Wednesday, August 26, 2009

100th post! Illustration Friday - Wrapped

It's a wrap for the wrapped rapper.

So this is about 5 days late, but with all the craziness last week getting ready for the SF Zine Fest, I think I have a valid excuse for waiting on this one.

Anyhoo, E and I have decided to really step up our game after all the great feedback we got from the Zine Fest. I think that if people had come to the zine fest really expecting to spend money (like people going to APE or Renegade do) we would have done even better.

Eve even sold one of her Illustration 1 paintings! Seriously, how many students sell the VERY FIRST assignment of Illustration 1 done in gouache? Not many, I'd expect. Anyway, I sold a painting, a few prints, and Eve made up some nice digital reproductions of her paintings. We ended up doing fairly well, and we're weighing our options about attending APE as an exhibitor this year. We shall see if the budget allows.

It was really great to see people that I haven't seen in a while, and it was awesome meeting tons of great new peeps! I managed some sweet trades (esp. Cough zine #6 and Sean Logic's Myspace Swindle zine - both highly recommended and done by cool-ass people) and our bookbinding workshop was an overwhelming success.

Anyway, we've been overhauling our Monkey + Seal site, so go check it out, as I'll probably be blogging over there much more than over here. Updates go up there MWF. Peace!

Monday, August 10, 2009

Woo!


See this painting? It (among others) is now SOLD, baby!


So tonight Eve and I met with a couple who just moved into a new place and wanted some wall candy. Through friend of a friend, the guy heard about us and wanted to buy some art...and he did!

As embarrassingly noobish as this may sound, it's nice to finally have someone buy your art who doesn't already know you.

Hey, everyone's gotta start somewhere, right?

So last night I had a dream about working at Paper Source and having someone buy a shit-ton of ribbon and gift cards, and I was struggling to find the right gift cards under the heaps of ribbon. What a fucking nightmare that was. I've been thinking, is PS the new TR for me? I hope not, for my sanity's sake.

Also: I will still be posting here, but I'll be posting at least Monday, Wednesday, and Friday over at the new blog: www.blog.monkeyandseal.com. Eve and I are getting seriously about this art biz, for reals.

Now, off to sleep. Work day 5 of 6 (in a row) incoming.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Illustration Friday - Modify

The damage they would do, they realized far too late, would be thoroughly irreversible and would be the cause of their own demise.

Quick sketch (1 hr or so) in Photoshop CS3. Much to work on, yet it's almost 3am so I'm off to sleep.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

This is like the best thing ever

My recipe (Yelp style) for Miso-marinated Eggplant

Enough people wanted this recipe, so here it is.

Miso-soaked eggplant over rice

Anyway, you need (for 1 big eater and 1 small eater):
-1 medium/large eggplant
-enough white miso to coat chopped up eggplant (~3/4 cup or so, the more the saltier)
-sugar (enough to do a good coat of the eggplant twice, so like maybe 4-5 tablespoons?)
-sake (about 1/2 cup)
-soy sauce (see instructions)
-3 large cloves garlic
-1 large onion
-1 package tofu
-1-2 green onions (not necessary, but I like it for the slightly different flavor than the onions, plus it gives it some color)
-some cooking oil
-rice

Directions:
So you COULD do the whole pressing-the-eggplant-between-paper-towel etc. to get the bitterness out. I say "fuck it." Just chop that bad boy up into about ~1/2" squares.

Throw eggplant into bowl/tray/container. Dump the miso onto the eggplant, then pour just enough soy sauce to sort of lube up the miso so that it spreads easier. Toss the eggplant, then add the sake to further dilute the miso. You're basically making a sake/soy sauce/miso soup, but you don't want it too liquidy. The consistency of melted ice cream should be good. Sprinkle enough sugar to coat the entire surface area of the top layer of eggplant. Mix, then cover and let sit.

Wash/soak your rice, put it in the rice cooker. Don't worry about the eggplant.

Start cutting your onions/garlic. Dice the garlic, chop up the onions however you like. I do the green onions sorta big so they stand out a bit (but I really like green onions).

When your veggies are chopped, stir the eggplant up. At this point I'd probably do another sprinkling of sugar over the eggplant. I just thought that maybe brown sugar might be good?

Anyhoo, I went and worked on my website for a while, so I'd just let everything sit for another 15 minutes or so. Alternatively, you could probably do the 15 minutes first, then chop the veggies if it weirds you out to have chopped onions and garlic sitting on your cutting board.

So I came back, washed my hands, and popped a frying pan on the stove. I set it up for medium-high heat. Oil goes into pan, along with garlic and onions. When they start to get a little cooked, stir up that eggplant mix and dump it in the pan. Proceed to stir. I got lazy, so after the eggplant was partially cooked, I added the green onions and tofu in, mixed it up a bit, covered it and turned it down to medium-low heat and ate some cookies.

Bam. 5 or so minutes went by and I went back and taste-tested the dealy. It seemed almost done (you don't want to overcook the eggplant too much, otherwise it gets really mush-like, which is cool if you're into mush like I am, but for others, maybe not so much) so I turned off the heat and while I set up the streaming TV show to watch with dinner, I let the eggplant cook a bit more. Serve it over rice, but be warned, this sucker is salty as fuck. I mean, miso + soy sauce? Get some water, pronto.

Anyway, I hope this inane recipe works for you, and I apologize if it doesn't. I really need to start measuring shit out.

Special in the Etsy store

So I updated www.monkeyandseal.com and started up the blog at www.blog.monkeyandseal.com.
Updates will be happening at least 3 days a week (as opposed to the sporadic posting here).

Also, the Jackalope print (3-color serigraph, edition of 26) is being sold for the next few days at a super-reduced price of $5 (even shipping got discounted a bit). Hurry up and buy these things!

In another slightly un-related topic, I got a promotion at work! Woo!