Daily Food Drawing Practice: A Creative Approach to Mindful Eating

1. Welcome! Let's Draw & Eat: If you love food and you're looking for a fresh way to connect with your plate, then this class is for you. Hey, I'm Liz. I'm a food illustrator in Northern New Mexico and I'm so excited to welcome you here to the Prints & Plants studio. In this class, we'll explore a creative approach to mindful eating by drawing our food together every day this week, inspired by prompts that I've provided. Drawing our food is one way to get really present and connected to the beauty and magic of the food that we get to eat each day. As I mentioned, I'm a food illustrator, but my journey to become a food illustrator started from necessity. A few years ago, I was going through a really stressful time in my life, and I was looking for any tool to help me feel grounded again and a sense of peace. On one particularly tough day, an idea popped into my head, and that idea was draw. I thought this was really weird, but I was pretty ready to try anything. So I sat down at my desk, I pulled up an image of corn on the cob on my computer, and I started to draw that corn kernel by kernel. What I noticed was that with each kernel that I drew on paper, my stress started to subside, and I was able to connect to the present moment and the beauty before me. My practice started small with that simple illustration of corn, but this practice of drawing food has been one of the greatest gifts in my life, and I'm so excited to share it with you in this class. But don't worry, you don't have to know how to draw to take this class. You can be a seasoned Illustrator or a total beginner. This class is not about perfection, this class is about creative process, and more importantly, this class is about creating a new sense of peace and connection with your food through creativity. Lastly, before we dive in, because food, especially local seasonal food, is such a gift and privilege and one I believe everybody should have equal access to, I've included a list of organizations who are working towards food and farmer justice in the class description. You can visit those links that I've provided to learn more about these organizations. As the painter Paul Cezanne on said, "The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution." So you ready to dig in? Let's get started. 2. Create Your Class Project: For your class project, you'll create seven illustrations, one each day of your food inspired by a specific prompt. You can upload one illustration each day to the class project section as you go or you can wait until the end of your seven days to upload all of your illustrations at once. I'd also love to hear any thoughts you have about this process. Like what your food reminds you of, what you noticed through drawing your food that you didn't see at first glance, and how this practice made you feel. Perhaps it shifted your perspective of your plate. Any notes or observations that you have throughout this creative process, you can simply type up and submit with your illustrations in the class project section. Upload your class project, go to the projects and resources section. Then click "Create Project". This will bring you to a page where you can start to upload your imagery from this week's class. You can upload a cover image of one of your illustrations. You can enter a project title for your specific class project. You can add to the project description with images you've created this week. To do so, you click "Image", which brings you to your computer files so you can upload scans or photographs of your illustrations from this class. You can also type in your observations into the description box. For example, for day 1, you could upload your image, your illustration, and then type something like this. This is just an example. You can see how to include 1-2 sentences of your observations along with your illustration. To upload every day, you just do the same process by clicking image to upload your next illustration based on that day's prompt. Again, you can upload all of your prompts at once at the end of the week, or you can upload one at a time each day after you've drawn and illustrated your prompt. If you upload one a day, then you'll hit publish each time and just come back into edit your class project. If you upload everything at once, then you'll simply hit publish when you're done. To publish your class project, hit the green publish button in the top right hand corner. I cannot wait to see what you create. To see an example, you can look at the class project I uploaded for this class to get inspiration. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the materials you need for this class. See you there. 3. Gather Your Materials: The materials for this class are simple. I recommend using what you have on hand. Don't let materials or getting the perfect materials. Don't let that stop you from creating. Because this class, it's not about perfection. This class is about process. It's about connecting to your food with a greater sense of peace and awareness through art. I'll share the materials that I personally like to use, but don't feel pressure to go out and get them to start this class. Just keep it simple and use what you have. You can always build out from there. I suggest using blank sheets of paper. This can be as simple as 8.5 by 11 inch printer paper, or you can use a sketchbook. I'm using paper from a large Canson XL Mixed Media Sketchbook. Then for drawing, I recommend a pen or a pencil. I personally like to use a pen because it prevents me from erasing mistakes too early and not learning from things that might end up being happy accidents. I like to use either a prisoner color illustration pen or a micron. I typically use the sizes 005, 01 and 03 because they produce really thin, fine lines and that's