{"id":31637,"date":"2017-07-06T15:08:42","date_gmt":"2017-07-06T22:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=31637"},"modified":"2017-07-06T16:40:44","modified_gmt":"2017-07-06T23:40:44","slug":"thoughts-thanks-and-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/06\/thoughts-thanks-and-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts, thanks, and arts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blessed benefactors<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Joel posted today about the awesomeness of his readers<\/a>. Now, I don’t know who his latest benefactor is, but I know that Joel and I share many readers — and benefactors.<\/p>\n

Like Joel, I can’t begin to number all the great people and their gifts. Honda generator, anyone? Funds toward re-roofing Ye Olde Wreck? Icon-painting class? Sometimes it’s $5 via the donation button. Other times, whoppingly more. Sometimes it’s “mere” moral support (there is nothing mere about moral support) or needed advice on tools or techniques. But it is all from good hearts and bright minds.<\/p>\n

Like Joel, I have been blessed with the world’s best readers. <\/p>\n

Onward with egg tempera<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

One of those readers, a figure of some mystery, has taken to dropping regular, but always surprising, contributions on me — sufficient to make up for last spring’s plunge in Amazon’s commission rates* and more.<\/p>\n

That person just struck once again. And you know what? This time I’m going to splurge. Taking the icon class last month I fell in love with both the icon style and with painting in that complicated, persnickity, medieval medium, egg tempera (which has many beautiful uses beyond icon painting). I’m going to take this opportunity to get started.<\/p>\n

Unlike more familiar painting media (watercolor, oils, or acrylic) you can’t just go out and buy yourself a set of egg-tempera paints (well, you can, but the cost would shock you and egg tempera is not durable in its fluid form). You make your own paints from powdered pigments. You not only gesso your own hardwood boards, which is usually no big deal. But you make your own gesso. AND you make the gesso out of things you didn’t even know existed, like rabbit-skin glue particles and French chalk (aka whiting powder). AND you have to paint on 10 coats or so of it. Egg-tempera painting has to be done with high-quality brushes because it’s a medium of thousands of fine, often very visible, strokes. Some artists even grind their own pigments from semi-precious stones and other earth elements. Some buy boards (usually from Orthodox monasteries) that are crafted to last centuries, and priced accordingly.<\/p>\n

In short, the barriers to getting started are big. Oh, there are books that lay out how to do it, and I got some of those from the library. The learning curve is steep, but once you’ve climbed it, tempera painting isn’t especially difficult, just different. More complicated and hands-on.<\/p>\n

The biggest barriers involve acquiring the needed ingredients, most of which aren’t in an artist’s standard stock.<\/p>\n

Dear Donor of Mystery: Your latest will buy 10 jars of high-quality powdered pigment, those bizarre gesso makings, red sable brushes, and how-to books that I can keep after the library versions have gone back. I already have small (not monk-made) boards for my first experiments. <\/p>\n

And I can purchase those things in good conscience because another donor\/lender has already covered the remaining necessities of household structural repair. <\/p>\n

Otherwise, I might be spending your money on a termite inspection. And however useful, you know that just wouldn’t be much fun.<\/p>\n

Life in the freedom-blogging lane is good, thank you. But sometimes it leads to things that are even gooder. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

*BTW, thank you to the person who just purchased all those fancy light fixtures on Amazon. They not only helped alter the generally dismal picture, but because of the arbitrary way sellers list items, a couple of them appeared in one of the few categories where the commission actually went up instead of down last March.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blessed benefactors Joel posted today about the awesomeness of his readers. Now, I don’t know who his latest benefactor is, but I know that Joel and I share many readers — and benefactors. Like Joel, I can’t begin to number all the great people and their gifts. Honda generator, anyone? Funds toward re-roofing Ye Olde Wreck? Icon-painting class? Sometimes it’s $5 via the donation button. Other times, whoppingly more. Sometimes it’s “mere” moral support (there is nothing mere about moral support) or needed advice on tools or techniques. But it is all from good hearts and bright minds. Like Joel,…<\/p>\n

Continue readingThoughts, thanks, and arts<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-aesthetics","category-money","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31637"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31667,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31637\/revisions\/31667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}