Kitty's Drawings

Hi All!

No drawing for you this week – folks are down and its been busy-busy here.  Today we went to the Taste of Melbourne….photos aren’t as good as last year – the difference between a point-&-shoot and a super DSLR is big – but I’d have to say the event was a lot better. Overall much better organised and laid out. It was easier to navigate and they had quite a lot of things upstairs whereas last year it was only extra seating. Speaking of seating, it was much easier to get a table to park at – or eat standing at one of the astroturf covered box things

So here’s some silly photos and some of the foods I nommed.

Starting off with some alcohol – nice (Smirnoff vodka cranberry things. Shuddup!)

Pistachio panna cotta & caramel salted popcorn from Sarti. Tasty and not too sweet

Crowd shot – it was busy but not unbearably so. You never had to wait long to get your hands on some yums. This was taken at the start when the doors had only just opened.

Yellow curry of wagyu beef w/ cucumber relish from Longrain. This was tasty indeed. And a very generous portion.

Pork BELLEH!! Omg. With peas, wild sorrel coulis, purple potato and fromage frais from Embrasse. This was super yum but probably could have had a dash more seasoning in the pork crumb. But gee, I really love pork belleh (scuse my horrid shiny thumb – I’d just got a free hand treatment thingo which left moisturiser on my hands)

Dad making a difficult decision….

Smoked duck, apple & walnut rillettes from Libertine. Interesting. Toasts where a bit too crispy but the flavours were nice.

Truffle rabbit agnolotti w/ game consomme again from Libertine. This was the better dish of the two.

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. I retract my earlier judgment that B&Js aint all that….Guess I just tried a dud flavour the first time cos this was YUM!! Phish Food (the choc one) was a clear winner with choc bits, caramel AND marshmallow. *drool*

Get in my belleh!!!

Blurry photo of vanilla panna cotta w/ blood orange jelly from Mr Wolf. Better than the pistachio one

Spicy meatballs w/ freekah, parsley salad & Turkish bread from The European. Tangy and delicious and filling too.

Derp

And then we did some wine tasting. Yes, I drank all that. The Mr didn’t finish his share. Pussy

And to finish off with some sweets – from Sweet Treats (I think that’s what they were called). Had some Crowns left. I have such a big dumb head. Heh.

Thanks go to Innocent Bystander and Agenda Melbourne for my tickets. It was definitely a great bonus not having to pay for entry as I really think the price for it is a bit too high.

Hopefully my next post will be drawing related….

Seeya round!

Hello Everyone!
So since I’ve been such a hopeless blogger of late…I thought I might do a little post about the things that got me a bit excited over the past week or so.

First off…I won tickets to the Good Food & Wine Show through one of my fave food bloggers, My Food Trail along with entry to the Celebrity Theatre. I generally suck at taking photos of food etc but me and the bf had a blast. They didn’t do the “Drunk Corral” as in previous years where they fenced off the wine tasting sections. Instead everything was spread out evenly. You buy a glass for $3 and just hand it over to the various vendors to get filled up
We wandered around, trying wines and sampling foods. There was heaps on offer and lots of good deals to be had. I didn’t end up buying much being a bit short on funds…I stocked up on Vegeta and couldn’t resist the $10 Always Fresh ‘showbag’.
The Mr also bought 4 bottles of wine which will only contribute a tiny bit to the filling up of our way-too-big wine rack. We’ll never fill all 480 spaces – especially when we drink it at the rate we do! Ha!

The Celebrity Theatre was fun too – George and Gary (from Masterchef) are pretty funny guys. I was disappointed they didn’t pick anyone for freebies from our end of the seating but oh well. They each made a dish out of beetroot and one with prawns. Can’t remember specifically what they were – Gary roasted his beet and there was prawn tortellini in there too.

So here’s my pile of goodies that I brought home…Not much but it’s all about the samples you try there.

