Illustration

Petit Fours from Valerie Confectionary

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Tiny ovens, anyone?

Tiny ovens, anyone?

If you're an LA local and you haven't visited the Grand Central Market  downtown yet, get thee a Lyft and go. Right now. I'll wait. No, really.

Back yet? Or maybe you're at work and can't leave your desk. Alright fine, I'll just tell you about it instead. The Grand Central Market is a magical wonderland that brings together various LA cuisines and cultures in a delicious way, and each time I go my definition of "YUM" gets redefined.

We went this past Saturday evening, and we happened to catch Valerie Confections when it was open. The first time we went to the market it was closed, and I spent a good 15 minutes trying to lick the chocolates through the display case.

We were able to sample their petit fours in two flavors: Earl Grey and Champagne. I haven't mentioned this yet here on my blog, but my favorite dessert? Cake. And cake dipped in chocolate is an upgrade to an already perfect dessert, especially when said chocolate is named "the best chocolate in LA" by Los Angeles Magazine. So.

The Earl Grey petit four had a very strong bergamot flavor to it, but was light and airy.* The lemon ganache on the outside was extremely complementary, and I was left feeling refreshed. There was a tiny silver fleck on top, and I suspect it may have been silver lustre dust.

The Champagne honestly didn't taste like champagne at all, but I didn't mind. I loved that it had dark, bittersweet chocolate, and the buttery cake inside really broke up the flavor before it became overwhelming. The tiny bit of edible gold on the top was a nice touch.

"But what does gold taste like?" you ask. I... don't think it's meant to have a flavor. But I'm still learning, so maybe it was just too subtle for me to have noticed.

The end verdict: I can't wait to try more from Valerie's. Besides the petit fours they've got chocolates, truffles, toffees, cakes, coffees, and more, so if you like sweet things you're probably covered. Go try it!

*As an aside, I'm a weirdo and have always maintained that bergamot has echoes of a Froot Loops flavor. I am apparently not the only person who has this opinion, but maybe the rest of you may think I'm insane. Doesn't matter, because it's my favorite tea thank you very much.

Sous Vide Pork

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You really can't lose when you have mashed potatoes

You really can't lose when you have mashed potatoes

Have you seen the new cooking craze, Sous Vide? Well, it's not new-new-- the technique has been around since 1799 and was "rediscovered" and refined in the 60s and 70s. It's basically where food is put inside a vacuum pouch and cooked at a steady temperature by water or steam.

It's "new" in that now it can be achieved with a fancy kitchen gadget that is finally affordable for the average consumer. It is an electronic stick that you put in a pot of water with your vacuum-pouched-food, set the temperature, and let 'er fly.

My husband and I got one for Christmas, and let me tell you-- it makes AMAZING meat. We've used it to cook steaks a few times, and in this case we cooked up a pork tenderloin that turned out phenomenally. It was mouth-wateringly moist, and the salt and pepper we put on the outside really brought out the flavor of the meat.

Did YOU know that pork tasted like something? I mean, bacon notwithstanding. Pork actually has a flavor. I used to not be a huge fan of pork, and I'm wondering if I just kept having overcooked meat all the time. That's understandable, since there was that whole trichinosis scare back in the day. I'm pretty sure I cooked my porkchops into a pile of ash out of fear.

Now they say it's really not that much of a threat anymore. And thank goodness for that! Our pork was perfectly medium-well all the way throughout, and exceptionally juicy. We paired it with some mashed potatoes (frozen, yes I know... travesty, but they work in a pinch!) and some steamed spinach.

Have you tried the sous vide technique? Let me know in the comments!

Heeeey Margarita!

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There aren't many uses for this lime green color marker... besides this.

There aren't many uses for this lime green color marker... besides this.

So this "drawing my food thing" began with me just sketching various things I ate for lunch. After a few goes at it, I found another simple and easy object to practice drawing-- drinks. I have frequent access* to them and they're visually interesting, so it seemed like an easy fit. This and the last drawing in particular were the first time I'd attempted to add some color into the mix with my old pals: Prismacolor Markers.

