I love whiskey. Especially the slightly smoky kinds like Talisker and the more well rounded ones like Glenlivet are perfect on a cozy evening.
Vanilla ice cream is the perfect starter for this Saturday night.
Tag: Illustration
Your well deserved after-work-treat
I am really enjoying this themed 7 day challenge. 2 more days to go.
Finally its Friday and what is better than a cold one straight after work I thought?
Extra sugar on Thursday
The week is more than half way over, so you might need a little bit of extra sugar to keep you going until the weekend.
These ones are more of the typical Icelandic style kind of ice creams that you get at most ice cream parlors. Soft ice cream in a box with any kind of topping you can think of – From Mars bars, to Oreos, Smarties, Skittles, coconut bars, biscuits and much much more and everything topped with chocolate and caramel sauce. Don´t forget the cream!
If that doesn´t give you a sugar high then I don´t know.
It´s all going down on Wednesday
During the last couple of months I definitely got into the positive habit of drawing regularly. After not drawing and painting a lot for the last couple of years I now cannot imaging to do it at least several times a week. They say a new habit takes about 21 days to form. It certainly worked for me. Next step is to try to apply it to my language studies… Spanish next and then back to Icelandic…
I love how this one turned out. It was snowing and I love snow. But it is also time to shovel it up.
Have your pick of ice cream on Tuesday
Day 2 of my 7 day challenge. Monday went well so you can have your pick with your Tuesday ice cream. Which one do you want?
Monday ice cream
I thought about joining another one of those drawing challenges as it was a lot of fun doing Inktober, but I couldn´t find anything that interested me. So I decided to do my own 7 day challenge of one drawing a day… dedicated to ice cream of course! I will keep the ice cream theme up for another week or so because after that I will hit the road and am off to explore Mexico! But more about that later.
For now, fight the Monday blues with your ice cream of the day – Voilà!
It´s a dogs life
A spoiled pooch that cannot get enough. When you are torn between a popsicle or scoops of vanilla & walnut ice cream with chocolate sprinkles on top.
What is your favourite flavour?
That´s it? I´m not convinced.
“The girl at the ice cream parlor talked me into getting pistachio. But I am not convinced. Should have picked walnut instead.”
Another watercolour drawing…. my favourite for the colours so far.
Happy weekend! Go and get some ice cream! I am currently in southern Germany were I enjoy 12+ degrees Celsius.
Ice cream party
“You forgot to give me a spoon but that won´t stop me!”
I did this drawing last month but I only coloured it in the other day. For some reason I didn´t know what to do with it colour wise before that. I now try to think ahead which colours I want to use before creating an overly colourful mess, like I did a couple of times in the past. I think it turned out quite cute.
I don´t want to wait for my ice cream!
I was told that I can have ice cream after dinner but I simply did not want to wait….
Sour and cold ice cream
Another drawing practice with watercolours. I like the background.
She looks slightly sour though. She got her ice cream, expecting vanilla, only to discover that it is lemon sorbet.
It´s ice cream o´clock!
I realized that since I picked ice cream as a topic, I don´t fall short of finding ideas of what I want to draw. At the same time I try to improve my people and water colouring skills… the later seems to be a somewhat slower process in my opinion.
In the past I often failed to draw or struggled to find anything inspiring. The process would be something like this:
8 pm I feel like drawing!
8.30 pm Finally assembled the drawing material
8.45 pm Starring at the blank paper…
9 pm Starting a google image search to find inspiration or good reference photo
10 pm Stuck on some artist blog or photo gallery
10.30 Pee break and I need a snack before I can get started
11 pm Finally found what I want to draw
11.15 pm Damn, its that late! But I just started! Need to go to sleep. Will continue some other time…
Definitely doing a lot better these days than back then!
Illustrations
I was asked again last year by one of the editors of the 14 Magazin, a magazine from Freiburg in southern Germany, if I like to do a couple of illustrations for two of his articles. Of course I said yes.
The magazine was published a few months ago but I only got my hands on a copy now.
First article is about the revival of vintage clothing and how it came back in style among 20+ somethings.
Second article which I quite enjoyed is about the pros and cons of watching TV vs online streaming. It argues that TV definitely has a surprise factor as you sometimes end up watching things that you would normally not watch. Also it provides a different viewing experience because you have to commit to a certain time if you want to watch something you are interested in.
Online streaming services are the opposite. Available any time and day, instant satisfaction is given. However, the tendency to binge watch is relatively high which might make us consume more than originally intended. Also the surprise factor is taken away as we usually choose what we want to see, therefore you might never get to watch that documentary about the Swiss rail way system that would have aired on your one TV channel at the time.
I also think that online streaming is more time consuming. Sometimes I can spend an hour going through the endless list of movies until I decide which one to watch. And I can definitely relate to the risk of addiction… “Just one more episode of xyz and then I will go to sleep….. damn how come I have to get up in 4 hours already!?!?” But who hasn´t?
Where did it go?
Tried to do something different with style this time, but am sticking to the water colours and ink.
Ice cream is still the topic.
Brain freeze…
“Brain freeze is practically a rite of summer. It happens when you eat ice cream or gulp something ice cold too quickly.”
I don´t know what happened here. I liked the ink drawing and then went all over the place with the water colours, obviously without plan or structure… and then I put on more colours trying to fix it and oh well… Then it turned into this colour explosion. As a consequence I started reading up about colour theory.
I like the image and might try to draw it again to see how it will turn out the second time round. What do you think?
Do you want ice cream?
Yes, Icelanders love ice cream. Most areas in Reykjavik have at least one ísbúð – ice cream parlor. The ísbúð we have just down the road from where we live is so packed on a late Friday night that you might think they are handing out free beers.
Ice cream is a year round affair in any kind of weather. I drove home last Tuesday around 10pm, everything white and snow was blowing left and right. I passed a street full of shops, all dark except for the ice cream parlor which was brightly lit and packed with people while the snow storm was blowing outside. How did they get there you wonder? Most locals don´t walk but only go places by car. So if your sole purpose is to drive to the next ice cream parlor then Icelanders even have a word for it – ísbíltúr – ice cream drive.
Cold and dark winter doesn´t stop anyone to get what they want – in this case a sweet treat. From my personal experience, I can openly admit that my sweets consumption increases proportionally with the darkness in winter and decreases when the daylight hours get longer again.
I like ice cream all year round and let´s put it that way, if it is cold outside, then at least it will not melt! What´s your faveourite time to eat it?
Strawberry kiss
I wanted to do something again with more ink as I miss my Inktober challenge. I really enjoyed drawing and painting with it.
So this is what it turned into. Strawberry ice cream.
Do you like strawberry ice cream?
It´s a dog´s life
What can I say? Dogs like ice cream. I like dogs.
Suck my ice cream
Some random water color practice while watching a movie. Not a fan of Miley, but I liked the way she was sucking her ice cream…
I actually quite like the way it turned out. Although I still feel like I am using water colours too much like acrylic colours… But I will keep on practicing.
There is ice cream on the ground – “Datt!”
“Datt” – an Icelandic word you will hear uttered especially by children after dropping absolutely anything (when living in Iceland of course). It means as much as “oops fallen”. It fell and I don’t know how it happened…!?
“Datt!”
More water colour and ink.
Melanie Franz 