Playing tourist in NYC

I had such a nice time going over the photos I shot at Gloucester that once they were all done, I felt very sad about the vacation being over. So, today I decided to play tourist in NYC and took my camera to Union Square Farmer's market.
I came home with about 200 photos that were shot in less then half an hour, and so now I can pretend that I just came back from a beautiful vacation in New York City!

A large piece

I'm working on.

32"X12"

seagull plates

I wanted to make something that relate to our trip to Gloucester MA last weekend, and  one of the things that really stuck with me was a very quite afternoon spend on the shore at low tied walking on seaweeds and talking photos of the many seagulls.

Mary

A beautiful and fun model we shot today called Mary.

A doodle a day

Since Ned and I started to have breakfast at home, I've stopped doing the little "buy me Breakfast" drawings, and I really missed them. So I decided to try a new series of small doodles, which will be called "A doodle a day".

They are going to be listed in the store, and all be sold for 10$ regardless to size or material.

Also, you'll be able to follow the whole series in this special A doodle A day tumble.

Store update

I've been very busy with drawing and shooting recently, and never got around to making and posting new stuff on the etsy shop, so yesterday and today I decided to finally get down to it and paint some new dishes.

There are going to be a few more exciting dishes listed tomorrow and the next day to.

I hate those mornings

when I wake up feeling like I have no skin and I'm so exposed to the world. The mornings when all I want it to cry and hide and not ever talk to a living souls. Angry, and disappointed with the world and everyone in it and mostly, with myself, feeling like there's nothing left to do in this life but get old and die.

Ho well.

Lunch break

After 3 hours of pretty rough riding on the free way. We are about lo leave CT and enter MA in a few minute. It's exciting and odd to be in a place I'v never been to before, even if it's just a roadside diner.

I feel like a stranger today, and not just because of the trip and the road.

2 shoots and a half

2 shoots today, it was pretty challenging. We had a couple of double shoots lately, but we shot with just a hair stylist and no makeup artist. So this time we had makeup, but didn't designate for it and so everything felt rushed and confusing.

I'm pretty happy with the photos we got, even despite the stress.





After the shoot we met with Persiana, she was telling us about the wedding preparations, and how she already got a dress, but didn't make any other choices. Then we went into a vintage store and she fall in love with another bridal gown. I was telling her about the bridal gown I got a few weeks ago in the Salvation Army store and she came over to try it out.

leftover broscatta

A 2 days old bagel, some olive spread I made last week, last piece of mozzarella cheese and a zucchini made a really nice breakfast today.

Onions

Some chicken is cooking in the oven right now, this is how it started.

Rethinking pens

For the past 10 year or so, I've been using the same pen, it's a pilot gel pen called G-TEC-C4, it's not very common in the USA, in fact I only found one stores that sells them here, which is a Japanese book store, But in Israel they are pretty common as your slightly more fancy then ordinary ball point pen. They cost around 3$ in Israel, and 5$ in NY.

I always loved this pen, but in art school a teacher told me that writing pend are for writing and drawing pens are for drawings and I need to be more professional about my choice of pens. At the time, I switched to pen and ink, which has the most beautiful line, is waterproof and really messy.
Later on, I realized that in the where and when I draw, it's not a choice between a gel pen and a pen and ink, but a choice between a gel pen and a not-drawing-cause-this-is-too-much-hustle. And I went back to the G-TEC.

But, a few days ago, a friend forgot a rapidograph in our place. I remember those from my father and from high school and suddenly I kept wanting to try his pen, however, there was no ink and it was all dried out. So, on Monday, I decided to give myself a birthday present and got 2 of them. One is by Koh-I-Noor, and one by Rotring. It was sort of nice to find out that the pen design and color is still the same as it was when I last bought one of those, which was about 18 years ago.

