Marketmore 76 Cucumber

Here is the finished illustration of the Marketmore 76 Cucumber:

There are apparently a lot of uses for cucumbers that have to do with skin care. I myself would rather just eat them. When I think of cucumbers I think of cucumber sandwiches in the summer, a nice cold, light snack.
Apparently Roman Emperor Tiberius really liked his cucumbers. Wikipedia tells me, " The Romans reportedly used artificial methods (similar to the greenhouse system) of growing to have it available for his table every day of the year. To quote Pliny; "Indeed, he was never without it; for he had raised beds made in frames upon wheels, by means of which the cucumbers were moved and exposed to the full heat of the sun; while, in winter, they were withdrawn, and placed under the protection of frames glazed with mirrorstone. Reportedly, they were also cultivated in cucumber houses glazed with oiled cloth known as "specularia”." I suppose he would have been happy today with our trucks and grocery stores making anything we want available all year round.

Marketmore 76 Cucumber

Today I began an illustration of Marketmore 76 Cucumber:

Hmmm, what to say about these... Well, here is a bit about cucumber history from wikipedia: "Cucumbers originated in India. Large genetic variety of cucumber has been observed in different parts of India^. It has been cultivated for at least 3,000 years in Western Asia, and was probably introduced to other parts of Europe by the Romans. Records of cucumber cultivation appear in France in the 9th century, England in the 14th century, and in North America by the mid-16th century."
And they are also good sprinkled with lemon pepper. :)

Bloomsdale Spinach

I finished that Bloomsdale Spinach illustration today. Here it is:

I'm really happy with how this turned out. It makes me want to stick totally to leafy vegetables because the wrinkly leaves just look so neat. This one is in gouache, which I am beginning to really like. I may stick with it for a while for everything. The strange thing about it though is the way my scanner picks it up. This spinach illustration actually scanned really grey again. I had to hold up the original and mess with the color of the electronic image on the computer, looking back and forth between the two, to get it to really look like the painting. I am not sure why the scanner doesn't like gouache, but as long as I can fix it, I suppose it's OK.
We also worked a bit more on the raised beds until something happened to Juneau again...

I think he just needed a snack.

Spinach Contours, Strawberry heads, and Garden Beds

Here is some further work on that Bloomsdale Spinach illustration:

For some reason, when it scanned it came out looking grey. I am hoping when I finished it the real green color will scan as green or else I will have to mess with it on the computer. But I love scanning the illustrations at this stage. It sort of works out so that in the end I get to have two very different works of art. One that is two toned and based only on the line, and another that is lots of colors and more... life-like.
Here is an interesting spinach tidbit from wikipedia: "The cartoon character Popeye the Sailor Man is portrayed as having a strong affinity for spinach, becoming physically stronger after consuming it. The commonly accepted version of events states that this portrayal was based on faulty calculations of the iron content. In the version, German scientist Emil von Wolff misplaced a decimal point in an 1870 measurement of spinach's iron content, leading to an iron value 10 times higher than it should have been, and this faulty measurement was not noticed until the 1930s. This caused the popular misconception that spinach is high in iron that makes the body stronger."
And now, perhaps one reason why people do not eat strawberries out of the dumpster is that they are afraid this might happen to them:

We were just eating strawberries and then Juneau... well, I don't know what happened to him.
But later, he got better and we worked on the raised beds some more until we ran out of screws and Juneau ran out of energy. Juneau, it's not that kind of bed:

spinach outline, garden building

I spent a tiny bit of time starting a Bloomsdale Spinach illustration for SESE. Here is that very light outline:

I know it is hard to see even when I darkened it up a whole bunch and that it also looks nothing like spinach right now, but come tomorrow it will look more like the real thing. :)
I also spent time with Juneau beginning to build the raised bed for the garden. Yay! After quite a bit of delay due to not having the right tools and materials we are finally getting there!

You can imagine this being longer and having that inside filled with soil growing yummy organic veggies with seeds from Southern Exposure!
In other good news, our compost is getting hot. I stuck my hand in just a little yesterday and it was nice and toasty in there.

More Zombies

Here is what may or may not be the finished cover for the zombie story:

Hmmm, not much to say about it. It was fun doing a different style than normal and working with gouache. I would like to keep playing with it, and also keep playing with the black outline, which I perhaps could have made more dominant here. I also had fun making the eerie background and painting the light around the moon, which made me think of a friend of mine who told me a few times that that was his favorite color, the color around the moon. I would also, like to play around more with that, strange natural lighting.

Coloring the Zombies

I began to do the fun part of coloring the illustration for the zombie story today:

It's getting there. I will probably finish all the color tomorrow and then I want to outline some of it in a stylized sort of way. I may get it all done tomorrow. We will see.
I am using gouache on this, which is a first for me. A friend of mine whom I visited over the summer had a set that she was never going to use so she gave them to me. So far I really like it. I like the smooth darks you can get. It is as I heard it would be, a sort of middle ground between watercolor and oil, or watercolor and acrylic.