Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Tested Out An Artistro Palette!

Christmas brought me some great gifts, as I hope it did for anyone reading this who celebrates. One of these gifts was given by some awesome friends of mine, and it was a great little Artistro palette, which I'll be reviewing today!

The Artistro Premium Quality Watercolor Paint Set came with some fun goodies!

The palette itself came in a lovely pastel mint turquoise cardboard box, which also contained a small sheaf of Watercolor paper, a little card about Artistro itself, and what I think is a sticker, though I can't figure out if it really is or not. 

The Palette itself!

The palette itself is a nice tin box in the same pastel turquoise color as the cardboard box, and while the metal isn't nearly as thick as my black palette, it's still quite convenient to have everything in a lockable case! The latch gives it a leg up on most of my palettes, to be honest, and it has a few other things going for it, too - it has a flat bottom so I can actually set it down places, it only has 2 parts when opened, so it can just sit open, it's fairly tall so I don't have to move brushes as far, and it's a nice soothing color.

Inside is quite nice, too!

Opening this palette reveals that it comes with a few goodies besides the paints! Firstly, it has a big, hefty water brush that feels like I could sit on it accidentally and not break it, plus a fineliner brush! The black pen is actually an acrylic paint pen - the first one I've ever used! And it has three mixing wells and a very large sponge, which are great for when you're changing or mixing colors. As for the lower half, there's a sturdy plastic sheet with a little cutout for your finger so you can pull it away from the paints and... guys...

It's one of the first palettes I've ever had that NAMES ALL THE COLORS outside of the swatch card!

And they're fairly popular color names, too, allowing me to try mixes I've seen elsewhere!

The palette does, of course, come with a swatch card, and it's printed on the exact same watercolor paper that came with the kit, and it's good paper, too, which really surprised me. I'm used to swatch cards that are cardstock or cheap paper, and this was great.

It helps matters, too, that the paints, while small, are very smooth.

These are, no joke, butter-smooth watercolors. Swatching the palette out, I only noticed a few tones out of the 48 that were harder to get consistent - the lightest blue, the lightest green, the fluorescents, and the metallics. Even those would probably have been easier to swatch if I'd spritzed the palette first instead of just stroking a damp brush over the pans 10 times each.

And I'm really pleased with the granulations I see because I love granulations in my tones.

Now, the Artistro palette is not the only art supply I received for Christmas. My mother made sure to buy me a nice Strathmore pad and some new brushes, since the ones I've been using are... well... they're water hogs that don't lay color well, frankly. I've been entirely relying on my waterbrushes and one or two fineliners because the rest just don't paint well.

These Phoenix brushes, however, paint very nicely.

And I will eventually have to start working on bigger paintings
Because these large sheets are tempting.

But I'm still pretty braindead from the holidays, so instead of testing my supplies out on some massive art piece that relies on vast quantities of water, patience, and time, I instead tested things out with a fun little Geometric piece.

"Bubbletime"; watercolor and acrylic; 2022

I used a 7 Round for all of the bubbles and outlined them all with the paint pen. I was very nervous that I'd spill the paint all over my bed, but I activated the pen very slowly and gently (shakeshakeshakeshake, press, pause, press, pause, press, pause, see that the tip is black, draw a small doodle on a scrap page, then get to work).

It went far better than I'd hoped, and I think I'll be adding this paint pen to my passel of liners for future projects! It layers perfectly over watercolors. Speaking of the watercolors, they went on very smooth, though if you don't use wet-into-wet as your technique, it can be a bit hard to even tones out. The paints also dried fairly fast, though that could have been because I had my ceiling fan on and the air was fairly dry.

All in all, if you've been thinking about trying out the Artistro 48 color watercolor palette, I'd say go for it. It's perfect for someone who is trying to make art, especially on a budget. The paper is good quality, the paints are fun, and if you're not planning on preserving the original pieces (I can't speak to the colorfastness of the paints, since I haven't had them long enough to test), then this is a great kit for you. Especially if you've been meaning to see if an acrylic paint pen is right for you with your watercolor art.

If you'd like to have a say in what I paint or draw next week, feel free to hit me up on Ko-Fi with a donation and a message telling me what category you'd like to see (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Geometric, Dedbert, Location, Word), and I'll pop it up here with a little thank you note!

