More food doodles.

One of my favorite artists, Lucy Knisley, runs a lovely food illustration tumblr called Snack Love. Recently she put out a call for guest Snack Love submissions and she posted mine this weekend! This miso bowl is something I came up with one morning while rummaging through the fridge and wanting to try out Lucy's awesome microwave poached egg technique.

I've since learned that my current moleskine-knockoff sketchbook holds up to watercolor okay and takes gouache pretty well, but it's definitely not the same as painting on the illustration board I like so much. I need more painting in my life.

Check it out, another recipe comic. :) This time we're making crispy, sizzling coconut-flavored Vietnamese crepes known as banh xeo. Go ahead, try it yourself!

happiness is a warm cup of cocoa

One of my favorite feelings is being bundled up and drinking a hot drink outside on a cold day, the warmth of my scarf and cup contrasting with the chill in the air and the nippy sting on my cheeks.

I had a whole host of issues with the last illustration I did, mostly from not being properly prepared, so this time I tried to do as much planning as I could. Which means pages and pages of thumbnails and more value and color studies. I think it helped a lot in the end!

miles apart

I was at a restaurant once with my family when I saw a couple sitting at a nearby table. I was intrigued by the symmetry of their body language, sitting across from each other and hunched over, absentmindedly picking at dishes spread before them and completely disengaged from one another, focused instead on their respective identical smartphones.

Below is a little bit of process for the illustration, the thumbnails/sketches and color studies. I'll probably tweak the final a little bit based on some helpful critique I got from my instructor.

Sometimes you find yourself sitting at your desk, working into the wee hours of the morning. If you're anything like me, sometimes you'll suddenly get a craving for something, like noodle soup. But it's 2am and nothing is open...guess it's instant noodle time.

But oh, how I wish for so much more.

Hey hey, it's a recipe comic! My mom's lemon chiffon cake was a big part of my childhood and I thought I should share it with you guys. This is what I've been working on for most of the semester, just figuring out brush inking and page layout...it was fun! I'm planning to do more recipe comics next semester.

I realize I haven't posted in a while....school's been busy this semester! Here's some stuff I've been working on...

For senior portfolio, my theme is "Slices of Life"; basically slice-of-life style narratives revolving around food. This is the first piece I've completed for it. Untitled for now, I haven't been able to think of a good title for it. Mostly just been referring to it as the 5 panel piece. Gouache on illustration board.

The full size piece is fairly big (full size of painted area, not including the border, is about 25 in x 8.5 in) makes it hard to get good pictures of it since there's so much small detail.

Detail shot of the middle panel.

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I'm also taking book illustration this semester. Our first project was to create a few pages from an alphabet book. My theme was travel, so each page is designed like a travel poster. Gouache on bristol board, ink for the letters.

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 Also taking a digital drawing from observation class, working entirely in Corel Painter. It's been a while since I've painted from observation, and even longer since I've painted still lifes, so it's been kind of relaxing in a way to spend a few hours just painting what I see. There's thought and analysis involved, but not as much as when I'm trying to make up stuff, so the painting seems to go faster. 

Also, I rarely get much opportunity to work in Painter, so getting the extra instruction and time to experiment has been nice. The "dessert snake" piece was done over the course of 2.5 class sessions. The skulls were done in about half a class session each.