Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Attempt More Digital Art!

I am still 100% a novice at digital art, and I really don't know what I'm doing. I tried to use Krita today and all I can say is that either that program hates my XP Pen Star G430S, or I just cannot effectively use it. I just wanted to draw an outline! When I would start my line, the program would either hesitate and then hurry to catch up with me (which sucked, because I was tracing a pencil sketch), or it would pop up a menu.

I don't particularly like radial menus to begin with, so imagine my dismay when one kept popping up when I just wanted to trace an owl...

So I switched programs back to Paint.net.

I know, I know, Paint.net is more like photoshop than an actual art app (despite the name...), but it's what I've been practicing with for the past 5 years.

Yeah...

Progress is slow.

Anyway, I started with a sketch of Dedbert and his Pink Owl Ladyfriend (whose name he will not tell me) brewing coffee together!

As You Can See, It Was A Very Rough Sketch

I loved the composition, but I thought it was perhaps a bit too close to the bottom and off-center, so when I scanned it, I tried to move it around. Didn't 100% work, but it was cute.

From there, I started trying to outline the piece. Like I said, Krita was not cooperating with my tablet for that, so I went with Paint.net and scribbled the outline in with a gray tone. I actually liked the scribbly, scratchy outline I got from there, so I stuck with that and intentionally overran some of the colors when I laid them down!

I tried just doing flat colors, but that was less interesting than just the outline, somehow, so I did some experimenting with dark tones and transparency and managed to put down a shading layer!

If anyone wants to give me some direct pointers, maybe some links to some tutorials for absolute newbie beginners who've never used Photoshop or anything like that, please, please feel free to send me a message on here or Twitter. Links will work better on Twitter, tbh.

"Happy Owlloween!"; digital; 2022

On another note, this was a Ko-Fi mini-commission! I got a nice little donation with a message telling me my benefactor wanted to see a DEDBERT piece, so that's what my donor gets!

If you'd like to have a say in next week's piece, please feel free to hit that Ko-Fi donation button on the sidebar and include a message with your donation telling me which category (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Dedbert, Location, Word, Geometric) you'd like and I'll make something next Thursday!!!

I think that'll about do it for me today, guys!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which Being Tired Is Contagious, it seems

In spite of my best efforts to sleep, I haven't been very successful. Turns out I just had my pillows arranged wrong, and I was hunching forward in my sleep instead of draping myself over the mound of pillows for optimal airway opening...

Of course, I didn't figure that out until about 3am, so I'm a little sleepy today.

And I'm not alone! Everyone I've talked to today has been tired, including the cool person who cashiers at the local Food Service. Even the cat has been tired, lurking beneath blanket forts or sitting pointedly in front of the bathroom closet in the vainest of hopes that we'll break and allow her to coat our bath towels in fur.

So what I'm saying is: today is a sleepy day.

I still went for a walk, I still wrote a little in my manuscripts, and I still poked around at my art supplies to see if anything popped into my mind as inspiration (it hasn't...), but mostly I've just wanted to take a cool shower and rest.

I've managed to take that shower now, and I'm currently relaxing in my room with both fans running and another itch.io game in another tab.

Caffeine-wise, I did way better today than yesterday. Yesterday I had, I believe, around 6 cups of coffee. I know. Believe me I know how stupid that was.

Which is why today was 2 cups of coffee, one can of Coke and the rest of my drinks have been either Meyer Lemon tea that Z got me for Christmas a couple years ago or pure water. I strongly recommend the water option.

I also recommend dressing in natural materials when the weather hits about 80℉/26,7℃. Cotton and linen are your best bet. I can vouch for the fact that light linen trousers are even more comfortable if you're in the sun than shorts. Covering your skin is good for you in direct sunlight! I have a mole I've been keeping an eye on for years on my neck, so I've taken to wearing a cotton bandana over it to keep the sun off. I've also had less heat/sun related illness this year than in other years (though it still got me once!).

