'The Snow Queen' By Jan Marcin Szancer, (1902 - 1973).

God's grace wanders at night among the fields of the soul

#coverart#love

This week’s cover for the New Yorker. I was so surprised this one was chosen because it’s so abstract. I am really proud of taking a chance by doing and sending it and very very happy it made the cut. It’s probably my favorite cover so far. Not because it’s the “ better drawn” one or the most symbolic. It’s mostly because it’s entirely based on a feeling of a city waking up rather than a structured drawing. Thank you Francoise Mouly,  Genevieve Bormes and David Remnick for taking a chance on this one ( And always always always, thank you Peter De Seve for everything)

Purple like lavender

Mulled Wine Recipe

All right, folks, ‘tis the season: winter.

And you need a hot beverage, and you need alcohol, and you stupidly think, I heard of mulled wine once, and search for a recipe, and find only pages of strange ingredients and paragraphs of far too much information on people’s lives. Every year I lose my recipe, and every year I regret it, poring fruitlessly and sadly sober over ingredients like star anise, cranberries, and demerara sugar.

So, to save you my grief, here is my very basic recipe, which my family–who does not drink the other 11 months of the year–finds so irresistible that they get tipsy and wonder why. (This is the recipe for one bottle, but I always make at least two.)

1 bottle red wine (cheap red wine, red blend or merlot, etc.)

½ cup - ¾ cup white sugar (you can add to taste)

¾ cup orange juice (you might want at least 1 actual orange, here’s why:)

10 whole cloves

(life is much easier if you peel the orange so that you get just the outer layer with as little rind as possible, then stab these little guys through, so you don’t have to go fishing them out later on, but feel free to fish away)

2 cinnamon sticks

Mix it all together and simmer it on low heat (don’t boil it, the alcohol boils off) until the sugar blends in. I tend to do it for 30 minutes or so, or just leave it on low and turn down to keep warm in a slow cooker.

¼ cup orange liqueur or brandy – I add this last, to make it as alcoholic as possible, but you can add it earlier. I also add both, and tend to steal the family’s brandy, but you can do this to taste.

Voila! Go, wrap your hands around a warm mug of mulled wine, reheat as desired, and spend the winter pleasantly tipsy.

Charged Drops Don't Splash

When a droplet falls on a surface, it spreads itself horizontally into a thin lamella. Sometimes – depending on factors like viscosity, impact speed, and air pressure – that drop splashes, breaking up along its edge into myriad smaller droplets. But a new study finds that a small electrical charge is enough to suppress a drop’s splash. (Image and research credit: F. Yu et al.; via APS News) Read the full article

Did you find your first leaf of autumn yet? Remember to hold onto it, if not in your hands then in your heart, so that you can make use of its tiny magic when you need it most. The uses of first autumn leaves can vary, from enhancing the catharsis of a melancholic moment to tumbling eerily down a seemingly deserted street as a warning of coming danger, but you will know when the time comes to release it and receive its blessing.

Shooting storms in low light, there are moments when the darkness hides everything. Then a single flash of lightning illuminates the entire structure from within.

willeadesphotography

*sigh* Reminding all of you once again...

AI art is stolen art.

If you're pro-AI art, you're harming human artists. Full stop.

At this point, I don't care if it's "real art" or not because that's not even what the real issue is, it's that it's already hard enough to succeed as an artist without having our work stolen, thrown into a digital blender, and spat back out in our faces, so we can be replaced because the value of our creativity and skill has been reduced to "content" and dollar signs. Do we mean nothing to you? Is your convenience worth telling us we don't matter?

These programs and everyone who uses them no matter how many times we've told you this can get fucked. I'm done being nice about it.

Sincerely, your salty neighborhood artist.

Why can’t real life cities be 10 mile tall gothic metropolises with red and black and skulls and statues of weeping saints everywhere

A few years ago, when I was living in the housing co-op and looking for a quick cookie recipe, I came across a blog post for something called “Norwegian Christmas butter squares.” I’d never found anything like it before: it created rich, buttery and chewy cookies, like a vastly superior version of the holiday sugar cookies I’d eaten growing up. About a year ago I went looking for the recipe again, and failed to find it. The blog had been taken down, and it sent me into momentary panic. 

Luckily, I remembered enough to find it on the Wayback Machine, and quickly copied it into a file that I’ve saved ever since. I probably make these cookies about once a month, and they last about five days around my voracious husband - they’re fantastic with a cup of bitter coffee or tea. I’m skeptical that there is something distinctively Norwegian about these cookies, but they do seem like the perfect thing to eat on a cold day. 

Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 egg 1 cup sugar 2 cups flour 1 tsp vanilla ½ tsp salt Turbinado/ Raw Sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chill a 9x13″ baking pan in the freezer. Do not grease the pan.

Using a mixer, blend the butter, egg, sugar, and salt together until it is creamy.  Add the flour and vanilla and mix using your hands until the mixture holds together in large clumps. If it seems overly soft, add a little extra flour. 

Using your hands, press the dough out onto the chilled and ungreased baking sheet until it is even and ¼ inch thick.  Dust the top of the cookies evenly with raw sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees until the edges turn a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool for about five minutes before cutting the cooked dough into squares. Remove the squares from the warm pan using a spatula.