Tshirt printing! Stampe per magliette

After a little update on the old Puffin I drew in 2011, here the design printed on t-shirts, along the moose (one of the most favourite among children). These have been printed by Tegrim in Parma, Italy. I hope these may be the beginning of a new collaboration :-)

Dopo un piccolo aggiornamento sul vecchio Puffino che ho disegnato nel 2011, ecco il disegno stampato su t-shirt, assieme all'alce (una delle più amate dai bambini). Questi sono stati stampati da Tegrim a Parma, in Italia. Spero che questi possano essere l'inizio di una nuova collaborazione :-)

(vegan) Kale & Spinach dip in Olive oil - Bimby directions

I have to write this one down because I highly modified some recipes I found on the web. See below why I modified these recipes

INGREDIENTS:

For the faux parmesan (recipe modified from http://minimalistbaker.com/how-to-make-vegan-parmesan-cheese/):
1/4 cup Macademia nuts
1/2 cup Walnuts
3 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder
Directions: Grind all the ingredients together in a food processor for about 1 minute. Store in a glass jar in the fridge.

Rest of the dip (recipe modified from http://www.chowhound.com/recipes/garlicky-kale-and-spinach-dip-11351 and http://minimalistbaker.com/creamy-kale-and-spinach-dip/ ):
40 gr Olive Oil
200 gr Chopped Kale including stem
100 gr baby spinach (I used a mixed kale, spinach, collard green and arugola salad prewashed box
3 small cloves of garlic, or 2 medium, or 1 big ;-)
add the rest of ingredients at the end:
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
1 Tbsp dried origano
1/4 tsp Tumeric (just a pinch)
2 Tbsp Extravirgin Olive oil

in a skillet fry the garlic in the 40 gr of olive oil (never fry the extra virgin, which can be added only when the dip is cold) until gets yellow, then add chopped kale and spinach.
If you have a Thermomix or Bimby, put everything in the jug, chop for 5 sec speed 5, then cook for 3.30 min, heat 100, speed 3.
Let cool down, possibly in a cooler container.
add 1/4 cup faux Parmesan, and the rest of the ingredients.
Let the Bimby/ Thermomix mix all together up to speed 8, otherwise use a food processor.

If you want it more oily you can mix with more oil or 1/4 cup milk of your choice, but it's super good like that.

Enjoy!

-WHY THIS VARIANT
1- faster to prepare ;-)
2- I have a number of food intolerances, including Cashews and Whey, while Nutritional yeast is a dead yeast, therefore not only works for who has yeast intolerance, but also for getting an extra dose of B12.
3- I want to have a heathy dip which uses Olive oil, because I'm intolerant to Sunflower oil, which is used in the majority of dips and bottled food, and I still love dips as snack food.
4- kale, spinach, oregano, walnuts, garlic, tumeric, arugola, collard greens, parsley are all food pretty healthy for the body: either anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, or anti-oxidants.

I found many information about healthy food properties in this website: http://nutritionfacts.org/

Stroller bag project accoplished!

This is for my sister in law and my niece, I found the project in "One yard wonders" and used some old print fabric from ikea, which works amazing as a Canadian gift!
NB. I had some instruction help from a sewing savvy friend, as this book has very nice ideas but not the best execution.

Pantry solution!

I just moved, and scrumbled the forniture I already had with the new space. We had 2 ikea stolmen units in the old living room. They're pretty great shelving system because they're completely customizable.
We ended up combining them on one wall space and adding some extra shelves. I cut some clear plastic table clot for protection over the shelves and added some of the milk crates at the bottom (with felts under them). We then covered it all with curtains ( sewed at the bottom, if you do this, only after they've been washed, they shrink considerably!). They slide very nicely with the metal rings. All ikea. I'm for fast and economic solutions, and they really minimize forniture shopping time.
So, now we finally have lots of pantry space and it's nicely hidden (and sheltered by the sun light), leaving a clean wall!

Painting on a plane

I gave myself way more time than usual for this one, as I had to spend 21 hours on 2 planes coming back from Australia. For fulll disclosure, I also watched 4 movies and took a nap, sketched the line and base color before hand and finalized it tonight while catching up on tv shows. I followed big lines the nice tutorial that Loish made for painting with Sketchbook pro, I can tell it helps! Thank you Loish.
Here the tutorial, a must try ;-)

Kym as my subject

Perk of dating an artist? You're going to be the subject of your partner art creations!
Here a digital sketch I did a year ago.
I was just drawing a generic guy which didn't get nowhere, so I just turned my head and start to draw Kym on the top of it, while he was playing videogames (that' why the proportions are not realistic).
The strokes of Skechbook Pro can get pretty realistic, I find them quite interesting (other than the fact that the brush I used burn the colors once I did a few overlays).