The plan for this week is as follows:

• Art for Thursday (there's still time to buy me a coffee and pick a theme!)
• I'm playing an incremental game for Saturday
• Hopefully I'll have more progress on that strap for Monday, though I might miss it, since it'll be Independence Day here in the USA.
• Next Tuesday I'll blabber more!

If you're planning on buying me that coffee, remember that the themes are:

• Animal
• Vegetable
• Mineral
• Location
• Geometric

And leave a message with your donation stating which one you'd like! If you buy me 2 coffees, I'll even let you pick whether it's Digital or Traditional!

I think, though, that that'll do it from me today.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

It's Still Tuesday in my Heart
Even if it's Wednesday by the time I post...

So...

It's technically still Tuesday, but let's be real, I put this blog off all day so it'll probably be close to midnight when it goes up.

If it goes up tonight at all lol.

So what have I been up to that I'm all dopey and avoiding writing anything down?

A LOT, but in a good way!

Since last Tuesday, I've been on a journey northwards and back, my younger sibling got engaged, my mom went to help her mom out for a couple days, my dad got swarmed by ticks, my cat was a velcro kitty for a day but not with me, I managed to figure out a potential stabilization solution for the Secret Project on Mondays, I tried a few new things, and I also ended up having a bunch of new ideas I have no clue what to do with lol!

Let's begin:

Saturday was a long day and one which saw a friend of mine and Z's snagging the two of us and whisking us away on a multi-hour adventure northwards. We stopped at a drive-in and I ordered a 3oz cheeseburger with ketchup and ate that, most of a slice of tortiere (which seemed to be a mashed potato/turnip and spiced ground meat pie), a lot of fried green beans (which may have been fried from frozen since they were a bit limp and watery on the inside but were otherwise good), and a few bite's of Z's Brunch Burger (fried egg, two 3oz patties, maybe caramelized onions?). The drive-in, Belanger's I think it was called, was fantastic. 10/10 would eat there again, even if the tortiere was... weird. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. No idea what their turkey pie is like.

My tasty lil burger with a small preview of maybe the curly fries our friend got?
The bun on this was super soft & fluffy and the cheese was perfectly melted.
They grind their own beef, and I thought the balance of fat to lean was perfect.

After Belanger's we went to a Dairy Bar in another, even further-north town, where I got a conservative small chocolate soft-serve (I wasn't feeling the best that day, since I'd scarfed down a bunch of cheddar cheese before I got in the car for several hours lol). Z on the other hand got a big ol Moxie float with Moxie ice cream. I tried a little of the Moxie and found that while my aversion to beets has gone away, I still think Moxie has an earwax aftertaste. Moxie ice cream, however, lacks the aftertaste, so it's a yes from me. Gives you all the fun herbal/medicinal flavors of Moxie with a creamy vanilla overlay that kills the aftertaste!

I'd love to make Moxie ice cream myself sometime. Maybe a chocolate Moxie ice cream, even!

I came home to news that my little sis is engaged! Congrats! (Though I doubt any of my siblings read these, they're busy!)

Guess what we had for dinner that night at nearly 9pm because no one was hungry til then?

Burgers. They were good, though, so all around, very nice (if beeftacular) day!

Sunday was mostly everyone getting ready for my mom to head up to her mother's place to take care of her while my grandmother gets ready to start treatment for her cancer. The cat could obviously tell something was up, and once my mother was gone, she pulled a velcro-kitty and stuck herself to my poor dad, who was just trying to work from home, which was very hard when the cat was determined to be right where he needed to be and insinuating herself deeper and deeper into his lap until he was forced to sit like a frog or lose the insides of his thighs to her kneading claws.

Poor thing didn't even want to go outside!

Monday came and I worked on the solution to my mushroom purse woes (yesterday's blog), but I also took the cat out for walkies and tried out a thing I picked up while hanging out with our friend on a previous day. I also took pics of the really nice Mexican Hot Chocolate Z bought me for Valentine's because he's the bees' knees!

