Thursday – Lunch
Posted: March 4, 2013 Filed under: Food Leave a comment »
Y’know, this is awfully confusing … I’m still catching up with posts that should have been, er, posted way back last October when we went to Cyprus.
Anyhoo … here’s my lunch for the Thursday afternoon; a delicious Greek Salad. Some followers (and you know who you are) accuse me of solely drawing brown food. Well here is a definitely-green meal.
I sat on the verandah of the hotel to draw this, but hadn’t banked on the sun moving about. It wasn’t ducking and diving, but I spent so long over my drawing, that the sun had moved to shine directly onto my salad. Oh dear! By the time I got to eat it the poor salad leaves were quite, quite wilted and had become a warm salad.
But still delicious.
Thursday – breakfast
Posted: February 24, 2013 Filed under: Food Leave a comment »
It’s been a while since I’ve posted any more of my holiday meals from last October (A week in Cyprus, thank you very much 
Where I drew every meal (apart from one!
So, here is the breakfast that I had on the Thursday.
Now, I don’t usually do breakfasts when I’m away on holiday. Wandering down to the Cade Royale for a bite to eat just didn’t do anything for me. I’d sit and stare at the other lucky vacationers, piling the plates with the usual breakfast suspects - but the idea of eating at breakfast time just turns my stomach. Normally I’d be well up for something to eat; bacon, sausages, waffles. Yum! But for some reason, when I’m on holiday I just can’t face it. By this time (about five days into the holiday) I was managing to stomach more than just a cup of tea.
Sketchcrawl at Leeds Armouries
Posted: February 18, 2013 Filed under: Urban Sketches Leave a comment »On Saturday – After a little bit of a mix up with a train (I do so enjoy riding on trains, but they are so frightfully expensive!) I eventually arrived at the Leeds Royal Armouries museum.
After checking in with Lynne I headed off to the small arms cabinets where I quickly bagged myself a couple of snazzy-looking weapons.
As I’d walked through the museum it was clear that there was a western-themed day going ahead. I drew these two weapons on either side of a full page spread, indending on filling in a western scene inbetween at some point during the day … but I ended up leaving the centre of the page blank as I got distracted by the other cool exhibits.
Now, I do tend to stick in my drawing rut (Don’t we all!) So, I decided to break out a bit. A decided that the sketchcrawl venue is not the place to labour on a single piece of drawing.
I tackled this grand elephant in it’s armour next; initially slopping down a Payne’s grey colour wash and then Noodler’s Ink-ing over the top. I tried to work quite quickly on this piece.
For my next piece I used a finer point (0.05) than I usually do. I also tried to keep the pen moving at all times; trying to capture shapes with a mess of scribble, rather than my usual difinitive lines. Oh, and quite macr, instead of my usual obsession with smaller stuff.
I drew this sarcophagus of Henry V next. Initially I tried to use just coloured pencils and then watered them down. But I felt that there wasn’t enough definition, so I used the fineliner pen again to add a handful of lines.
There was a video re-enactment of the events leading up to the defeat of the French at Agincourt above this sarcophagus and I was really enjoying listening/glancing at it. So I stuck around to add a few extra bits and bobs (None of which are period pieces to Agincourt, I hasten to add – please don’t write in!) The spurs and the swords are from a display case beside the sarcophagus from a hundred years earlier and the helmet. Oh, the helmet! I hunted round the museum for a helmet like the ones portrayed on the re-enactment video. I thought I’d found one and quickly sketched it in at the space at the top of my page. Then I glanced a bit closer at the label; only to discover it was an Italian helmet! Grrrr! Ah, well. Maybe there were a few holidaying Italian soldiers travelling back from England at the time. Or maybe bounty hunters, or mercenaries. Or maybe someone might have borrowed a helmet from an Italian cousin, or something :/ Anything is possible, you know!
We all had a great time; there being so many interesting things to draw. (I and I didn’t even draw a single morsel of food!)
Fish and Chips
Posted: January 19, 2013 Filed under: Food 4 Comments »
Heavy snowfall across the country kind of put a stop to my joining in with the Sketchcrawl North group meeting up in cafes around Sheffield. I’d been really looking forward to a whistle-stop tour of Sheffield cafes and getting in loads of foodie drawings in. Ah, well!
I carried on with a bit of work at home instead. But I’d forgotten that Lucy and Caroline were popping out in the afternoon. I tagged along, and while they were busy I headed for The Golden Hind Fish and Chip shop. This is where we tend to get our fish and chips on Fridays, for our tea.
