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.

Waiting at school

I pick up my granddaughter at school twice a week. She is in first grade, so this is the second year that I have chafed at the amount of time that is spent waiting for her class to come out. The elementary school and middle school are sited adjacent to each other. If I don't get a parking space on the street 20 or more minutes before classes start to be released, it is not possible to get near the school, as cars line up in the street in both directions and impede all traffic through that neighborhood. Last year I knitted socks to make the time productive. Now, I sketch things.

#Inktober 2019 Palm trees in Poway.
Inks: Diamine Chocolate Brown and
Monteverde Malachite Green

There are, of course, palm trees.

10/07/19 Horse crossing at elementary school
Exceed journal paper
Chinese rainbow color pencil

Poway was known in the past as the "horsey" community. In the decades since the schools were deemed "award winning", the influx of high-income people have taken over many of the horse properties, but many still remain. It is amusing to me still to see the intersections with push buttons high on the crossing poles so that horseback riders can trigger the crossing lights to allow them to walk across. There is a riding path adjacent to the school and I tried out a new rainbow pencil to sketch the horse Xing sign. It was interesting to use one pencil to get multiple colors in the scene. I was disappointed by the way the yellow disappeared on the cream colored paper.

10/19/2019
Horse crossing at elementary school
Strathmore Toned Tan sketch paper
Marco Rainbow Pencil

I repeated the scene using my new Marco rainbow pencil on Strathmore Toned Tan paper. That allowed the yellow to come forward, but I learned that sharpening a rainbow pencil in a long sharp point does not make it as easy to get the single colors. I didn't have time to include the background details this time.

The second sketch was done while I stood on the sidewalk. Several mothers with kids in tow walked by me as I sketched, smiling when I glanced up. I thought they were smiling in support, and maybe they were. But when I closed my sketchbook, I noticed the 2 minute poses on the back from a practice life sketching session.

2 minute pose practice sketches.
Strathmore Toned tan sketch paper
Pentel pocket brush pen

Then I wondered if they were smiling at the pose sketches. I am intimidated by observation if I sketch in public. Yes, I have read about how to overcome that fear. I'm sure that it will go away someday, like the fear of speaking in public has. So, for now, I will assume they were smiling in support, not amusement.

Psychedelic Hamsters

I'm a child of the 60s. Not the drugs and free-love 60s, but the back-to-the-land, make your own, simple living 60s. I gravitate toward tie-dye, the more colors the better. So when I read about Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone pencils, I had to try them. Loved them!! The colors really pop on black paper too.

Fanciful Rooster: Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone Pencils
Canson Black Sketching paper

But wait! There's more! Why stop with 3 colors when you can have four? Or seven! Enter the seven color pencil made in Japan. I have seen these for sale on Amazon for a price that was out of my budget. Then, while surfing on eBay, I found a set of four for a dollar a piece. They are bright and creamy and have beautiful colors. Thus the psychedelic hamsters.

Sydney hamster in her psychedelic dreams.
Niji-Iro seven in one pencil
Blick Mixed-Media paper

Comparison sketch of three rainbow pencils, three layers on each ball at darkest value.
Left: Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tones; Center: Niji-Iro pencil; Right: Brilliance 4-in-1 pencil.

When I went back to eBay to buy up the rest (how long will 4 pencils last, after all?), the seller and the listing are no longer available. So I tried a couple of other offers. I have received a 4 color pencil made in China that was a big disappointment. Here is a quick comparison sketch:

Description of pencils:
Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone pencils: Made in Czech Republic. $12.50 for 12 in a metal box (from eBay). One of the pencils is a colorless blender pencil. Each of the remaining pencils is a different combination of three colors that are randomly intermixed in the lead so that a continuous line gradually changes colors even if the pencil is not rotated. Colors are bright and creamy. The colors are banded at the end of the lacquered, natural wood colored pencil and given a poetic name like "Sunset", "Tiger", "Rainforest". Some of the combinations have striking color contrasts and some are more subtle color changes.

Niji-Iro pencils: Made in Japan. I paid $1.50 each (including shipping) from eBay, but the only comparable pencil (not labeled Niji-Iro) I see now are priced at $27.50 for 12 ($2.33 each), and they are three sided pencils. The pencils I have are round, standard sized pencils made of smooth unfinished natural wood. Otherwise the leads are arranged the same as the Amazon offering with seven colors in a pinwheel pattern. To get the best color variation, the pencil should be rotated as you write. The pigments are bright and the colors lay down rich and creamy. They came in two plastic sleeves, two pencils to a sleeve.

Brilliance 4 in 1 pencils: Made in China. $0.75 each, including shipping, from eBay. These are larger diameter than standard pencils, and the four colors are intermixed throughout the lead. The leads are waxy and hard and produce a faint line. I could not get a bright color even when layering. Not recommended. The pencils arrived in a paper envelope.

#Inktober2019 Yixing teapot sketched with
Diamine Inks: Chocolate Brown and Red Dragon.

Here is #Inktober2019 sketch of the day. I could, theoretically, sketch only pieces from my ceramic collection and have one for every day this month. But I need to use my green inks next!

And here is a picture of Sydney hamster doing her dead hamster trick.

Sydney hamster playing dead
 in protest over the heat.

When the temperature gets up above 83 degrees in the house, she presses her mouth and feet against the glass and goes all still. I had already turned on the A/C last week when she went into her drama mode. It's a good thing we have had a week of fall weather. I feel silly to use A/C just for two hamsters!