something I'm drawn to. No pun intended. But again, use whatever you have on hand and number 2 pencil, a Sharpie, a ballpoint pen, whatever you have, works. I also recommend, as I mentioned, not using erasers, even if you are using a pencil, allow yourself to mess up, to make a mistake, and to see what you can learn from it rather than erasing it too early. Then let's talk about color. I usually like to create simple line drawings to begin with, but then I'd like to add color and make it more modern and playful with a really vibrant and fun color palette. I encourage you to explore this as well. For this part of the process, I will primarily use Prismacolor Markers, but you can use watercolor paints, acrylics, pastels, Crayola markers, colored pencils, crayons, whatever you have on hand is great. Then the last material you need is going to be your food. As I mentioned, I have different prompts and I will go over those in a moment, and so you're going to need food each day to draw from, to get inspiration to document throughout this class process. Those are your main materials. Paper, pen or pencil. I recommend no eraser, color and food. I've included the materials list in your resources document, as well as books related to food and mindful eating, and the seven prompts for this week. You can access this resource document in the projects and resources section, in the next lesson, I'll go over the seven prompts that we have to get creative with this week around our food. See you there. 4. Write Down the Prompts: In this class, we'll be drawing our food, and each day for seven days in a row, we'll be inspired by a different prompt. Those prompts, those seven prompts in order of appearance are day 1, breakfast, day 2, drink, day 3, lunch, day 4, ingredient, day 5, snack, day 6, produce, and day 7, dinner. Again, you can find all of these prompts listed together in the Resources Document, which is attached in the Projects & Resources Section. You can jot these prompts down on a sheet of paper and keep it on your studio desk or your kitchen table, as we work through this class together this week. I personally recommend spending at least five minutes with your drawing each day if you can. Sometimes it can feel really intimidating to sit down to create. Something I like to do is just set a timer for five minutes, just so I get going. When I know that it's only five minutes, I can sit down and start to create. What usually happens is I'm having so much fun and I'm so absorbed in the beauty of the subject that I actually lose track of time and start drawing for way longer than five minutes. I encourage you to try that for yourself in your own process to get started. I'm getting pretty hungry and my guess is that you are too. In the next lesson, we're diving into our first prompt, breakfast. Let's dig in. 5. Day 1: Breakfast: For day 1, our prompt is to draw our breakfast. For me, my breakfast typically looks like a delicious bowl of oatmeal with whatever toppings that I might have on hand at that time. That might be fresh fruit, it might be frozen fruit. It might be some different kind of nuts or seeds, or maybe a drizzle of oat milk and a dollop of peanut butter. Whatever you're eating for breakfast today, that will be your inspiration for today's drawing. Here I have my bowl of oats, my breakfast just right next to my sketch book, so it's easy to reference and see as I work on my drawing. What I'm thinking about is I'll start with this as my main inspiration, but I'm also thinking about the toppings that I added to my oatmeal. Today that was a dash of cinnamon, some sea salt, some pumpkin seeds, some ground flax seeds, and then this huge dollop of peanut butter. I'm also thinking about the ingredients, so the oats themselves. I keep all of our dry goods in these really beautiful clear mason jars because I think it looks gorgeous in the kitchen, and it's nice to see what we have on hand. I have this next to my sketch pad as well, just as reference for when I start drawing the actual oats, and not just the final bowl of oatmeal. As you're drawing your breakfast, start to think about what's right in front of you, and also these other surrounding elements that can give you inspiration as well. Now I'm going to dive into drawing, and I'm not touching color yet. I might not even do color today. This is just something that I really want to focus on, I think, with a line drawing. Now, that's not to say that you have to do the same, if you want to add color, go for it. But I'm going to start with an O one micron. Now, when I'm feeling particularly intimidated or rusty with my drawing skills, I like to start with an exercise called blind contour. This exercise is a way for me to release judgment, to leave that at the door, and to just fall into the subject before me. To do blind contour, if you want to follow along with that, you just look at your subject and you don't look at your paper at all. I'm going to give my full devotion and attention to this beautiful bowl of oatmeal, and I'm going to pick a starting point with my eye. For me, it's this chip bout of the ball. It's one edge of that ship, and I'm going to place my pen on paper, starting there with my hand as well. Now, I'm going to slowly move my eye around the outer rim of this bowl, and then inside into the details. As I move my eye, I'll move my hand at the exact same pace. I recommend that pace being very slow, really embodying the pace of a snail, if you can. Moving as slowly as you can. We can start that together. Again, I'm not looking at my paper even though it's tempting. I'm just looking at my bowl of oats. Now, you might glance down every once in a while. Don't judge yourself. Just draw what you see. We might deem it as bad art". I don't really believe in that, I think mistakes can actually lead to our own personal style, and development as