Adding some oxygen to our home, making art and cooking pasta.

Some photos from the weekend. We bought two plants which both require low light; we are hoping we don't kill these anytime soon. The succuluents are plants we have had for about 2 years. These somehow have survived! I am growing a plant in the foreground, the tall pointy one which hopefully will flower some time soon. The picture of the trees was taken around 1030 AM this morning. It is so incredibly dark when it rains. It makes me feel gloomy! They are calling for more snow this Thursday. I am hoping it doesn't!

We also experimented with pasta-making this weekend. It was really enjoyable. It tasted really good. Sorry for the blurry pictures but it's impossible to get suitable light in our dark kitchen, and I hate flash.

A few photos from today and yesterday.
PS: This is great.

Dinner and drawing.

A deviation from the norm today; a photo with food as the subject. Let me tell you, this is one of the best dinner combinations I have tried as a person with a non-dairy, meat-free (almost) diet. It consists of roasted brussel sprouts (a little oil, salt and pepper, 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes, stirring once midway through cooking time), Vegetarian sloppy joe mix (I use fantastic brand, and I follow the recipe for "Mama's Sloppy Joes" which is the following (from their website :

1 package Fantastic World FoodsTM Sloppy Joe Mix
1 Tbsp butter or olive oil
½ medium white onion, chopped
¼ cup chopped fresh basil (I didn't have any so this ingredient was omitted)
¼ cup diced tomatoes (I used diced tomatoes with chipotle peppers from Whole Foods)
2 Tbsp Woodstock Farms® Organic Brown Sugar
3 Tbsp chili powder (I used 1 Tbsp.)

1. Prepare Fantastic World Foods Sloppy Joe Mix according to package instructions. 2. In a sauté pan, heat 1 Tbsp butter or olive oil. 3. Add chopped onion and let caramelize for approximately 2 minutes at medium heat. 4. Add brown sugar, chili powder, basil, and prepared Fantastic World Foods Sloppy Joe Mix. 5. Place mixture on buns of your choice.

We didn't use typical buns as they contain dairy, so we used soft tortillas. So, so good.

The final piece to this meal was vegan potato salad. I simply used small baby red skin potatoes that I parboiled for 10 minutes. In a bowl I mixed 1/2 cup veganaise, 3 tbsp. apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp (appx) sugar and salt and pepper. I also cut up part of a red onion and 2 stalks of celery. Mix all ingredients together and let sit in the refrigerator for 4 or 5 hours, or overnight.

So that's my spiel on the food that makes my stomach growl, in a good way. On to the drawings:

I have recently established a routine for myself to follow daily. I think I have discovered I work best with structure (as most humans do, I assume) and in order for me to be successful I have to chart out what my day should look like so that I actually get things done.

So far, it is working out well. The above is what drawings I did this morning. Most of what I work on is based off of photographs I have taken, but I want to try to get away from that and make art that is more imagination-based.

a mindless drawing and some quick sketches.

Snowy weekend.

Lots and lots of snow this weekend. And more of it to come Tuesday night/ Wednesday! I can't wait for spring. My car is completely buried under the snow and I'm debating whether I should let the second storm cover it further or uncover it now and then dig it out a second time later this week?

I baked chocolate chip cookies that were ALMOST vegan (included real eggs) this weekend. Needless to say, they were quite yummy. I used vegan chocolate chips that I think made the batter sweeter than usual, because the cookies seemed a little sugary.

Starting to get somewhere.

I've recently felt like I was in a rut with my illustration. Drawing myself over and over again gets tiring, and considering I focused my thesis in college on self-portraiture I felt the subject was getting exhausting and repetitive. I needed a change of pace, and while I may one day go back to portraits, (maybe even self-portraits!) I wanted to switch to something enjoyable. I really like sketching rabbits, and, seeing that I don't have the option of owning one of my own, at least I can draw them and dream about having one in the future. :)

Sketchy vs. photo real

Most recent work. Not entirely satisfied but I am glad I did something and completed it in one sitting. Not sure how I am to go on from this point but I want to continue self portraits or portraits in general. I have to figure out what qualities can be left out and which ones to add in to give the piece a more illustrative quality. I think I would have a breakdown if I were to focus on photo-real.

Rainy day turns to sun

We were greeted by a rainstorm this morning which happily broke into a sunny day. With temperatures turning to 60 degrees f we opened the windows and let the breeze meet us.

Ignore the poor quality of these photographs...

And maybe the poor quality of these drawings??? I'm 'back in the saddle' of trying to focus my days on creating things. It's been harder than I thought it would be to get myself going. Here's a few of the ones I have been working on; they are mostly from old anthropologie catalogues that I've had laying around. The last one is a copy from a de'Medici sculpture by Michelangelo. I want to try to post more of my work as I go along. Hopefully my skills learned from college come back!