And thank you to all my readers who kept me posting throughout 2022!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

In Which I Review A Palette!

 Christmas saw me getting a lot (and I mean a lot) of pajamas, but also some other fun stuff, including a very cool blue sweater and a gift card to a local bookstore from my younger sibling! It has taken me until now to use that gift card, and here is what I got:

The Peter Pauper Press Studio Series Watercolor Field Kit
With 48 Brilliant Colors!

This kit fits in my purse, is easy to carry, is relatively strong plastic, opens easily, and does in fact contain everything advertised (mixing palette, 48 colors, aqua brush, sturdy case, and a sponge). It has a foldable loop on the bottom for easy balancing in one hand.

The mixing palette lifts out on pegs!

Those are some fresh paints lol

A clearer view of the paints

A Swatch using both paints & brush!

So let's talk contents. 

The palette is a palette. There's not a ton to talk about with it - it works and it's pretty decent!

The sponge is a tiny sponge, and I don't hold much hope for its long-term survival, nor am I 100% certain what the sponges are used for, since I usually travel with tissues that I use for cleanup.

The brush... the brush is weird. I've used water brushes before, but they're usually as easy to fill as "unscrew brush from handle, pour water into handle, screw back together, voila". This one is... weird. It has a little black thingy over the opening in the handle when you unscrew it, and that prevents you from just filling it from the tap like the other water brushes I have. It's also very short, so it doesn't hold very much water when you do fill it, which you do by holding it underwater, squeezing the air out of it, and letting the water fill it up. The whole time, you've got your hand underwater and cold and it feels like you're going to break the brush handle. All in all, the worst water brush I've ever used, filling-wise. Actually using it is great, though. It seems to have a more consistent flow than other brushes. I'd say it evens out, frustration in filling vs ease of use.

As for the paints, they're pretty! They're very nice, and they go on very smooth! They do smell... bandaid-y, though. That's odd, but not too unusual for watercolors lol. I think they just contain a lot of gum arabic. No idea about their lightfastness, but since this is a travel set, rather than a proper in-studio set of paints, I'm gonna say they'd be ideal for watercolor sketching rather than permanent art. I will also say that some of the colors are water-hogs. That second lavender on the 4th row down especially soaks up water when you dampen the pans and it ends up not looking like any of the paint reconstituted. Don't believe its lies, it's perfectly fine, it just doesn't swell lol.

The pans after the first wetting/use, also the brush.

One last note on that weird lil water brush: it stains just the same as all the other nylon-tipped water brushes I've used lol. Does anyone else have that problem? It doesn't spread the color, it just completely stains!

But as we all know, the real test of a watercolor kit isn't what it looks like or smells like in a box or on swatches, it's what it looks like when you use it! And here we see my first use of this kit:

"Sketching With Dedbert"; PPP watercolor on watercolor paper with Micron ink; 2022

I think that with a more robust brush, this paint will be fantastic even at home, and on the go I usually have at least 3 brushes on-hand at any given time just bc I'm paranoid about running out of water (a real concern with the weird filling-method on this new one!). I did forget to erase the pencil lines, so sorry about that! But this was a lot of fun, and it's given me ideas on what else to do with my future art!

And that about covers today's art adventure! My conclusion is this: this kit is worth the $20 I spent on it and I encourage anyone on the fence as to whether or not to pick up a Peter Pauper Press field kit to go for it!

Don't forget to Go Enjoy Something!!!

TEA REVIEW: CHOCOLATE MINT

 

In Which I Tried New Tea!

I do not shop often in the current climate (not that I shopped often before...), but every so often, I am invited to pop downstairs and tag along with my mom when she's heading out. this time, we went to one of the great local chains that really hasn't updated its inside look since about 1999 (which I view as a 100% positive feature), and we picked up some gifts for the niblings (gender neutral term for the children of siblings, if that hasn't crossed your vocabulary yet!) and eventually wandered down the tea aisle.

