Tea and Toasty

The weather has turned hot and toasty. The Santa Ana winds are a feature of fall and early winter in southern California. The temperatures this week have been in the 90s during the day and in the 50s at night. That means my house can be cooled down at night enough to stay in the 70s inside, if I shut it up in the morning. The thing that keeps us all on edge this week is the very low humidity, around 7% during the day, and the increasing winds. Until I moved here, I had not experienced the oddness of taking a glass jar of liquid out of the refrigerator and having such low humidity that no moisture condensed on the glass. The winds have been gusty today, but tonight the wind is rising and causing creaks and snaps in the house as things dry out. I was living in a canyon south of here in 2003 during the Cedar fire. I saw the fire tornadoes lick up over the hills south of us when Scripps Ranch was burning. We had no police or fire coverage in our neighborhood, even though the fire came to within a mile of my house in Beeler Creek Canyon. I am glad that lessons were learned during that tragic fire. But I am jittery when the weather turns toasty.

#Inktober2019 10/24/19
Yixing clay Conch teapot
Inks: Monteverde Joy Sepia, Noodler's Lexington Gray,
diluted India ink wash, Sakura Gelly Roll white
Strathmore Toned Tan sketch paper

I have a passion for tea. When it is hot and dry, I like to have a pot of jasmine green tea. So for today's #Inktober2019 sketch, I chose another one of my teapot collection. This teapot looks very much like a conch shell. It holds 1 cup of tea, which makes it just enough for one small cuppa. I haven't actually used it for tea yet. I either drink my tea Gong fu style, with my 120ml teapot or I drink a 2 cup teapot full of tea as I did today.

Two Yixing clay unglazed teapots.
120ml capacity in the smaller, right teapot.

Gong fu (or Kung fu) is a ceremonial process in which tea leaves are steeped for successive, very short periods of time in a small amount of hot water. I typically fill one of my 120ml teapots about one quarter full of leaves, add water just off the boil to the top, cover (and pour water over the teapot as well if I am using an unglazed Yixing clay pot) and steep 15 seconds for the first steep.














Then I pour the tea into my tiny teacup and continue the steeps with each one 5 seconds longer than the steep before. I can get 5 to 8 steeps before the tea becomes tasteless or bitter. The tiny cups of tea cool quickly. and each successive steep is piping hot. That is so much more satisfying than waiting and waiting for a mug of tea to cool enough to drink, then having the tea become tepid before I can finish the mug.

#Inktober2019 10/22/19

One of this weeks #Inktober sketches was of one of my tiny (30ml), unglazed clay teacups with a clay frog (made for me long ago by my friend Michael) and a tea coaster. The frog's right eye came out wonky, I'm not sure why. I seemed to be sketching it as I saw it, but I guess not.

Two minute pose sketches
www.lineofaction.com
Marco Rainbow pencil and 2B graphite pencil

I practiced a few 2 minute poses yesterday. Two minutes goes by shockingly fast! The book I read today, Draw People Every Day, recommends starting with 30 second poses. I found this book to be quite helpful. I think I could only sketch a couple of main lines in 30 seconds. In the book, his assertion is that doing hundreds of 2 to 3 minute studies will raise my skill level faster than a few dozen over-worked long poses. Short poses are fun to sketch, but they use up my sketchbook paper quickly, so I think I will switch to printer paper for a while. I started these poses with my Marco Rainbow pencil because the colors have such a cheery effect! Then I switched to a 2B graphite pencil because it was smoother and faster to sketch with. I have a journal in which I take notes as I read different drawing books. I intend to add some reviews of these books as I progress.