Urbino

A view of Urbino from a hill opposite.

Shame that damn tree got in the way.

Padma

An affectionate little ball of madness.

Bag of crisps - for Nadia

There we were, sat in a beautiful rural landscape in the middle of Italy, gazing over fields and hills, the sun setting in the distance. We got out our pens and paints, and I drew this. A bag of crisps.

Nice crisps too.

Urbino street

From the holiday in Italy. A beautiful old town. Enjoyed doing this one. First drawing for a few weeks it was.

Shower woman

First attempt to do something using acrylic paints.

Some woman stepping into a shower. I suppose I could say this was inspired byModigliani or somesuch. After all, he did paint a few women's arses. But no. Just came out like that I'm afraid.

Sticky blood

Been dwelling in old memories a bit lately. This is one from when I was walking down the hill to school as a kid, seeing the kind old bald man start to wobble on his bike and then fall off, scraping his head on the tarmac. When we caught up with him he lying there, he was face down, his twitching frame stuck between the bent wheels and a patch of the darkest blood i'd ever seen (much darker than the stuff in the horror films I loved at the time).

Shortly after the a couple of cars pulled up and a shaking man chased us away from the scene.

Never saw the old man again after that.

Guess it was too much for him.

Swimming Jungle Pig

A few lives ago, I visited the Amazon jungle in Bolivia, where I saw a swimming pig. The local men in the boat wanted to scare the pig and ram it with sticks and the side of the boat. We screamed and begged them to stop. The river was very strong and we were afraid the pig would not make it to his family on the other side. But they only laughed and kept on attacking the pig, which did not know which way to turn.

Eventually, after much protest, and a few horrible minutes toying with the pig (and toying with us, the silly gringos) the men gave in.

When we were far enough away, we were relieved to see the pig still had enough wit and energy left to make it over to his family on the other side.

Wonder if the pig remembers that?

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).

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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!