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!

Progress Report

Hey, I've been taking art classes and drawing daily for a couple of months now, and guess what? Either I'm getting better, or feeling more confident, but I think I'm improving.

A few examples.

#1. The assignment (from Koosje Koene's Draw it Like it's Hot!) was to combine some food and some lettering in preparation for the big final one, which is to draw a recipe well enough to submit to They Draw And Cook, a fun recipe website for artists and artists-to-be.

I drew the jalapeño freehand, from memory and directly in watercolour. I was shocked at how well it turned out. The lettering is based on the font called "curlz" that came with my system. It's one of my favourites, and I like the way it matches the curl of the pepper's stem. It got a bit crowded towards the edge of the page, on the right, but it was only an exercise, so I left it.

Watercolour on Strathmore Mixed Media 500 Series Sketchbook

#2. I drew this other chili pepper as a colour pencil and stamping exercise. Koosje calls this style "messy" and it sure is, but there is a charm about it, as a contrast with such a carefully drawn subject, but it would also go well with a cartoony style subject, I'm sure.

Colour pencil and ink on Strathmore Mixed Media Series 500 Sketchbook

(Yes, my "final exam" recipe will have something to do with chili peppers.)

#3. Meanwhile, I wanted to test the format for They Draw And Cook, so I created this spread for a typical Mexican drink.

Can you tell that I miss Mexico? (I lived there for 20+ years.)

Watercolour, watercolour pencil and ink on Arches cold press paper

What I learned from this sketch is I should draw lines with a ruler first, or risk everything being crooked like here, and hours of work could be wasted if this were my actual submission! Otherwise, I think it worked quite well.*

More importantly, I know what I would change if I were to re-do it.

Strike that! More importantly, I had fun doing all of these (and others not so worthy of publication).

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* And next time I won't forget to check the recipe itself: on this one, I forgot the sweetener! (In case you want to make it, just add sweetener to taste, be it agave nectar honey, or even sugar.)

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A Classic Go-To Recipe

First Assignment: Draw a Recipe - Click to enlarge

In my first restaurant, the menu changed daily. It was a limited menu with one soup, one appetizer, three main courses, and one dessert.

When I was out of ideas (or time) for an appetizer, the life-saving dish was Egg Mimosa. It was delicious, the customers loved it, and my kitchen helper liked to make it because it was easy. A truly winning combination!

So when I learned that I had to illustrate a recipe for Draw It Like It's Hot, it was the first thing that came to mind--even after forty years!

One of my fellow students--a French girl--wrote that she made many of those eggs as a child. That reminded me that it's a perfect dish for a child's lunch, just add a slice of whole-grain bread and you've got a pretty complete meal.

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Learning How To Draw Food Is Fun!!

Some of my best memories as a French chef have to do with how beautiful food can look. Not as an elaborate finished dish--in its natural state.

Let's face it: food is beautiful!

I remember so vividly the huge stock pot with its vegetables and herbs floating on top. The trays of strawberries at the farmers' market where I went every day when I had my first restaurant. The displays at the cheese shop. A colourful salad.

After that, when I travelled through Europe, I marvelled at the variety and artistry of the fruit and vegetable displays in Italy, and wondered at the immense piles of parsley at the public market in Ibiza. What on earth did the Catalans make that required so much parsley?

From chef to food illustrator seemed like a natural transition, so when I found out about Koosje Koene's Draw It Like It's Hot, I just had to sign up. $69 for four weeks: my kind of price!

The first week of the current session ends tomorrow. For my first week's assignments, I submitted these two sketches:

"Shopping List" - Did you notice it's in alphabetical order?

"Afternoon Snack" - The real point of this is the reflection of the outdoor scene in the knife.

I am doing all my sketches for these classes in a new Strathmore Series 500 Mixed Media Sketchbook, 5 ½" by 8" (14 by 20 cm). It's not perfect, and the "portrait" format is a nice change from the Moleskine's "landscape" orientation, but the Moleskine's paper is better for wet media.

These few weeks of art classes are the most fun I've had in a long, long time!

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The Perils Of Drawing With Ink

This is a self-imposed assignment that I gave myself because I'm between courses this week-end. Sketchbook Skool ended on Friday, and Koosje Koene's Draw It Like It's Hot starts on Monday.

Compare the copy with the original*, and you'll see why if it hadn't been for Tommy Kane's voice in my head, saying "Finish the Drawing!", I would have scrapped my first attempt.

Oh, well, those are the perils of drawing with ink--as in no pencils allowed at all!

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

By the way, if you can't find the mistake at first glance, you're in good company (maybe)! When I uploaded the sketch to the skool site, Tommy himself commented, "If you didn't say anything I would never have noticed." Perhaps he was just being nice.

I can't help wondering if and how the mistake could have been avoided by using Marc Taro Holmes' "dot plotting" technique--if only I could figure out how to apply it to my own drawings.

The other part that bothered me was how the words "Ontario Fruit" had turned out. I must have been very tired when I got there--the drawing took several hours--and afterwards I felt I could have done better.

So this morning I re-did that part. Just to see if I could. I'm glad I didn't realize I would spend HOURS copying two words!

As an exercise in patience and "seeing" (looking at the shapes, not the subject), it was worth it, and I like how it turned out--don't you?

Pilot Drawing Pen, Watercolour Pencil (for the red),
Tombow Calligraphy Pen (for the black)

* I took the photo afterwards; the drawing was done from the actual basket.

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