Thursday, May 15, 2008
Unbearable Lightness of Being
 Labels: sketchbook
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Night Sketches
Some done in the past few days:
 Labels: sketchbook
Friday, May 09, 2008
Cupcakes & Feathers
Today I bring you an offering of orange vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting. I modified a traditional 1-2-3-4 cake recipe. Unfortunately, the cupcakes didn't rise! Normally I make vegan cupcakes from my favorite Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, but I thought that perhaps the lack of egg resulted in rather stout cakes. Turns out I probably just need a bag of self-rising flour.
These cupcakes were still delicious despite their rather short appearance. The buttercream frosting didn't stiffen as much as I'd like, so they pooled into smooth, glossy ponds. Sometimes I really feel myself growing older, or maturing my palette to put it kindly, as last night, growing depressed from my ugly cakes, I collapsed with a sugar headache after eating four. Hey I said they were ugly, not gross. I brought most of them into the office today.
Orange Vanilla Cupcakes
(adapted from recipes on Martha Stewart and Allrecipes)
1 cup of unsalted butter
1.5 cups of sugar
3 cups of flour (I would try 1.5 cup all purpose, 1.5 cup self-rising)
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup of orange juice
zest of 2 oranges
dash of cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 muffin pans with cupcake liners.
Cream together butter and sugar. With the mixer on low speed, slowly pour in flour, alternating with dropping in one egg at a time, until fully mixed. Add vanilla, orange juice, zest, and cinnamon and fully integrate. Pour almost 3/4 full in each cupcake pan, makes 24.
Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
6 tbsp unsalted butter
6 tbsp cocoa/baking chocolate
2 cups of powdered sugar
1 tbsp of soy milk
Cream all ingredients together until you have a thick, creamy consistency. I haven't achieved the perfect balance between the right consistency and the right amount of sweetness yet.
Along with being obsessed with finding the perfect recipe for Mother's Day, I've also been fascinated with pin-up girls and fancy feathers. Especially peacock ones to wear in my hair.
 Labels: covet, foodie call, sketchbook
Monday, May 05, 2008
your love is a perfect blindfold for me
 Labels: sketchbook
Friday, April 25, 2008
What I Drew This Week:
I find I do better drawings while talking on the phone with out-of-town friends. It just works better on a subconscious level. Maybe that's true of everything, you just respond to what's instinctual rather than over analyze everything (as for anyone who knows me, knows that I'm apt to do).
Happy Friday, friends! I hope you all have fun and restful weekends planned, I know mine is pretty chock full but I'm still trying to squeeze some quality time in to just bake and clean out my closet and run some last minute errands for Ryan's birthday weekend extravaganza ;) Perhaps even some time to take myself out on a date. I need to be wooed.Labels: sketchbook
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Classics
So here's another sketch I did last night while I was on the phone with Laura. I thought she'd be a perfect compliment for a post about my desire to read more classics. In college, we were never required to take any proper literature classes -- I skirted by on a diet of film studies classes since, well, I love film. And there was that whole Film major thing going on the first few years. So while I saw Breathless and Un Chien Andalou about three times each, and wrote extensive term papers on the merits of The Graduate and The Matrix, I never once touched a Hemingway, Wharton, or Steinbeck (for class, anyway). These are the hallmarks of a hippie college founded on the scripture of John Muir and a writing department founded on the second wave of the New York School.
So now, in these next few years between Right Now, art school, and then Grad School, I want to read a solid grip of (modern) classics. Here's a list to start:
1. Madame Bovary, Flaubert
2. Timequake, Vonnegut
3. On The Road, Kerouac
4. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde
5. Vanity Fair, Thackeray
6. Middlemarch, EliotLabels: books, sketchbook
IF: Fail
"She failed to get her head on straight."Labels: illustration friday, sketchbook
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Hang On, Little Tomato
This was a concept sketch I did for an Illustration Friday prompt a few weeks ago. I never got around to finishing it, but I was rather fond of Little Miss 100% Love so I thought I'd share. Maybe she'll become a painting.
Quite honestly lately, I've felt like going underground for awhile. Hiding underwater from the stormy weather stirring outside and waiting to drown me. Lots of nights spent in hot baths, reading The Seas (which is almost perfect stormy weather reading), and sketch-sketch-sketching away in my sketchbook.
I'm gathering myself and working towards my main goal this year: applying to art school in the fall. "Goals that you keep to yourself are just castles on the beach. If you're determined to achieve something, tell people about it and ask them to help you stick with it." You guys'll help me stick to it, right?
Another way to stay underwater for me is loving food. Not in a gluttonous, American way. In a two-hours-spent-browsing-through-Whole-Foods and caramel-custard-from-scratch kind of way. This article in the L.A. Times about oysters is pretty much my idea of porn. Someday, I'll become an accidental foodie.Labels: foodie call, mean reds, sketchbook
Friday, January 25, 2008
Give a Little Love.
