tethered balloon

I've been playing with an image in my mind and trying to solidify it.  It's harder to find the look I want when not working from reference images.  Here are the steps so far:

Rough Layout

Blocking Out Some Color... but I didn't like it.

Refining the shapes and silhouette.  Make it more whimsical!

That's all for tonight.  Will continue this later.

shu qi sketch

I'm bursting with artist energy right now so I felt the need to do another sketch.  So here's a quick exercise in color blocking.

Here's the original source image:

suit sketch

Lately I've been thinking about how sexy a well-fitted suit can be, and the nice silhouettes that can come from it.  Then, coincidentally, I saw a commercial for the White Collar series boasting of their fans gushing over the Neal Caffrey character (who always seems to be dressed to the T in 3 piece suits).

I'll have to admit, he does wear it well.  And it made for a great study in suits.  Here's sketch inspired by Neal.  In a suit.

sketch stretch

I dusted off the tablet to stretch my sketching muscles, which have atrophied a bit.  Here's a quick sketch for Project Apricot while I've been feeling inspired recently.

One of the main characters with a broad sword.

I'm feeling a bit rusty, but still very happy to be doing this again.  Sketching always fills me with nostalgia, excitement and great hope for the future.

Nyan nyan nyan nyan...

I usually don't get dressed up for Halloween, but I couldn't help myself this year!  I made myself Nyan Cat costume from scratch.

For the uninitiated, here's the source material:

I made a hoodie from scratch (the thought to just buy a sweatshirt as the base didn't occur to me until after I already started sewing).

It turned out okay :)  Michael made the poptart for me and then I tacked on a rainbow.

New plants!

I'm not good with plants.  And I am downright awful at taking care of orchids, which is a horrible shame because I absolutely love them.  Within the last 4 years (just since I've moved to the Bay Area), I can count either 6 or 7 orchids that have died in my care.

They've died from being overwatered (which leads to mold), and underwatered (I had kept them at work, and the air is particularly dry).

Let's have a moment of silence for the last orchid that didn't survive.  It came from the San Mateo farmers market. 

I brought home 2 mini orchids from Trader Joe's.  I promise to try harder this time, little orchids. 

Just for good record keeping, here are the care instructions:

Phalaenopsis Care

Temperature 70-90 degrees day; 60-70 degrees night

Water every 2-3 weeks, keep evenly moist

avoid wet foliage, best to water in the morning

Fertilize 1-2 times per month, less in winder

Light moderate indirect light

I also picked up a basil plant.  Only $3 at Trader Joe's, which is comparable to one pack of basil.  This one should be easier to take care of it.

frozen macarons from Trader Joe's

I've noticed frozen macarons available lately at both Costco and Trader Joe's.  Given the time and energy I've spent learning the fine art of macaron-ing lately, I'm partly appalled at the idea of assembly line, mass-produced macarons, partly bummed that my skills may now be obsolete, and partly surprised at how cheap they are.  (about $4 for a pack of 12 at Trader Joe's).

Trader Joe's offers 6 vanilla's and 6 chocolates, so it still lacks the more interesting flavors.

If these frozen macarons are any good, it could replace this whole set of supplies.

I just tried one of each.  The vanilla has pretty good flavor, but was way too mushy.  The chocolate had a much chewier texture and was closer to what I've made before and was pretty good (especially good if you like dark chocolate).

In conclusion, these are pretty decent.  They are easily better than the Miette macarons I've had.  (Note that they're also stored properly so that the macarons don't crush either.  Something that Miette hasn't seemed to learn yet.)

wedding present decoration

I just wrapped up a wedding present, added a little touch with some hand-made flower decorations.  All it took was 2 sheets of white paper, a pair of scissors, some glue, and just a little bit of the wrapping paper I was using for the wrapping job.

glass etching

So here's a story.  Two years ago at the CFX department Christmas party, I participated in a white elephant gift exchange.  I landed a gift of 2 aqua globes and a Engrave-It (etching tool).  "Woot," you say?  Woot indeed.

I was pretty excited for the aqua globes, but had no idea what I would do with the Engrave-It.  And so it gathered dust until I recently realized a use for it.