I've used Moleskine exchange book to give the first one a try. The line is a bit thicker, which I don't mind so much (the Rotring is thinner) and the color of the ink is beautiful - super black and dark, the pen really flow nicely, though - more ink, more time to dry, and also a bit of spreading (but really just a tiny bit). The nicest thing is that unlike the G-TEC, the ink is not water soluble so when I do the painting part, the line stays as crisp which is great.

I'm still trying to decide if I like the result though I feel like the drawing I made with it is more illustrative in style and less artistic, probably because the lines are so crisp.

What do you think? can you even notice the difference?

G-TEC

Koh-I-Noor

breakfast

We both woke up tired and out of it this morning. I decided we deserve a breakfast treat and so, half a box of fat free ricotta cheese, the last egg and some blueberries became tiny blueberry pancakes. We had them with the homemade jam from a few days ago, and it was yummy!

I can't really call this health food, it's more like damage control junk food. Still probably not even half as bad as eating pancakes in a restaurant, since the main ingredient was fat free cheese and it was fried in Canola oil and not in butter.

Ballookey's book pages 2 & 3

Started the second page today and finished it this evening. Ned and I were shooting in the morning but things were going all unorganized, one of the models cancel, the hair stylist was late and then didn't show up either.
It was very nice to escape to a world that doesn't depend on other people...

The moleskine coated paper is giving me trouble, but I'm trying to resolve it in different ways. Some markers, a different type of markers and some crayons. My favorite markers work really nice on this, but the tip is very narrow and it take ages to cover the areas I want to paint.

Also, some interesting pen testing, which I might write more about it a bit.

I'm not sure how my next few days are going to be work-wise, but if nothing happened, I hope to get the book out to Anders on Monday or Tuesday (but we'll see what happens).

Dinner & Breakfast

This is what we had last night for dinner. at homed we almost always eat vegetarian but since we decided to not eat out anymore, I get those meat urges every week or so. So, we went to the Meat Hook, a butchery inside the Brooklyn Kitchen - it's rather expensive and all organic meat store, but since we don't eat meat often, it might as well be good.

We got half a pound of ground beef and I made tiny meatballs to go with some whole wheat spaghetti. it was a heavy satisfying meal that went really well at the end of a very busy day.



In the morning, I mixed the leftover meatballs with some more chopped tomatoes and broke a couple of eggs in there for a meatball Shaksuka.

Ballookey's book for Moleskine Exchange

We've been having a very busy week, Ned and I started working with a new department at "Ford" modeling agency and somehow managed to book 5 shoots in one week. So between deciding on cloths, cleaning the apartment, editing, editing more, photoshopping, picking up bagels and having beautiful young and tall woman going in and out of our place - I didn't get to draw since last Saturday.

Last night, after 2 shoots, dinner, 5 editing rounds and it being 1:00 AM I couldn't take it anymore and decided to put the first few lines into Ballookey's book. I stayed up for another hour drawing while Ned was working on 2 of the images to send to the agency.

This morning I woke up not wanting to do anything but draw.

So I dumped answering e-mails, running errands and taking care of work and spend about 6 hours on this. Then went to the art store to get some new markers and crayons, I forgot how difficult the regular paper was with watercolor.

Banana Bread Muffin

Remember the jam from yesterday? It came out delicious! as I found out while having some banana bread muffin this morning.

Jam!

We go grocery shopping on Monday, before we store the new produce in the fridge, we go over what's left in the fridge and trow out all the stuff that's going bad or wasn't used during the week.

This Monday, I noticed a bunch of fruit I never eat, they were too soft to eat fresh, but still not bad enough to throw out, so I decided to make jam.

I chopped 2 soft peaches, 4 aging red plums and one apple, and put them in a pot, squeezed one lime over the fruit and slicked the pill of half of the lime and added that in. 

Then added 2 cups of confectionery sugar left over from a big baking project in may.

Then turn the stove on, mixed everything till the sugar melted and turn the stove to a low temperature, and let it cook for about an hour and a half.