START LARGE, THEN GO SMALL

Having had a sufficiency of caffeine during the day, I really should not be sitting at home sabotaging my prospects of a good night's sleep. Two cups of coffee in the morning, three cups of tea from lunch to the cocktail hour -- which I observed with more tea -- followed by some strong stuff (Iron Goddess of Mercy) for the past two hours.

As you might expect, I'm high as a kite.

When you use a smaller teapot, especially an earthenware item like the one pictured below, you fill it over half to three quarters full of good tealeaves (medium ferment, like a Sui Hsien, Ti Kuan Yin, or even a reddish Oolong), rinse the leaves with near-boiling water to get rid of dust and open them up, and then do several steepings, each one a little longer than the last, starting at around a minute's duration and finally going up to five or so.

It's not hard and fast. So keep your neuroticism in check.
This might be hard for obsessive people.

Usually I only fill it about a third full of leaves, and do slightly longer steepings, three max. Still, it gives me a jag much like a shot of good espresso, spread out over a few hours.

The computer painting above started out altogether bigger than several feet squared, so that I could deal with minute details. I reduced it by about sixty percent to work on proportions, then a bit further to play with light and shade. Enlarged it again for further fussy work. Another reduction or two to see what it looks like and make minor corrections.
It's now a three by four thousand pixel file.
Start large, then go small.


You can tell that such teapots are in a way perfect for obsessives.
Altogether it took about five or six hours to do.
Spread out over three days.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================