Knights/superheroes

Inspired by my new book ‘Henry Moore Helmet Heads’. He was inspired by armour and it struck me that helmets look like the African mask I did earlier. They also remind me of superheroes.

I did multiple small prints of a helmet in a superhero/retro colour scheme.

Gouache Explorer

Trying a slightly abstracted architecture, Indian palace in gouache.

Food Pictures

I like drawing food. My favourite food in the summer is watermelon and its also great to draw. Great colours and patterns. Look closer at your food today.

Pizza Making

Monday is pizza night!
I’ve been working on homemade pizza since I got a great breadmaking book from my lovely sister in law, Maria. She knows about pizza.
I’m lazy but I like good food so this is me:

Mix yeast with warm water and leave to rest. Don’t use too much yeast, about half what they recommend.
Mix a bit of flour with warm water and rest. Use a good quality flour, I like Dove farm organic bread flour.
Make up dough by eyeball, you don’t have to weigh anything, you just need the right consistency.
Put yeast liquid in bowl, put flour in, put salt in, mix using floury water. Knead a bit and rest for ages.

My pizza sauce is heretical: small tin tomatoes, raw garlic, slug olive oil, squeeze tomato paste, big squeeze ketchup and cook down.

Heat pizza stone in oven hot as you can.

Flour board and pizza peel and dough, sticky is the enemy.

Roll and stretch dough on wood board. Transfer to pizza peel. Top with sauce, mozzarella (not the diet kind) and fresh basil, quick as you can.

Slide off pizza peel and cook on stone.

Art class of the year

Every year I try to do an art evening class to stretch myself creatively.
Last year it was printing, the year before painting. This year, in October, I am doing something completely different with jewellery making! I am hoping for lots of cathartic hammering and to make things I can give to people.
I am discovering rather than fine art I like to do something that involves making stuff in an interesting craft process, but with lots of design to ponder. I do like working with different materials. I didn’t do the next printing one as it is all etching and engraving, whereas it was the linocut that I really enjoyed.
Next weekend I am doing a one off class in Letterpress where you print with text. I will need to think of a pithy slogan or phrase to print. Sadly, most of my favourite catchphrases are either rude or insulting....

Mask Linocut

I was very intrigued by a picture of an African mask I found in the newspaper, so cut it out for my sketchbook and did a linocut print of it. The print is the biggest I have done yet at A4 so required many hours of patient lino chiselling using my wee tool set. Enjoyed this one. Might do more.

Felt Pen Renaissance

Art in felt pen? Surely not. Until I discovered the new art felt pens which have a wide chisel shaped end and a pointed detail end and and come in a million gorgeous colours. The colour is transparent so you can layer it for different effects. Mine are the Winsor and Newton Promarker. 

Project Renewal

Every so often I like to start some new projects...

After having an amazing dinner of tapas at Cafe Andaluz in Aberdeen I am going to be trying some Spanish cookery. Not such a well known cuisine as Italian or French but looks tasty and healthy with lots of prawns, chicken, tomato and peppers. Roll on paella!

Following great success with weird serial killer style sheet facemasks from Boots, I ordered a pack of Korean facemasks online. Apparently Korean face care is the next wonder product. Not the one with snail slime though as I worry about the wellbeing of snails. Plus eugh.

Also had a big clearout of shoes from the wardrobe. The agonising, the knackered and the ugly are all off to the charity shop.

Most Illuminating

I spent a while working on this Celtic design, which I traced from my old Celtic Colouring Book. I tried to stay authentic doing it in gouache and (fake) gold leaf but had to touch up in marker pen and white acrylic. This was fun to do though and I love gold leaf which might appear in more pictures!