Another story.  Eucharist, my church, does communion every Sunday and provides a choice of wine or grape juice.  Up until this point it's always been a bit awkward remember and telling people which purple liquid is the grape juice and which one is the wine.

So I decided to try and etch "juice" and "wine" into the glasses using the Engrave-It.  Here's the test glass.  I used the same font as what we used for the Eucharist font.

I think it turned out reasonably well.  If you look closely, you can still see it's hand done, but I think it looks pretty nice.  If I get buy off, I'll etch 3 more.

wool buddy

I always just thought of wool as itchy and the source for ugly sweaters, but look what wool can also create!

Hoyt got me a kit from this guy @ woolbuddy.com.  He has such cute designs with such personality.  If you go to events like Alternative Press Expo or the Maker Faire in the Bay Area you've probably seen his booth.  Anyways, all it takes is a selection of brightly colored wool, a felting needle, and a whole lot of free time.

I can't wait to try making some wool creations of my own design.

omg! look what I found!

I was looking for some photos on my flash drive and found these old sketches from an on-going project (which has stalled).  These are two character sketches I did at least almost 5 years ago.

It bums me out a bit because I have versions of these that are further along (and a sketch of another character), but they're on a hard drive that's busted.  Also bums me out that I'm pretty out of practice and am not at the level I was when I did these two sketches.

Anyway, I'd like you to meet some friends of mine:

Iris

Yan

I'm trying to figure out what to tag this as.  I've gone through a few working titles already: Purple Night Skies, Dreamwalkers.  I think I'll just give it a code name for now...  How about project Apricot?  I'll just make my way through this list of fruits.

Macaron experiment

I'm making another two batches of macarons.  This time I'm going to try and cut down on the sugar in the shells.  I'm going from 150g of powdered sugar to 100g.  To keep the mass of dry ingredients the same, I'll be upping the almond meal from 150g to 200g.

Results:  Okay, just finished the biscuits.  The sweetness level is definitely lower, but I'm noticing some textural differences as well.

• When I take them out of the oven, I'm noticing the foot has a good height, but once it cools for a while, the foot shrinks.
• The outer shell still forms, but is thinner, and the base of the biscuit is a bit cakey.  There is a hollow space between the crispy top of the biscuit and the dense bottom.  This makes it more fragile and more likely to crack.
• The smaller biscuits turned out better because it got cooked more thoroughly and the bottoms turned out more solid.

Overall, I'm not crazy about the change in texture.  I think I swung too far with replacing the powdered sugar with almond flour.  Next time, let's replace just 25g.  (Yeah, I'm using binary search.  Let's make use of this CS degree.)

I'll report back on the ganache once that's done.

Some photos from the process after the page break...

links for food coloring

While I'm thinking about macarons, I decided to check online to see where I can find powdered food coloring.

Here are a few links:

Country Kitchen SweetArt
Amazon ('cause what can't you find on Amazon?)
Candland Crafts

Holy what?  Did you know there are "Food Writer Markers"?

I can just imagine a 3 year old seeing mom do this and then taking a Sharpie to Thanksgiving dinner.  Thank you world for ambiguous products.

New macaron books!

Yay!  Presents from mom and dad!

 

and fresh off the pre-order list...

And this one was a present from Hoyt :)  (Thank you!)

There are some interesting looking flavor combinations in here.  I can't wait to try a different ganache recipe too.  Will post the results of my experiments when I get a chance to make another batch.

"Wallace and Gromit - Curse of the Were-Rabbit" notes

Just watched "Wallace and Gromit - Curse of the Were-Rabbit" and here are my notes after the page break.

I'm specifically looking at how each scene is organized and how it abides by the HIP structure (provided courtesy of Shawn).


Hook - start with an implicit question; the more energetic or primal (survival) the question is, the better
Intensity - ramp up the activity in the scene, drive it forward, bring the people to the edge of their seat
Prompt - end the scene with at least one question left unanswered; have the bad guy closing in with your hero backed into a corner; this drives people to read/watch more

packaging design blog - lovelypackage

I like all the eye candy on this blog.  It's nice to get some inspiration from here every once in a while :)

Lovely Package

matcha azuki macaron

The macaron is not the featured dessert here, but still the combination intrigues me and I might try that mousse recipe and see how it goes at the center of the macaron.

match azuki entremet

cool animated gifs

These are some truly artistic animated gifs that quietly capture a moment.  (Editted because the blog where I first found the images, doesn't have them anymore.)