artists. When we embrace those imperfections, we remember that we're just a human being. On the other side of this paper, we are a human being learning and creating and failing and learning and creating, and really just making beauty. Allow yourself to be in that imperfection and in those mistakes. I'm going way too fast, I'm realizing, as I'm talking, so I'm going to slow my pace. I just skipped a lot of visual information by going not quickly, so I'm going to slow down even more to really take in the beauty of this bowl. You might notice, I'm noticing this right now, that your eye wants to jump ahead a few steps, see what's coming. But this is the beauty of blind contour and this is the challenge, is to allow ourselves to be right here right now. Not jumping ahead to the next visual information, just being present to what's before us. One of the reasons I love blind contour as an exercise to start drawing, to start an artwork is it makes me slow down. It helps me release final outcome, and it really makes me focus on the process, which is a challenge. That's a hard thing to do, but that's so much of creativity, and it helps me get to know the subject at hand in a deeper way, because instead of my brain making up information, it's starting to just see what's there, and allow that to be the beauty, allow that to be the reality. I'm on the inside of my bowl now, and I'm just moving around these really curved lines with the oatmeal. What's interesting is once it's cooked, there's not as much defined shape, as there are with just the individual dried oats. It becomes this more abstract movement that's also being defined by the cinnamon sprinkles and the salt. I can see these large grains of sea salt glistening in the light. How beautiful it's that? I'm now at this pumpkin seed with a dash of cinnamon. I'm documenting that, and then there's this sea salt crystal. Now, I'm not looking at my paper. I feel like I'm documenting these things that I see, and maybe they're accurate, maybe they're not. But what's happening here is I'm developing a stronger relationship, and therefore a stronger trust and faith between my hand and my eye, a connection there that's so essential to creating art, trusting ourselves, trusting our creative vision, trusting our hand to document the beauty of this world in our own way. I'm coming up on this huge dollop of peanut butter, which is like glistening in the light as well, and I'm super hungry, very excited to enjoy breakfast. This is why I wanted to share this class with you. This is why I wanted to share this method with you, is because this slowing down before eating, this drawing our food. Peanut butter is gorgeous, it's like an abstract shape going on. It is such a great way to pay reverence to the gift of food. It is such a powerful way to connect with our food before diving in, and to really recognize it for what it is. To see its beauty and its nourishment, so that when we do eat, we have a greater sense of calm, and presence, and appreciation, which are all feelings that I really think contribute to the nourishment of our bodies. Not just physically, but emotionally, and mentally, and spiritually as well. What I like to try to do and that I suggest to you is not lift my pen, my utensil, from my paper with blind contour. It's a little tricky to know where to put it down. You can try that if you'd like. Now, this means I'm creating this line, that doesn't really belong in the visual, to connect back over to this other side of the bowl where I want to be focusing right now. I see another pumpkin seed. Now I could spend all day here. I could go so slowly that I spent all day on a blind contour and maybe still didn't get every detail that I see. That's okay. This exercise can be really useful, to set a timer of one minute, three minutes, 20 minutes, to fall into the presence of the beauty before you. I'm going to pause here. You might look down and think, "Wow. Okay. That is not my subject. This does not look like a bowl of oatmeal." In some ways it does. But you might start to see other things. This is such a beautiful moment, with art, with your creative process. For example, when I look at this, it looks like the Earth, to me. It starts to look like the globe or a map of the Earth. That makes me think about, wow,, so much more went into this bowl of oats than just some oats and some water. A lot more when into this, the sun, the soil, the rain, farmers, the grocery store, the people who work at the grocery store. There's this whole world of ingredients and process to get this in my bowl to eat. Magic. Starting to see what you're drawing reminds you of can bring you into an even deeper state of appreciation, and reverence, and peace for your food and the nourishment that it provides. Now I'm looking at the patterns, and the repetition, and just the simplicity of these dried oats in this jar. That's going to spark the next portion of my drawing here, just really falling into the patterns of these beautiful simple oats. Now for this, I'm not doing blind contours, so I'm going to be looking at my page more often. But something that I like to do in my process of drawing food, illustrating food, is to simplify. Sometimes before I dive onto paper, I'll just observe the subject and ask myself what visual information I want to include, and what I want to leave out completely. What I love is that there's all of these oats in this jar. But I don't want to draw every single one, but I love the movement of them and the repetition of them. I'm going to carry those two elements to my drawing. I'm looking at just one to start. I'm going to draw this really simple oval. Then I want to draw that line through it. Now, what I'm noticing is it almost touches the other end, but not fully. I'm going to leave it like that. Then because I love the movement happening in here, I'm