Chocolate Mousse Cupcakes

So James's radiology class had a bake sale a couple of weeks ago and I thought I'd make some cupcakes of course! I followed a recipe for chocolate mousse cupcakes and they turned out pretty good. For these, the cupcake top is sliced off and a layer of mousse is added in between the bottom and the top. Here is how they turned out. You'll see some of the tops started sliding but they stayed in the fridge over night so they chilled before the mousse melted anymore.

View from above:

Some pictures of the process. The mousse:

The lonely bottoms, waiting for the mousse:


The tops:


The Chocolate Mousse Cupcake all put together!

And of course some didn't make it:

Overall I was really happy with how they turned out and everyone at the bake sale loved them. Yay! I have to give James credit for taking all of the pictures, I can never get the lighting right!

Bamboo branches

So I broke out my Japanese ink set again since I was itching to paint something.  I was once again reminded of how hard it is to use this ink.   It's extremely hard to get the right amount of ink on the brush and to do certain strokes.  It took me somewhere around two hours of practicing brush strokes just to make this picture actually look like bamboo and I still didn't get the leaves right.  Anyway I still like how this turned out overall and I'm excited to do more.  

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had to grind my own ink from a stick and mix it with water.  Then I load the ink on a small paintbrush to achieve this style of painting.

Anais Nin

Eh....I used to be better with the portraits...but I guess did only spend about 45 minutes on it.  

I took two pictures...wasn't sure which one was better.   She is wearing a hood in the picture which is why there are those lines.

It's been awhile

I haven't posted in awhile....I have been so extremely busy and haven't had time to do any art.   Anyway I'm doing  a drawing for my cousin Chico, because I promised I would do something for him :)   

It's in colored pencil and is something abstract which I never do but I'm trying really hard to be more creative with my art.  

I'm not sure how to do the background...it's a work in progress....

The Sultan's Elephant

The Sultan's Elephant was a street show put on by the Royal de Luxe theatre company.   The show consisted of a giant puppet girl and a giant mechanical elephant that they built.  It only showed in a few cities including London and Nantes, France.  Anyway I randomly came across pictures and youtube videos of the show and I am in awe of it.  I wish I could have been there when they performed.  Here is a video of the performance:

Anyway the painting above was based on the elephant in the show.  I was so inspired by it and....I also love elephants.  

The painting was done with pen, watercolor and colored pencil on charcoal paper.

She Sells Seashells....

I finished the painting for James's mom, Teresa.  I didn't really like how the scallop was going when I first started but I think it turned out ok.  Although I had imagined it completely different.  I'm posting the whole painting and then a closeup of the three shells.

Um so the pictures didn't turn out so great because you can see my hands but the lighting was better this time.  

Whole thing was done with watercolor and some colored pencil was used on the scallop.

sneak preview

So James's mom's birthday was on the 12th.  We are going to see her this weekend and I wanted to paint her something for her gift.  She loves beach stuff and the ocean because she grew up in Florida around the Keys.  Anyway I decided I wanted to do seashells because I thought that they would look beautiful in watercolor.   I'm not finished but here is what I have so far:

I like how it has turned out so far but I'm scared to even touch the scallop.  I'm worried I won't get the colors and texture right (you know to make it look like it actually has ridges).  I know it's not done but I was super anxious to post it!  This picture doesn't do it justice by the way, my camera couldn't get the lighting quite right but the colors are actually a lot brighter.

rainbow cake

Ok soo....I made that rainbow cake which I posted a link about in the last post.  I made it last weekend but my laptop wasn't letting me upload pictures so I'm going to try again.  Anyway it worked out really well and was a lot of fun.  Here are pictures of the process before baking:

Pretty colors!  Aaand here is after baking:

Pretty right?  I really only did it to see if I could...there wasn't any occasion really....and I definitely pretty much ate the whole thing over the course of the last week.  It was good!

Poppies will put them to sleep

So my mom asked me to do a few paintings for my parents' bedroom and bathroom which they recently redecorated.  She gave me a couple of ideas and I'm pretty sure the word "poppies" came up at some point from my mom.   The colors of their bedroom and bathroom are dark brown and red so I thought poppies would actually be perfect.   Here is what turned out:

I think it turned out pretty good but I'm sure it'll look even better once it is framed.   I will post a picture when I have it framed.  

Oh yeah and stay tuned because I am going to try to make this rainbow cake this weekend because it is freakin sweet

http://omnomicon.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-make-rainbow-cake.html

I'd love to hear comments and feedback on the poppies!

fish fish and more fish

I broke out the ink set tonight and it wound up really liking it. To paint with this set you actually have to grind the ink yourself from an ink stick to produce the liquid.  It's actually quite fun and I had a picture of me grinding the ink but accidentally deleted the picture....Anyway the first lesson was to paint  a fish and below is what I produced.  It turns out using this ink is a lot harder to use than watercolor (although it seems they would be similar).  It's much harder to control the concentration of ink and water on the brush.  

This was my best fish (above) but I had to practice a lot of strokes with the ink before I got something I liked.  You can see my multiple attempts below:

I really liked doing the fish so much that I thought I'd try to paint a Koi fish which is also popular in Japanese art.  I first used the ink to make the body and I added color with my watercolors.  The ink actually dries sort of light so I went back over the ink just a little with black colored pencil.  I tried not to use the pencil too heavy though because I still wanted the "ink" effect.  

Isn't it cute!!

Japanese Ink Painting

Last year my aunt got me this beautiful ink set and a guide to learn how to paint Japanese style paintings.  The art is called Sumi-e.   Here is the book that I will be using to teach myself:

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Ink-Painting-Art-Sumi-e/dp/0806908335/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231626244&sr=8-1

Here are pictures of the ink set:

I'm almost afraid to mess with it because it is so pretty!  Anyway I'm excited about learning a new technique of painting and I will be posting my progress.

sunflower

So I decided I needed something new for my artblog and I also needed to break out the watercolors again so I painted this last night

It's pretty good I guess, it was mostly just for practice since I haven't painted in over a year.  (It also made me realize I need new watercolors!)