In undergrad in 2007, I did an entire semester of independent study with markers, so I own over 100 of the things. I know, I know. Sacrifice food for the expensive art supplies, I know.

Anyway, I spent three months finding only two books on the subject out in the wide, wide world, and one cost $70. $70! Do you know how many bottles of very cheap wine that is? Or alternately, it's about 20 markers.

I instead made my own book that was a glorious 60 pages of swatches, technique trial and error, and my first set of fully-rendered marker pieces. Where is that book now, you may ask? No clue. I may have chucked it at one point, once I went to grad school and was told that digital art was the way of the future. What a letdown, am I right?

Fast forward ten years, and I'm finally using them again.** I still love and need my computer to maintain an income, but it feels SO GOOD to get away from that glowing screen and make something with my hands again.

*I mean, I AM an artist. Writers have this same thing too, I hear.

**Can we talk about how amazing it is that they haven't dried out in all this time??

Wine o' Clock

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When you want some wine, but all you have in your pocket is $2

When you want some wine, but all you have in your pocket is $2

Who doesn't love a good drink after work? I used to hate wine, but became a huge fan of it when I was in grad school; I was living in the wine-centric city of San Francisco at the time. Sonoma and Napa are just two hours north, after all!

I even remember my first lesson about wine types outside of just knowing them as "red" or "white." I was invited to a dinner at my friend Maggie's house, and she told me to "bring a cab." In confusion, I showed my ignorance by asking if she meant I should use a cab to get to her house.

"Oh... um. No, it's a wine. Look for a sign in the grocery store that reads Cabernet Sauvignon."

My friends in San Francisco were exceptionally patient with me. I still laugh to this day about some of the dumb questions I asked them!

That evening was my introduction to what would end up becoming my favorite type of red wine even to this day. I really enjoy the dry "punch you in the mouth" flavors that Cabs typically have.

That said, wine is also expensive, especially for an at-the-time graduate student. How does one solve this problem? Why Two Buck Chuck, of course! I learned it was easy to budget for $2/bottle every now and then, and so "Wine O' Clock" (also known as "Sunday Wineday") was born.

Ladies and Gents, Ready Your Forks 

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Being that I'm a professional illustrator, I went to art school. Predictably it was a lesson in "what's the cheapest and fastest ways to eat?" The "starving artist" thing isn't a cliché. I spent my entire undergrad breathing and bleeding art... and eating a ton of ramen. Or Hot Pockets. Lean Cuisine. Tiny Costco pizzas... Wendy's value menu. You get the picture.

I'm a sissy and can only handle literally three drops of hotsauce on my avocado. And that's AFTER training for it!

I'm a sissy and can only handle literally three drops of hotsauce on my avocado. And that's AFTER training for it!

Graduate school brought me a whole new dilemma-- I'd learned a bit about cooking and food, but now had absolutely zero money in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the world. I legitimately could not afford to buy or cook meat in my postage stamp sized apartment, so I had to get creative with vegetarian meals I could cook en masse and eat the leftovers for two weeks. So, you know. Rice. Lots and lots of rice.

One of my more creative attempts at using up my Thanksgiving  leftovers this past year.

One of my more creative attempts at using up my Thanksgiving  leftovers this past year.

So now I'm an "Adult." Or so says my driver's license. I've since learned at least some basic-plus (that's when you're one step past basic, but definitely not intermediate) cooking skills, and have come to appreciate better food than my academic career might indicate. I've also entered an age decade that begins with "3" and just gotten married. That's about the most adultiest-adult thing you can do besides paying taxes.

We got tons of great kitchen gear from our amazing family and friends, and as I was reading the very complicated instructions on how to season our new wok I thought, "Wow, I really wish I knew more about food so I feel like I can do this thing justice."

And thus was born this new little side project of mine: refining my palate. Learning to cook better, learning to define tastes better. What spices can I use besides just basil, salt, and pepper? What sort of flavor goes well with another? What IS the best way to cook a steak? Why is it that you have to tie a turkey's legs together?* Only, as I'm an artist, it isn't just going to be a side hobby-- no. It'll also be an illustration expedition as well.

Maybe one day when I publish a giant coffee table book of my food art, I'll have to call it Refining My Palette. I am NOT sorry for that pun.