And luckily, for my purposes, it has an attached restaurant …
And I discovered that half-past two on a Saturday afternoon, after a snowfall, is not a particularly popular time to eat at the Fish and Chip Restaurant. The place was deserted!
The waitress didn’t seem too pleased to see me (But to be honest, I think that was because I dumped my bag and jacket on a chair, only to realise once the waitress approached that it had only recently been vacated and she hadn’t cleared it yet! So there I was, the only customer in the place and I chose the one table that still had batter-crumbs and half eaten pots of tartar sauce strewn over it!)
Once I’d drawn the bread and butter I started to chow down on that whilst I figured out how I was going to tackle this huge pile of fishyness.
Rather than draw the whole plateful of food I decided to go for drawing the individual components; which means that as I draw them I can eat them. (I like drawing the whole plateful, but it does mean that I have to complete drawing everything before I can eat it. At least drawing components means I can enjoy some warm food as I go along. Remember: I’d tramped through snow and slush to get here!)
I sketched in the fish along the bottom; to frame the drawing and to leave a space in the middle of the page for writing. I thought I could draw the other elements of the meal dropping down from the upper frame.
So, I started colouring in with watercolour – I used a light base colour and added in the darker areas of the batter straight away. While that dried I coloured in the Calamari Rings, as they were in a similar coloured batter.
It amused me to have the chips in an ordered row, rather than the pile that they were in on the plate. You can see that I ‘d started to tuck into the fish and some of the other things on the plate by now. (And no, the fish wasn’t totally cold. It was still, slightly, warm!)
I knew I wanted to put the restaurant’s name and logo in the bottom left-hand corner by now.
While I waited for the waitress to return, so that I could ask for the bill, I drew in the logo and name and added the name of the meal from the menu (She’d come in a couple of times earlier on in the drawing, but by now I think she’d given up on me ever finishing my meal!)
I finished off the rest of the writing later.
(A CD of ‘Hits of the 40s’ was playing the whole time I was drawing, and I’d gone round all the tracks at least twice by the time I left)
Holiday Villa – France
Posted: January 13, 2013 Filed under: Commissions Leave a comment »
It’s been a while since I’ve done a commission. It was a pleasant change, amongst all the plates of food, to draw a house.
This drawing was for a work colleague. They’ve stayed at this little villa in France a few times and this commission was by way of thanking their friends, who own the property.
Having been away from drawing buildings for a short while it was interesting seeing what influences I could carry over from how I’m working drawing food; namely adding more texture with ink markings and with different shades of paint overlaying.
Kings – A new Chinese buffet restaurant
Posted: January 10, 2013 Filed under: Food 2 Comments »
One of our favourite places to eat out at in Huddersfeield was Jumbo’s Chinese Buffet. I think it was because when Lucy was quite little she was rather partial to prawn toast (or crawn toast as she called it then). It meant that Caroline and I could have a relatively good meal out and feed Lucy up too. I hasten to add that she did eat other things too!
But Jumbo’s closed down several months ago.
Just imagine our delight to discover that another Chinese Buffet had opened to fill it’s gap.
It didn’t disappoint
I didn’t scoff my way through piles and piles of buffet to achieve my drawing; instead I have to report that I just had lots of VERY small portions of dishes! Okay, I’ll come clean! I had a larger serving of the Satay Chicken, but only because it was really tasty and I wanted some more … and it was an all-you-can-eat-buffet.
The Venue – One last slice of Christmas
Posted: January 2, 2013 Filed under: Food Leave a comment »
Or, to be more precise, A first slice of Christmas.
I drew this at the staff Christmas party. End of the term; when I had the whole of the Christmas and New Year expectations and celebrations to look forward to.
The Venue is a huge party venue (!) catering for hundreds. So, it did feel a little like we were being hurried along with our food.
The starters I’m afraid I really couldn’t do justice to; there was so much!
For the main course we had a choice, on the evening, no less. It was struggle to get my order in, as I was distracted colouring in my starters! So I ended up being served later than the others on my table.
Cheese and biscuits they could not prepare for me. So I had to have one of the set puddings. Not being a pudding fan I couldn’t really comment on it. And I spent so long s=drawing and painting it that the dance floor had set on fire and I just had to leave to join in the 60′s and 70′s medleys.
(It was great tearing up the dance floor to Gangnam Style)
PS. – What I thought at the time was a fruity sauce – was, in fact, a rum sauce.
