Illustration

Antar at his first flyball competition

| Aafke-Art

I can’t believe I didn’t post this at the time! fact is, Antar’s his first official flyball competition was a great success! We had a wonderful time, lots of fun, and Antar did really well! Of course that is to be expected from a Fekete Kutya, but en verité, I am still all excited and rosy when I remember. Everything was good, we camped out. Antar had fun racing. nice friends, our team is the best, but we had a lot of fun in the evening with the other team’s members who also are the best!
Of course lots of amazing dogs besides Antar!

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Antar has to get his paws wrapped. It looks funny, you usually do that on a horse, but why on a dog?
As you can see on the drawing,this is the wrapping after a race:
that black dot is where the small pad  gets rubbed on the mats, and if he didn’t wear the wraps they would have been bloody! That’s what happens if a Fekete Kutya goes flat out!

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A couple of people were going to stay in tents, so I brought my super mini trekking tent. The Eureka Moonshadow.
It was Antar’s first time sleeping in a tent. Which meant that we didn’t sleep a lot. There was also a massive thunderstorm. It was expected, so we all set up underneath a large open barn, which turned out pretty good.

Here you see my mattress, me and Antar…   And how that works out in the real world….

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Memo to self: need a larger tent and mattress…..

The second day Antar got to race in the team! He got even more excited in the team! It’s more complicated though. Luckily coach was right next to us to keep and eye on us and tell me what to do when. Antar did great.
Except for the Fekete Kutya victory lap at the end of the last race, but he had passed the finish line so the race was officially over so it didn’t matter.
Except for me looking like a bad dog trainer.
Not everybody understands the challenges of training a Fekete Kutya.

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Daily Painting, Roy

| Aafke-Art

A small sketch in pen, with water colors, of Roy,

This is my favorite technique for my sketchbook. This is pretty fast so good for work-on-the-go. I don’t have too much bulky stuff in my travel gear, and you still have precision and colour. Of course you can also work just in pen or water colours, but this is fast and it looks good.
At least that’s how I think about it.

In this case I used a drawing pen. The Sakura Pigma Micron 03 in black. These have been favorite pens for years. I have them in black and sepia. Very reliable and water proof. So you can add a water colour wash.
The water colours are my trusted Winsor and Newton watercolor set, the same one I have been lugging around with me for 20 years now!

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Haute Cuisine for Cavemen! bookreview

| Aafke-Art

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A new cookbook by chef Pete Evans and it’s all Paleo! I am Paleo, so I was very excited to get this book. And even though I had high expectations it did not disappoint. You know how having too high expectations can lead to an anti-climax. ”The Paleo Chef” starts off with a short chapter on Paleo, why it is a lifestyle and not a diet or fad. Why it is so much better for you to eat Paleo, and why quality of food matters. Very condensed, but the basics of the Paleo lifestyle are all covered.

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The recipes are great, the ones I have tried were all easy to make and super yummie. Maybe not a beginner’s book, I did not find it completely ”easy” and ”fast”. Probably for a real chef they are, but for a run-of-the-mill home cook they are quite involved. Actually very exciting!!! Be prepared to add to your grocer’s list: all recipes have quite a large number of ingredients, even though I already have a Paleo Pantry, this book gave me more to discover. It is definitely quite ”haute cuisine”. For me that is part of the appeal of this book, I already have more simple Paleo cook books.
The dessert section will delight. You really don’t have to miss out on delicious food when going Paleo. Try it for a month, and then have a real good look and sniff at that bread you used to love so much, quite possible you will find it nasty and musty tasteless stuff. The only times I still eat some bread is when I go back to Europe and get juicy full grain and seed artisan breads hot from the baker’s oven.

I made the breakfast dish ”Asparagus with soft-boiled eggs & bone marrow broth” as an hors d’ oeuvre for a dinner party. It was delicious and the guests loved it. I did not mention the bone marrow until everybody had said how much they liked it because some people get squeamish when it’s not the same old boring red meat. But I must say nobody batted an eyelid. This must have been because the dish was so very good. And as an extra I finally managed to cook the perfect soft-boiled eggs.
I am really happy to have a cookbook which tackles stuff like bone marrow and liver as well as your normal cuts of meat. Pete Evans advocates nose-to-tail eating.

I noticed one little mistake, on page 180, (”Mark Sisson’s chocolate bark”, a favorite!) when it’s about boiling ”au-bain-Marie”, it says ”make sure water isn’t touching bowl”, of course they must have meant ”should not touch the pan” the whole point of au-bain-Marie is that your inner bowl or pan only touches the water.

There is one recipe per page, a beautiful large photo on the other page. Every recipe has a short introduction, which is interesting and fun, a (long) list of ingredients, and the instructions. Simple and easy to work with.

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I like the layout, the recipes are divided in chapters:

  • Breakfast
  • Vegetables, sides and snacks
  • Seafood
  • Poultry
  • Meat
  • Dessert

The hard cover book is beautiful, case bound, quality paper with full color large photos. I am glad it is so well bound because this book will get a lot of use.

Click here for info about the publisher

I was given this book for free by the publisher in return for a review, however, the views given in this review are entirely my own.

Illustrations straight into a printed book!

| Aafke-Art

I have been having some fun! I love the members of Basenotes, the perfume forum I visit almost every day. I wanted to do something nice for my friends on Base notes so I have been re-binding and illustrating two old pocket books. It’s a great suspense novel by Ngaio Marsh: ”False Scent”. There is of course a theme of a very special perfume which runs through it, and I have my idea what it would smell like, and the game is going to be that who-ever guesses it gets one of the books.

So here are the covers, inside is a little vial where you can put your perfume if you like.

I drew the illustrations directly in the book, in the empty spots.

The fatal perfume is presented!

Inspector Alleyn inspects the body…