We weren't in the mood to dilly dally, obviously, and I was limited to one box of tea, so when it came down to the wire, my choices were for a lemon tea and a chocolate mint tea. A close third was a holiday themed chocolate tea, but I wasn't sure about "chocolate with lavender and mint", so I stuck to the other two. In the end, I knew that I could find a lemon tea in a local shop or just... order it easily off of Amazon or something, so I chose the chocolate mint tea!

The Tea in Question

I brought the tea home (along with a cheap pound of packaged mill ends of yarn for Christmas present creation) and immediately decided to make a cup.

The first thing I noticed was how heavy the teabags are compared to my chamomile tea bags. The second thing I noticed was that you get two less bags than with the Bigelow chamomile, which... bummer. The ingredients are nowhere near as simple as the single-ingredient chamomile, either! This tea contains: oolong tea, cocoa powder, peppermint, natural chocolate flavor, and carob powder.

It smells... divine. It smells like Andes' Candies or Thin Mints.

I was so excited to try it that I slammed the kettle on and grabbed a mug. I could've run upstairs for the teapot, but... I just wanted it that badly. I chucked the bag in the mug and that's when things got... spicy.

The cup and the culprit

Turns out, the tea smelled so good to the cat that all she wanted to do was bat the tag around! I couldn't take any more pictures because she was going bananas over it and I had to hold the string against the cup lip to keep the teabag from being yote across the room by an overstimulated tabby. It was in this flurry of movement and stressful time that I may have made an error.

The steeping time recommended for this tea in 8oz of hot water is between 3-5 minutes. I have no idea if I let it sit in the water too long or not long enough, but... well... despite having a rich dark hazel color (dark brown shading to almost a greenish brown along the edges - the mint?), it was quite faintly flavored. At first.

You see, after removing the bag and leaving it for the cat to buffet around, taking the mug of tea upstairs, and then getting into an in-depth conversation with someone, I had let the tea cool a bit after that first sip. My second sip was a bit more flavorful, so let me tell you how a slightly-cooled cup of this tea tastes.

You could tell there was chocolate in this tea because it smelled like chocolate and there was a faintly bitter taste I recognize from cocoa powder, but there was also an odd sweetness that I think came from both the "natural chocolate flavor" and the peppermint. It wasn't bad at all, just a strange taste. I could taste the oolong, which had its odd, round, vaguely herbal essence, and it all finished with a gentle, cooling sensation from that peppermint.

I was, of course, slightly disappointed that the chocolate flavor wasn't more pronounced. I don't need it to taste like a Hershey bar, of course, but a touch more chocolate punch would've been appreciated. I have to wonder if the subtlety was caused mostly by me either not steeping it properly (I did not check the temperature of the water, did not heat the cup first, and didn't time the steep!), or perhaps it requires milk to be added to have the full chocolate effect?

I will have to investigate this tea further, much like the Morning Thunder.

Thanks for dropping by to hear me blather about tea!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

ps: the "something" this week is... possibly the best advertising for tea ever?

Talk About Tuesday 252

In Which I Try To Blather

It's December 17 - one week from Christmas Eve (really, you're not expecting a Wednesdaymania on Christmas, right?) - and we just had a rainstorm and temperatures near 60℉ (15.5℃). Then it immediately fell back to about 30℉ (-1℃) and today it's 27℉ (-2.8℃). As you might be able to guess, my family is having issues adjusting to these rapidly fluctuating temperatures, so basically everyone's sick right now. Boo.

Also, my poor sinuses have no clue what's going on, and their solution is to feel dried up while simultaneously spewing mucus like there's no tomorrow.

Yay Christmas.

So what do you do when you're having your face leak and your family hacking and coughing like a children's ward in Victorian England (ooh, black lung joke!)?

You read.

And I read Jonathan Evison's Lawn Boy.

And what a wonderful book!

Lawn Boy is the story of Mike Muñoz, a young man trying to survive the world actively taking a dump on him while also struggling to find his place and learn just who exactly Mike Muñoz is. It's a journey of self-discovery, but unlike most literary explorations of someone trying to find themselves, this book is about as navel-gazing as a trip to the grocery store. There's introspection, sure - it's a first-person narrative where the narrator is constantly having the rug pulled out from under him - but it's not some twee little tale of a wealthy white blogger wandering around for 300 pages until they meet the right sexual partner and run off to Bali.

