Vegan Cake

After looking at all this cake on the IF site, and the rain out the window, I thought I may as well make one.

Here's what it came out like:

The recipe is very simple and delicious and completely vegan:

Sieve 3 glasses Self Raising Flour, I glass sugar, 3 heaped teaspoons of bakjing powder and 2 tablespoons of Cocoa powder into a bowl.
Mix 3/4 glass sunflower oil, 1 glass soya milk, and some vanilla or almond essence (this time I added a splash of blueberry juice too for fun).
Mix it all together and pour into a cake tin. Bake on 180 degrees for 45 - 60 mins until you can poke a fork in there and it comes out without sticky gunk on it.
Cover with melted chocolate or icing or whatever (for this one I made icing with fresh lemon juice and put plain chocolate shavings on the top).

----

I also decided to draw the resulting cake (click for larger image):

BTW - If that isn't enough cake for everyone this week, I also listened to the album 'Pressure Chief' by Cake when painting this.

Bon appetit!

Tammy's Hair

Not very inspired by the IF theme 'Cake' so found a close up photo I took of Tammy's hair on the beach at Tavira in Portugal last year.

She's lying on a multicoloured sarong if my memory serves me right.

Thought I'd see if I could recreate it in watercolours.

Nearly.

Garden tree

We had an extra day this weekend. So I got to sit in the garden and thought I'd try draw the tree.

Can't decide if I prefer the black and white or colour version.

No idea what kind of tree it is.

It was there before we moved in.

Anyone out there know anything about trees?

Holiday

Saw a photo in the weekend paper yesterday that set off this fuzzy memory of walking and burning in the midday sun, the light all around so bright reflecting against the whitewash and the flowers and the alien streets. Making me blind.

Sorry

Since the recent move, I have been listening to my old records again, retrieved from the barren wilderness of my brothers damp flat. Its been like getting back my memories. Those albums were so important to me growing up. Poring over the covers, reading the lyrics, admiring the art. Now its all about how many tracks can you fit in your phone, a million hours of muzak compressed in your pocket, coming at you non-stop, convenient and soulless. How easy it has become it seems not to have to make a choice, to have to get up and turn the record over, dust it down, give it a clean.

So in one sense this drawing of an old Hank Williams album I was just playing harks back to a sorrow for having somehow lost that excitement of my youth, of hunting down from shop to shop in order to find that elusive record (no Amazon in those days), buying it, guarding it carefully all the way home, then playing it for the first time.

It also reminds me of a time of my life I am not proud of, of a person I feel I owe an apology to.

But that's another story.

Packed up

Not too much time and energy left after the move. Did do a bit of scribblin when all the stuff was packed, when on the phone to the water company.

Did the first drawing below of Tavish, the famous cat, as he sat patiently for the chaos to subside.

Happy as a pig in a poke he is now.

Now me, I've got post stress stress or some such. Its all over but I'm not all over it yet.

Give it time.

Pud Pud

Here he is.

Serene and dignified.

Mr McTavish.

Purple haired painter man

Started drawing the face in ink, then got a bit carried away.

Takes me back to the good ol' days when I was a long, purple-haired weirdo.

Tammy painting Caesar

This is not very flattering - couldn't get the face at all. But the cat ain't too bad, and enjoyed doing it.