Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Pretty Big Update

A lot has happened since I last blogged, or at least it feels like a lot happened. I've been killing myself over a digital painting for my portfolio, and while it's nearing completion, it still needs some work. Here's the painting as it stands now.



  
Value Study
 

Color Study

I'm pretty happy with out it turn out except nothing has any texture, since I still haven't figured out how to have texture and smooth gradations.

Moving on to less stressful and much more delicious subjects... I made the first pumpkin pie of the season a couple of weeks ago.

 
Delicious and from a can


Breakfast of champions


A few days later of friend of mine came over and had the sudden complusion to make butter since we had whipping cream in the house.


Mmm... butter

It's pretty simple and there are directions all over the internet on how to make home made butter. Pretty much put some whipping cream in a jar with a marble or two, seal the jar and shake the crap out of it. It took us about 20 minutes of shaking. The whipping cream separtes into buttermilk and butter. You drain the buttermilk off (we made pancakes with it the next morning), and squeeze all of the buttermilk out of the butter by pressing the butter to the sides of the bowl and rinsing the butter until there is no buttermilk left in the butter (left over buttermilk will turn sour and ruin the butter).  I wish I knew where she had found the instructions but I know that instructions are easy to find on the internet.


We decided to add some blackberry syrup from Copper Creek in to make our own blackberry butter
  

This stuff is heaven on toast and warm bread

Moving on from baking to things that arrive in the mail... I got my books from Canada! A couple of weeks ago I ordered a whole mess of books from the Labyrinth Store in Toronto. They had the rare art of Lilo and Stitch book that I've been dreaming of for almost a year. It's not available in the States for anything less than about $50 and the Labyrinth Store had it for nearly list price (about $26). Plus I was able to get a few of Chris Sanders' sketchbooks and an Art of Jack Cole book that appears to not have been released in the States accoring to Amazon.


The lovely loot
  

The wonderful Lilo and Stitch book

Other things that arrive in the mail recently? My new Intuos 4 Wacom tablet came just a few days ago (now I'm just bagging), and more fun dog costumes.


Caddie (Cadbury Cream, as in the Easter candy eggs) as a ketchupy hot dog


Picture of Caddie sans creepy glowing eyes

My mom found super cheap ($6 each) hot dog costumes on the Amazon. We got ketchup for Caddie and mustard for Bailey. I tried the costume on Bailey but didn't get a picture of her. I have this one instead!


Bailey (Bailey's Irish Cream; yes, all our dogs are named after food) in her little Snoopy/watermelon kimono I got for her in Japan

I'm looking forward to my birthday tomorrow and because this became so long, that's all for now!
 

3 comments:

  1. LOL @ the dog costumes! especially the hot dog one. that made me crack up.

    ummm i didn't know you could actually make butter (i mean, it's just not that common, you know?). now i want to make some of my own! ahhh and you put in the blackberry syrup. yummm. i'm totally craving that right now.

    when i visit again (when, not if), we need to go back to copper creek inn. i miss the food and the syrup and the snow and heck, i even miss going in the hot tub outside in the rain.

    and i miss YOU! you're visiting sometime soon, yes? :)

    <3

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  2. oh, and your digital painting turned out great! i honestly thought the first one was a photograph at first lol.

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  3. keeping up the good work i see :p

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Thanks so much for your comments!