It's the story of a struggling artist who knows what art he wants to pursue in a world that just sees him as yet another Mexican to exploit (he's a born-and-bred Californian, his dad just happened to have Mexican heritage). Mike just wants to mow lawns and trim hedges for work, but his art is topiary, and the world just seems to crap all over him. Everything that could go wrong in this guy's life seems to (though thankfully it lends itself more to humor than tragedy!). His truck breaks down. One of his bosses gets arrested. His lawnmower gets stolen. His mom's tenant pulls the wrong tooth.

This isn't a book about socialites, it's a book about the guy mowing the lawn out back, so expect some snark that isn't founded on the idea that somehow people who live in big houses are the best people and that somehow the people who work hard to get things done are somehow inferior. It's not even the opposite, either. It's a book about complicated people and complex feelings...

And topiary.

And Disney.

And revolution on a very, very small scale.

And bespoke delis.

Basically, this book rocks, and if you're looking for something to remind you that the sun exists, that heat is a thing that can exist outside your house, and that dreams come in all shapes and sizes, this is definitely the book for you.

Heck, even if you don't think you'd like a story about a dirt poor guy struggling to survive in an inherently racist society, you should pick it up. At the very worst, you'll learn a thing or two about landscaping :P

So yeah, go read the Great American Landscaping novel and let me know in the comments what you thought of it, because as you might be able to tell, I loved it and I'll absolutely be reading Evison's other books! And by the way, if his name seems familiar, I've done a review of a Paul Rudd film based on one of his books! Does the title The Fundamentals of Caring ring a bell? Yeah. That's him.

So that's it for my book review this week!

Now what am I doing on this week before Christmas?

• Tomorrow we'll get our final Wednesdaymania for this month because I'll be busy opening gifts and eating good food with people I love next week.
• Thursday, I'll be doing my final Christmas Sketch!
• Friday will be about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, because I'm not going to talk about Christmas movies this year, lol.
• Saturday will be another video game, possibly one that's a fusion of Poker and Dungeons and Dragons...
• Sunday will be a very interesting noodle bowl...
• Next Monday I'll have a finished Purrmaid to show you!
• Next Tuesday, I may be a little busy, but not too busy to shoot you a quick lil message on this blog!

Thanks for hanging out with me today, guys!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Saturday Casual Gaming 241: The 7th Guest

In Which I Discuss My First Big Scare In Gaming

Back when I was a wee little owlet, huddled deep in the cushy confines of childhood and innocence, I saw some things that maybe a bitty babbie should not have. For instance, my father wanted to watch Indiana Jones when I was in Kindergarten, and so we watched it. I was subtly traumatized by the face-melting scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. That wouldn't be the end of it, though (much to my mother's chagrin). See, my dad had his computer office in the basement, and me being a wee little wimpkin, I was terrified of the basement.

It's not even a creepy basement.

Seriously, he had, like, a cute little log cabin style room down there and it smelled like warm wood and safety, especially since there was a door I could shut and keep out anything that scared me. Except for one problem.

My dad like to play video games on his desktop sometimes.

At first, it was dumb stuff like a very old PC version of a Speed Racer game that my very nerdy uncle gave him, but from there we ended up with a rather eclectic segment of early 1990s PC games. Redneck Rampage, Monster Truck Madness, and every Puzz3D game that was published, I think, crossed his screen. Fairly innocuous, right?

Well, then 1993 happened.

And with it came The 7th Guest, and the scarring.

The scarring was real.

And... I don't really get it now?

This FMV game scared me so badly that I still don't like that cellar and it mocks me in my dreams

So what's so spoopy about The 7th Guest?

Everything, when you're a tiny child, to be honest.

It's a big creepy mansion filled with ghosts and disembodied parts from dead people. Of course it freaked me out! And the cellar puzzles were literally impossible. It was basically dumb luck to escape!

You play as the main character, who I didn't know until today was named Tad, and you're stuck in this big house solving puzzles. Please bear in mind that I have literally not played this game since 1994. I don't remember much, and I'm basing this review on what little I can remember about how it messed me up.

It only messed me up a very little bit. Most of the scarring was from the Nazis in Raiders.

