Last Cookbook Images, Really

Two last cookbook images. There was a request for another Europe, because, as it turned out, there were no French recipes in the cookbook (a rather minor objection, I thought). The new illustration was designed to represent more of a central and eastern European feel.

There was also a request to move North America out of the urban landscape and into the heartland. I kept basically the same people and their arrangement, but changed the background and the type of food on the table. Better or worse?

both Illustrations Faber-Castell Pens on Paper

Revised International Foods Illustrations

These are my updated international cookbook illustrations. In the end, several regions were split up, and a few were added. I kept three illustrations and made or significantly altered five.

I had done the originals without the benefit of Photoshop, and so I edited them old school style, tracing over everything on a light table an literally cutting and pasting. Actually, I didn't have the benefit of a light table either, but a piece of glass laid across two chairs and a short, shadeless lamp on the floor worked just as well.

India was included as a separate region from the rest of Asia. I thought of spices and a spice market.
This is the updated Asia illustration, where I took the original Indian woman out and replaced her with another Korean woman. I also put different food on the table to reflect the change.
Europe and North America were also split into two separate regions, which made sense. I mostly wanted a man in this one, since most of the illustrations show women cooking, and I wanted to highlight street food.
The Middle East was also added. Since we often automatically think of the Middle East as a great big desert, I wanted to show more of a garden scene.
Last, I changed the Africa illustration, because the previous one, despite my love for red-red and African street food, reinforced a slightly negative stereotype of Africa as being all very rural and underdeveloped. With this one I focused instead on the ideas of family and community, and now I see this as an all-around much stronger picture than the original.

I transferred the street food idea to France (where it is less likely to be seen as offensive, or where I am less likely to care [not really, please don't be offended! I like France]).
North America, the Caribbean, and Latin America stayed the same, only I changed all the borders.

The reason for the ivy in the borders was to tie them in with the cookbook cover, which had ivy on it, and which I did not illustrate.

All Illustrations Ink (Faber-Castell pens) on Paper

Marine Corps Marathon

My younger sister ran in (and completed) the Marine Corps Marathon last Sunday! She also raised money for America Supports You and the Red Cross.

I could not help her run the 26.2 miles (which she managed very well on her own), but I did help her design an illustrated magnet she could send to her sponsors as a thank you.

Oil on Bristol Paper (Image and type completed in Gimp)

The Marine Corps Marathon is called the Marathon of Monuments. It begins in Arlington, winds around the Mall and the Jefferson Memorial, back through Crystal City, and finally finishes at the Iwo Jima Memorial. This design followed that idea, and it was the one my sister ultimately chose for the magnet.

Another option.

Ink on Recycled Paper (Edited in Gimp)

I wanted the logo for America Supports You to be somewhere in the illustration, and I like the simplicity of this idea. I also like the color and texture of the recycled paper as a background.

The final option was a collage. I had an older sketch of the DC skyline I had done for another project and I wanted to recycle it, adding the running figure made from painted sandpaper.

Ink, Oils, Sandpaper and Collage (Completed in Gimp)

Below is the original drawing that I took the skyline from. This was done some time ago for a web story project about a little girl named Gemma who lives in DC. We never ended up using the drawing for the project, but I'm not ready to let it be forgotten in my sketchbook just yet.

Ink (Faber Castell Pens) on Paper

Octopus Garden

Pencil on Paper

This is the original sketch for a painting (below) I made for a friend's new baby boy. The theme of the nursery was "An Octopus Garden", based on the song by the Beatles. Octopuses collect shiny and interesting objects they find on the bottom of the sea and make themselves gardens, which is such a happy thought, thus a happy song about the idea. I was aiming to reflect that happy, safe feeling in the painting, where C is well-cared for by a friendly, albeit eccentric octopus in his undersea garden. I'm not sure what an octopus would collect for his garden, but I imagine buried treasure and old ship anchors would be a part of it!

Oil on Painting Board

(I used a Colourfix[TM] Painting Board, the first time I have used one, and it was really nice, sturdy but flexible, with a nice texture. It came precoated with primer.)

