Thai-inspired peanut lime noodles with soy curls

I made these awhile ago and had forgotten that I took a picture. They were very tasty Thai-style peanut sauce noodles. I think I'll try this again sometime soon. The addition of crunchy cucumber at the end was really nice, and something I always forget is an option for hot noodle dishes.

Acorn squash ravioli

I made some acorn squash/cashew ricotta last night, with fresh tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, parsley, and a really tasty store-bought organic tomato sauce. Yum!

Unfortunately, the picture doesn't look that appetizing.

Happy upcoming Easter

Can you guess what this is?

Yet another cloud monster

Another cloud monster

Good and Bad

"Painted" tree

Here's a tree that I painted digitally.

Wedding bears

I was just looking through old files on my computer and came across this one, which I'd completely forgotten about. I think it was something I drew while I was thinking of different images we could put on our wedding invitations back in 2008. I think I really disliked this when I made it, but looking back at it now I'm thinking it's kinda cute.

Purple fish

Turquoise crocheted guy

I crocheted part of this while watching TV and finished it up at my knitting group. When I got home from the knitting group, I ended up starting a new crochet project and realized that my wrist is really sore. I'm afraid I'm developing a repetitive motion stress injury! I'll have to lay off the yarn and start doing some more drawing or painting, but I've been going through artist's block, so I'm a little concerned about this.

Crocheted Teddy

Kid in a kitchen

I drew this in Painter. I'm going to start trying to provide more spatial context for my sketches.

Four-legged crocheted creature

I've been behind on posting, but I have been making things. Here's a little blue guy.

Seal-like creature

I crocheted this using the leftover gray yarn from my mittens. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but Sean and I both thought it looked seal-like. I have a little more yarn, so I might try to add a tail.

Mittens!

I knitted a pair of Newfie Mittens! I'm almost sad that it's warmed up enough in Toronto that I may not need these until next year. Almost.

Sean

My friend Jee-Hye pointed out that Sean's posted a number of drawings/sketches/3-D models of me, but I never seem to draw him. Here's a sketch of him I drew last night while he was drawing this one of me. I don't love it, but it somewhat resembles him.

Monster

This is a monster who has just discovered that his troll doll collection has been stolen.

Prompt word play

Sort of like in Illustration Friday or Pictionary, we were given conceptual words in class last week, and had a few minutes to create a drawing based on our card. Can you guess what my word was? Answer is upside down below :).

ǝɔuɐןɐq :ɹǝʍsuɐ

Sewn paper

One of the activities from last week's art class was to draw a random assignment from a "mystery box." I drew a baggie full of torn pieces of thick paper, a spool of thread, a glue stick, and an embroidery needle. The instructions were to use every piece of paper in constructing some kind of image. I was to use no other materials besides those that were in the bag (no other drawing implements). You can't really see where I stitched rather than glued in this picture, but you'll get the basic idea. It was a fun project - I think I might try it again at home.

Deep dish blueberry tart

There's a great vegan bakery here in Toronto called Sweets from the Earth. They make fabulous cheesecakes, cookies, and a lot of other products, but my favorite of those I've tried might just be their deep dish blueberry tart.

Unfortunately for me, the tart (which is like a mini-pie and about the size of a standard muffin) costs about $5.50. I decided to try making some of my own. If I do say so myself, they turned out pretty well!

A monster from two angles

This is a friendly blue monster. I think Snorkle would be a cute name for him.

Beer

I drew this at a sketching group last week, and just added some digital color in Photoshop.

Sky

This is part of the background of a digital painting I'm working on. I was about to keep going but kind of liked how it looked. I'll post the full version when I'm finished with it.

Appleseed

I drew this last week in Illustrator but am having a hard time coming up with a background that I like. It's Johnny Appleseed, and in the unsatisfactory background that I've drawn but not posted, there are trees springing up behind him and he's throwing seeds out in front of him as he runs along.

And more

And more. I think this could be an interesting quilt design.

Eyes closed

More playing around in Painter.

Art and Play

This week in my art class, we focused on the importance of play in creating art. Each student had about ten minutes to combine (in any way they saw fit) a random image cut from a children's book and a random gargoyle-like grotesque stone face into one drawing. I had an image of a duck wearing an apron with the helmeted head you see above, and I thought this was a funny way of putting them together. It was really interesting to see the ways in which each of us interpreted the assignment and the solutions so differently.

Crocheted creature

We've been catching up on season 5 of Lost this week, and since so much of it was shot with a shaky camera effect, I ended up doing a bunch of crocheting while watching the TV out of the corner of my eye. Here's a little creature I made. He's about four inches tall, and made out of Knit Picks cotton worsted-weight yarn.

Apple cake

I made this apple cake a couple days ago, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

However, I was so excited to sample it that I just turned the bundt pan over as soon as I'd finished taking the above picture (right after it came out of the oven), and started smacking the bottom of it, thinking the cake would just slide right out in one pretty piece. It did come out, but as you can see from the below picture, gently loosening up the sides and waiting for it to cool a little more would have been a good idea! I'm glad I wasn't planning on serving it to guests. Lesson learned!

Painter "pencil" sketch

I'm acquainting myself with the various tools within Painter. Here's something I drew while playing with the 2B pencil tool.

Line drawing