Killer Guac!

Happy Valentine's Day!  I hope you're spending it with friends, family or someone crush worthy!  This is one of my favorite recipes to make when I have friends over or I'm visiting my family.   I've been playing with some new textures and hand lettering.  What do you think?

If you want to see more illustrated recipes head over to They Draw and Cook! It's an inspiring site full of illustrated recipes from artists around the world.  I always end up finding a new dish I want to cook or a new favorite artist.

February Sketchbook peek

I love seeing other artists work in progress, so here's a few shots of a new recipe I'm working on. I've been itching to incorporate more hand lettered text into my work.

And more pattern... always more pattern.

These colors make me very happy.

By now you've probably guessed what this is a recipe for... I'll have the final posted sometime next week!

What I'm working on....

I was very resistant to working digitally. I thought the computer was evil itself. Now that I've figured out how to use it as a tool... I'm hooked! Seriously... what was wrong with me before? It has allowed me to be spontaneous in my mark making, change around lousy compositions and experiment with color/texture.

So... I was a little nervous about going back to the basics of paint and paper. But as I started painting this week I felt more confident then ever. I still love it!!!!!

Under the Ground

It's finally here! Poster #2 for Fertile Underground!

I had a lot of fun doing the hand lettering for the title and the bottom info.

This time around I did the design and gladly handed it off to a silk screen expert to do the actual printing of the posters. I can't tell you what a relief that was!

One of my favorite parts is this mouse... I drew lots of mice as a kid.

Fertile Underground was awesome enough to give me a dozen or so prints to sell. Thanks again to Kristina for doing such an awesome job printing these!

I'll have them up in the Etsy shop for sale with the first poster! I just finished the design for poster #3 and I can't wait to see it printed.

You've "bean on my mind..."

Art Festivals and Craftshows are a lot of work, weeks of sewing, ordering and organizing stuff all with my fingers crossed for good weather. However, I've found that it's a great opportunity to get direct feedback and that's really helped me make decisions about my work. (which things to discontinue, what needs to be tweaked and pricing too!) I have been busy busy busy working on some new items for the East Greenwich Art Festival coming up Sept 3rd!

I just got these babies in the mail yesterday!

I know, I know... I'm super cheesy. But the berry one just seemed so right that I dared myself to come up with three other veggie greetings.

And I did!

I figured these could each work for multiple occasions and they had a sense of humor... vegetables shouldn't take themselves too seriously.

Next week is crunch time, but I'm hoping to photograph a few more items before I head out for the sale. I will also post these in my Etsy shop too! If your going to be in the area please come say hi! I'll be there 10-5, 1408 Division Road.

Fertile Underground Posters

I have quite a few projects I've been working on since I last posted. Today I wanted to share this one with you. Fertile Underground is a local group mostly comprised of farmers and artists working hard to open a grocery and cafe on the West Side of Providence.

There store will feature organic, local and fair trade food as well as baked goods once their kitchen is done. There are very few places to find local fruits and veggies on the West Side, so I know they will be very popular once they open!

When I saw they were looking for an artist to design an edition of 4 silkscreen posters to promote their store I jumped at the chance! (An opportunity to do some printmaking, draw food and experiment with hand lettering?-Im soo in!)

And it's been awhile since I've done any printmaking...

And I've never done a 4 color print.

I had forgotten how much work goes into making an excellent print, before the ink is even opened....

First I did some quick veggie drawings, finished them in ink and arranged them digitally. Then, I colored the poster, separated them into layers on the computer. I printed them out onto large pieces of acetate, coated the screens, exposed them and TA-DAH!!!!

The screens were all ready to go.

This week I teamed up with my amazing friend Andrea to complete about 80 4-layer prints for Fertile Underground.

After a lot of hard work and deep conversation about unicorns we managed to get a good rhythm down and we finished!

These posters are on pieces of paper 19"x 24", so I hope they will eye catching when they are hung up!

I have 10 available for purchase, so contact me if you want one!