He picked this up at one of the newest bookstores in the area :)

You can really smell the chocolate & cinnamon

This little puck fits in the palm of my hand.
I'd say for comparison's sake it's about as big around as a soda can.

You whisk the puck briskly into milk, and I promise it dissolves fast.
And that's when the pecan notes hit!

I'm pretty sure they use the pecans as a thickening agent...

Because this is a THICK cocoa.

The hot cocoa was incredibly sweet and velvety thick and smooth like melted ice cream almost. It was, in fact, almost too sweet, so I added a shot of coffee to it and...

I am convinced that's how it's supposed to be drank because it was heavenly.

Meanwhile, someone was pretending she didn't care about going outside.

But cats are like Maine weather. Wait five minutes...

... And suddenly you'll find yourself outside!

But she didn't seem to want to be out for very long.

Me not letting her sulk and skulk underneath the camper and the deck probably had a lot to do with it...

But she got to stalk a chipmunk and squeak at a bird, so she was satisfied.

You know what else is satisfying? Pouring yourself more coffee when you're done letting a bored cat explore the yard and topping it with a Stroopwafel.

Look how perfectly it fits on this mug!
It's like they were made for each other!

Two minutes of rest over a steaming cup and it's perfect.

Just the right balance of soft & crispy & gooey.

Stroopwafel are something I've been meaning to try for a while. Makes sense to me that I'd like them - I like waffles, I like caramel, I love treats that go with coffee. But I never remembered to grab them!

Thankfully, I noticed them while Z & I were shopping with our awesome friend and we picked them up. I can't wait to make him a nice cup and let it cool down a bit with the stroopwafel on top, softening slightly.

It's nothing like a sugar or waffle cone you'd get for ice cream, to be honest, and that surprised me. The crispiness is subtle, the sweetness not as overpowering as you'd expect from something with a caramel layer, and the softness from the steam is nothing like the staleness you sometimes get from a slightly soft sugar cone.

All in all, I've been very busy lately lol! But delightfully so, and I can't wait to keep being busy this week!

Tomorrow will be drizzly and cool (high of 63℉/17,22℃), so I think I'll stay in and sketch.

Thursday should have the fruits of that sketch on the blog! And maybe I'll slip out at some point to snag some snacks and a Jarrito?

Hopefully by next Monday I'll have A) finished my strap or 2) found another short plastic zipper to cannibalize for my purse. If not, I have another potential solution: Zip ties & thread. Yeah, I might just zip-tie a couple of circles, stitch around them in either crochet or just sewing, and call that good lol. Might even be less of a headache than trying to track down another zipper. We've only bought just so many sheets and blankets, which is where the first zipper came from...

But this has already become an obscenely long blog where I just babbled and blathered at all of y'all.

If you want a say in this week's art, feel free to shoot me a coffee over on my Ko-Fi account (the link should be in my sidebar? Idk, is that what it's called?) and tell me Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Place, or Geometric! If I get multiples, I'll do my best to combine things ;)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Made A Sketch

Thursday again, and all I wanted to do today was sleep. I think I've had enough coffee to kill a small yak, but I'm very sleepy. I've been in relatively good spirits, however, so I managed to will myself to make a fun little sketch of the Four Pillars of Casual:

"Four Pillars of Casual"

The Four Pillars are, of course:

• Coffee
• Tea
• Snacks
• Books

That's supposed to be a book the coffee (left), tea (right), and English Muffin (center) are on top of lol.

I'm planning on expanding this idea in other mediums (markers, crayons, pencils, maybe even paint, digital) but for now it's just a little scribble. I even had the date wrong at first lol!

Despite my lack of motivation, I've gotten a little writing done today, too! Not... not much, but about a paragraph isn't too bad for someone who wants to sleep and eat popcorn.

