Another creature

Here's another creature. This one's not morose, but he's not quite ecstatic. I'd describe him as mildly suspicious.

Ecstatic Creature

I looked over some of my recent posts and noticed how many morose characters I've been drawing. I decided to draw something very happy (if unstable). I drew the basic shape by candlelight during a brief power outage tonight (it's really windy here today).

Food

Today's creation is a kitchen creation rather than something I drew. This morning, I made cinnamon rolls using a recipe from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan Brunch (highly recommended!). They turned out well enough that I ate four and a half of them today. Sigh. They're not as fatty or decadent as Cinnabon, perhaps, but they're certainly not health food.


For dinner, I made butternut squash ravioli with frizzled sage, a sundried tomato/fresh tomato/tomato paste sauce, and some kale cooked with garlic and fresh lemon. The ravioli filling was sort of creamy and ricotta-esque, thanks to some water-soaked raw cashews, a bit of firm tofu, a sauteed onion and some garlic, and a little lemon juice, which were all blended up with the roasted squash and some herbs. I used the cheater's method of making ravioli, which is using won ton wrappers instead of fresh home-made pasta dough, because I ran out of flour after the cinnamon buns and I don't have any semolina anyway, but I had some wrappers in the freezer. The squash, kale, and fresh tomato were all from the local farmer's market.

Fudgy Doughball

I posted an update to Facebook yesterday declaring that I felt like a fudgy doughball after compulsively eating a large quantity of homemade brownies. My mom suggested that I try drawing that. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a visual representation of how I felt yesterday evening.

The brownies were really tasty, by the way! Thanks to Dreena Burton for the fantastic recipe.

A shorpy face

As you may know, shorpy.com is one of my favorite websites, and I always find something interesting to inspire my drawings. Here's a sketch of the face of a schoolboy.

Making a connection

Not sure what these guys are - alien bears?

Wallflower

I drew this while watching Dexter (Season 3) tonight. That show just keeps getting better! I don't know how it's possible.

Creature

I drew this tonight while we were watching I Love You, Man. I've only really been drawing on the computer since I got to Toronto, so it felt really good putting pencil to paper. I added some digital color.

I'm not really sure what this guy's story is. Any ideas?

Agony and Iron-y

Sean hates ironing more than just about anything. I drew this little impression of him while he tackled a couple of shirts tonight.

Colorful conversation

Here's another image related to the project I'm working on.

Illustration Friday - Infinite

This week's Illustration Friday theme is "Infinite." The first thing I thought of was the night sky.

Magnifying glass

Here's another image I created for the project I'm working on. I tried drawing something more fun for my daily post, but I think I'm getting sick so I just decided to upload this instead. Send good-health-vibes my way, please!

Stationery

This is something I drew today for a project I'm working on. If you're a particularly diligent follower, you might recognize the pram image from this post back in my earlier blogging days.

Girl at night

Thumbs up

Here's a little guy I created to encourage me to keep on unpacking our seeming thousands of boxes. It'll be done someday.

His face and head are based on a Faces in Places post of the bottom of a skateboard.

Happy ghost

Jowly dog

This is a quick cartoony sketch of a jowly dog. We're in the midst of unpacking, so soon I should be able to post some more varied stuff!

What I ate today (and yesterday)

The annual Toronto Vegetarian Food Fair was held this weekend, much to my delight. It was like paradise for a vegan. Hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people were in attendance, and Sean and I snagged some delicious eats. Here is a representation of a selection of some of my favorites, each item drawn with a single continuous line.

From the top row, left to right:

- a Chinese steamed bun - we had about five total, two different types
- a delicious seitan tempura roll, deep fried and tipped on either end with black sesame seeds
- a slice of apple cake - the perfect middle ground between a moist cinnamon cake and an apple pie
- I'm actually not quite sure what this was, but it was delicious! It was a flaky puff pastry filled with gingery veggies and some sort of faux meat - chicken, perhaps?
- a coconut spiral (sort of like a cinnamon bun, but with coconut instead of cinnamon)
- faux eel - I've never head real eel, but Sean said that it was remarkably similar
- a samosa - we had a couple of different kinds from different vendors
- a very yummy kebab
- a cookie, baked by the wonderful Terry Hope Romero and given out after her cooking demonstraton (she's co-author of two of my favorite books, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and Veganomicon, and her latest book, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, comes out in November!)

The Toronto Vegetarian Association did a really great job, and I'm already looking forward to next year's event.

Memory test

I decided to see what would happen if I tried to draw a map of the US from memory, with all of the states included. I had 49 and couldn't figure out which one I was missing, until Sean came in and took a look at it and pointed out that Indiana wasn't on there. Some of the map is a complete mess (sorry, Michigan and Indiana. Oops, Louisiana...)! Oh well. I'm happy with how certain areas turned out. In my defense, I haven't looked at a map of the US in quite awhile!

Here's the correct layout:

Octobuddy

Here's a little octopus buddy loosely based on a Faces in Places post of a windmill.

Metal creature

This is another image inspired by Faces in Places.

Sad guy

Another baby

Here's another baby - see the post from a few days ago for a very different approach.

(And no, Heidi, I'm not hinting at anything!)

Gravity (old work)

Many of you have probably seen this already, but I am not up to posting a new item today, so here's the poster design I created for Sara Bareilles' tour poster design contest earlier this year (it won!). I got a bunch of goodies and a visit with her after her fabulous Hotel Cafe concert in LA back in March.

Illustration Friday: Strong

This week's illustration Friday theme is strong. I decided to portray a circus strongman, and did him in the digital paper cutout style that I started working with when developing my yet-to-be-finished portfolio.

Antlerman

This is somewhat based on a photo I saw on a friend's Facebook page awhile ago. I thought it was interesting, so I flagged it.

Gene

Ok, so this isn't a Niagara-related post. We had a nice day trip down there, though. Today's post is a sketch I did awhile ago of a guy named Gene. He's a very good drummer who posed a couple of times for a costumed figure drawing class that Sean and I took together at SMC.

Conversation piece

Here are some chatterboxes. I'm not sure why this image looks so fuzzy, but if you click on it it'll be crisp.

Tomorrow's the start of a four-day weekend up here, so we're going to check out Niagara Falls! Maybe I'll draw something Falls-inspired tomorrow.

Before: Our backyard

Here's a photo of our backyard in Toronto. I'm hoping that this will be a "Before" photo and that my creation will be an "After" picture of a much prettier space after I've had a chance to attack it with my newly-acquired trowel and clippers. The detail shot is the pile of clippings and branches I've already started building. It'll be a bit of a challenge, since it's such a shady area and the soil is terrible. Since this isn't much of a post, I'm going to include some photos of some of the Toronto flora and fauna I came across today while walking around our neighborhood, the ravine behind our house, and High Park.


(I'm not sure what these are - do any of you know? The outside layer of skin on the ripe ones is slightly translucent.)

The squirrels here come in all different colors - the ones dressed all in black are very chic.

A baby

I'm starting to come up with some ideas for a project that I might be working on. It involves babies, so here's a baby sketch - the end style probably won't look like this, though.