Regardless, you, through the eyes of Tad, explore this vast and incomprehensible mansion, encountering FMV clips of ghosts. I did not understand in 1993 what FMV was. To me, it was as though a dozen actual people were stuck in my father's computer and he couldn't help them.

Helplessness is a major theme in this game, I think.

That and really nice 3D environments!

So there are all these ghosts stuck in the house with you, and they're all pretty mad about it, too. You weren't even supposed to be there. I remember them treating me/Tad very shabbily at points. That scared me - I didn't like people being mean to me (I mean, very few people do, and for them, it's probably more of an adult discovery than a thing they liked as kids), and I was very intimidated.

Also, the FMV was super pixellated, so everything had a blurry, half-understood quality
which really was effective, since this was just as my eyes started failing...

You're trying to leave (as Tad), but the scary old man who owns the house and who killed everyone (I think?) has put up a series of really devilish puzzles. They're so tough that I can't remember most of them, though I know that they followed a lot of the same formats as the 1990s Brain Games puzzles I loved like marble solitaire and logic problems.

I remember not understanding how this can puzzle worked at all.

So you find all these puzzles and you try to defeat them, but then there's the basement.

The basement was the worst, and not just because I was in a basement while I played it.

The basement level is a maze.

An unbeatable, nonsensical maze.

More people give up in the maze than at any other point, I understand. And I get it. After the thirtieth time you hear Old Man Stauf (the bad guy) snicker in your ear (and it was even worse with headphones) or ask if you're "Getting... lonely?", you move slowly from fear to rage. It's the easiest game in the world to rage-quit.

I have never, to this day, beaten this game.

I'd like to, though, so until I can buy it off of GOG or Steam or whatever, I'll have to settle for watching other people play it, lol.

Some day, I'd like to record myself or stream myself playing this game so you can all laugh at how silly I was to be terrified of it.

Because as much as it scared the silly little pants off my silly little self (and let's be fair, I was a wee little tot at the time), I also have a strong sense of nostalgia for it.

So Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Filmic Friday 238: The Shuttered Room

The Shuttered Room 1967

So we got together last week with the promise of "games and karate" attached to Movie Night at Film and Editing Friendo's place. Mom of FEF had prepared a bingo game with Swedish Fish as markers, and we were to watch this movie, one of her favorite's (in the same way that Arizona Werewolf is a favorite of mine), very closely to see who would win.

It was a blast!

Now, don't get me wrong, this is not what most might consider a "good" movie - it's not particularly beautifully lit or shot, the actors aren't at the peak of their careers, and the story is, frankly, silly - but it's a fun movie.

This is one of the more accurate posters I found for this movie.

Set off the coast of Maine (!), The Shuttered Room is the story of a beautiful woman who has been given her parents' old home (a defunct mill) and whose big-shot magazine editor husband insists on it being a vacation home, despite her misgivings. They arrive on the island and are, predictably, completely warned off from the house. Luckily, the husband is a New York guy, so common sense is a foreign concept for him.

"Oh wife, I don't know why you're so resistant to coming back to a place where you were so traumatized as a child that your entire childhood has been erased and you have no recollection of even your own parents. You're being unreasonable."

And since this is a small island supposedly off the coast of Maine, the locals are scumbags. Especially one guy who was promised the mill by his "ANT ARGATHAR" (Aunt Agatha). He's 100% awful.

Hello, I'll be your stalker for the duration of this movie.

This denim dude is the worst. That being said, there is nothing that can beat how... stupid the reveal is at the end. Seriously. It's something you'll both see coming a mile away and also never expect.

This is where the ending takes place.

All told, this is a really silly and fun movie that's somewhere between slasher and haunted house. There's a lady with a drugged up golden eagle, crazy island hillbillies, justifiably angry women, and a fetishization of stockings. There's also a hilariously huge 1960s vehicle that somehow made it across the bay on a tiny ferry, a comically huge dollhouse, and more cobwebs than a Spirit of Halloween.

As for the "karate", there was a hilarious fight scene of Pushy-Ineffectual Husband vs Denim Doofus and it was awesome.

