Carve December Day 25 is a nod to Tom Hegg’s poem “A Cup of Christmas Tea.” YouTube has several versions of the author reading his poem. I recommended reading it and/or listening to it.
I hope you all get the chance to have that cup of tea, (coffee, cocoa or whatever your warm beverage is) with loved ones today.
Merry Christmas!
Before I start the post with my Inktober sketch of the day, I just want to thank all of you for following me. I really appreciate the “likes” and comments (If I missed your comment, please let me know!). I don’t want to overwhelm you with a ton of blog posts or emails, so I really appreciate the patience and support during Inktober, when you are getting the daily posts. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Today’s prompt is “SNACK” and I almost posted the wrong prompt!! LOL. I have Plumchester square sketchbook from Artsnacks that I have been sketching my ideas in first, before I do the final. I sketched an apple and did a couple of “ego” ideas, then I moved on to another page and did more “ego” ideas and a sketch for tomorrow’s prompt. Without thinking about what I was doing, I completed tomorrow’s prompt in my Inktober Sketchbook, LMAO. I was like “Oh crap!” when I caught it before posting the wrong one. So now they are out of order in my sketchbook.
Oh well, glad I caught it.
I sketched an apple for today’s “snack” prompt. Partly because I am telling myself I should eat more natural snacks, and partly because our elderly neighbor gave us a bag full of Red Delicious apples. The problem with Red Delicious apples is they aren’t good for cooking. Although I may try in order to get them out of the fridge. Any ideas?
My son and I were just discussing apples the other day. He likes Sweet Tango and Cosmic Crisp. I can’t find those here in Florida. But I can find my favorite, the Pink Lady. Which is indeed, pink. Wonderful combination of sweet and tart. Try one if you can find one.
Enjoy today’s sketch!
Six more days left in October. It’s always amazing how fast October whips by. Then Christmas goes into high gear, pretty much skipping over Thanksgiving. I think that Thanksgiving has been turned into the Memorial Day of the Holiday Season. It’s a shame because it really is nice to enjoy November for the beautiful month that it is. You can get some bitterly cold days, maybe even some snow, and you don’t quite get Indian Summer anymore. However, the crunchy leaves and the pumpkins, Indian corn and corn stalks left out to celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving have their own charm. Thanksgiving is the holiday to be thankful for what you have been given during the year and to celebrate with family and friends. No gifts. No annoying fireworks. Just good food and spending time together, maybe watching a parade, football or some annual activities.
My kids love Thanksgiving and my daughter tells me that it’s her favorite holiday. She says it is the food. I can see why. Thanksgiving, at least in my family, was all about homemade food. Everything from scratch. I even use a Food Network scratch recipe for my biscuits, which I make the day before and then reheat them on Thanksgiving. (I use spelt flour instead of white flour.) The joke in our family is that it takes days to make the meal, then everyone seems to wolf it down in about 15 minutes on Thanksgiving.
The favorite Thanksgiving food? Stuffing, hands down.
It seems fitting that today’s prompt is “tempting.” Especially as October winds down. We are coming into the season where healthy eating goes flying out the window. Halloween with the excessive candy, Thanksgiving and the holidays with the rich foods, wine and desserts, and cookies; it’s the season of food and calories.
Speaking of today’s Inktober sketch; this is a pen and ink version of a watercolor sketch I did several years ago, when Cleo was still alive. I swapped out what was originally on the plate for the fish.
OK, someone please tell me why cats are associated with fish? Cats are domesticated from the African wildcat, a species that still exists today and they eat mice, rats, insects, birds, lizards and sometimes baby mammals. Where’s the fish?
It’s Inktober Day 17 and today’s prompt is salty. One word with so many ways to represent it. I opted for the good old fashioned Philly pretzel. There’s nothing like a hot Philly pretzel straight out of the oven, slathered with brown mustard, spicy or not, I don’t care. Philly pretzels are amazing. Delis and shops, food trucks and food carts all over the Philadelphia region sell Philly pretzels. The best are the salted ones but you can get them unsalted.
I know, some of you like the Auntie Anne pretzels. Yeah, those are dessert pretzels. Philly pretzels are a savory dough, they taste like a hot buttered roll, not a rolled up doughy cookie. Philly pretzels are sort of like a twisted bagel with salt. They are usually a long shape, not your traditional round pretzel. They aren’t like the Bavarian soft pretzels you get in gastropubs this time of year. Once you try a real Philly pretzel, you’ll understand the difference.
Philly pretzels straight out of the oven are hard and crispy on the outside. The inside is soft, bread like; some folks like to pull out the soft inside and eat it like an oreo, soft inside first then the harder outer crust. (Or if you are in a schoolyard, the inside dough balls are used to bean someone in the head. Only Philly kids could use soft pretzels as a weapon.)
I think some of the pretzel companies ship them around the US. I haven’t tried that yet but maybe I should. Some things like Philly pretzels, cheesesteaks, hoagies, scrapple, Irish potatoes, Taylor Pork ROLL (it’s not Taylor ham, it says ROLL on the box) and Jewish Apple cake are best when acquired in the Philly Region.
Oh, and the piece de resistance? Birthday pound cake from Stock’s Bakery on Lehigh Ave and chocolate from Lore’s Chocolate on 7th St.
And I am not a fan of Pat’s or Geno’s cheesesteaks. Those are for tourists. Some of your best cheesesteaks come from the neighborhood bar or deli. Or Jim’s on South Street. My favorite place is Somerdale Deli. In South Jersey.
Today’s prompt is scallop. I thought about doing some sort of design but I decided to take my mussels “inches” and make them into a larger 4×6 sketch and used scallops instead. OK, so it is a little macabre with the scallops crying over the ones that were cooked. I am not trying to make a statement or anything, my warped sense of humor was going a little in the “Far Side” direction.
If you are not familiar with the “Far Side” cartoons by Gary Larson, they were genius and took everyday things and turned them into humor, like cows, dogs and cats. Some of my favorites are the cows standing around on hind legs and smoking, one yells “car” and they all go back to grazing and doing regular cow things. There’s a frog that sticks his tongue to an airplane flying over and gets lifted in the air, but two of my favorites are the ones about dogs and cats and what they hear. These two are priceless. You need to read the dog one first to really appreciate the one for cats. It’s so true.
There’s also so the cartoon of the kid going to a mentally gifted school and trying to push the door that clearly says “pull.” Something we have all done at one time or another so the humor hits home. Gary had sooooo many cartoons. My coworkers and I used to stand in a bookstore at lunch time and cry over his books. We used to have everyone in the store laughing. We had one coworker who we would drag to the store when he came into the city so we could share the cartoons with him. Yeah, I think we actually bought him a copy, LOL.
Laughter truly is the best medicine and the best way to bring people together. Now that I think about it, we never complained about anything, we’d just go do something that made us laugh. That’s a good memory for me.
It’s so much fun to do tiny art! Today’s prompt is “Sprinkle.”
Service with a smile…..
This is a portfolio assignment in the course by Mike Lowery, “Getting Paid to Draw.” The Assignment was to create icons for a category of our choice. I chose baking since it is a commonly used illustration and is part of the 3X3 Illustration challenge. (In essence, I am killing two proverbial birds with one stone.)
Well Coco is painted. I really like how it came out and it was fun! What a happy sculpture to hang out in my studio.
Gina Lento: Fine Art and Illustration 
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