It Was Fun, But I'm Not Doing It Again!

The final assignment in Draw It Like It's Hot! -- Koosje Koene's online course in food drawing -- was to put together a recipe and submit it to They Draw And Cook, a website that describe itself as "Recipes illustrated by artists from around the world". And indeed, that's what it is.

I never imagined that I would agonize so much and for so long over such a simple order, but I did, and later I will give all the gory details, but for now I will just show you what I came up with in the end, and submitted to They Draw and Cook:

Click to enlarge.

Even though I cheated ever so slightly on the image proportions, my submission was accepted, and here is the proof: http://www.theydrawandcook.com/recipes/pickled-jalapeno-peppers-by-gina-bisaillon

For me, the best thing that came out of this project--several good things, really--among them:

1. I stuck it to the end, and finished the drawing. For this I have to thank Tommy Kane (see my previous entry about this and the Sketchbook Skool course); I kept hearing his voice in my head, saying "Finish the drawing!";

2. The picture of the jar turned out really nice, and in fact, because the whole thing is a collage, I will detach it and keep it as a small painting (the jar part is 3" x 3");

Watercolour and colour pencil on Arches hot press paper. Click to enlarge.

3. Although I used a photo of a jar as a model for the container, and I did cut a carrot to make sure I had the pattern right, everything else about that project came out of my imagination. Although this may not seem like such a feat to you, it's a breakthrough for me.

4. I learned to use all my different versions of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements to clean up a picture, and best of all, to stitch several parts of an image to create a panorama. You pretty well have to acquire this ability in order to submit a recipe to They Draw And Cook because most scanners will not accept anything longer than letter-size, and TDAC requires submissions to measure 16.66 inches wide and 6.25 inches high (5000 by 1875 pixels)!

This means that now I don't have to worry about photographing an object, a room, a landscape with a special app that I only have on my iPad! Instead, I can just use my regular camera--yay!

The They Draw And Cook website is a very successful project, but to tell the truth, even though most artists I know are pretty good cooks (as for me, I'm a retired chef and my recipe is one I actually use), if I'm going to look for a recipe I will first of all think of one from someone who is first a cook, then an artist maybe, but not the other way around!