money I received and I had fun working with those. I am also finding that I enjoy working with two types of charcoal: willow and compressed. It’s an easy way to get different values as you might notice in the session four sketches.

Before I move on to the sketches, here are some daffodils from my back yard the other day. They seem to come up around my birthday every year, which is a nice treat. However they always seem to get a cold shock and  whither quickly. I like the focus in this photo on just one flower thanks to my amazing 50mm prime lens I got for xmas.

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I brought my camera on the Buckquarter Creek Trail last week. My intention was to find the two trees my mom and I saw in October that she wanted a photo of. I could not find them. All I have to say is: you try going into the woods and finding the same trees twice!

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Yesterday was my birthday. I took the day off from work to read Discover magazine and paint. It’s funny that I’ve never painted a cardinal before considering how much I like them. This guy is peeking into the picture to say “hi”. This will not be my last cardinal I’m sure.

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The other week I felt inspired to paint some pistachios. Not sure if I’m done with the painting yet, but it’s been a while, so I thought I would post my progress. If I work on them some more, I will probably post the revision. But I didn’t really intend this 5×7 to be a drawn out process. Pistachios have an amazing range of color and at the time, the sun was hitting them in an interesting way. [Read more →]

I make excellent soup of all kinds. Some are invented, and some are tweaked recipes that I find elsewhere.  One of the universal favorites is my beef stew which I have honed over the years. Although all beef stew has some similar ingredients this recipe is crafted by yours truly. It is really delicious. I don’t have a recipe per say, but after making it many times I have a similar process I can share. This is an art, not a science so don’t take the ingredients as hard and fast rules. Mine change regularly.

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In April of 2009 I visited Washington DC and luckily bumped into a great orchid exhibit (although I can’t remember which museum we were in). I wanted to do a few art pieces for xmas gifts and waited too long to let the oil paint dry so I decided to do some ink drawings of some of the orchid photos I have on hand.

Each received a light watercolor wash for color and the ink was applied on top. I have also included the photos that served as inspiration.

The Art

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This is a useful tip I discovered through experimentation some time ago. As I was answering someone’s question about how to do this in the WordPress.org support forums the other day as a much simpler solution than a second WP installation, it occurred to me that I should write this post. My impression is that it might not be a widely known tactic.
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