The tree, progress

Had some really busy days lately, so not a lot of time to work on this. I'm getting myself geared up to offer some commission work, and I  have to work out prices and how many I should do at once... and gear myself up emotionally.

However, this little project has been fun to putz around with over the last few days, and I'm really excited to see how things turn out :D

 

Also, I've had the weirdest problem today, in that everything I've eaten tasted terribly bitter. So I had some cranberry juice, because that's supposed to taste bitter. It's the only thing that's tasted good to me today. So weird.

Whoops, a bit late

Alternate title: how not to shade lots of soft fur.

As you can see, my digital work... needs work. 

Here's a weird furry thing, for your enjoyment :D

Hey, lookit that-

...Art and food :D

 

I decided to try turning that little sketch from yesterday into an oil painting/potential mixed media peice. Here's the first hour or so. I'm going to have to slash the canvas or something in the end because there were some really bad gouges in it when I got it that I tacked back together just enough to be able to paint over, but it'd take a lot of paint and a better patch job than I did to really fix the tear.

 

A really awesome friend bought me some goat cheese and a tomato, so I got some asparagus and tossed it all together. I think the asparagus might be even better with the cheese than the tomato...

Food adyentures!

So... this one time, I couldn't write the word adventure... it was kind of hilarious. The poster ended up reading 'adyentures' because after four or five tries and I couldn't get it right I'm pretty sure we ended up just sticking on the shape with the mangled word on it.
Anyway... actually, that kind of worked in better than I intended. Dinner tonight was kind of that process.
I realized I had shrimp, then that I had yogurt, then that I had lime juice and orange juice. No real idea how that was going to tie together, just that it needed to all go into the same dish. There were several near misses through the process of cobbling this one together, and for a bit there everything I added just made it worse.
First off, you know how when you open a large container of yogurt, then let it sit for a bit, it gets that liquidy condensation stuff? That's important.
To start out, I thawed a small handful of shrimp, or set it to thaw while I made a sauce.
I took my greek honey yogurt condensation (that kind of sounds... really gross. oh well) and whipped in just enough yogurt to make it completely opaque but about the texture of syrup. About two or three tablespoons of that went into the saucepan with a generous drizzle of lime juice, four teaspoons of orange juice, a quarter teaspoon of salt and a touch less than that of fresh-ground black pepper. let that come to a simmer and then tossed in the shrimp and covered the pan.
At this point I remembered my meager spice collection and started sniffing through, and discovered my rosemary garlic blend. A generous helping of that went in and I tossed the shrimp in the sauce a bit and covered it again and went to heat up some leftover jasmine rice.
It actually came out really nicely, and letting it simmer covered like that actually re-constituted the little diced garlic bits in the spice mix. However, I let it simmer too long, and the sauce condensed a bit too much, so when I do it again, I'll either not let it go so long, or I'll figure out something to add at the end to tone down the sauce after the shrimp has had a chance to soak in the stronger flavor.
.
.
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And once again, I neglected to take a photo before it was eaten... I've got to get better at this. I halfway considered taking a pic of the shrimp tails and unfinished rice XD
Oh well. It'll become a habit. Eventually. :D
So, here's a quick doodle of what it kind of might have looked like, tadaaaa.

Class doodles are the best

So, I was sitting there at Institute (a free scripture-study class they offer around here) falling asleep after a really long day, and this really awesome old water-stained piece of paper fell out of the back of my scriptures, where, apparently, I had stuck it absolutely ages ago... 

So, I did this:

It actually kept me awake pretty well. I'm glad. Class was really great today.

Where I've been the last week...

There was this:

(I didn't take these images. I lent my camera to a friend, who took my camera down to southern Utah to photograph the solar eclipse. My price being that I got to have digital copies of all of them :D ) 

 And this:

I've signed up for the summer NANO event!! I'm going to actually try to get this done this time around. I'm planning to use this time to flesh out the storyline for the webcomic I want to start.