I'm going to go back to my manuscript in a moment, but just wanted to update you on the bonkbubble piece I'm doing digitally!

I'm up to 22 colors now from my original 16, and my secondary palette may be limited, but it's still kind of pleasant to look at... except the first color which is a combination of Arylide Yellow and Purple Navy...

Secondaries:

• A7A25E (167, 162, 94)
• E48888 (228, 136, 136)
• DB984A (219, 152, 74)
• ED5A6C (237, 90, 108)
• 34333E (52, 51, 62)
• 777C47 (119, 124, 71)

I'm gonna go back to writing now, folks.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 314: Dalgona Dreams

In Which I Try That Viral Coffee Everyone Raved About

If you know me, you know I like deep bitter and sweet flavors. I'm all about that bright, citrus sweetness, don't get me wrong - orange juice is still the bizzomb for breakfast out - but when I'm home, I wake up with a 2:1 ratio of hot cocoa to coffee. My partner calls it my morning gruel. I've brainwashed them into liking it. Apologies.

Regardless, this means I've got the ingredients on-hand for a viral drink sensation that's sweeping the internet.

Dalgona Coffee, or whipped coffee, is everywhere on the internet right now. I cannot escape it. It has completely saturated YouTube and Twitter, and I cannot blink without seeing a caramel-colored whip in a cup somewhere. It drove me completely to the brink, and I eventually just said...

Alright, where is my tiny whisk and some sugar?!

Because despite its complicated appearance, it's actually the easiest thing in the world to make, gives you a fantastic caffeine and sugar high, and gives you a workout. Also, there's milk involved.

You need four things:

• 2 Tablespoons instant coffee powder (I use Nescafé Taster's Choice House Blend, but pick your poison preference)
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 2 Tablespoons hot water
• A glass of milk

I have no idea if sugar substitutes would work for this. I'm gonna guess honey wouldn't work. Regardless, you'll also need a bowl, a whisk, and something to get the Dalgona out of the bowl with.

That tiny whisk in the above pic? Too small. Get you something bigger than that.

What you want to do is pour the dry ingredients into a bowl - not too big or it won't whip well, but not so small that it just goes flying when you start to whisk. That's a large cereal bowl.

Once your sugar and coffee are together, dump in your two Tablespoons of hot water and immediately start whisking. Just... beat the tar out of this mixture. Obviously, you can use whatever mechanical means you usually use for whipping cream for this, but I only had my biceps and a whisk. My poor, poor biceps.

Because this whip job is a long one. It's gonna look like coffee soup and smell like someone tipped over a Tim Hortons, but keep going. Whip it like it's the 1600s and it took an apple from your yard. Whip it like it's your hair at a metal concert. Whip it like you want it to call you daddy... uh... that got weird.

Eventually, it will start to look whippy. This is good.

The coffee mixture, which, by the way, does not yet have any milk in it or near it, will start to lighten in color as it thickens in texture. Whip it til either your arms are screaming louder than the Devo song you now have stuck in your head or until it's at a consistency you find appealing - somewhere between foamy batter and whipped cream. I got mine to a loose whipped cream texture.

At this point, you get out your glass of milk and start carefully dolloping (or if you're smarter than me, piping with a pastry/icing bag!) your Dalgona into the cup.

I used half of this mixture in each of two cups and it was supremely overwhelming for my mother. It's sweet from all that sugar, but it's also mondo bitter - pure coffee goodness. If I'd had the presence of mind I'd have made chocolate milk to put this in, because it's insanely addictive and I think it would make a stupid-tasty mocha drink. It thickens the milk as you stir it in, and it's just... it's really good.

10/10, would whip the crap out of ingredients until my arms hurt again.

So in conclusion: This is one viral food trend that I not only understand now, but am actually a convert/advocate for it. If you have instant coffee and sugar and a kettle with water and some milk (or a milk substitute, I'm not cutting vegans or the dairy-challenged/allergic out of this fun), you should make some Dalgona.