One of the school applications I'm looking at poses the ever-threatening essay question "Who are your three major artistic influences in your discipline, how have they contributed to the world globally, why they are important to you, and how are you going to change the world?"
This question is so challenging on so many levels -- first, I don't know that I have three major artistic influences in any one discipline. I find inspiration across the board of art, writing, crafts, music, & even sometimes Art. My inspiration is born in films and folklore and old faded photographs. How can you be expected to pick one (or three) artists' body of work in one discipline to represent your influences?
I'll be thinking on this for awhile, since I have a good chunk of time before the application is due -- and of course I won't take the argumentative route since I was born with the albatross of Asian Guilt around my neck. However I did want to share this adorable artist I found via the Craftzine blog. Mizna Wada has a playful illustration style influenced by Japanese horror comics. I have no idea what that means, but I am totally digging her Dios de Los Muertos-inspired cute.Labels: inspiration, sketchbook
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Brushing the summer dust out of my eyes.
Dreamy crocheted neckwarmer courtesy of Etsy seller JewelLace. Perfect summer-to-autumn transition wear.
I'm trying my hand with gouache again, after a rather lackluster experience in a Color Theory class a few summers ago. Acrylics are too cloying for coloring my sketchbook, and watercolors are rarely the effect I'm looking for. I love flat, opaque, dreamy and bold. This doll of a gal is dressed in Erin Fetherston's Fall & Winter 2007 collection. I didn't mean for her expression to be so sour, but I'm probably channeling my frustration with a sore throat/mean cold rearing its ugly head.
In other news, I'm actually moving along with several of my priority projects for October, which include:
- studying for the GREs
- redesigning this site
- read three books (at least)
- finish a short story
- finish two paintings
- decorate & bake for Halloween
- clean out closet, hem & mend
- sew red riding hood cape costume
- make skirts and napkinsLabels: artsy girl, fashion love, lists, sketchbook
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Illustration Friday - The Blues
Acrylic in a sketchbook, Warming up to the Blues for Illustration Friday. This is my first submission; I'm very excited that I finally contributed! Influenced by the matryoshka dolls popping up everywhere from The Small Object to Fred Flare to Anthropologie. Now time to burrow into the Martha Stewart Halloween Holiday issue, while ignoring the vile creatures Bear tries to eat on television (Man Vs. Wild). I sincerely hope you had a fantastic weekend.Labels: artsy girl, illustration friday, sketchbook
Monday, September 24, 2007
Travel Essentials
I'm mostly packed and ready to go, though I am very sad to leave my little boy and little dog. My travel essentials include Martha Stewart Holiday, Allure, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, my red journal, and a delicious pack of new colored pens. Have you ever taken a look at the Paper Mate logo? The two hearts are just adorable enough to brighten up your office space. Sure, I may be over-prepared for the one hour flight, but I'm anticipating the wait time that will probably in total exceed my time in the air. I'm looking forward to catching up on episodes of This American Life and getting some actual reading done.
For my last dinner before the trip, I made Cappellini in Fresh Tomato Cream Sauce from VeganYumYum's site. Mine wasn't vegan however, because I shredded up some gruyere instead of using nutritional yeast. It was mighty delicious and completely demolished within ten minutes.
I'll leave you for the next two days with this sketch I did over the weekend. Most of the paint happened because I was trying to use up the acrylic palette I was working from on another painting. You'll see the painting when it's done, it's going through some awkward growing pains. For right now, a tribute to the rain finally coming to LA.
 Labels: domestic goddess, foodie call, sketchbook
Monday, September 17, 2007
Hallow-ready!
Thanks for the encouraging words on my last post, friends! Here were two more from that night of sketching, hope you enjoy them.
Who else is excited for Halloween? I'm pretty sure Halloween is my favorite holiday because (a) costumes, (b) candy, (c) the creative noir decorations, and (d) lack of family obligations. The scary becomes corny and folkloric, and I just adore the autumn-infused decorations. You bet your bottom dollar that I will be making these cute witchy cupcakes from Martha Stewart. Good Thing: Martha (and her editors) post all the recipes, crafts, etc. on the encyclopedia of Martha (also known as her website).
I also hope to have another pumpkin carving night with friends, while watching Nightmare Before Christmas and eating too much candy corn. I'm going to be Little Red Riding Hood this year, a project simple enough to use my sewing machine & coordinate with Ryan without being the uncreative gross couple. Anyway, it's time to take Lucy out for a walk again soon and study for the GREs -- have a wonderful evening, good friends!Labels: holidays, sketchbook
Sunday, September 16, 2007
What I Did On My Summer Vacation
Some sketches I did during the move, when all I had left in the apartment were some crappy Crayola doodling markers, a pile of magazines to be recycled and my sketchbook. 10 minutes, no erasing.Labels: artsy girl, sketchbook
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