Psychedelica

New digital painting to share with you today. I started out really hating this one, but vowed to keep doing things to it until it came out interesting, even if that included adding a new opaque layer that covered everything I had done so far.  I'm still at the very beginning end of the digital learning curve. It wasn't until the final tweaks that I began to like it. Hope you do too.

Psychedelica - a digital mandala painting

I'm realizing that I need to update my art website - I have been very sporadic in where new work gets posted. Sometimes Tumblr, sometimes Facebook, sometimes here, almost never on my site.

Chicklet Migrates North for the Summer

Whitman commencement ceremonies were held this afternoon.  Hannah just finished her freshman year, so of course was not graduating, but stuck around so she could see the ceremony which featured guest speaker Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame.)  He closed out the event singing Always Look on the Bright Side.

Afterwards we said goodbye to Whitman's Prentiss Hall.

Last night Hannah sent me this photo, and asked if I thought it would all fit in the car. And, "Oh by the way, this doesn't include my clothes or bedding."

All clean and ready for the next kid next fall.

Extremely full Subaru arrived back home safely.

I don't even know how it is possible for time to be passing so quickly.

We'll be tossing the pod on the car and loading her up again to go back in the fall before we know it.

Mandala Pair

Two digital paintings I made this week.

Lazy Chai

With the internet being down from 5am to noon today, you'd have thought I would have gotten some "real" work done. Not so. I did manage to waste over an hour making tea...

I love the chai masala tea that I make, but I don't always feel like going through that whole process of getting the pan dirty and making the whole 8 cup recipe I use. You can see below the Trikona brand masala and tea on the left that I use for the big recipe.  I bought some really expensive black tea with chai spices, and was not totally surprised to see inside the tin that it was (wait for it) black tea with chai spices. I could literally see recognizable bits of cardamom, cinnamon, and clove. And the tea looked remarkably like the Brooke Bond Red Label/Mamri that I use for the base of my recipe.

So, vowing never to pay $12 for 2 ounces of that tea again, I set off with my mini processor to replicate it. I used the spice ingredient list from the masala mix I had bought and was lucky to have all of the spices on hand (I make a lot of curries.)  Ginger was the only problem in that I had it ground or in root form - nothing that could be chopped up to make a dry mix. So I used powdered, and yes, it does settle out a bit.

I adjusted ratios a bit as I tasted it in the only way possible, adding more stuff to the bowl, which resulted in a near double batch to overcome my initial black peppering.  Estimated cost for the batch for the near pound of tea mix is about $3.

Although I used only half the 2lb. Red Label box, you can see that I'm set now for quite a while. And the epitome of laziness for brewing this tea - I use a pyrex measuring cup instead of a teapot.    My Belgian friend Gigi cringes when I tell her this, but I do at least put boiling water in it for 30 seconds and dump it before I put in the tea and the water I'll drink. So, cheers to laziness and to cheapness if the end results get you where you need to be.

Some days having a good cup of tea in hand sets the mood for the entire day.

Celtic Snake Mandala

I've been trying to carve out a few hours each day to work on the drawing tablet.