Easter 2011

Easter was relaxed this year. Normally, Micah and I spend the day running around between our separate families, trying to get everything done at once. Instead, we had lunch at his mother's then hung out at my parents' place till night. Micah's mom pulled out some beautiful dishes I'd never seen before.

We were put in charge of the meal so, in typical fashion, we went all out. I decided to make the rolls fresh. The Southern cookbook came in handy. I picked something called "Gramma's sweet yeast rolls." Everyone knows gramma's recipes are the best, right? The dough had to be left overnight to rise and I was up early kneading.

Micah roasted the ham in pineapple and apple soda (I'm not sure if this is a real recipe...he likes to throw random ingredients together.) He then made a sauce/gravy from the drippings, apple soda, pineapple juice, brown sugar and soy sauce (with corn starch to thicken.

Lastly, everyone requested I make my famous (in these parts) EEsy PEEsy Potaty Cheesy. It really is super easy. The recipe is below

6 medium potatoes
3/4 cup butter (or margarine)
1 can cream of chicken soup
3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/3 cup chopped green onions
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup crushed cornflakes (or bread crumbs)

Boil potatoes with skins on. Peel and slice thinly into buttered casseroled dish.

In small saucepan, mix 1/2 cup butter, soup, cheese, green onions and sour cream. Stir over low heat just until heated through and pour over potatoes.

In small skillet or saucepan melt remaining 1/4 cup butter and add cornflake crumbs. Mix well. Sprinkle crumbs over potatoes.

Bake at 350 degrees 30-45 minutes, or until bubbly. (Serves 8)


If you try this, I'd love to hear how it turned out!

Makeshift bedroom studio

Back home in Long Beach, I have a whole garage to use as a studio. I usually leave all my supplies sprawled out in a fit of creative mess. Unfortunately, visiting Micah usually means sharing his 100 sq. ft. bedroom.

Here's my set-up:

Yay natural day-light! I have my sketchbook or tablet on the bed and a small table in front. Under the laptop is a printer-scanner. To the right on the floor is a tub of all my sketchbook and art supplies. I keep my pens and brushes in a tin so I just reach down for them as needed.

Here is my studio in a tub:

Contents of tub from top to bottom:

1. Paper sacks full of finished comic pages sandwiched between cardboard (for safekeeping.)
2. Pad of 9x12 watercolor paper
3. Pad of 9x12 bristol paper
4. Packs of cardstock paper. White, purple, green and blue (used for mini-comic covers.)
5. Sketchbooks (5 total)
6. Business ledger
7. Packing tape
8. Tin of watercolor pencils, watercolor tube paints and ink
9. Stapler
10. Tin of brushes, pencils, pens, markers etc
11. Can of fixative spray
12. Plastic pallettes

On the left:
1. Paint rag
2. Watercolor pan

On the right:
1. Envelopes, bubble mailers, boxes etc. For shipping orders.
2. Ruler
3. Travel-sized watercolor kit (from April Nash!)
4. Pencil box full of wires, xacto knife, box-cutter, pliers, scissors.


And here's it all put away! I tried to be as compact as possible otherwise there's barely any room to walk through:

Read me!

I've been really plowing through my book list lately, and dragged Micah along as well. He's been searching for a bookmark so I decided to make use of some scrap cardboard I had lying around.

I hadn't realized how quickly I'd be going through my reading list. It really helped that the library had so many of them! I didn't realize how I'd severely under-estimated their collection.

Studio projects of the week:
- Script next week's comics
- Pencil & ink
- Thumbnail Crab & Manatee
- Thumbnail 'Ruthy ride her bike'
- Edit test files for prints

Napkin sketch

The Attack Of The Craft contest has been in full swing. Today's task was to draw our weekend plans (real or imagined) on a paper napkin. It was harder than I thought, but here it is:

And a scanned version so you can actually see it:

A forum full of crafty wily women (and a few doods.) What more could anyone ask for....a chance to win an iPad, maybe?

In all seriousness, I love this little forum.

http://www.attackofthecraft.com/stage/showthread.php?t=5759