Pantone Recipes by Alison Anselot and Trendland

Amazing colour-coordinated recipes from Trendland and Art director and photographer Alison Anselot.
Pantone-coloured products are everywhere but this is the first time I've seen a recipe and food photography carefully matched against a Pantone reference. Pretty amazing.

Wish I could colour coordinate my food. More here.

'I heart my bike!' Fixie made from Food

Following on from my previous post about the Edible Cookbook, here's another edible abomination masterpiece: Swedish still life photographer, Fabian Öhrn partnered with art director Joakim Hedblad to produce this fixed gear bikes (totes hipster, of course) made entirely out of food.

Ours is not to question why (Seriously, why?) but to marvel at the madness. In case you're wondering, here's the ingredients list: Leek, kolbaz sausages, regular spaghetti, Swedish rhubarbs, ginger, organic carrots, syrup, lime, lemon, black spaghetti, grapefruit, cowberrys, pear, cheese, whole meat macaroni sticks, cucumbers, sugar, orange and lots of olive oil... (at least there'll be no squeaky brakes, ho ho.)

Inspiration: Leah Reena Goren for Evian

These are some amazing food illustrations (as well as other things) from the wonderfully talented Leah Reena Goren. They were live illustrations commissioned by evian produced during the SOBE Wine & Food Festival. Drawings were completed on location in South Beach, Miami, Florida and during travel, and then posted in real time to evian's Twitter and Facebook. In all, 32 drawings were completed to tell the story of the 3-day weekend. Amazing idea, it must have been such a lovely brief to work on!

The Real Cookbook: The World's First Edible Cookbook

German design agency Korefe has created "The Real Cookbook," the world's first edible cookbook. The book is a special edition from the Gerstenberg Publishing House, which specializes in culinary and art books.

 How amazing does that look? Typography & Pasta - literally two of my most favourite things.

It's just a promo I believe, you can't buy it - but I'd love to see it made into production. In English too, perhaps, but the German means you get an education lesson at the same time!

In terms of assembling a lasagne, it makes perfect sense - you do construct the pasta layers a 'page' at a time, and it will ensure a perfect spread - no weird leaks in the corner where you've had to snap lasagne sheets into pieces to fit your dish!

I'd love to see more examples of edible graphic design...

Edible Drawing Class with Satoshi Date

On the 26th Jan I went to a great little workshop run by FARM:Shop in Dalston, Edible Drawing with Satoshi Date, a Tokyo born artist, who studied at Central Saint Martins and is now creative director of his own fashion label. 

It was really great actually, I haven't been to a proper drawing class in so long and it really brought home to me how much I miss it! It's so easy to get caught up in just drawing 'how you draw' and forgetting the techniques that make drawings better. It really was like going back to basics. 

Here I am! Blending blending. Serious drawing face.

The workshop was split into 3 stages; first we were invited to draw a piece of fruit in front of us, but quickly, in less than 5 minutes, four times. This was to encourage us to look closely at the object, and draw what we saw, not what we expected to be there. It's so easy to draw things because that's how we think they should look, and not because that's actually how they are. I was drawing a pomegranate, which is actually incredibly hard; all the little fruit pips inside and the way the light falls.  

  

You can see from top left that I started doing what I always do, which is drawing the outline; Satoshi quickly corrected me and reminded me that we should always draw light and shade; objects don't have edges or outlines, they just have where the shadow ends and the light begins. 

 

 

After that, we focused on creating a 30 minute detailed drawing, based on our quick studies and what we'd learned. It's amazing how quickly 30 minutes goes in, I didn't even finish mine. I found it really hard creating definition using just light and shade, I usually go straight in with black lines. 

 

Next was a haptic drawing - that is, drawing something using only the sensation of touch, with your eyes closed. I haven't done this since school! It's so much fun, and actually incredibly relaxing. This was supposed to be an orange. But actually, I quite like it. Abstract, and I think it does resemble an orange. Or a nipple.

Lastly, we were invited to draw the fruit again, but this time by tasting it too - I chose the pomegranate seeds (I hate orange) and discovered 2 things; First, pomegranate seeds (the bit you eat) are actually hexagonal, not round, like little jewels. Secondly, tasting it kind of does help. You get a feeling for texture, and what it is that's inside; even though you're not drawing the inside, it helps with shape and weight etc. Interesting.

It was great to draw food from life too; I usually work from photos I've taken, especially when cooking, because I haven't got time to sketch when things are boiling away. I learned to look at things properly, something which I know I haven't been doing over the years. FARM: Shop itself is an amazing venue, if you're ever around the Dalston area, definitely drop in - "FARM:shop's cafe conjures up some of London's freshest food using ingredients they've grown in house or sourced from local growers.  It's a great place for a light lunch stop, coffee fix or somewhere to relax on a sunny day amongst our indoor allotment or out in our garden polytunnel."

Illustrations for SingleGirlDinner.com

Single Girl Dinner is one of those sites that you think, 'that's such a great idea. Why didn't I think of it?' It's a simple concept:

"Maybe this was all you had in the fridge. Maybe this was the best dinner idea you could come up with. Ever wonder what another girl in your heels was doing?

Let Single Girl Dinner inspire your next dinner for one."

It's not necessarily about what girls sans boyfriend cook - it might just be that odd night of the week you find yourself just cooking for one, with whatever you had left over. Or actually, because it's just you, you can go crazy and make the best damn dinner ever because there's no-one to tell you you're probably burning the garlic.

The site's not up completely yet but they have a tumblr - and my it's good. Look at all the photos. Just look! But the best part? Well, I was kindly asked to contribute some illustrations for the site launch, and here they are:

I love how wonky my bowls are. Drawing perfectly physically probable bowls is so passé.

A Little Introduction.

Hello! As you can see, I've started a new blog. EXCITING. I've still got my main one, on my website, (here, of course) but I wanted a separate space for what is fast becoming a major part of my work; food illustration!

I thought long and hard over whether or not to start this, after all, I'm already overly busy - but I love cooking and baking, I love drawing food, and it felt like a good idea to keep a blog based on all these things rather than muddle up my 'proper' blog and portfolio. This is definitely an experiment; in whether I can manage to draw food once or twice a week, and to share recipes and show you what I'm making.

I cook for myself, about 4 nights out of 7 in a week; the other nights I'm out being interesting. I work full time, I'm single (this is important - as in, I don't cook for anyone else, so I can be weird and extravagant or weird and lazy, and also end up eating bigger portions because I don't know how to divide properly), I share a house in London with 4 others, our kitchen is not massive, though quite well equipped. We have barely any freezer space, and our fridge can be... interesting. We don't, as a rule, ever cook together. And so this, I realise, is not uncommon throughout twenty-something young professionals in London. Or anywhere else, to be fair. But I think it'll be interesting.

I hate starting anything new. So much pressure. I'd rather get a few posts done and then release this wonderful thing on to the world. But, you know, it's sunday night, and I'm hungry. So here we are. Watch this space, as they say. Watch it. This space. Here.