From illustration to 3D print of a cat

A while back I asked my family and friends which, of this blog illustrations, would look good as a 3d print. The cat illustration I made many years ago, was one of the winners. It's a nice illustration I made to test out my new (back then) Wacom tablet. Today I'm using the same design to test out the glow in the dark pla filament, and creating a figurine that hold the same feeling of the illustration I made back then. I've listed the figurine on Etsy and I hope you'll like it ☺

Daenerys 3d print

My work (Guru Studio) 's colleagues made a blog art challenge staring with Game of Thorne. I never really watched it, but I like a lot this character.

It happen to be a long weekend in Canada (Thanksgiving), so as Character Modeler into 3D printing, I couldn’t avoid to use the extra time for jumping into this challenge at best and getting our TD Kym to print it! 

We're going to print a high resolution soon, and paint it, but I hope this test will make it for now!

Here the Original Post on my Tumblr page.

Waiting lunch on the patio

this is still from the trip in Prince Edward county, in Ontario near the 1000 islands. Kym made a photo when I was painting the house in the winery backyard. I'm not sure if I ever showed my light trip watercolor set. It's a mints tin case that kym got at an interview with DreamWorks so we kept it for a while and then... oh well it's light and fits a few watercolor bricks  i also have some new water brushes so i can choose different sizes for the various needs. I like a lot the big flat one, very handy. ☺

Musician at the cafe'

I stop for a coffee (and for coffee i Always mean espresso)in Napanee ON, this morning with my family, as there was the scare craw festival, and the place (coffee cravings) had 2 musician, guitar and voice plus cello, entertaining the clients with nicely executed pop songs. As the others were drinking cappuccino, I took the extra time to sketch the cellist girl. Funny enough her mother was just sitting aside me, extremely impressed by my sketching on the go. So I gave her the sketch as Kym called time off. I think I made her day. Such a nice feeling ☺

Painting Tangled

I can see the lights - Tangled scene made from a painting tutorial at the Paintlounge in Toronto.

This took me a while to post, anyways, here the real painted pic from the post I was talking about back in February. I usually don't actually use PAINT for my art, so this was a fun tutorial to follow. The teacher was quite please with this outcome. Yay! I made a painting!

Fleece scraps recycling

 

For my Christmas gifts I made a bunch of objects that required small pieces of fabric and fleece. Instead of using the sticky one, I used a lot of my old fleece scraps from when I was doing winter beanies. Although this was really not enough to finish my scraps, but then Kym asked to get some cushion for avoiding the pots to ruin the wall, and for doing some covering for his bottles.
I have to say this is a very entertaining kind of project, because it require to align all the scraps in a way that they fit nicely for shapes and colours (I still try to make them look nice somehow), therefore it becomes a bit time consuming and mesmerizing. I didn't end up finishing the covert illustrated on the table photo, but the pot cushion made its use quite well aside our kitchen pantry. In the back I sewed some cotton fabric leftover from the back of the coasters I made previously. I'm quite happy with the result and I'm glad I found a function for all these scraps. If you happen to do the same, send me a link through the comments!

from Wine Corks to Cork Board!

This is a project that used lots of friends collaboration to be able to finish this panel. It's a birthday gift for my friend Biagio, who likes wine a lot. in the centre there are 2 old pot board from Ikea and so I glued all the corks on a wood panel with wood glue. I'm quite happy with the result.
My friends didn't stop to give me corks, so I'll soon do another one for myself. I'm also very happy to do something useful while recycling all these corks that otherwise would be simply tossed in the garbage.

home made Shadow Box

As every good cartoon passionate, my house is full of "toys" everywhere. It makes my mom go nuts. So I took a wood panel I purchased at the art-store a while ago, and bought 6 small cardboard boxes from the dollar store and glued them and their lids to the wood panel with wood glue. So now they have a nice custom display on my wall and allow less confusion around :-)

Savannah Curtis

A digital sketch while watching the movie "Dear John". They always lit so well Amanda Seyfried. I may do something more realistic once.

Once upon a time

this is sketching by memory the actress that play Tamara in the 2nd season of Once upon a time. So it come out quite different but oh well... at least I painted something.

Auguri Papa' (Happy Father's day)

In Italy it happen to be on March 19th!

sketching Monster University

Ahhh! I really like how mike come out!
These are illustrations of Mike Wazowski and the Dean Hardscrabble made in watercolor from a still frame reference.
When I was watching MU I though... what a great modeling and lighting! So, as I had another night rental available, I start to watch it a second time, and then... o well, I basically spent the rest of the evening on getting these 2 done :-D
Hope you like them too!

Digital doodling

Here a couple of sketches i did recently. The landscape is made with FreshPaint, after I attended a real acrylic painting class (Tangled) at the Paintlounge here in Toronto. The other sketch is made with Sketchbook Pro.

Sewing my gift - year 2

Again, I got so much fleece and quilt fabric, I though to make a bunch of useful handmade gift this year. There are a lots of tutorials online, plus I personalized some item as I like, o made up others (like my keyboard cover, which I made for myself in the summer but I forgot to post it :-P)
Anyhow, here some example, many more on the bottom of my photo collection of sewing stuffs.