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

The Stinky Soap Adventures

I sent these drawings to my niece and nephew in West Africa, in a package along with two bars of stinky soap (Grandpa's Pine Tar Soap-which has been highly recommended for heat rashes). As a child, I don't know if I would have been very excited to receive a couple of bars of stinky soap in the mail, so the drawings depict some of the fantastic adventures they could have with a bar of stinky soap, if they use their imaginations.

Here, H uses the bar of stinky soap to top off her fantastic tower of blocks, before C knocks it down (he's going through a destructive stage).

And here H and C sail away together on a great bar of stinky soap over the ocean to faraway adventures. Stinky soap, I think, is very good for the imagination.

Ink (Faber-Castell pens) on Paper

International Foods & Etc.

Here is a wonderful facet of America, and especially the DC area: the wealth of international recipes and culinary traditions that have floated to our shores along with our poor, tired, and hungry huddled masses.

These illustrations were inspired by the international vegetarian food fair put on by the members of the Capitol Memorial Church in DC. The members hail from all over the world, and so they hold an annual food fair for the community, where everyone can come and sample as much as they can eat. This year they are also putting out a much-anticipated cookbook.

Each drawing loosely illustrates one of five rather wide geographical regions represented.

First, Latin America, and where would we be without tortillas and tamales and cherimoyas and flan?

The Caribbean is another near neighbor, so it makes sense that Caribbean food would influence our diet. As the crossroads of the world, Caribbean traditions have also been impacted in turn by African, Indian, Spanish and American influences, to name a few. But when I drew this, I was mostly thinking about islands, music, and pina coladas.

Europe and North America were lumped together into a single region, so I envisioned European immigrants meeting in the great melting pot of New York to share a food that has probably been called both European and American: Pizza.

A lot of American food, especially in rural areas, hails from Europe. I used to work in a retirement home in rural Pennsylvania where most of the residents claimed German/Ukranian/Hungarian heritage. There the four main food groups were potatoes, tomatoes, meat, and sauerkraut.

Asia includes a number of different countries and cultures, but I just focused on India and South Korea in this drawing, attempting to describe South Korea in careful and aesthetic rectangles, and India in overflowing circles of all sizes.

I love Indian food. I want some right now.

Africa is another wide region. But I focused on the part of Africa I am familiar with, West Africa, and especially West African street food. Here a student is buying red-red (fried plantains with red beans). Red-red exemplifies what I love about African street food. There are the basic ingredients, plantains and beans, and then all of these other little things you can add, or not, depending on your taste: palm oil, hot pepper, and garri (dried, grated cassava), at no extra charge.

Now I'm really really hungry.

All illustrations are in markers on white paper

(Faber-Castell pens, actually. I am a huge, huge fan of these for drawing)

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.

From Ghana with Love

A sketch is a moment in time captured on paper. These drawings were made during long quiet days in Ghana, where I lived and worked for two years, and where I learned a lot about how to relax and appreciate the day. The drawing above captures a sudden rainstorm seen through a tear in the patchwork curtains over a barred window.

Below, another expat friend, inside her bungalow, sitting and talking late into a warm evening while her dog sleeps on another chair.
Her dog, Jaro.

Ink, Markers and Gel Pens on Paper

Monkeys

Sketches of monkeys done at the Baobeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary in Ghana. The Black and White Colobus Monkeys live high in the trees and scorn anything human. Mona Monkeys hang out in the thickets near the ground and around garbage dumps, picking up discarded people food. When I was watching, the juvenile monkeys were 'babysitting', sitting in the upper branches of a bush where the babies played, while their mothers were all off doing their own thing.

Ink on Paper