Next up is some more free stuff! I’m a member of Meg’s Makeup – Linky to your right –>
…a site where you get points for contributing to makeup reviews and general forum-y stuff. The reviews are always hilarious and informative and Meg and her team often pick products that aren’t so mainstream. It’s a good place to go to find out about new beauty products etc..
Once you build up either 50, 150 or 250 points you can choose to get some goodies sent out to you – for FREE. Well, almost. This is my first ever claim on points and I submitted it back in March. Back then it was 100% free…However, since May you have to pay for postage for your items. This I think is completely reasonable as Meg was spending quite a bit just sending these packages out all over the world. So I’m totally okay with spending $15 for $100 worth of stuff!
And yes, that’s how much cool stuff you get for redeeming 250 points. This is my haul:

* China Glaze nailpolish in Bad Landing
* Napoleon Lip Glass in Protege
* Tarte Seal the Deal lip sealant
* Tarte Eyeliner in Ballet Dancers
* Urban Decay Cream Shadow in Whipped
Score! Check it out

Aaaand….to finish off – a gratuitous photo of my kitty Boof, being utterly cute and hanging his super floofy paws over the couch. Look at them! SOOO cute!!

Bye bye for now then – til I actually do some drawing

Eeeeeeeeeee it is here! My precious beasty beast. It is soooo shiny and FAST and super awesome.
It arrived yesterday just a little after 5pm after the delivery man almost sent my dreams dashing to the concrete by having a little trip on the front step! Yikes! I saw that box wobble and images flashed in front of my eyes of the little Apple logo laying forlornly amongst shattered glass and broken LED chips. Oh noes!!!!!

Never fear! The boxes made it inside where I immediately ripped them open and started to assemble my machine. Meanwhile you can imagine the fun the kitties had with the massive boxes! What is it with kitties and their insatiable love for cardboard and paper products?
My only small setback was having to install my Airport Express card (essential for geeking it up online), which is a task usually assigned to a qualified Apple tech as it requires delving into the guts of your computer. Thankfully it wasn’t too hard – if you’ve ever installed some RAM it’s not much more tricky than that. Handy to have small fingers as there is some serious fiddling involved trying to get these itty bitty cables to clip into their spots. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to put one in while keeping the frustration at bay.
After that I was good to go! Hook up all the cables in their appropriate places and turn it ON.

Behold, the SHINY:
(and my swanky office chair. Cool huh?)

(ugh cables)

Yaaaaaaaaaay!
And its sooooo FAST I just can’t believe it. I can power up Photoshop CS4 in three seconds flat (yes I counted)!!! That’s about 20 times faster than my MacPro at work – however that is bloated with 3D software and a virtual machine to run Windoze. But STILL.
Oh and I have named him Erebus – the Greek god of darkness and shadow, son of Chaos. See, I have this habit of naming my computers after Greek legends. Always loved the stories as a child and the names sound so cool. My work computer is called Icarus and the old Macbook Pro lappy is Prometheus.
But I have to go off to Tassie this weekend so I won’t get a chance to test out it’s prowess when it comes to actual work. When I get back I will get right onto that little test let me assure you.
Well I am off to pack for the trip. Early night tonight! Gotta be up at 3am. Eep.
Bya!

(and YES I know I am a SERIOUS geek shuddup)

Hiiii!!
Finally I think I can show you this! I’ve been working on this for a lovely client and while it has gone through a COMPLETE redesign I think it has turned out well. The redesign being completely my own idea. It’s totally not ‘standard procedure’ to completely start again and do something entirely new for a customer when they haven’t suggested it – but in this case I wasn’t overly happy with the way the other drawing was going and some random sketching brought about a new look which we now both agree looks better.
This is for her business card as she is a makeup artist and wanted a pretty girl with some flowing hair and makeup on.
I had a lot of fun doing the hair and thankfully my other client also specified flowing hair – YAY. So much fun I am going to get cracking and finish that one off too.

Other news….I just got back from a fantastic afternoon tea with some awesome bloggers…Get ready for the link love…I got to meet: Violet LeBeaux and her beau Jimmy, Super Kawaii Mama (squee! Starstruck!), Esme & the Laneway (omg too!), Nicole from Circa Vintage, Celeste (she has many many blogs!) and Natalie/Briar Rose. We went to the Cristina Re Where a Girl Goes store in Collingwood where we indulged in delicious sandwiches, quiche, macarons, cupcakes and chocolates. Oh, and TEA of course. Even though I’m not normally a tea drinker, I really enjoyed the different varieties they had on offer. Yum!!

Everything in that store is so ridiculously awesome and they even gave us some gift bags to take away with us. They have a bunch of pretty papers in them which I think I might use in some drawings. Yay! Everyone was dressed so impeccably too and the company was just fabulous. I shall have some photos for you in a future post.