Well worth the sugar high from a quarter pound of Swedish Fish lol.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 235: Noodles and Rice

Spicy noodles and tasty salmon rice courtesy of Umai Crate

I think that Umai crate has been one of the coolest things introduced to the world since pre-sliced bread. I know that, for those of you living in larger metropolitan areas, the allure of multiple types of instant noodles and side-dishes is less impressive, but I live in a Maruchan town. Seriously. It's hard to find different kinds of noodle around here. Like - nearly impossible...

So to have noodles from Japanese stores appear on my doorstep every month is a blessing.

The closest legit Asian grocery stores are about... 80 miles away. And I cannot drive. And I have no money. This is the best way for me to get good noodz!

Inadvertent advertisement aside, however, here are two different dishes I tried from Umai Crate this month... uh... last month, technically. Happy September?

(ooh, I'm gonna have to start planning for Falloween 2019!)

I'm not 100% sure what this one was called, but it's Nongshim.
They make the blast-your-face-off spicy Shin Cups.
I knew what I was getting into.

Look, I like spicy food. I really enjoy having that fiery heat toasting my lips and draining my sinuses for hours afterwards. Nongshim foods have tended to hit the extreme upper limit of my capacity for capsaicin. That being said, I had a good feeling about this interesting setup:

You don't cook the noodles in the tray - it's not sturdy enough for boiling water.

Red can be very alarming color to see in foods. In meat, it tends to mean that it's improperly prepared. In vegetables, that means beets (which I don't really like, sorry). In noodles, it means you're going to lose some tastebuds to the heat. And boy, was this a red dish.

I don't know exactly what this says, but... I'm guessing it says "liquid fire".
Because that's what was in it.
Culinary plasma.

The noodles were fairly unassuming - dried and nestled together in their pretty little puck.

A faint, brown rice-y smell rose from them that I found incredibly pleasant.

After preparing (and cooling) the noodles, I was left with a decent tangle of noodz in the bottom of my enormous dish.

They were so slippery that I almost lost them down the sink while rinsing them!

And of course, then it was time to apply the death sauce. I say this because these noodles, man...

I mean, look at how red that sauce is in there. You know that's some prime peppery hotness.

I loved these noodz to death. They nearly killed me, since I was an idiot and ate them in the middle of a week-long acid reflux attack that kept me up for several nights, but they were delicious. The heat felt cold going down my throat. It was like swallowing dry ice (which I DO NOT RECOMMEND). Then the heat would blossom up and set my lips on fire. I think it may have actually given me chemical burns on my tongue, because there are some smoothed-out patches now that weren't there before... 10/10 would eat again. Perfect on a toasty day.


About a week after the noodles, however, I had some leftover rice at home. It was just some long grain white rice that had been boiled and buttered and left in the fridge for a couple days, but that didn't matter to me. I had plans.

Plans that only used one of those bags. The one with the scale/wave pattern.

Umai Crate occasionally sends more than just noodles, after all. Sometimes you'll get a cute kitchen sponge or egg ring. Sometimes it's a spoon or chopsticks. Sometimes you'll get spices or furikake or things you can add to rice!

This time, we had a bag with dried salmon, seaweed, and green tea. I wasn't sure how I'd like it, since I'm not really into green tea (I love the smell, but sometimes I can't handle the flavor). I also wasn't sure how it would go with the butter on the rice.

We were also going to attempt to add the shiso furikake in the smaller purple bag,
but we decided at the last minute to stick with the salmon stuff alone.

I boiled up some water in a kettle, then sprinkled the salmon furikake stuff all over the bowl of rice. I didn't even heat the rice up. I figured boiling water would do the trick.

I wasn't wrong, either.
It warmed up perfectly.

You can't really see the salmon in that shot, but it reconstituted really well. The overall effect of the topping and the buttered rice mixing with the water was marvelous - the rice became more tender, the salty flavor of the butter and the salmon and the furikake seaweed was evened out by the creaminess of the butter, and everything tasted wonderful. There was a faint green tea undertone that was actually addictive, even for me, a tea-hater.

10/10 would eat again. Can't wait for more leftover rice!!!

So that's all from me this week. Sadly, I haven't made a video this week, so we'll have to hope that I get on that for next week :P

Go Enjoy Something!
FC