Family proportions.

I was VERY concerned that I kept drawing the children too old. It's hard to be consistant. Feedback from Stephanie was that I was adding 3 years to Luke and Emily, and I was making the littlest boy too much of a baby. So she took some photos of families from church to show me the relative sizes. Then I drew a version of our book family. I scanned it in and used photoshop to adjust their proportions, mainly leg length.

Mum   Ben   Emily   Luke   Dad

From this, I made some coloured rulers in InDesign, so that when I was putting my drawings into the layout I could also check if the relative heights were correct. And then I also had to constantly remember to make Luke and Emily's legs and arms short, so that they looked little. Fat tummies also make kids look young! A few years older and they get much lankier.

I put the least amount of practise into the Dad. He's supposed to be a skinnyish man getting slouchy and parenty. He doesn't show up at all in one book, so thats OK, but in another book he is all the way through, and unfortunately he varies in quality. His face changes shape, his height varies. I really didn't get the hang of him at all. Even in this sketch I can tell that I don't really understand his body because he's straight like a pole and is falling backwards slightly.

So this drawing is pretty much how they look in the books. The end size of the books meant that the drawings are quite small, so the simpler illustration style of this sketch is basically how I ended up drawing the finished scenes. All my lead-up was too detailed and too big. Drawing it smaller like this forced me to simplify, especially the faces: just dots and spots. I find the hardest part of the face to draw is the bit between the nose and the top lip, so at this size I don't have to draw it at all!

Coloured portrait.

Eventually I had to go to colours, and although I haven't done much watercolour, it seemed the most appropriate style: a lot of colour control and detail. Actually, I had no idea if I would be able to do decent watercolour or not, I just hoped I could! So I painted this, which took half or most of a day I think. It was the big test of my illustration technique, because the books probably wouldn't go ahead unless my illustrations looked professional.

Baking round 2.

This is a very regular sort of white loaf recipe I got out of my bible study leader's cook book. I added a teaspoon of bread improver (with a teaspoon of yeast and 750g of flour, butter and warm water). I kneaded it for 5 or 10 minutes, which I learnt how to do from a youtube video. The internet is so handy.

Then it just sits for 50 minutes or so on top of my warm oven (while baking veggies for dinner) and it doubled.

 
Then I brushed it with milk and baked it for 30 minutes, and it was done! My oven is hotter at the back. I don't know if the back or the front of the oven is the correct temperature.

It is a bit doughy, like a good damper. I ate it with my baked veggies! It's all part of the $2 a day challenge. The lentils weren't that nice, but the bread made it satisfying anyway. I need to buy some mixed seeds so that I can bake multigrain. I think you just need to soak the grain overnight.

Scootering!

Character sketches.

Another installment in my illustration back story! Illustration style finally comes together. Ignore the two little boxes I can't get rid of.

Not very good Emily

Better Emily with practice faces at different angles

Baby brother Todd/Ben

Older brother Luke

Dad and Mum

I did a series of portraits of all the family. Some things I started working out at this stage:

• Eye-shaped eyes don't look as good as just dots and eyebrows. 
• The shorter the arms and legs are, the younger the child looks.
• I like drawing feet.
• I'm trying to make them look messy and casual. It's hard to go against my instinct to make everyone beautiful, but I tried to make the Dad have a bit of a tummy and a receding hairline, the mum look mum-shaped, the kids chubby.
• I've figured out that I should draw hair in big chunky outlines. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't at all.
• I have to draw Emily's body first and then draw her dress over the top and then rub out her body.
• Stripes look really cute. Lots of Bonds-style striped clothing.

Baking round 1.

So I made the 5 minute no knead bread! It's simple in theory, you mix it and store it and bake it on a pizza stone with a bowl of water as well, and you get a sort of heavy turkish bread with a really nice crust. It goes really well with the stew I'm eating at the moment.

Kept in the fridge for a few days.

The dough is really floppy and sticky so my first one was a sort of flat mess on the pizza stone, but it baked fine. The second one I had better handling technique so got a more traditional bread shape, and it didn't make much difference to how it baked. Neither of the rose all that much, but they were still yummy. I'm exercising much restraint and making a loaf last more than one day.

Before baking.

This was the second loaf. It uses 1.5 cups of flour. The idea is, you make a batch with 6 cups of flour and bake it by the chunk as you need it. I didn't know if it would be any good, so I made a half batch (3 cups) so this is 1.5 cups.

After baking.

I will try another recipe this week, maybe one that involves kneading. I will try and buy something called Bread Improver, which bakers use. I'm starting the $2 challenge, so baking bread will save money. If I can get some multigrain happening, that would be good!