Animated Gifs That Savor a Passing Moment

macaron update

I made another batch of macarons this weekend with great success!

It took half a day to make a batch on my own.  I did half a batch of mango ganache filling and half batch of red bean paste filling.

The mango ones turned out perfect, but the red bean paste ganache didn't chill long enough and was runny at first.  The red bean ones were also on parchment paper instead of the silpat and also came out mis-shapened.

I had no problems with oven bake times.  I put the oven on 300 degrees and baked the biscuits in the top-middle rack about 16 minutes total.

The macarons were good but still a bit too sweet.  I think next time we can cut back on the powered sugar and compensate for the same amount of almond meal so the dry mass stays the same.

Oh and here's a recipe I found from a blog and it has pink bunny macarons.  Cute.  I will try to do some fun shapes again soon, but a bit differently.


Easter Bunny Macarons

Great article of an artist's perspective

How to steal like an artist and 9 other things nobody told me

Despite the title, it's not about stealing, but a reflection on what it means to create, and an analysis how an artist or a person is influenced to create.

I love this article because it solidifies a lot of what I've realized over the years.

• I don't have to forbid myself from creating art until "I'm good enough"
• I need to create stuff that I enjoy.  Only then can I make my own decisions and only then can I fully love the results.
• I can love and mimic another artist's style and work, but ultimately I need to find my own style and process.
• Be brave.  If I want to learn something, I will go learn it and try to do it.  Practice even if I'm disappointed with the results.  Especially when I'm disappointed with the results.
• Edit.  Each technique and tool I accumulate should just be something available to be used judiciously.  I should not apply every tool at every possible time.

I was glad to read that side hobbies and projects are important considering I have so many.  I love working and exploring.  It has really helped me learn more about myself over the years.

latest macaron news

We hauled ass the weekend of 3/26-27 and made 2 full batches of Italian-meringue macarons for a fundraising bake sale at work.

It was a spectacular success and people seemed to really enjoy them.  Though it made me nervous when French people bought one since I'd imagine they would have even higher expectations.

The flavors we made:
- red bean paste ganache (stumbled onto this recipe which happened from Thip's blog.  we had just taken a class from Thip 2 weeks before.  yummy!  will try just straight red bean paste sometime too.)
- mango ganache (I cooked down some mango puree for the flavoring.  really good!)
- lychee filling (cooked down and blended some canned lychee.  it got easily overpowered by the white chocolate flavor.  I ended up making a pretty pulpy lychee filling.)
- white chocolate ganache (pretty simple and pretty good)

We ran into some trouble with getting the macaron shells to cook fully.  Baking the standard 8-10 minutes seems to leave it a bit gooey on the inside.  We ended up baking them at least 20 minutes.
- is our oven weak?
- does it make a difference that our heating element is on the top?
- or is it okay that it's a bit gooey on the inside at first?  will it cool and harden?

supplies to get for further macaron exploration

Time to do some shopping this weekend at Sur la Table :)

I need:
* a kitchen scale
* little plastic scraper
* Ateco pastry bags and a #3 tip
* powdered food color
* cooking thermameter
* maybe metal mixing bowls

Italian macaron class

For my birthday, Michael signed us up for a macaron class taught by a pastry chef in San Francisco.  We went this last weekend and, in a group of 6, finally got some formal training :)

pictures coming soon.  recipe is after the page break.  here are the results of our labor. 

The flavors were

• strawberry balsamic
• passion fruit
• yuzu
• coffee
• chocolate
• peanut butter

I'm excited to try this again and experiment with some flavors.  I have a few ideas: ginger peanut butter, lavender, earl grey, key lime, rose water.

Victorian Star Wars and other coolness

This artist has some pretty interesting things in his gallery including, but not limited to, Victorian-style drawn Star Wars characters :)  Fun.

http://gregpeltz.blogspot.com/

2 more project ideas

Wanted to write these down before I forget them.