Garlic and Vampires

Garlic and Onions are not the most exciting veggies, but they can definitely supply a lot of flavor. I decided to give these bulbs some credit and paint them on an Autumn like cloth. 3 weeks left of the CSA and I've done 12 veggie drawings so far!
Next week I'll be heading to the West Coast to check out A.P.E, the Alternative Press Expo. (Think Comic Con but with zines and small publishing companies) It looks like they will have some great speakers; including Lynda Barry and Daniel Clowes! I'm staying with my Aunt which is always fun and hopefully I can meet up with some friends, bloggers and potential clients. I've been busy putting together little zine like portfolio's I can hand out.

I can't believe its already October... I'm starting to plan an elaborate Halloween costume to make up for last year's complete absence of Halloween. Something involving a tiny red hat I picked up in Harajuku. If you like Halloween, vampires and fabric depicting them then head on over to Spoonflower. I entered this week's contest. Vote for my Vampires!

I missed the Kawaii competition that I desperately wanted to enter. So, I decided to make this a kawaii/vampire fabric. You might say that crosses and gravestones aren't cute... But that's cause you haven't seen a sleepy coffin or a crying stake.

Voting is up this week till October 13th! And while your there check out all the other awesome fabric people have made! Maybe I should do a post on my favorites sometime soon.... hmm

Seeds and Puppies

Fall is here! So is my drawings of veggies from last week; more eggplants, tomatoes and peppers. Doesn't this palette feel like Fall? Although I'm more of a Summer fan, I am looking forward to cooking comforting foods with lots of squash.

Speaking of comforting...

My family got a puppy! I went home for the weekend to indulge in cuteness.

SHE'S SO FLUFFFYY!
We drove to the middle of Virgina to pick her out and after much debate we named her Addie. (I was partial to Mochi or Olive) She's driving our other dog, Lexey completely crazy. Lexey is almost 15 and would rather be left alone. We are all hoping Addie will calm down a bit and they can be friends. Here's her sneaking up on Lex and nibbling on her foot while she's napping.

Yay puppy love!

Eggplants, tomatoes, and a pepper

Even tiny veggies taste delicious!

The BF's stepmom gave me this dazzling, white eggplant form her garden. A few days later the CSA gave us these two beautiful purple ones. We got a ton of tomatoes last week, my favorite being the grape tomatoes! I bought some mozzarella cheese, basil and ate it all up!

Veggie line up!

The weather this past week has been hot, hot, hot! But it hasn't stopped the veggies from getting big and delicious. This week's batch of scallions, chard and kohlrabi were all noticeably bigger than last week.

I've never had fava beans... but I'm excited to give them a try! This week I painted the veggies on top of our kitchen table. Robin's parents kindly gave us the table when we moved into our apartment and it is one of my favorite pieces of furniture. The top is metal with this kind of kitschy design. It's fantastic for rolling out cookies and pie dough. Anyways, it seemed like an appropriate back drop for the veggies!

CSA Hurray!-week 1

I generally try to be supportive of local business; coffee shops, book stores, cheese stores and of course local artists! I also eat and enjoy cooking veggies so when a friend asked me to share a CSA I couldn't say no! I've been waiting eagerly since then to pick up my first week of CSA shares. (CSA =Community Supported Agriculture ) basically it means that after making one big payment I will have fresh veggies each week from now until October! Allie and I went to pick up our first weeks share yesterday and I felt the need to draw my half of the vegetables.

Sooooo if all goes according to plan I will be drawing my veggies and fruit each week. I've never seen this purple kohlrabi before but I've read its good in a slaw and the garlic scapes make a fine pesto. I look forward to the challenge of finding tasty things to make with all my veggies. If your interested in getting your own and your in the Providence area I think they still have shares! Check out Ledge Ends Produce! In addition to the regular CSA shares they have other special ones you can add too like fresh corn and they will be at many of the Fabulous Farmer's Markets in the area. Yay veggies!