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

Hymn: How firm a foundation.

(I discovered this hymn on the Together for the Gospel CD. That CD is a great singalong hymn-learning resource.)

After the first verse, all the verses are sung from God, if that makes sense. We sing to Got what he said to us. ie,

Fear not—I am with you, oh be not dismayed,
for I am your God, and will still give you aid.

That's a very unusual voice to write a Christian song in. It can be kind of confusing.

It's a good song to sing when you are walking in the rain, because there is a verse that goes: When though the deep water I call you to go the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow...

I especially like the last verse: the repetition for emphasis, singing about hell and foes. Leaves me pumped full of singing endorphins.

The soul that on Jesus shall lean for repose
I will not, I WILL NOT, desert to its foes.
That soul, tho all hell should endeavour to break,
I'll never, no never, no NEVER forsake.

Also in Goulburn.

Goulburn had amazing roses everywhere.

I didn't take my camera with me on Saturday morning, but I will mention the bikeshop/cafe, which was a hip-n-hapnin place, I went in to look for a scooter but they didn't have any, only bikes and food.

Then Dad and I went to the street market next to the park. It's not as big or busy as the Maitland or Glebe markets, but it's got some good stuff. Especially freshly baked artisan bread, $3.50 a loaf, crocheted things, and some second hand books. I bought a WW casserole cookbook and a hardcover Neil Gaiman book.

Goulburn.

 

Mum, Dad and I visited Granny and Grandfather on the weekend. When we visit, very little ever changes. We sit at the same table in the same kitchen with the same biscuit tin that we did when I was little, and it's probably unchanged much from when my Mum was little. It's nice to have that sense of continuity. Also, it is quaint.

This is the kettle.

This is the can opener, it folds out from the wall.

This is the backyard.

These are the chooks.

I found an egg!

Restless. And I want to bake bread.

I think it must be the weather. It should be summer by now, but the forecast is for another week of rain. I'm feeling distinctly frustrated about my life and everything, my attention span for work is minuscule, I'm struggling with envy/contentment, I'm tired. And I still want to bake bread.

I'm too busy and it's too cold. I need warm and I need time. All my frustration is being focused down on this one obsession. I WANT TO BAKE BREAD.

One of the no-knead breads I want to try making.

Craft in small spaces.

Craft is notoriously cluttery. You have to collect the tools and materials, and once you finish something you have leftover scraps which "could be made into something one day". So you collect small balls of wool, bits of cloth, bags of beads, especially cos none of it is cheap and it is all so pretty. But that's the best case scenario: much more likely is that you start something and get bored after 2 weeks and then 6 months later when you feel crafty again you start something else.

In my drive to own less stuff and fit better into my room, I turned to my craft bags. My mum had a sewing room and a whole linen cupboard full of craft and clutter, I'm trying to contain my stuff to a small corner.

Hence, most of the sewing that I am blogging about is an attempt to clear out unfinished projects, use up scraps, or 'upcycle' clothes. I've got a cross stitch I started when I was 10, quite large, almost finished and not particularly to my taste anymore. I've got some patchwork which needs to be quilted. Unfortunately, if I finish projects like these I won't have more space, because a quilt or a picture is big, but at least they will be out of the sewing corner. And I get a sense of achievement. And something to blog.

Baking.

My next fad will be baking bread. I last did this 2 or 3 years ago. I don't have a bread maker, I just do it in the oven. It's a bit time consuming, but nice to do something different. I shall be using the No knead artisan bread recipe from here. I have purchased a pizza stone and some yeast, now I am waiting for a couple of hours free to get it going.

Learning to draw.

I did a fair bit of illustration in my design course. I picked illo electives because I fancied myself as a drawer. I actually haven't done a lot of drawing at all in the 5 years since I left uni. I don't make art for fun; since design is my job I prefer to sew or play piano or other things. I've drawn things like tractors for some jobs.

Now, the only way to be a really good drawer is to draw a lot. Like getting better at tennis or knitting. Practise makes perfect. So I did a few pretty bad drawings, then a lot of mediocre drawings, and finally a presentable set of illustrations. I think there is a real difference between my stuff and stuff done by people who draw for a living and draw all the time—their ease of drawing something beautiful. Being so good that you can be simple and eloquent at the same time. I'm not there, but maybe by the time I've done 20 books…

So anyway, there was a lot of work to get good at drawing before I published a picture.

Seriously ugly:

Has potential. Simple, but too cartoony:

Too real: 

Too real… but getting there. Sister, brother, mother actually look very similar in physical appearance to the finished versions, but haven't worked out a painting style yet.