Women of Ghana and Long Bus Journeys - from Sketch to Painting

Marker on Paper

This sketch was quickly done in a crowded bus on the side of the road in Ghana. I believe the bus had broken down and we had been sitting crammed inside for hours, with more hours to go. I was wondering if we would ever get on the road again or if it would be better to get out and try to flag down another ride (and pay for another ride, losing the money I had already paid for my ticket).

The bus ride to the north was almost always miserable because the road was bad in places and the bus companies didn't want to waste good buses on a bad road. Children rode free, but not if they wanted their own seats, which meant that their parents rode the whole way with kids on their laps. Inside the bus, it was hot, especially after a breakdown when we weren't moving. This mother had been sitting with her toddler-sized child for hours and he was tired and cranky and struggling when I made this quick sketch of them, from my own seat a few rows back and across the aisle.

I liked the drawing because of the struggle between mother and son, as if he is fighting his way forth into the world. She tries to create a safe place for him, but is exhausted and frustrated herself. To me it was a metaphor for the whole process of birth and procreation in general, and especially motherhood. Love and pain.

Ink on Paper

Later, as I spent more time with mothers in Ghana, I began to admire more than their strength in hardship. Their lives were full of celebration. I saw this in the multitude of designs of black on white that decorated the cloth they wore for celebratory events. Black and white cloth was worn for weddings, for funeral celebrations, and for baby naming ceremonies and outdoorings. And it was worn for women's ministry groups. On certain days, all the women in my church would dress in black and white designs and stand up and sing praise songs, clapping and dancing and waving white handkerchiefs. And when a new baby was born, they would all head off in the same black and white dresses to joyfully welcome him or her.

Oil paint on a halved Gourd

Eventually, I made a series of paintings attempting to express what I had learned from my Ghanaian women friends. I painted them on calabashes, which are halved gourds turned upside down. Calabashes were used in the kitchen as tools, for washing rice, drinking water, or serving local brews prepared by women. Artists also decorated calabashes in various ways, and the gourds were used in the construction of musical instruments.

The first painting I worked on was from the sketch of the woman and child on the bus. Later paintings were more successful, as I learned to adapt my style and technique to the materials, and for this one, I think I still prefer the original sketch. In terms of content, however, none of the later calabashes managed the level of emotion caught in this child's yellow arms, in his heedless struggle for independence against his formidable, albeit exhausted, mother.

Keeping a sketchbook on hand can salvage something worthwhile even from the pointlessness of a bus breakdown in the middle of a long journey.

For those in the area, the completed paintings will be on exhibit in the Arlington Central Library, Arlington, Virginia, during the month of August.

Orchids

Ink on Paper

Orchids at the National Botanical Gardens in DC. I love wandering around the gardens on a hot day in the capitol. Trying to draw flowers without using color is also interesting.

I don't know if I was nearly as successful as ancient Chinese artists, who made peacocks iridescent and peaches pink without any colored pigments at all. This way they came closer to understanding an object's true nature, according to Victoria Finlay in her book, Color: A Natural History of the Palette (2002, Ballantine). I was looking for a book on color theory and found this one instead at the library. It isn't really about color theory, but more of a history of color, and I highly recommend it.

Colors were for professional painters--who were rather sneered upon by the elite, as creating something necessary but vulgar. Black, on the other hand, was for the gentleman artists, who combined the skills of poetry and painting, and who wanted to portray the landscape of the mind, not of the eye. (p. 91, on the history of the color black during the Tang dynasty)

She goes on to relate a story about Su Dongpo, a scholar-artist living in the eleventh century (p. 92).

Once...Su was criticized for painting a picture of a leafy bamboo using red ink. Not realistic, his critics said gleefully. "Then what color should I have used?" he asked. "Black, of course," came the answer.

One last interesting bit on the history of ink:

From early times both the Persians and the Chinese thought it was desirable to have ink that not only travelled seductively across the paper, but which also smelled wonderful. So they would add perfumes, to make writing the sensual experience that scholars deserved. Sometimes recipes for ink read like the random elements of a love poem: cloves, honey, locusts, the virgin pressing of olives, powdered pearl, scented musk, rhinoceros horn, jade, jasper, as well as, of course--most poignant and most common--that exquisite smoke of pine trees in autumn.
(p. 92)