It's probably going into the rotation for summer drinks, tbh.

Stay tuned for next week when I make 2/3 of a meal and then forget to take photos at the end (or they don't come out)!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 309: Breakfast Time Again!

In Which I Make A Breakfast

I'm not really a breakfast person 99% of the time. I like breakfast foods - pancakes, waffles, French toast, quiche, toast, eggs, bacon, oatmeal, etc - but when I've just woken up, cooking is the last thing on my mind.

And then this morning, I had a craving for Cream of Wheat. Which I never usually want, but hey, who am I do deny my stomach?

So I set about making Cream of Wheat for breakfast.

Your first step is always to gather your ingredients and measure things

So for one serving of Cream of Wheat, you want 3 Tbsp (three tablespoons) of the cereal and 3/4 cup of either water with a pinch of salt or just straight-up milk. I chose milk, today, since I wanted to maximize the filling-potential. Then I readied my morning cup of coffee and set the kettle on to boil, but that was just for the coffee lol.

Also, the tongs are on the counter because I had to dig for my tiny whisk and the measuring spoons.

Next, you heat the milk!

I set up the milk on medium-low, stirring constantly until it came to a light boil. I didn't want to scorch the milk or burn it onto the pan (which is a pain to clean up), so I watched it like a hawk. Now is about where I'm going to admit that my initial plan was to just... nuke it in the microwave instead of making it on the stovetop. Then I thought for a second and reconsidered. It's a good thing I used the milk, too, since it's gonna go by soon...

Once the milk or water boil, slowly add the cereal mix and start stirring like mad

I've made Cream of Wheat using a spoon before. Don't do that. Find or buy a small whisk - this one came with a hot chocolate gift set a few years ago - and use that instead. You want to go until the mix is gloopy and makes slightly obscene bubbling sounds as you stir.

And then dump it in a bowl with some cream, cinnamon and sugar, and some brown sugar!

At this point, it was a bit pasty, and even after mixing in the cream, it was a little too thick, so it was a good thing I'd just heated the water for my coffee!

This is before I added water and mixed it together.

As for the texture, well... I remember Cream of Wheat being much soupier as a child, but between me whisking rapidly the whole cooking time, using milk instead of water, and continuing to stir like mad once it was in the bowl, the end result was like eating a soft, faintly sweet bowl of clouds.

I'm a convert.

This was so much better than most of the oatmeal I've made...

I think I'm officially old. That's cool :)

So what about you guys? Do you have any breakfast foods you used to dislike that you're now really cool with? What are your favorite hot cereal toppings?

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Thursday Art Walk 246: Sketching Along

In Which I Done Did Drawings

It's snowing.

It's 33℉ (~0.5℃), so cloudy it's nearly too dark to see, and it's spitting snow.

I am not ready for winter. My fluffy Star Wars jim jams are on. My soft sweatshirt is on. My slipper socks are on. My blanket fort and my blanket nest are well-stocked with fluffy coverings and I have my shawl wrapped around Dedbert to keep him warm (Dedbert is my cute green owl son). Yet still, I am unprepared.

My cat refuses all attempts at cuddling, as that would mean leaving one of the many blanket nests we've set up for her in the living room, which she refuses to entertain if food is not involved.

What I'm saying is that it's the perfect day to stay inside if you can, curl up with cocoa, and sketch random stuff you see.

"Coffee, Cardinal, and Cat"; pencil and ink study on legal size printer paper; 2019

I'll be doing more art as the day progresses, but that's what I've taken a picture of so far, so there you go!

Also, the wrinkles are because my cat decided that the papers were the right place to stand while waiting for me to arrange her new blanket tent. Which she proceeded to fall asleep on top of. :| Cats.

Such a sleepy baby she didn't even notice the flash...

I have many things to do, and a limited window in which to do them, so that's all from me :)

Go Enjoy Something!
FC