Added 1 new A* page:Jason of the pretty far-out sci-fi webcomic Carpe Chaos is an A* reader, and has been kind enough to give A* a little advertising space on the Carpe Chaos site. Thanks, Jason!
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Yesterday I was talking about art "crystallizing" and freezing a moment in time. Well, little did I realize that there's a crystalline mineral called selenite, which comes from the Greek for "moonstone," and shares the same "moon" root as the name of our outer-space anti-heroine, Selenis. Selenite, which is one form of the mineral gypsum, can grow into crystals that are quite long and gorgeously transparent, like this 23 cm (9 inch) example
image by Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0 (source)
and those "swords" of selenite crystal may grow in clusters, like so
image by mockbird (source)
Both of those samples come from the Naica cave complex in Mexico. In 1910, miners there discovered the "Cave of Swords," 120 m below the surface, with many such crystals. But that was really just the tip of the selenite berg--because ninety years later, in 2000, extensive mine expansion that pumped out huge quantities of the 50 degree Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) water filling reaches of the mine much deeper, around 300 meters down, discovered the previously flooded, football field-sized Cave of Crystals, containing selenite crystals that had grown, in remarkably stable scalding water above a magma chamber over the course of 500,000 years, into mammoth jewels stretching up to 11 meters (36 feet) in length!
video on Youtube
This really awfully overdramatic Discovery channel documentary on some scientific investigations in the cave mentions that the crystals are hot to the touch, and soft, "like fingernails." Ew! Even with massive pumps keeping the hot water out, the cave is still just as hot and humid as can be, meaning that anyone entering has to wear a respirator and cooling suit (they've been using these bulky suits lined with mesh pockets holding ice cubes--no joke!) in order to avoid succumbing to the sweltering conditions within minutes.
Anyway it's pretty neat. Apparently it is thought that the cave will eventually be allowed to fill back up so the crystals can get back to doing their slow, hot work. Go, selenite!
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Oh yeah, here's an early stage in the painting of today's page--energetic but rough! I ended up using quite a bit of white (and black!) ink on this one:
But hopefully if I keep this up and get more practice, I'll get to the point where I don't have to do a whole lot of editing to get the initial vigorous work presentable, and energy and spontaneity will go hand in hand with legibility! =o
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