going to play with that, but in a new way. I think about these oats running across the page. I want to do a loop de loop, that's what's feeling fun. I'm going to play with that. I think those two words, play and fun. When you're stuck creatively or you're feeling a lot of pressure, return to the place of joy and ask, what's fun? What could I do that feels fun? The loop de loop, that word is really fun, and that feels fun visually and to draw to me, so I'm going to play it with that here. I am going to draw the bowl in this mountain space. I'm going to make a spoon going across horizontally down here. I'm going to move this guy aside, bring the bowl of oats back. Yes, I did take some bites, but I'm going to draw the edge of the bowl. Looking down on it, and then the spoon looking down on it. I will do that here. I want a thicker pen, actually, this is too thin for what I want to document here. I'm going to bring out my prisma color brush illustration marker. I'm going to move back to my oats. Let's see. Oh, one micron. I'm going to document the spoon in the bowl. I might draw some of the pumpkin seeds. Then I might come in with, we're going to use this brush pen again to do some really simple but vibrant polka dots that represent the cinnamon and the salt. I'm going to pause here with my daily drawing because I'm getting really hungry and ready to eat this breakfast with you. I'm going to put this one away for now to go munch my breakfast. Now when you leave this lesson to take a bite of your breakfast, just notice if you taste any new flavors, any new textures, if you see any new colors or patterns in your food that maybe you haven't noticed before, I would love to hear your observations with your class project. When you upload your illustration from today's prompt, also include one or two sentences about what you observed that maybe you didn't notice about your breakfast at first glance. What I usually notice when I sit down to eat my food after drawing it, especially with my breakfast at the beginning of the day, is that my body wants to move more slowly. Sometimes I'm rushing to get that first bite, but after taking the time to draw my food, I actually slow down. Suddenly that rushed bite slows down, and I can taste the flavors, and I can feel the nourishment of that food in a whole new way. It's because I've taken the time to move slowly by drawing that food first. I'm curious what your experience is, and I can't wait to see that in the class project. I'm going to finish off my bowl of oatmeal, and I will see you back here for day 2, where our prompts will be Drink. See you then. 6. Day 2: Drink: Welcome back to day 2, where our prompt today is a drink. For me I always start my mornings off with a hot cup of coffee, but your drink today might be a glass of cold ice water, some ice tea, a cup of hot tea, a smoothie, whatever it is that you're sipping on today, that will be your inspiration for your drawing. As I mentioned, you can think about things related to your drink, things that went into the process of creating that beverage. For me I'm thinking about what I use to make the coffee. I have this lovely StoveTop Espresso maker. I have this next to me as well, and I have some coffee beans that I can use as inspiration as well. I have all of these at the ready, but I'm going to start with the mug of coffee. To start, I'm thinking about looking at this mug from above, so simplifying that and also thinking about other angles that I could draw this mug so I can draw it looking straight on to get that full handle, I can draw it looking from above. I could draw somebody sipping on it in action. But right now I'm really focusing on what I see. Now there are some fun bubbles that are happening because I just poured this cup of coffee. I love again pattern that's happening with those really simple shapes. When I think about how I can simplify the bubbles, I think of polka dots again, just like we did with the cinnamon and salt yesterday. In your drink, just notice if there's any color or pattern developing that you want to document in your own unique way. Something that I love to do is to redraw this over and over multiple perspectives. This perspective multiple times, really experiment with what I like. What works, what feels good? Again, what feels fun and playful and joyful in the creation process. When you're not making a final composition, you can really allow yourself the experimentation space to find what works, to learn from it, to learn from what doesn't work, and then to go just on the same sheet of paper and try it again with those lessons. I want to move on to these other elements that went into the coffee. Going to make sure this is empty because it has some coffee in it. One of those is this lovely Bialetti Moka Express StoveTop Expresso maker. I am not going to lay this completely flat because it will leak the little bit of coffee that's left in there. I'm just going to set it to the left of my paper. I'm going a little blind contour here because this is not a subject I draw a lot. It's when I need to practice more. If that's the case, sometimes I start in more of a blind contour, paying more attention to the subjects to my paper, so that I can really see it and understand it before I dive into stylizing it a lot on my own. But as you draw your drink or the components, even if you're drawing the drink itself. Like if I were still drawing my coffee, think about the elements that go into making that drink. Not just the tools, but the people, whoever grew it, whoever worked the grocery store to stock it, who worked the trucks to get it to that store? There are so many factors, you can think even to the plants. I could go back to the coffee plant to draw that and learn more about how my coffee is created because my coffee beans are not local. They're roasted locally if I buy that, but