Art << s i t a r a h . n e t

i like pie!!!

My friend Allison mentioned to me on Friday that she was thinking of going to Magnolia’s, a New York bakery famous for its cupcakes. I was puzzled because the Magnolia’s I knew of was a distance away over by Rockefeller Center, but lo, there was indeed a second Magnolia’s, just 9 blocks away! With Valentine’s Day treats dancing in my head, we set off at lunch time. They had a nice selection out, with several Valentine’s Day cupcakes in chocolate, red velvet, and vanilla flavors, s’mores cupcakes, banana cupcakes, carrot cake cupcakes, red velvet cupcakes, key lime pie cupcakes, and sweet-saying cupcakes that looked like hostess cakes with ‘amore’ and ‘cupid’ scripted atop them with white icing.

I chose a chocolate-chocolate Valentine’s Day cupcake for Lou, a red velvet one for myself, and a banana cupcake for kicks.

Cupcake Trio from Magnolia's

The red velvet cupcake was good, with the customary cream cheese frosting and a decent, albeit slightly dry, cake. The banana cupcake had the opposite problem; the frosting was very plain and mostly tasted of fat to me, whereas the cupcake part was a nice, moist banana cake with chunks of walnut in it. We ate that one a day later so it may have suffered from age.

Banana cupcake from Magnolia's Bakery

This is a closeup of the Valentine’s Day cupcake. It highlights their good choice in selecting different textured toppings. Sprinkles are par for the course, but the addition of tiny hearts and red sugar really added some gorgeous variety.

Cupcake closeup with sprinkles

If I needed cupcakes in New York, I would definitely go to 69th street Magnolia’s again. My other options are the 59th street Whole Foods or Penn Station’s Zaro’s, both of which make gorgeous cupcakes that have lard-like icing and decent-to-terrible cake bodies. If I needed cupcakes in New Jersey, I’d stop by a local bakery rather than bring them home from work. Varrelman’s, Carlos’, and Sweet Avenue Bake Shop are much better than even Magnolia’s.

I stumbled across Lady Omega’s blog while looking for some CSS inspiration. I enjoyed the header image, and I was also trying to teach myself Adobe Illustrator as quickly as possible, so I decided I would guide my lessons towards remaking that particular piece of artwork.

I think of hers as a Coach bag, and mine as the Walmart version. Same idea, but lower quality and less craftsmanship. I also didn’t save the .ai to a .jpeg at a high enough quality, so there’s some pixelation in the sky that was not in the original.

I could not get the water right for the life of me. I eventually gave up. Same with her more subtle fading of the sky.

This is another charcoal pencil drawing from my Lord of the Rings fandom. I drew this in December 2001, before Fellowship of the Rings hit the theatre. Its partner is my Galadriel drawing elsewhere on this blog — they were drawn from the same calendar.

I used a paper with a good grain for this but I just didn’t have the skill with blending yet. Honestly, Galadriel and Arwen were probably the first two non-art-class portraits I did. Yes, I was a freshman in college, but I was a late bloomer. :/

As I was saying, this isn’t very good, and I know that because I just unearthed the original. It seems like way back when I scanned Arwen, I fiddled with the contrast, resulting in the above picture. It’s a huge improvement, so much so that I am embarassed to show the original. :\

Here’s an approximation of the picture I used as a model. This may not be exactly it, given that the photo doesn’t have shine on the right side of the hair. I probably wouldn’t have added it if it wasn’t there — I don’t like to make extra work for myself. :p I clearly see my faults now: chin too pronounced, wrong slant to the eyebrows, misguided nose shading (I did it without understanding it), nose too long, overly defined hair part, ear is slightly the wrong scale, plane of the face is tilted incorrectly, upper lip not full enough. Yes, I’m critical, but who’s going to be critical for me, eh?

I drew this in August 2004 after coming home from a joint birthday dinner with my mother. I was living on campus at the time, doing some official research during the day and ballroom dancing at night. I was also at the end of my weight loss, so the combination of the gym, running a few miles every other night, dancing for several hours, and an extreme veggie diet left me pretty emaciated. After this particular dinner, which was fairly standard for a normal person but off the chart for me, I was full of carbs and protein. With my blood singing with sugar (and my insulin spiking like a Richter scale), I sat down and drew.

I worked on this until at least 3 am or later, going through the night. The model in question is everyone’s favorite Brazilian, Adriana Lima. I actually quite disliked her at the time — those crazy eyes and puffy lips. I think it was almost out of spite that I undertook this portrait. Ironically, her face was the quickest part. I was pleased with how spot-on it was in the first try.

On the other hand, I thought I’d never finish her abdomen. Sooo much charcoal. I was quite dirty. I had a lot of paper to cover — 16×24 or so. The paper was also very thin, made for sketching, so the texture wasn’t fantastic and it didn’t ‘catch’ the graphite like usual.

And because I know you are wondering — yes, my mom put this photo on her fridge.

Here’s the starting outline. I was surprised I had the forethought to photograph it. Maybe I thought I’d stop there!

 Some graphic art I did at some unspecified time. I used to have a real thing for tiling some random scribbles and seeing what came out of them. This one isn’t an exact center tile — in fact, I’m not sure offhand what kind of pattern I used to create it. Any ideas?

I see it as a snowflake, though sometimes I see the left side as a butterfly, too.

I drew this fairly quickly in December 2001 from a Lord of the Rings calendar. There was a lot of promotional material at that time due to the eminent release of Fellowship of the Ring. I used charcoal pencils, tortillions, and a heavy textured paper. This was the original picture:

Some quick sketches of Hobbes I did for a friend in 2004 or so. They’re not great but kind of fun if you like C&H. It’s just pencil on a thin sketch paper.

This wasn’t so grainy in the real world — blame the photography. I couldn’t scan it, so I took a picture, but it was a little dark, so I changed the contrast. Imagine it looks like a normal art cell (particularly the odd light on her face — that doesn’t exist!). Use the second, tiny picture to get a better holistic view.

I used colored pencils and an ink outline on somewhat heavy paper. My only extravagance was the green gel pen that captioned the drawing. I messed it up, too. I can’t write straight for the life of me.

The happy young woman is Osaka, a ditzy character from the anime Azumanga Daioh, and her companion is Menchi, a cat/dog from Excel saga.

I drew this in December 2005 for Louis. It was meant to be desk art — these were his favorite characters from two animes we had recently enjoyed, so I wanted him to have something at work he could look at and smile over. It has traveled with him to two other jobs as of today.

Here are the pics I used for models. Her right eye is messed up — it is so excruciating to make an ink error. I opted not to start all over. :\ Her nose isn’t the same shape, her right arm should not have a muscle, and I didn’t properly curve the top of her head.

My partner worked at well-known company some time ago, and, because times were rough, management let loose the Consultants. They had a plan, an epic plan.

Redo everything.

In java.

Java, they extolled, can do anything and everything.

Nevermind the fact that this was an open-source perl/postgres shop with no java-trained employees. Seeing fellow developers in pain, I reacted like any person would — I mocked up an O’Reilly manual with a ghetto racoon and the answer to all their problems: PyHPerlacle.

It’s the next big thing after Ruby on Rails. I swear.