Anyway, you'll be seeing all sorts of food art here now, so I hope you're hungry!

*Oh yes hungry reader, I, along with my husband, was in charge of cooking the 23 pound turkey for Thanksgiving this year. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing... but somehow the thing turned out delicious and no one died from undercooked poulty. Whew. Skin of our teeth on that one...

More Foxen Have Deployed

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400 thousand of them, to be exact. Congrats to Stephen Owen of FoxDeploy.com for getting 400k hits on his website!

I've worked with Stephen before, you may remember him as the guy who really likes foxes.

He also really likes coding, so why not put those two things together! He wanted some cute foxes celebrating, and thus this Fancy Foxen party was born!

The final image has some extra space at the top and bottom so that we could crop it down to the banner size he needed on his site... but this also gives me the opportunity to zoom in so you can Where's Waldo with the silly foxes in the background.

A Day in the Life of a Freelancer

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So for everyone out there that wonders just what we freelancers DO all day, I wrote up a little outline about how my own typical schedule goes. Yes, we can work in our PJs* if we really want, but it’s certainly not sitting around stuffing our faces with bonbons. Or, if we do, it’s while we’re doing about 8 different tasks at once. You can eat bonbons or not, I won’t judge. You do you!

*I actually never work in my PJs, despite the temptation. I swear, really! If I do, my work ethic goes right out the window!

My Typical Day!

  • 8:00 AM: Wake up… I know, that’s not very early. It’s a thing I’m working on.
  • 8:15 - 8:45: My workout! I switch off between cardio and strength 6x a week. I usually use Jessica Smith’s programs.
  • 8:45-9:00: Dog walk.
  • 9:00 - 9:30: Shower n’ stuff.
  • 9:30 - 11:00: Breakfast while I BUSINESS FRENZY for about an hour. I go nuts on social media promoting myself and others, plus send/respond to emails, and search for new potential gigs. This is also when I post new content and work on writing any new content that needs writing.
  • 11:00 -  3:00: Job stuff! Actual client work. I also eat lunch at my desk at some point in here.
  • 3:00 - 4:00: Typically a second BUSINESS FRENZY but this time I might lean more heavily on the social media side. It’s when a lot of people are active! This is usually accompanied with tea.
  • 4:00 - 4:30: Walk the dog!
  • 4:30 - 8:00: More Job Stuff!
  • 8:00 - 9:00: Dinner
  • 9:00+: If it’s Crunch Time I’ll get back to Job Stuff. If it’s not, I’ll switch off between reading/watching a program, playing a video game, or working on my own comics/personal projects.
  • 12 AM: Bed time!

And of course there are exceptions to this rule. Making my own schedule as a freelancer is very cool! Things might shift around if I have a doctor’s appointment, business lunch, or some sort of event to attend. On Tuesdays my ballet class rearranges the *entire* day. It also depends on my current workload. If I’m lighter on the client work side of things, I tend to lean more heavily on BUSINESS FRENZY time and do such things as designing new promo materials and catching up on accounting.

If you’re a fellow freelancer, what does YOUR day look like? Share in the comments!

Wacom Companion 2: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

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So for the holidays I received the best present an illustrator who frequently travels could ask for: the ability to put together a truly mobile studio! While my old, smaller Wacom Cintiq was technically portable, it was a real pain to tote around since it required so much other equipment. The stuff was heavy. My arms are made from noodles. Once set up, the stuff pretty much took up an ENTIRE table… which doesn’t really work at your local Starbucks. Or anywhere.

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Enter the Companion. Sleek computer + Cintiq all in one… I’ve been frothing at the mouth to own one since they were first announced. So how does it hold up as a portable studio? Did it pass my road test? Let’s take a look.

The Ugly

I like to go backward because I’d rather end on a positive note.

