Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I’m not done with the Abyssinian Maid yet, but I’m starting on another painting for the Kubla Khan book, and just finished roughing it out. I’m sure it will still change significantly but this is the foundation it’s being built upon. This is for the part of the poem that goes (in bold),

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

If you’re wondering about the skulls, this is from later in the poem;

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

So, of course, it’s a dead underground sea fed by the sacred river Alph.

Small parts of my region of Toronto are still without power — unpleasant, with the cold weather we’re having! We drove Caitlin most of the way to work since the subway around here was closed, and it was really odd seeing what had power and what didn’t — the grid is a really chaotic structure I suppose. We also had a major fire alarm (with fire engine and all) here today because some of the pipes froze during the night since there was no heating in the building, and when the system started up again they busted and blew out enough steam to trigger the alarms. Very annoying since it meant a high volume siren playing over the building-wide intercoms for 20 minutes.

I wasn’t sure if she’d “get” it, but I got Nefarious playing Crayon Physics (I have the full game — it’s totally fun) today… I was amazed that she was completely able to solve even the more complex physics puzzles and had a great time doing it. Plus of course it’s a game that’s good mental exercise… It’s always a crapshoot which games will be a hit. Because her hand-eye-mouse-gamepad coordination isn’t the greatest yet, that tends to be much more of a limiting factor than game complexity, which I’ve found isn’t really an issue (and modern games are pretty well designed and have intuitive interfaces).

I did a little more work on “The Abyssinian Maid” as well.