Tradition!

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and, like last year, I will be spending the day feasting on delicious food at my significant other's parents' house in Long Island.

This year I have a hankering to bring a little LaSota to the table. I won't be celebrating any part of the Thanksgiving weekend with my own blood relatives (a rarity, considering it's my mom's favorite holiday), so I'm going to bring a little of my own tradition to the dinner table tomorrow, gonna represent LaSota style.

And so...I just made my first Spinach Casserole (yes, it deserves to be capitalized). A staple at LaSota holiday dinners, the Spinach Casserole was, I believe, devised as a way to get kids to eat vegetables. The Spinach Casserole, you see, does not taste like vegetables. This is due to a careful (over-)cooking process whereby all nutritional value is squeezed out of several packages of frozen chopped spinach, which is then blended harmoniously with sour cream and dry onion soup mix, then topped off with plenty of butter and bread crumbs and parmesan cheese.

Yum.

Gourmet it ain't, but tradition it is. Yummy tradition.

22 Nov 2009

21 Nov 2009

20 Nov 2009

Scanning Delays...

No, really, I have been doing these drawings every day...it's just been an, um, crazy weekend, so I didn't get around to scanning everything daily for the last couple of days. Tonight is catchup time for the technological side of my Daily Drawing Project! And my scanning skills are still less than stellar...one of these days, soon, I hope, I will become one with my scanner...but that day is not today.

19 Nov 2009

Learning Curve

So I've been told that the quality of my scans is poor, and that the scans are not doing justice to the actual drawings...poorly representing them and all that. I have also noticed this myself...but, for now, my focus is on pumping out these drawings, and my hope is that my scanning skills will improve as I go. Hopefully I will have a bit of a chance this Sunday to put a little more time and love into the technological side of this Daily Drawing Project, and I'll jump up really high on that scanning learning curve! We can only hope...
It's nice to have a project.

18 Nov 2009

17 Nov 2009

16 Nov 2009

Daily Drawing Project

Well...now that I've figured out that using my scanner is oh-so-simple (I'm not doing any image manipulation, mind you, just straight up scanning and cropping...one step at a time, kids!), and now that I've dusted off my pens and gouache, I have spur-of-the-moment decided to embark upon an awesome I-have-no-idea-how-long-it'll-last project. It's my...

DAILY DRAWING PROJECT!

Yessir, I'm gonna make a new drawing every day (or night) and post it right here on this blog...until I grow bored or run out of things I wanna draw or my scanner breaks! (Knock on wood, none of that will happen any time soon...)

Let's see how this crazy scheme pans out...

Oldie but Goodie

Well, now that I've figured out how to use the scanner function on my Epson NX400 (so easy! I had just never tried before), there is no stopping me, kids. I'm going scan-crazy. Now if only I had Photoshop on my laptop...
This image is a gouache drawing I did in early 2006, from a series based on words I grabbed out of Margaret Atwood's The Tent.

Going crazy, time to sketch...

I think it's just been too long since I've put pen or pencil to sketch paper or bristol board or rag paper or...anything! So, until I de-crazify, I think some sketching is in order. No agenda intended. Here's the first two minutes of my efforts (the 80s music station is playing in the background in the other room).

Hoarse and sore...

...is what I am from cheering on the New York City Marathon runners outside my apartment this morning.

It was a great way to start the day, standing on the sidelines, cheering on all of the athletes who have worked so hard to run this marathon.
My favorite parts:
-Shouting out encouragement to individual runners by name (many had written their names on their shirts for this purpose).
-Sticking out my left palm to receive high fives from runners as they passed.

Pretty awesome, feel good stuff.