- make my own mp3 player
- make my own little felt creatures based off my little doodles.  maybe make some for friends that are shaped after themselves.

macaron notes

Here are the things I did different in this latest macaron experiment:

• used fresh egg whites instead of the "Just Whites" from a carton
• let egg whites warm to room temperature before whipping
• used the copper-lined pot
• whipped egg whites to stiffer peaks
• used silpat instead of parchment paper to bake on

Here are the things I learned:

• getting stiff egg whites is the key to averting flat macarons
• macaron biscuit is a bit too sweet
• raspberry cream filling is too liquidy
• bottom of biscuit is empty.  might need to cool completely before pulling it off.

Things to experiment with in the future

• pulverize powdered sugar and almond meal mixture in food processor.  will it give smoother texture?
• let egg white "age" for a day or two before whipping
• try different filling recipe
• try less powdered sugar so biscuit is not so sweet
• will letting it cool completely before pulling it off keep it from being hollow on the bottom?
• how to get more uniform shape? - mold?
• how to get the smooth surface like the one's from Paulette's?
• how to dial it from airy to chewy?
• can I add flavoring to the biscuit without changing the chemistry of it too much?
• if putting a glaze on the outside, when should it go on?

macarons with raspberry buttercream filling

Behold!  My first successful batch of macarons!  Michael was such a great help and these turned out so much better than last time.

macaron batter piped onto the silpat.  (with a few fun shapes)

the macaron biscuits baked

 

close up on the macaron biscuits

Can I interest you in a delish little macaron? 

I'm ridiculously happy with the results right now.  Will post what I've learned from this time soon!

Self-imposed screen writing homework

In an effort to understand how my favorite animated movies construct interesting scenes and plotting, I'm going to rewatch some of my favorite animated movies this weekend and write out how they're plotted.

Here's what's on my list of candidates so far:

• Lion King
• Castle in the Sky 
• Paprika
• Howl's Moving Castle
• Wallace and Gromit - Curse of the Wererabbit
• Wallace and Gromit - The Wrong Trousers
• Coraline

I'll post my findings when as I go through this list :)

elbooga's art and plushies

Found her on musthavecute.com.  She makes some really charming plushies and portaits, that's a much more refined version of some of the doodles I do.  So cute!  She's currently not taking anymore commissions, but may again in the future.

elbooga's deviantart site

new earring holder

I just made myself an earring holder :)  It's not too far off from the earring tree idea I had a while ago for Eu Care.  One thing I learned is that to maximize the usage of space, the longer earrings should dangle off the bottom and the smaller earrings can go on top.

Here's what it looks like with out the earrings.  It's just a linen-like fabric stretched over a wood frame and glued in place, and I'm just punching the earrings through the fabric.  (I got it for $3 from Michaels.)

Here's what it looks like from the back.

results from last night's sketch session

Some sketches I did last night (and inked in today).  Based on a budding idea for a screenplay.  The premise of sketches is the mixing of the realistic with the graphical and each girl having her own way of rendering their hair.  I'll get around to cleaning them up some time.

year in review and the year to come

Yay!  It's a new year and a good time to review my existing project list, add new projects and check some off.

Projects:
1. Eu Care - doing good :)  We made great progress this year and here's to even more effectiveness in 2011!
2. Comics (with working titles) - didn't get very far, but still dreaming
3. Screenplay/Storyboard - have most of my plotting done.  will make a concerted effort to finish it this year and submit the pitch :)  Shawn offered to give feedback, so I'm excited for how the constructive critique will help refine it.
4. Programming - didn't get very far
5. Facebook Apps - nope
6. Personal Web Site - :( nope, another year of paying to sit on my domain...
7. Sewing - fell off on aprons, but I want to get back into it.  at least to use up all the adorable fabrics I got.
8. Give Matt hair - started :)  and will continue
9. Wall art - didn't get very far
10. Giclee printing - found the printer I want, but still haven't gotten it yet.
11.  (new) macarons!  - that's gonna be the new hotness this year.  I'm planning to master these little treats.  And I had a bright idea!  Two words: Totoro macarons!