Wednesday 20 August 2014

Heat Wave Holiday


So at the end of June/ beginning of July I started a collection of biro illustrations and I've finally got round to working on one of them in Photoshop. It's been a while since I last coloured using Photoshop. It took a while to get used to my graphics tablet again but slowly and surely, I've been getting there.

I've actually got to the point where I'm nearly done so I thought I'd share the process.


Using the CamScanner app I 'scanned' the drawing. It took a while to get it to this stage but this app is pretty good.


I cleaned up the line art a little and then painted in the base colours in a new layer (multiply). I then layered on the shadows (multiply) and then some highlights (lighten).
I usually avoid painting backgrounds, mainly because I'm not very good at them, but today I tried! So this is where I've left it at for today. There are still some touches to added but I'm fairly happy so far!

This was drawn during a freakishly hot day and was inspired by 熱浪假期 by Twins and right now I'm huddled up in fleece pyjamas. it's freezing! I hope summer hasn't given up...


Saturday 2 August 2014

Chess Cookies

This weekend I decided to bake since I hadn't made anything at my flat yet. At first I was going to make a cake but then remembered that I only had plain flour, not self raising ^^'
So, I decided to make chess cookies.

The goal!
(image from fifteenspatulas.com)

Ingredients: 
* Butter
* Sugar
* Flour
* Egg
* Cocoa Powder

***
White squares:
 50g butter
2.5 tbsp sugar
1/2 beaten egg
100g flour

1. Mix butter with sugar

2. Add the egg


3. Mix in flour

4. Form a ball of dough 

5. Shape into a cuboid (rectangle) Mine were approx 2" x 2" but I forgot to take a photo ^^'

6. Put in the freezer for 30 minutes

***

Chocolate squares
 50g butter
2.5 tbsp sugar
1/2 beaten egg
80g flour
20g cocoa powder

* I used 70g of flour with a 28g packet of hot chocolate powder

Repeat steps 1 - 6

***
1. Remove rectangles from the freezer. Cut each rectangle vertically so you have 3 equal slices.
2. Swap the middle piece 
(white-chocolate-white an chocolate-white-chocolate)
3. Wrap up and freeze for 15 minutes
4. Flip the rectangle so the solid coloured side is facing up
5. Repeat step 1 and 2 so you get a checkered pattern
6. Freeze for 15 minutes
7. Slice into squares
8. Bake for 15 minutes at 170°C


Ta-da! 
Mine were wobbly because I was impatient and didn't leave them to freeze for long enough ^^' so important note for all, let it freeze for the required amount of time so you don't get wobbly cookies!