And some of this:

 

NOT FOR ME. It would appear that I have been conscripted as the local wedding dress consultant XD I've been wedding dress shopping with so many friends now... It is a great opportunity to do some research for an upcoming project, though... 

But, mostly this:

It just so happens that I get really awful migraines on a decently regular basis. Last week was... rough. I should apologize to my roommates again. I was alternating between grumpy old bear mode and 'i am the couch lump' mode...

But now I'm back :D

(ugly drawing is ugly)

An owl a day...

...and I have no good way to finish that statement. Any ideas? (I'm just too tired for this right now)
On another note, I think I got Livestream figured out today :) Maybe I'll have to set something up soon and actually put it to use.

Chocolate Cake

With chocolate frosting and cherry pie filling. :)

 I attempted to plate it all nice and pretty...and ended up just getting distracted playing with the cherry sauce.

The brownie mix I used called for about a quarter cup of oil and two eggs... I think. I ended up using a bit less than 1/4 cup water, a little over 3/4 cup oil and two eggs. The frosting was meant to be a ganache, but it ended up being more of a rich chocolate frosting. My friend had managed to find a cherry pie filling with no corn syrup, (which tastes a ton better anyway) so I was able to have as much of those as I wanted!

Food note for the day...

If you are preparing elk, this is pretty simple and turned out rather spectacularly today:
saute onions in butter until they just begin to caramelize.
cut meat into strips about an inch thick and add to onions.
brown and turn the heat down a touch so nothing burns.
cover, stirring occasionally, until the meat is nearly cooked through
add sliced mushrooms, salt, pepper
add a touch of milk to the pan and stir with the juices in the pan, add a bit of flour as desired to thicken into a gravy.
Enjoy the awesome.

We also steamed some green beans with a bit of butter, then when the beans were about ready we added sliced roma tomatoes. That we had with goat cheese. We also made spaetzle and grated gouda over it.

It was a very rich meal. I should have taken pictures. The green beans and tomatoes and cheese looked so gorgeous on the plate.

My stomach can't decide whether to be happy at all the good stuff I ate or upset over how much too much of the good stuff I ate. :)

So, if you saw my first post ever...

you'll recognize this character :)

Digitally inked and flat colors dropped in. I'm starting to like her. I may just have to give her a story. Any suggestions?

Moar... of the same

more figure drawing practice for today :) This is my favorite from the bunch. I think I'm getting the hang of the tablet, finally.

So, now that I have time to establish the habit, this is going to turn into a daily sketch/food blog. I will sketch, I will cook, I will sketch what I cook... :D
This weekend I decided I had too many eggs and they needed to be used. Somehow that turned into making shortbread cookies Saturday night, and then custard tartlettes with shortbread crusts last night. The cookies were far prettier but got eaten before I thought to take a picture, so here's some shots of the tarts and notes on what -not- to do with custard tarts (hahah, I find a lot of those things out...)

Okay, so things not to do:
-don't be impatient when cooking the custard. That just messes up the texture, and you'll end up with some weird sort of tapioca thing going on. (I'm hoping that the shortbread crusts will mask the texture enough that no one will really notice...)
-don't overcook the crusts. I had wanted to throw them back in the oven after putting the custard in to brown the tops so it looked pretty, but I let the crusts cook fully before-hand and couldn't put them back in for fear of singeing the edges.
But I think the biggest don't is just don't worry. I figure now I've done it once the next attempt should be much more successful. Also, I'll be giving these away, so I don't have to eat them all myself and everyone who's getting them will just be happy for the free desserts XD
Oh, and for a little extra something I dropped a spoonful of cherry preserves in the bottom of each crust before baking them. I don't know if it will be too much or just right. I'll let you know once we've actually tried them.

Figure drawing practice

Now that finals are over and I'm recovering from the traditional post-semester-sinus infection, things are going to start happening around here!

I'm trying to get used to drawing on my tablet, so this is some of what I did today (these are all between 30 sec-6 min). A bit rough, but I think I'm getting the hang of this thing.