  • The Stand – (photo above) The Companion 2 comes with a stand to hold it up like an easel. This thing patently sucks. It has three “cutouts” that will hold up the Companion at different angles. Except it doesn’t work well. It’s flimsy, and it’s hard to snap the tabs into the holes on the Companion to keep it in place. If I have it at its flattest setting, the Companion won’t snap into the bottom tab, and the thing is constantly sliding forward. I have to keep doing the ChaCha with the darn thing. Draw draw PUSH. Draw draw PUSH.
  • The Battery – I have tested this Companion quite a bit, and the battery just doesn’t last very long. My latest test put it into Full Studio mode: WIFI on, Photoshop chugging along, chat programs running, and music streaming from Google Play. I got approximately (and I’m being generous) 2:30 hours out of the thing before it hit about 10% battery. I didn’t run it to power loss, but… I feel like anyone that works out in public hits a point with their battery where they are afraid to keep it running for fear of it shutting off suddenly… and losing your progress. We all know that those battery estimates are wrong, wrong, wrong. So if you’re on a flight or in a café that gives you A/C access? You’re golden. If not? Well, don’t plan on working very long.
  • The Price – Whoa mama this thing costs a lot. But then again so does anything by Wacom. If you like Wacom products, you already knew about this going in.

The Ba-- Actually let’s call this The Neutral, aka Mild Annoyances

  • Photoshop – Photoshop’s UI is fantastically too small for the Companion’s screen, and the version I have can’t enlarge. I hear the new Photoshop CC has this capability, but that it’s experimental. Sure I could up-res my screen but why would I want to do that? That messes up stuff in other programs. Most applications will adjust their UI a bit so that the buttons are at least not microscopic. Manga Studio does it perfectly, as does Chrome and most games I’ve tried playing on the thing. I get around this issue by just using my Cintiq pen– it gives me way more accuracy, but I still have issues with misclicks sometimes.
  • The Borders – I’ve had a teeny bit of trouble hitting menu items on the very edges of the screen, but it doesn’t mess up my workflow very much. I only notice it sometimes, and that’s mostly toward the top.
  • Touch Control – This issue might have a workaround that I just don’t know about. Basically, I wish there were a way that when the Companion sensed the Cintiq pen on its surface, it would turn OFF the touch function. Why? Because when I draw I rest my hand on the screen, and that can sometimes lead to hilarious results with simultaneous commands.

The Good

  • The Weight – This thing weighs about the same as my normal laptop, so it doesn’t break my back when I tote it around. Specifically, because I don’t have to tote a Cintiq AND a laptop (with 500 cords), it’s quite easy to carry through airports and across town to the coffee shop.
  • The Simplicity – Graduating from Cintiq plus laptop, three cords, two power cords, two power bricks, pen and external HDD to just Cintiq plus cord, pen, and external HDD has been a lifesaver. My footprint on a tabletop has been reduced by about half, and it’s way less time consuming to set up!
  • It’s Slick – The machine has great aesthetics!
  • It’s Fast – Mine is the i5, so while it’s not the most powerful that Wacom had to offer, it gets the job done. If I’m using a very large brush, sure I’ll get a bit of lag. Undoing a big Fill tool command takes a milisecond longer than it does on my desktop computer. It’s almost not noticeable though. In addition, it’s got a solid state HDD so this thing boots up and shuts down like it’s breathing. Poof! So fast, my head is still spinning.
  • Easy to Use – I love that the computer itself works well as a tablet. Windows 8 is made for tablets and is very easy to control with a finger tip. I needed to get a bluetooth keyboard to make typing easier though!

So what’s the verdict? Companion 2, while it has a few things that I’d like a workaround for, is an extremely excellent, easy to move studio. I can get any type of work done (writing, drawing, painting, comics, emailing, social media, spreadsheets) on the go without issue. I’d say my biggest complaint is the battery life, but that just means that I need to get creative about finding A/C outlets in cafés! I’m excited to use this fancy doodad for years to come!

How does it stack up against a Surface Pro or iPad? No idea as I haven’t tested those. I did significant research on those other options before I settled on the Companion 2, and my findings mostly were that all of these items are comparable. They’re all gonna have pros and cons, so it’s just down to your work style and what things annoy you the most!

Whichever you choose, you’ll probably be fine. Happy drawing!

PS. Wacom didn’t sponsor this or give me the Companion 2 for free. (Rats, that would’ve been nice.)