Habichuelas con dulce

This a little experiment with some textures. Inspired in large part by N8W's work, but also Dominican colmado paintings.
(Colmados are these little corner stores that sell everything (rum, beer, tomato paste, salami))

and a poster I have from Dominican artist Tony Capellan. Tony does mostly installation art. I don't usually like installations that much, but his are always cool.






For Easter, Dominicans make Habichuelas con Dulce (Beans with sweets), which is a dessert of blended beans and floating cookies. Its kind of strange, but not as strange as the "habichuelas con dulce" flavored ice cream.





Here is a recipe, courtesy of DominicanCooking.com

Habichuelas con Dulce is one of Dominican's most cherished traditions. It is prepared in Easter in large quantities and shared with relatives and neighbors.

Time: 60 Mins
Difficulty: Advanced
Serve: 6 people

Before starting to cook: Cut the sweet potatoes into small cubes. Boil with a teaspoon of salt until tender. Put the beans and the water through the blender. Strain the beans to get rid of the skin.

Ingredients:

* 1/4 cup of raisins
* 2 teaspoons of butter
* 2 cinnamon sticks
* 2 cups of boiled red kidney beans
* 2 cup of water from boiling the beans
* 1/2 cup of sugar
* 1 cup of coconut milk
* 3 cups of evaporated milk
* 1/2 teaspoon of salt
* Cassava bread (may be omitted)
* 1/2 lb of sweet potatoes
* 10 cloves
* 1 cup of milk cookies (may be omitted)


Preparation:

1. Put the beans, the coconut milk and half the milk in a pot and bring to a boil. Add the rest of the milk, sugar, raisins and sweet potatoes and let boil medium heat for 10 minutes. Stir regularly to avoid sticking. Add the rest of the ingredients and boil to the desired consistency.
2. Spread butter on the cassava bread, sprinkle with salt and put in the oven until it turns golden brown.
3. Serve the beans chilled with the cassava on the side. Put cookies on top of the beans.

Illustration Friday: Peace

No time to do a new illustration right now, so this is an old one I did for Carleton College, about the Peace Corps.

This is sort of a self-portrait as I was an Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic from 1993-1995. I lived in a town on the coast called Sabana de la Mar. If anyone wants any advice on joining the Peace Corps, email me.

illustration friday: orange

I did this a few months ago. This poster works better if you say it in your best Pepe Lepew accent.


I just got a book about Raymond Savignac.
It inspired me to do a little poster for oranges. I'm trying out some new custom brushes in photoshop too.

Creatures Great and Small

I got this book mostly for the textures, but the poems are pretty good too. In doing a little research on the illustrator, Marcello Minale, I found he was stabbed to death in 2001. From the BBC:

Former Olympic rower and renowned designer, Marcello Minale, 58, died after being stabbed following an argument on Saturday in the car park of the Montauroux rowing club in southern France.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1097133.stm

Click the camel to see the whole set on flickr

Illustration Friday: Help

The rhino has a symbiotic relationship with oxpeckers, also called tick birds. In Swahili the tick bird is named "askari wa kifaru," meaning "the rhino's guard." The bird eats ticks it finds on the rhino and noisily warns of danger. Although the birds also eat blood from sores on the rhino's skin and thus obstruct healing, they are still tolerated.

I realized after I posted this, that the colors on the rhino remind me of Mr. Bubble.

Thank you for your comments.

Illustration Friday: Mask

I sketched out this raccoon last week before I knew the theme this week was "mask." So it must've been some sort of cosmic unconsciousness.

As a bonus this week, here is the original sketch. Thanks for all your comments.

Illustration Friday: Might

For some reason when I heard the theme was "might," the first thing I thought of was how you always hear how ants can lift 10 times their body weight. In my quick internets research, I found out ants strength is overstated, but I already had my idea.

I wanted to experiment with limited color here. I was inspired by some colors in an old 60s letter/bill holder that I have. I also was inspired by some old cookbooks I have, that use just black and one color. I like how they use the solid color to describe the shapes, and then use interior black for details.

Here is a pic of the bill holder that inspired the color. Click it for the larger size and some other close-ups on my flickr too: