Stoneware

I was at a cake bake and sweets exhibition during my lunch break and came across this demo of a chef showing how cool the pans were. He said they were $1300 but over here we're oferring at half price - $650. Now some part of my brain mustve thought that 1300 is too much.. but the dumb female part of my brain jumped in glee at the half price not considering that $650 is still pretty high.. especially considering I was only ever going to use 3 of the 7 pans.. and that too super-sporadically. But.. who the eff cared.. they are pretty! I came, I saw, I took!

I do love them I am cooking a little more often. Btw the line he had me sold was "these pans last 12 years.. someone in your family cooks something everyday.. they will pay for themselves!" Thats it.. 12 years.. possible family.. dad cooking, mum cutting and chopping for little chubby bubbies... 😍 oh. what a lovely mental image! Lol dumb me! At the rate I'm going, that picture doesnt really seem possible.. besides I'm not high up on eligibility for adoption from countries like Philippines being a single woman! 😤

Lol the post is talking about everything but the pans. So here's some fried rice (rice made in the multifunction cooker) in the 18cm, 1.2 L sauce pan:


I use the frying pan more mostly for fried eggs (need the protein for all that hard training.. lol). There are 4 other pans that are just more suitable for 2 or more people sizes. But even so if I had to get just these 3 making them a little over $200 ea, I still would knowing (hoping) that there's no PFOA leaching into my food and that they're so slick nothing ever sticks! Cleaning is a cinch too I still havent had to chuck them in my dishwasher. Their lids are simple genious! Only a woman could think of the things the lids can do.

Definitely recommended to those that don't mind the slightly higher range of the price and have more mouths to feed than one. So worth it!

Ramadan Mubarak

I sketched this after asking a friend what the stuff in Urdu/ Arabic meant. But I still hold no responsibility if what ive tried to sketch is incorrect. The sentiment is more important.


I would like to think of myself as a fairly open person having a good deal of acceptance for all religious sexual, political whatever affiliations. However for a long time I've suferred from ill-placed anger towards our muslim brothers and sisters especially due to so many bombings on my nation and the overall sensitivity around terrorism. However I think I now have the maturity of separating what are politcally fueled agendas as opposed to individual, personal beliefs. I know that this post may get me flaming. It's a risk im willing to accept to demonstrate a gesture (albeit flawed) while hoping the big rift in my home country is somehow healed someday.

DIY pocket watercolor palette

A friend told me how she made her own watercolor palette inspired from the one her art tutor had.

 I tried to do it myself and here are the steps:

Step 1: Pick an eyshadow palette with wells that would roughly make good candidates (I picked 140 × 120 mm and 100 × 280 mm).


Step 2: remove the little alluminium wells carefully and get rid of the eye shadow from those wells patiently and gently. A pointy thing like a needle or a safety pin works great for the task.


Step 3: leave the tiny wells in warm soapy water and scrub them gently with a dish cleaner brush and make sure you've got the corners clean.

Step 4: pat dry them and leave them to dry completely. Arrange them in the business card holder so you pick the final layput and use just those palettes


Step 5: squeeze the watercolors into the palette wells, distribute and leave to dry for over 48 hours.


Step 6: place them in your business card holder and viola!! Enjoy your new pocket palette.


Tip: taping these watercolor wells onto a bit of sitcky tape keeps them together and keeps them from shuffling around and falling off.

The colors I've picked are:


Top row(left to right):
1. Buff Titanium
2. Hansa Yellow
3. Yellow Ochre
4. Quinacridone Gold
5. Raw Sienna
6. Potter's Pink ( W & N )

Middle row (left to right):
1. Undersea green
2. Sap green
3. Cobalt teal blue
4. Cerulean blue chromium
5. Pthalo blue
6. Ultrmarine blue

Bottom row (left to right):
1. Quinacridone Rose
2. Pyrrol crimson
3. Raw umber
4. Burnt sienna
5. Moonglow
6. Deep green (HS)
7. Violet (HS)
8. White (HS)


Note: all the colors are Daniel Smith extra fine watercolors. You can either go for those or Winsor and Newton ( Potter's Pink). I had a cheapie from target -12 color tubes for a total $10 by Hunter Studio.  (Other tubes are $19 - 25 ea based on the series).

The last three are Hunter Studio and have dried out badly and are all cracked. Demonstrates that the price you pay for quality colors is totally worth it.

The process took me my entire weekend ( cleaning the eye shadow palettes and letting the colors dry took the longest of the steps). It has been the most fun time doing  DIY in a long time!

=============
Update - 19-06-2015 8:50pm
a slightly more truer set of swatches:

Art supplies hoarding spree

Last year a friend and I bought a pricey watercolor palette for a mutual friend on his birthday and while we were at it, we got one each for ourselves.

Tbh, I hadnt used it much until I picked up sketching a little more often recently. But the fact remains that if it wasnt for the super compact and versatile nature of the pocket palette, I'd always have shied away from using watercolors.


This is the business card holder actually housing magnetized watercolor wells designed by an ingenious artist somewhere in the states. It holds 14 colors.

Another of our mutual friends posted a sketch of her palette the other day with over 21 colcors and I was like 😍 I want thaaaatt! I asked her where she got hers from and she said she made it.. diy!

I had to catch-up with her to get her to show me how. Which she did.. in fact she spent the whole day with me showing where to get art supplies from and we had an awesome dinner at the Rocks.

So end result. The original pallete I'd bought was something like $70. And with her method (I ordered 5 business card holders on eBay for $5 free shipping!) It was a total of:
$1 - business card holder
$6 - eye shafow palette
$450 - watercolor tubes 5-15 ml ×17 😂

($200 other misc art supplies that are supposed to be helpful when doing watercolot.. lol)

I definitely saved money and had tons of fun with the diy... but im not sure I really did end up saving any money... 😕

The one thing I'm happy about is that I'm hopefully here in this city to stay. So even if I don't use it all right away, I will.. someday. I remember having multiple shopping sprees in Melbourne for arts and crafts supplies and then giving it all away when I moved to here without even having opened some of the packaging!

Sacred Spirit

When I was in Adelaide, a county fireman introduced me to this song by Enigma (post title) with native Americam chants that I'll never forget.

Bears, eagles, wolves, ravens etc. remind me of native American folklores and so this post had to be titled so for a sea eagle soaring high above the wild seas taking the beauty of the magical sunset in.

Stallion of the Redfern

The movie (Stallion of the Cimarron) is awesome and I've always loved horses. So while I was at Redfern sketching the decay with the amazing arty people of the sketch club, I couldn't help but try to sketch this interesting subject.


And here's an attempt to sketch the beautiful decay with the new looming its head in the backdrop sharply:

Rain and sand

Something about the rain.. makes me so happy and sad at the same time... working from Darling harbor was nice...

But what was nicer was visiting the Bondi beach... and even better was the dark hot choc there!! 😃



After hanging out with some clever arty people that taught me about color mixing and shadows, here's a bit of revision of the mug:

Hammerhead Shark

When I was young, decades ago, I read this book about some scientist who was studying volcanic activity and how the vortex attracted multitudes of sharks especially hammerheads. Id never seen one.. not even in an aquarium back then.. and since then I've had this awe mixed fascination for them..

I was wandering about at darling harbor today and saw these marvelous photos of phosphorescent deep sea creatures which brought all the images of hammerheads back...  I just had to try and draw one!

Free and untamed

Everytime I see birdcages I hear MJ's song 'Johny Raven' in my head... he was sooo adorable in Jackson 5.

This seat isn't taken

Another rainy day.. another lonnggg meeting. What a rush to be sitting in the first row right under the noses of the ELT (elite leadership team) and doodling away while they were discussing the vision and focus!

For the record, the seat was taken.. I just wish it wasn't. . Lol

New Media

I had a little arts supply hoarding spree this arvo and among other things I bought watercolor pencils (again) and canvas pads (also again × 3). I dont believe anymore that canvas should only be reserved for acrylics and oil.. it does just fine with watercolor too!


I did the flowers on the cover of my older untouched (mostly) watercolor pencils.. the look is a bit messy... which I tried to correct with fine line markers (which I have plenty of sets of...) but it only got messier. . But I don't mind the effect..

Grapevine

So... I work for this awesome company that not only provides you free fruit... gives you plenty of time to kill too...  lol I sat at my desk doodling this and no one bothered me... talk about an open culture!

Now I'm sitting here ashamed of having wasted that time I didnt have anything else to do 😒..

But I have to post this anyway.. lol


My tag on instagram - "what's eating Gilbert's grapes"

Fancy 6-in-1 Rice cooker

I needed a rice cooker because cleaning my pressure cooker is ... well.. boring. So.. I went googling for rice cookers... and saw that if I added $10 more I could get the next cooler model.. and then 10 more.. n 10 more... and then my eyes fell upon this shiny beast that boasted it did 6 thinks such aas baking, deep frying, steaming and some others that evede me.. the point being. While I was considering getting a cheap $15 target gadget I didn't need, I ended up covetting this thing I was likely not even going to take out of the box!

Of course.. the joys of single unrestricted (actually quite restricted now really.. with the new job and the less than optimum pay! Or maybe my spending habits changed drstically with the way more than needed income my last one gave.. anyhow.. I digress! ) life meant I went ahead and ordered it. It arrived and knowing myself, I unpacked it and placed on the countertop all plugged in.... 5 weeks later it was still sitting there plugged in but chaste and untouched.

Long story short.. I used it to make rice.. loved it and it might get another use in some weeks again for sure!

Recipe:
1 cup basmati rice
1/2 cup split unpeeled green gram (Moong)
1/2 cup Split peeled lentils
4 cups water
Biryani Masala, Red chilli powder and salt to taste.

When the timer hit over 25 minutes my anxiousness started to turn into panic because my pressure cooker takes only 6 minutes to make rice! But at the 27th minute it chamged to heat and I jumped to open the lid. Obviously I steam burnt myself.. no kidding.. and on my scar too! Which hurts like hell right now... but the pleasure of seeing each grain done so well quickly drowned it all.


I'm loving the results and the ease of cooking as well as cleaning and definitely recommend this thing for anyone who is smart enough to go and buy a private jet to go next nextdoors

Another Logo Design

I dont know if I've tooted enough on this blog about training to become a yoga instructor teaching for free.. So we have this chatgroup created where we chat until the wee hours (which I whinged a bit about... but it didnt help).

Being mildly OCD. . I couldnt stand seeing the austere gray stock image for the group and I just had to make one up. The lunch-time sketching is becoming more and more addictive.

Here's the background of the logo unedited:

Mountain flower

Its never too late to turn it back around..
....The only way is... up.. up.... UP!


I've never seen snow but I'd love to! Especially if I can find such a bright wildflower springing out of the austere, frigid land!

Iris

This song by goo goo dolls almost always makes me want to cry...

'..when everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am'.

Angel Eyes

Damn those Angel Eyes...
...Devil in disguise...
Never thought they'd cloud my skies..


(~~Update 3/6/15 11:05pm~~
Image of the sexy devil removed.... just cuz!)

I hate him so bad..

Sometimes I wish I never met you! I would have my heart still.. I would have my mind still.. I would have some peace!

Guest Appearance

So... I had a longish drive on the way home from Wombeyan caves.... you know what happens on long drives.... your mind wanders... often to deep dark places you keep hidden from.. even yourself.. and on such mind blanking moment the man who can only be described as an epitome of malehood crossed my mind...

There's no way I can come even close to sketching him like he is within an hour.. But I just couldnt wipe his image off my mind all day.. n so.. well... damn all the inaccuracies of my sketching... here he is:

A Wombeyan Wombat

I was at the Wombeyan caves for a weekend (which I'll do a post on in my other travel blog... soon). On the way to there I saw two roadkill wombats. But on of the guys saw two live wombats near our dorms! Pity I didnt see one myself! but there's pictures of little Daisy and Spud, baby wombats (Spud's wrapped in a beanie!), sitting on my drawer for about 6 months and it was about time I tried to sketch this bundle of sweetness!


I was googling images of wombats and I just lovvvee how adorably chunky they are... like a mass of muscles.. but in a cute way.

Btw.. its so handy to be living 3 minutes away from work.. so that way.. not only do I get to have lunch at home.. I can even fit a bit of sketching and painting in the lunch hour!

Here's a slightly smudged up mod of the chubbie:

Cherry blossom

While watching random youtube videos.. I saw this crazy artist creating an amazing effect by multiple techniques... this one is simply splatter drops... I lovvved creating it..


Its clear that with practice I should avoid blotches.. plus I need to work on the brach placements n making that more aeshaesthetic and all.. but I am impressed by my first ever attempt at splatter painting. And I've got it all over my phone too.. lol.. lucky its just watercolor!