Choosing a Subject for Your Mural - Muraling Part Three

Murals are not just added fluff. Think of them as practical help for boring or flawed rooms. Your wall painting can actually create an illusion of more space in a small room. You don’t need hammer and nails to do the work. With proper perspective you can expand the walls and create a feeling of roominess. Why not paint some extra indoor space, outdoor space or outer space. (flying saucers included) Let your imagination soar.

Maybe you like the idea of having a mural in a certain room, but you don’t know what the subject of the painting should be. First concentrate on the room. Does the room look cold or bland? Are the architectural features, modern, conventional or traditional? Consider the style of furniture, and how the space is being used. Let the room or wall speak to you and tell you what it needs.

Once you have acquainted yourself with the needs of the room, you are ready to zero in on a subject or theme for your wall. Good places to search for pictures to copy are; magazines, your local library and the internet. Once you know what you want to paint, research the details (close-up pictures). If you wish to paint a field of flowers, for example, you should search the internet and various books and catalogues for detailed pictures of your chosen subject. With paper and pencil, familiarize yourself with the subject by sketching it. Thumbnail sketches at first, and then a large detailed sketch if you feel you need one.

Author Joyce Oroz
Mystery Novel "Secure the Ranch"

Available in Paperback for $18.95 and you can purchase here
Available in Kindle Format for the amout of $2.99 and can be purchased here

Mystery of the Ballooning Biscuits

After ten years of no biscuits (because I can’t have wheat gluten) I had a craving for one. I shuffled through my recipe books and decided to go with a very impressive book from an impressive culinary school. I shopped for potato starch, tapioca starch, white rice flour, brown rice flour, guar gum, turpentine and candle wax. Actually, I stopped at the guar gum. Thinking I had everything, I set out bowls, utensils and a cookie sheet. Dang! I needed buttermilk. (not exactly a staple at our house) So the biscuits were put off for another day. A drive to the store means twenty minutes down and twenty minutes back, and an investment in gasoline. The biscuits would now cost two dollars each, but I was so far into it I had to follow through. The big day finally came. I was already drooling over the biscuit I was about to create. Carefully I measured all the dry ingredients and stirred them together with baking powder and sugar in a large bowel. In a smaller bowl, I mixed 2 eggs, melted butter and 2 ¾ cups buttermilk, just like the recipe said. Why think about it when the recipe does all the thinking? But I had a feeling something was wrong. Traditional biscuits are made with very little liquid. The batter should be stiff—hard to stir. I poured the wet ingredients into the dry and stirred. I had soup! I rechecked the recipe. I had done everything correctly—now I had to think for myself. I began tossing in more and more dry ingredients until the mixture was thicker (but not stiff) and threatening to overflow the bowl. Still salivating over a possible warm biscuit with butter and honey, I decided to go ahead and bake the not-stiff batter. I baked tray after tray of three-inch Frisbees, ending up with close to four dozen pancake-biscuits. I have a food-rule I follow religiously, “If it’s not rotten, freeze it.” Our two little freezers are bursting with frozen biscuits which I sample periodically with great pleasure. Lightest little things you’ll ever find. They work well as toaster popups. The moral to this story is: "Just because it’s in print—doesn’t make it so” Author Joyce Oroz Mystery Novel: "Secure the Ranch" (Available in Paperback and Kindle Format)