Beetle Tracks

Near our house on the dog walking route, we have a wide patch of incredibly fine dust. It's so soft and light your tennis shoes sink in a few inches every step, and if you don't walk slowly and ducklike, your shoes fill with dirt immediately. We also have a healthy population of various beetly bugs. Here is a survey of some of their different tracks left during the night. These range from half an inch wide to about two inches wide. They are really quite fascinating in their diversity, density, and busyness.

State of mind

Some small ink and watercolor paintings I've done recently:

My intent was to get this pair onto notecards on Etsy, but the image is more a testament to how I feel getting ready for the trade show in St. Charles in a few days.  So, perhaps when I get back.  So many ways you could caption this.

• Ever have one of those days?
• Ouch, that had to hurt.
• Give me a call when you get free.
• Hope you're back on your feet again soon.
• The Twister Champion reigns!
• Relax!

Ditto.

Don't forget to relax. Drawing mandalas is a great tool for me to unwind a bit. So, if the first picture is the "before" this is the "after."

Bugs and Blooms

A small painting. I was trying to not be so controlled and tight as I am in my ink work. It is a Goliath beetle.

And in unrelated news, the Sansevierias (aka Mother in Law's Tongue) is blooming. It is incredibly smelly and can be smelled three rooms away. I kind of like the smell, but it is a bit overpowering. Some people's never bloom. We must be providing the perfect level of neglect. And if you can see those beads of liquid, I've learned recently from the font that is all knowledge called the internet that this phenomenon is called guttation. And also that this plant is toxic to cats. We no longer have a cat, but this plant had nothing to do with it.

Traffic Patterns

I decided I needed to finish up this small acrylic painting I had started many moons ago and had put aside. I didn't think to take a picture of the starting point, but I snapped a few along the way. I must say I liked the original idea of roads making a Celtic knot pattern, but for the life of me I can't remember how I planned to do the water crossings. It's obviously quite easy for the road to go over the water, but not so much the other way. Hannah said I needed the cows, even though they are smaller than ants.  You can click to zoom in, or install that fabulous app called Hoverzoom.

Traffic Patterns 8" x 10", acrylic on canvas board

detail

Getting closer

Two days into the renewed effort, with much detail still to go.

That was kind of fun. What's next?

Coyote Pups

We discovered three coyote pups this morning during our walk. I came by later this evening with a real camera and was delighted to find them back home, although only two came out to see us. No sign of the parents on either visit.  I hope they manage to survive without being driven off. The culvert leads to a densely sagebrushed area where they no doubt have their den.

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.