Beard love

Weee I'm baaaaack! I went through some not so great times and temporarily abandoned my blog. But now I'm better and filled with springy positivity! I'm looking forward to early morning runs (without freezing my lungs), refreshing homemade smoothies, seeing sprouting greenery and mulberry season! I also love the longer hours of sunlight, my internal clock is strictly set to diurnal - travelling to and from work in darkness is not cool! My only trepidation with the warmer weather is the increase in the mosquito population - but upon discovering this nifty mosquito trap (http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net/homemade-mosquito-trap/) I feel like the odds have tipped in my favor! (I'll let you know how that goes...).

Anyway, I made this beard related comic recently. I'm totally envious of beards, if I could grow one I would rock a fu manchu beard for it's satisfactory stroking length whilst pondering (the primary use of a beard in my opinion).

Year of the Snake

Happy Chinese new year! Because this festival (like all other Chinese festivals) is very food centric, I thought I'd do a small doodle about food symbolism during Chinese new years. The main meal happens on new year's eve, where the whole family gets together and watch the Spring festival concert/party - I swear the whole of China watches this, it's become a part of our new year's tradition. We ate so much food! For new year's eve supper there is usually an excess of 10 dishes served (normally everyday meals have about 3 dishes). We also got tons of fruit and a giant cake as presents from my parents' friends (Chinese people like giving fruit as house presents, fruit is quite expensive in China so greatly valued -how awesome!) So I've been totally stuffing my face, starting out quite healthy in the mornings with giant bowls of fruit salad, but ending up shoveling mouthfuls of cream laden cake late at night - heehee!

Ooh I did forget to list the traditional year cake (nian gao) that we eat too - wikipedia will help me here. Its for success and good luck with achieving your goals (especially important for young people and students to eat this!) We slice ours up and fry it like haloumi, so it's crunchy on the outside and gooey and sticky sweet in the middle. But this year my parents got the cake as a present and when my Mom tried to fry it it melted! It was grey too, instead of the usual red beany maroon colour we are used to - it was so sticky and stuck to the roof of my mouth and it looked like gloopy snot wahahahaha! So turns out there another type of nain gao that you are not meant to fry :) I prefer the haloumi one, it tastes better - beware the grey snot cake!

Tentacle hand...

...and the eye of terror!
Been awhile since I posted...
Work has been/is still/will be till the end of my life crazy... (really should be getting ready for work now instead of doing this blog thing)

It took me SO long to get those goddamned sucker things to look right, I became a bit mad (obsessively painting every minute detail in every single sucker - which you can't see unless you're zoomed in like 300%) Hai... I really struggled colouring this drawing... I kind of had this new stylized vision in my head, but when I started painting it all became mush and I fell back into my old style...

New blog header!

The blog is getting a make over! I've realized its become quite messy looking with different drawing styles and weirdly shaped links... So slowly going through and standardizing everything to some form of theme/colour scheme...

I found quite a helpful website for editing your HTML for customizing you blog (specifically on Blogger). It helped me make my header bigger! Though now it's not going to display properly on smaller screens - strictly speaking, your blog should be only 800 pixels wide, to accommodate the older screens with 800 x 600 aspect ratio - but 800 pixels is tiny! Its a bit of a headache, I'll probably fiddle with it more later... 

Boomerang

I spent an hour last weekend throwing a boomerang around (very unsuccessfully). I can't throw. My coordination is so bad that I'm still failing after Alex showed me how to do it multiple times. Um, I guess try, try again? I was never great at sports, but enthusiasm conquers all!

Trials of everyday life 02

Monday trials! After an early morning of connecting with my higher self at yoga class, I desperately needed a caffiene boost to tackle my day. But after throwing some really gross burnt KCF coffee down the drain and possibly making myself sick obliviously drinking tea made with very questionable milk, I finally missioned across the road to buy milk. On the way back, this is what my crossed my caffiene deprived mind...

Sping time!

I finally cleaned up my balcony this past weekend! There is now space to walk! I also planted some carrots, radishes (a recent discovery and now firm favourite), lettuce and bright orange poppies. I find it very convenient to have vegetables growing so near at hand, and have greatly enjoyed my parsely and basil already established on the balcony. I've had varying success planting vegetables, but hopefully the warmer weather will help.

If you have a bit of a green thumb (or a wanna be green thumb like me), you'll enjoy this.

Pasta a la Norma

I drew this picture imagining this playing in the background ^_^ I used to struggle with cooking aubergine, I like them, but couldn't find a vegetarian recipe that was...tasty enough? I always associated them with the taste of salty fish - that is what my Mom mostly made aubergines with - yes if you are a meat eater, try this recipe! (I think you can potentially substitute salted fish with some fish sauce). But I have finally found a great vegetarian recipe! Pasta a la Norma is super delicious! I think the trick is lots of garlic and giant handfuls of basil. Yum...

Illustration Friday: Tall

"He wore a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, and a silver scarf. He had a long white beard, and bushy eyebrows that stuck out beyond the brim of his hat" - Gandalf from Lord of the Rings.

It a massacre...

When I made beetroot soup the other night, the resulting pot of soup looked like a horrific blubbing mess of chunky blood gruel...it was quite grim! But that aside, it was delicious! Just one thing - I followed this recipe, and its absolutely crucial to chop finely/grate the beetroot, as it takes forever to cook!

Dreamer

"Dream big Dream true"

Inspired by this photo (isn't her hair colour amazing?!)

Trials of every day life...

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Toilet monster!

More Hel looks portraits

They have cool hair...

Strawberry bunny incubator

Hitched

More growing centers for little worm ghosts

Have been finding this labour intensive intricate lace inspired pattern very therapeutic to draw...

Budding forest of little worm ghosts

Drawing free on Freedom day

Portraits from Hel Looks

A friend gifted me a Moleskine sketch book for my birthday (the most perfect present ever! Long coveted by lil old me but I would always gag at the price before ever getting to the checkout). It is amazing! I'm never going to draw in anything else! It also seems to miraculously play nicely with my technical pen (deemed exclusive enough for ya? Stupid pen that clogs up randomly - from paper fibers? - on regular printer paper!). Yes I love and hate this pen so much that I speak to it.

These portrait drawings are from pictures from Hel Looks, an awesome site.

Journal doodles

Some pages from my doodle sketch book, its nice and compact so I've been very good with whipping it out in random places and doing some drawing ^_^