Traudl's Apple Cake

 

 

This recipe came from my good friend Traudl who lived near us for many years. She originally came from Bavaria. I always enjoyed a slice of this at her house usually with cream or ice cream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also do several of my own variations of this recipe. 

Sprinkle cinnamon and flaked almonds on before cooking. 

Swap the plain flour with self raising flour and just press into the tin so skip rolling it out. The base turns out more cakey. 

I don't always peel the apples.

Add either vanilla or almond essence to the base.

Frozen Bramley slices or Granny Smith slices work well too

Plum with almond cake  

This is a variation of the apple cake. I used SR flour instead of plain, almond essence instead of vanilla and cooking plums instead of apple. I added 2 tsp milk to the batter mixture.

I cooked it at gas 6 for 40 minutes. as ovens vary check it after 30 min.

Silk Painting for Beginners

 

 

 

In 2018 I wrote a step by step demo for Leisure Painter magazine on painting tulips on silk.

Silkcraft put together a kit that is still available here see image above.

 

I also teach silk painting via zoom if you are interested please contact me at www.tessaspanton.co.uk

 

Usually I mount silk to a frame before painting. It is also possible to iron the silk onto freezer paper before painting which is handy if you want to make cards as you can stick the whole thing into a blank trifold aperture card.

 

If you don't have freezer paper you could stretch the silk over a microwavable take out container, plastic tray from a ready meal, back of a small picture frame or even a cardboard box. Fix with small pieces of masking tape at the edges.

Below is one of my photos that I provided for the article. It is  available for you to use for this project.

 

Iron the silk onto the freezer paper. Draw the tulip with a soft pencil or fade away pen.

if you are not confident with drawing print out the photo. The silk is thin enough to use like tracing paper. trace the outline first the iron onto teh freezer paper.

  GUTTA TECHNIQUE 

Paints or dyes spead on wet or dry silk. Gutta or outliner makes a waterproof line that stops the paint spreading beyond the area you want to paint.

 Practise drawing gutta lines on a piece of paper first. To avoid a blob at the beginning of the line, hold a small piece of paper on the place where you want to start, begin there and move smoothly onto the other piece of paper. If you get a blob further down the line you can gently lift off some of the gutta using a small, slightly damp paintbrush. I prefer some irregularities or variations in the gutta lines as I feel it gives the work more character.

If the line is very fine, it may let the colour through when you come to paint the silk. If it is too thick it will take longer to dry.

Leave till thoroughly dry.

 

 

 

EXPERIMENTS WITH COLOUR

 Have fun with colours and get a feel for painting on silk, you could turn these samples into greetings cards.

  U     Use a wet paintbrush dampen the silk. Don’t make it too wet, just touch the brush to the silk and watch it absorb the water. Then put colours onto the damp silk and watch them flow and blend. 

O  OR Try brush marks of red and yellow on dry silk. Put one colour next to the other, run one colour over another. Leave to dry then overpaint with more brushstrokes.

O

 

Below the red was diluted with water to make a pink, The background was made damp before painting with diluted blue.

Society of Women Artists 160th Exhibition

 

 
 I am delighted to have 2 paintings selected for the 160th exhibition of the Society of Women Artists.

This year it is online and can be found here

 

 Rising Moon acrylic on birch ply (c) Tessa Spanton

This one was chosen for the brochure.

 

Melodious acrylic on birch ply (c) Tessa Spanton

 

Society Women Artists Online Exhibition

 

These 3 paintings of mine were chosen for this exhibition which is open now online, details here. 

 

Usually it is held annually at the Mall Galleries, London. I am delighted to have had them chosen especially as my work is very different this year. I have experimented with abstract work in recent years but not submitted them to exhibitions. 

This year I took the Art2Life Creative Visionary Programme online and have had more time than usual to explore abstraction and work on several paintings.

Top right is my most recent and one of a series exploring blue, the colours of sea, sky and ice.

Wood panels prepared with gesso

                                               Underpainting

I worked on these with further layers of acrylic paint. The 2 on the right include collage. Bottom right has collaged paper from my collection of beautiful washi papers.

Mark Making Tools for Paintings

On the right, forsythia twigs cut on an angle. They are usually hollow inside so will hold some ink or paint and make good pens.
On the left  and below second on the left is a brush I made using some dried ornamental grass stalks cut from the garden. They are taped to a forsythia twig with masking tape and make some nice grassy effects in a painting.

Above  I have had some teasels growing in the garden. They got up to about 4 ft. I left them over winter for the birds to take the seeds. When I cut them down I saw that the stems were hollow and larger than the forsythia stems and might make some interesting marks.

Above from the top going clockwise, pieces of old credit type cards whole or cut down make great tools for spreading acrylic paint.
A fork or comb are good for scratching back into wet acrylic paint.
The corks can be used for printing either as they are or with nails or string added. I made these for use with batik wax or they can be used with acrylics.

My acrylic painting below was mainly done with the credit card and the fork.