Peggy's Jibber-Jabber: My Bouncer

I have a bouncer.

“You have a bouncer?!” you ask incredulously.

I do! A succinct definition of a bouncer is a large, polite-but-firm human wall at a bar or club whose job is to keep trouble out, let the right folks in, and gently remind everyone that gravity still works when they’ve had too much fun. That’s the traditional definition of bouncer.

In my world, a bouncer is someone I bounce ideas off of. Someone I trust and rely on for honest advice. My bouncer is my oldest and dearest friend, Trish.

Our grandson Andrew turned thirteen on the tenth and I’ve been so busy painting Christmas cards that it totally snuck up on me.

“I’ll get him a card the next time I go out,” I told my handsome son. Then I had an idea. “Or should I paint him one?”

Kevin is kind of an easy‑going guy. In my head I can hear him answer, “Whatever you wanna do is fine.”

Before he had a chance to answer I added an addendum. “And don’t say whatever I want. You have a better idea of what he’d like than I do.”

“Paint him one,” came my answer. “They look great and it means more, in my opinion.”

“What kinds of things does he like?” I asked. Andrew was four when we left Missouri. At four he liked Paw Patrol and Bluey but I’m gonna guess he out-grew those long ago.

“He likes sports, gaming (PS5), and German Shepherds.”

Andrew is very athletic and plays lots of sports. He’s even good at them! And Lulu is his German Shepherd. Andrew, like most little kids, was afraid of the dark. Kevin and Kandyce got Lulu to protect him from the monster under the bed.

She takes her job seriously and is an excellent guardian.

I went in search of ideas on Pinterest. I wasn’t finding anything that grabbed my fancy.

To mark his special day, my beautiful daughter-in-law did a photo dump of Andrew over the years. One photo in particular struck my fancy.

There’s a man at my church who’s an excellent artist. I admire Shawn’s talent so much. When I showed him the Christmas cards I was painting, he said, “You do a great job with the faces.”

If I can paint cartoon faces, can I do a real face?

I printed off several variations of the picture, one with sharp contrast so I could see lights and darks, one to work from, and another that I used to transfer the image to my paper.

Then I went to work with my under painting.

I’ve heard several artists say they plan out their paintings before they put brush to paper. Me? I jump right in. I don’t know how to plan it. I just look at the picture, find the lightest color, find something close to it in my palette, and start mapping it out.

It’s ugly at this stage —

And I always doubt myself.

“I'm trying a portrait today. I may scrap it but I'm gonna try,” I told my bouncer. Then I sat back and looked at what I painted. I wonder if she can tell that’s a dog? I thought. “PS that's a dog wrapped around his neck.”

“I knew it was a dog before you told me. I'd love to see you finish it,” Trish said.

See! My bouncer is supportive!

The next day I worked on it.

“I think Andrew is coming along okay, but I’m having trouble with the dog,” I told her.

Not everyone sits on their computer like I do and she was off being busy somewhere else and didn’t get back with me.

I rested, played a game on my computer, kept glancing at it, and when I had an idea of what to do next, I went back to it.

Three hours later I sent this to Trish. “I think I’m done but I’ll look at it again tomorrow.”

“The kid is pretty good but the dog is awesome,” she replied.

You have to know that the photos don’t represent the real thing very well. For some reason it always picks the yellows and emphasizes them. His shirt is orange and I only suggested it because I wanted their faces to be the focal point. Keep in mind, I’m new at this.

I posted it to my FB watercolor group for opinions. Most of them were positive and as much as I like hearing them, they don’t help me to become a better painter.

“Cute…I think, for me, it would be better balanced if you had shown more of the boy’s arm as it shows in pic. As is it’s a dog with a boy head under his head…kinda creepy. Sorry, not being mean, just the way I see it.”

She was right and not the only one to point out that it looked like a disembodied head. I knew the arm was there and I guess my brain filled it in.

Another member offered specific instruction on what I could do to improve Andrew’s face.

I put the arm in and hated it. Because of perspective it looked too skinny. I “erased” the back of the arm and let if fade out. Then I went to work on the face. I don’t think I took the shadows dark enough but I’m afraid it’ll look freaky if I darken them more, so I’m gonna leave it.

You know something?

I told my FB group this is my first people portrait.

I sorta lied. I had tried to paint my daughter in acrylic paint and it was a disaster! But this is technically my first watercolor portrait.

Another lie — albeit an unintentional one.

It was a couple of days later when I glanced to the top of my desk and realized that this was actually my first one. It’s lived there since I painted it, which was a long time ago. It’s done on cheap paper and I outlined Andrew’s facial features too much. I don’t know why I saved it but I did. I glance at it once in a while but it’s like white noise, something always there but you barely notice it.

So is it really a lie?

Do I have to fess up and correct my post or do I let it pass?

I’ve been really focused on my painting lately and with everything spread out across my desk, I didn’t need Tiger walking through my paint or on freshly painted cards. He’s feeling neglected. Here are the eyes he gives me.

Then today he came and sat in front of me while I was working on my letter blog. I sprinkled a little fresh food in his dish and worked around him.

Do you think he’s mad at me?

Speaking of watercolors...

You see this beautiful face?

It belongs to Christy, a fellow artist and member of the watercolor group. After seeing my post she reached out to me.

“This is going to sound bonkers, but I’m a paint maker and I would love to send you some more paint as a Christmas kindness. If you want, no pressure,” she said.

Now, I do have to admit that it did sound bonkers.

“Why would you do that?” I asked, grinning from ear to ear the whole time I was typing it.

Christy explained that sales from her Etsy store have been kind of slow and she had paint coming out the wazoo.

“What do I need with 55 half pans of Prussian blue?”