Right now I have to get back to finishing a ConceptArt.org CHOW entry I started. The theme is The Magus…This is the brief:

The Magus

London, England 1907. Cyril Grey is the leader of the ‘Order of Shining Starres’, an occult organisation that aims to become the most dominant in Britain. Grey has access to some of the darkest forces of the astral realm, and demands complete devotion from his acolytes. He is a man obsessed and committed to the promulgation of his black bible, the Book of Regulation, or Liber Ordinatio said to have been dictated to him by a messenger from the gods that provided to him his magical motto, Sit Vis Vobiscum. He has inherited wealth, independence, and apparent youth; appearing little over 35. But there is talk that he is older and uses a ‘glamour’ to fool his followers. There is also talk of the wealth running out, and debts beginning to mount up; of pretenders to his position, and of… murder. Dark murder, as prominent figures in the occult underworld start to… go missing…

Design Grey in his ceremonial robes of office. Consider the historical period (Edwardian) and setting. Also consider his apparent age and powerful persona, and try to present that in your design.

Interesting! I stared it on a whim – just from a sketch of his face….which turned out alright. Hopefully things keep running smoothly and I can finish on time and still like the drawings. Expect more soon!

Ciao!

You know how I’ve been whining about needing a new computer??? Well I finally bit the bullet and am in the process of buying the ultimate beast of all the Apple products….

Nooo I didn’t go with the new iMac as there’s some issues with the 27″ Intel7 ones….And I can’t wait 3 weeks plus for delivery. Impatient lass here.

So MacPro it is with the shiny new-fangled LED monitor. Not cheap. I’ll be paying for this for a while but I definitely need it – I’ll be able to draw with lots of layers now! And use large brushes without any lag. Yay!!!

Pretty:

Powwwa!! It’s gonna dominate my desk. Yeeeh. Can’t wait to get it. Photos to come of course.

Meanwhile – I’m doin some drawing. Will show you all soon when I get the go ahead from my client
Byeee!!

Just a quick post today to say…I WON SOMETHING!!!!!

Eeeeeeee!!!

A lovely blog that I read, by Twila at The Mysterious Life of a Metropolitan Housewife recently had a competition to celebrate her first blogging anniversary. The prize was a gorgeous aqua repro 50′s dress by Shristi Studio on Etsy. And as with many contests, I enter and then promptly forget about it….but today I saw on Twila’s blog that I had WON. Woooo!!!

So without furher ado, here is my prize…picture courtesty of Twila & Shristi Studio of course.

I can’t wait for it to arrive. Yay!! SO HAPPY!

Finally! I have something to show you. Yes – I’m back from my lazy hiatus. Picking up the drawing again.

This time it’s a sketch for ConceptArt’s Team CHOW competition…The theme is Tarot and you must team up with another person from the forums with 2 to 4 people per team. Then you pick two tarot cards to draw, one from the major arcana and one from the lesser. So my team is called “Oh Bother” and we’re a duo…my teammate is from the UK where our timezones are a bit more compatible. We picked The Star, The Empress as the major arcana and Two of Swords and King of Swords for the lesser. Yay! We’ve got all of January to work on them so busy busy. Slow start but kind of picking up now. Here is my initial sketch for The Star. Nothing too flash just trying to get my skills up to an acceptable level again.

Other news: We finally have some KITTIES!! I am officially a crazy cat lady now. Hehe. Last Sunday we went to the Lost Dogs Home and rescued two adult kitties.
Here is Boof:

He is 3 years old and was in the shelter for quite a while. He’s the fluffiest cat I have EVER seen! Seriously! His tail is so floofy that when he walks, the hairs on it swoosh and sway in the breeze. Awww. And look at those eyes!

Jonny’s cat we’ve called Puss:

She is one year old and much smaller than Boof. She’s uber-friendly and loves to get in your face for a pat. Literally! She will cram her head into your nose to get some pats. And she’s really spritely and active and cute.

So they’re our new babies. I am so happy to have kitties finally and happy that our landlords allow them. The good thing with adult cats is you don’t need to train them as they already know where to go. They are both so friendly too. Yay!

Anyways, back to regular posting from herein. And happy 2010!