Fifty-five! Wow! I laughed as a mountain of watercolor pans, complete with pans tumbling down the side, flashed in my mind’s eye. “That made me laugh.”

“I have a love for the color and made a lot of it.”

I looked into making paints at one time. Christy assures me it’s more expensive to make than it is to buy.

Put simply, I love presents! Who doesn’t!?

And I wasn’t going to say no to such a kind offer.

“You can pick the colors you want,” she said.

I went to her Etsy store and her colors were all beautiful. “I can’t decide. You’ll have to pick for me,” I told her.

Guess what I got in the mail Saturday?

Christy’s gift.

Besides two tins of beautiful paint, she sent me three loose pans wrapped like taffy, pretty stickers, charms, and a pair of earrings.

“Did you make them?” I asked.

“I made the resin charms and earrings because I like having multiple crafts,” she said.

A girl after my own heart! Y’all know about all the things I’ve been into over the years so I totally get it. I find something I want to make, buy the stuff, conquer it, maybe sell a few, and move on.

If you have a desire to try watercolors and want to support a struggling, small town girl, here’s a link to her shop.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ArtisticIdealsStudio

One more note about watercolors before we move on.

My handsome brother-in-law sent me a picture of Matty framed.

“There were people at the frame shop who complimented the painting and wanted to know who the artist was. Of course I told them my sister-in-law,” Cork said.

“You should make business cards and pass them out,” Dee suggested.

That sounds like a job, and I don’t need a job. A few commissions here and there is all I need.

They hung it where it can be seen as soon as you walk in the door.

“Is that an RV?” you ask.

It is. They’re full-timers.

How about my kitchen disasters this week?

I have never — no never! — ever put the frozen pizza in the oven on its cardboard.

I can’t say that anymore.

“Why?”

Because I did it today after church.

In my defense, I have a lot on my mind.

I took my portrait of Andrew and Lulu to church with me today. I wanted to have Shawn critique it and like I said, the photos don’t do it justice.

Instead of Shawn, my beautiful friend Jody told me how to achieve the effect I wanted to achieve.

“What’s that?” you ask.

I wanted Andrew to be looking at me.

Jody spotted what I needed to do right away.

Fixing that was on my mind.

There’s a little cutie-patootie at church that likes to craft and make things. She really admired the portrait of Andrew. As it so happens, I have an abundance of student grade watercolor paints that I want to get rid of because I’m going with the higher, artist grade paints now that I’m making a little money painting. I just needed to find someone to give them to who would want them. And Ella does.

Fixing a palette for her and gathering a few other supplies that would help her along the way was on mind.

And Michael! My handsome mountain man. He has a round plastic container of mints he keeps in my church bag for Sundays. On Sunday morning he’ll put it in his pocket so it’s handy when he gets a tickle or cough. At the end of service he puts it back in my bag. Today he dumped out an almost-full tin of mints inside my bag!

Aye-yi-yi!

Cleaning out my church bag was on my mind.

And, one more thing, I had a piece of pumpkin crisp in the fridge that was calling my name. A little pre-lunch snack, don’cha know.

To say my mind was elsewhere is an understatement.

When the timer went off, I got up and couldn’t find the cardboard on the counter. I looked in the trash, thinking I’d thrown it away in my distracted state.

It wasn’t there.

Did I...? I thought and opened the oven door.

I did. For the first time in all my born days, I put the cardboard in the oven with the pizza!

Aye-yi-yi!

“You sound like my grandfather,” Mike said when I told him what I did. “What are you gonna do?”

“I scraped it off the cardboard and put it back in the oven. I’ll check it in five or six minutes to see if the bottom got brown.” In case you don’t know or haven’t figured out, it doesn’t brown the bottom when it’s left on the cardboard.

Not my only snafu this week.

Miss Rosie mentioned to me on our morning love call that she was having chili for supper. Do you know what goes good with chili?

“Homemade bread?” you guess.

Yep. And it had been a while since I’ve made Miss Rosie a loaf of homemade bread.

I had it timed out that it would be done at four-thirty.

I made the dough and set it aside to rise for an hour. When it was time to get it in the tins, I could see it hadn’t risen as much as it usually does. It just wasn’t very warm in the house. My oven has a proof setting but I’ve never used it. I thought I’d like to use it now since I needed to have it in the oven in an hour to stay on schedule. Otherwise, I’d’ve just given it more time.

The internet said to cover the bread with a damped towel to keep it from drying out on top and put a small pan of water in the bottom of the oven.

I did that.

An hour later, I opened the door and could see it had risen enough to push the towel up. When I picked up the towel the bread was stuck to it.

Aye-yi-yi!

I got a spatula and it was just lucky I’d chosen a linen towel instead of a cotton one to cover it with because I was able to cleanly scrape off the dough. It looked a little flat now, as you may well guess, but I baked it anyway and it was just fine.

I like to make No Peek Beef Tips. The problem with that is no matter how much fat I cut off of the tri-tip, it always seems to have a lot of oil on top.

Recently I found a fat separator at the thrift store and thought I’d give it a try. After having baked for three hours, there was no way I could put something that hot in there and I didn’t want dinner to be cold. I spooned off what I could, which is what I’ve normally done, and we had dinner. After dinner I thought I’d try it.

I start to pour it in the fat separator when it hit me.

I’m such an idiot.

I could put the beef tips in the fridge now and tomorrow I could pick the fat off!

Aye-yi-yi!

We had snow this week! In years past I’d go out, walk around, and take pictures for you.

“I could just recycle some of my old snow pictures and no one would ever know,” I told Mike.

But I won’t.

We did make a trip to town for a couple of things. Then we went past the construction site for the new fire department building. They were pouring concrete in sections and leaving spaces between the slabs.

“Are those pointy things to anchor the new concrete with the old?” I asked Mike.