they're not grown locally. I could explore the plant and learn more about where it's grown? Who grows it? Now I could create a new relationship to my food, a new awareness, respect and appreciation, and potentially new choices about what I'm consuming as well. It's something like this, if they're small enough, I like to have them just directly on my sketchpad. I'll move this over, and sometimes I like to play like the oats were in a container, but sometimes I like to play with, if I have the food on hand, play with your food, arrange it, see what works. Again, just like the oats, I love that this can create a story or a movement, a visual line to move the eye through a work of art so I can play with what this might look like. We know everybody says don't play with your food, but I think it is a great way to connect with it and have fun and to understand it better. I like this and I might again, I love loop the loop, so I might continue some more beans off this way. Loop them around that way. For starters, I am just observing one that's in my central vision here, and I'm going to just document what I see. Now I have this large space, something I might want to include here. What I'm thinking could be fun is a bag of beans. Because I do how these coffee beans, I am using the bag here as inspiration to draw in this space. Now I'm going to add some color. As I mentioned, I'm using Prismacolor markers. I really like these because they have a thicker tip on one end for larger spaces from all the brush feel. They may have this chisel tip for really finer work, so I like having both of those options and the colors are really nice as well. What I really like to do is challenge myself to pick a limited color palette. Sometimes I'll say I'll only pick three colors, maybe five. Today I know a few that I want to start with are a bright orange because of that mug that I was drawing. I want one brown for that really deep color here. I might even push into black. But for now I have a dark brown and a sienna brown as options. Then, I want something to mellow out this bright orange and I like something that's a little bit cooling and not as warm of a color. I'm going to pick a cooler color, either this blue slate or this light blue. I have these options right now, and because my notebook has this perforated edge where I can tear out papers, what I like to do occasionally is draw the tests of colors just in the margins, so I have it as visual reference right there. I might do it on a separate sheet if it's too close to my paper or if this is going to be a final artwork. I totally do it on a separate sheet. Because this is a sketch, I'm just going to do it in the margin to give an idea and to decide what I want to use based on how these look on paper. I'll start just with this light blue, next to that I'll do this blue slate. Since I'm doing multiple colors, I'm just going to abbreviate these, so I know what to reference moving forward. Light blue, blue slate. Then into these brown options, I have this sienna like that, and I have dark brown and I really like that deep brown for the coffee, and then I have just this plain orange which I know I want to use. I think I know I want to use it, but I also potentially wanted to use this Spanish orange color. Putting these on paper really helps me understand what they're going to look like. When I reference back to my mug, it's like an orange yellow color. I actually don't know that I want the full one bright orange and I'm actually going to go with this Spanish orange. I'm going to start there and then I'm going to use the dark brown and then I think I'm going to use the light blue. I'm going to remove everything except those for now. Then I'll just start filling in color into this drawing. This is where I like to use the other side, the brush tip, because I have this huge space to fill in so that can just make it a lot smoother. I love these markers too in this process because you can take it anywhere. I mean, you could have a small sketchbook with you in your purse and whip it out when you're at a cafe getting coffee, when you're at dinner, just to sketch what you see before you eat it and notice how your experience of that food or that meal changes. Adding color into my sketch book is also a really great way to note for when I move into the digital world. It gives me a starting point, so I'm not just overwhelmed with color options. I know that I want to start in the oranges, I want to start in the browns and that's a good way to start the process. When I started illustrating, this was how I did everything. This was how I personally created art. This is how I did art for clients. I've moved into the digital world for multiple reasons, but it's always so refreshing to come back to the sketchbook, the real materials, the raw materials, and practice here. This is the thing, as you work in process, you don't have to have everything figured out. Each step that you take, each decision you make, that'll lead you to the next step in the next decision. Again, that's why we learn, because we take a step, we think it's the one we want to take and it might be and then it might not be. But either way, we learn and it adds to our creative style and ability. You might find in your process with these prompts that some days feel unfinished like when I think about yesterday's prompt for me with breakfast, that was just a line drawing and that was more about process and practice and connecting to my food through blind contour. It was about a final colorful product. Today I'm still really focused on connecting to my food and my drink, but I'm more interested in taking that to the next step with color and experimenting with how that can add to my relationship to my food as well. You'll find that each day it's different depending on where you're at, what your day looks like. Maybe you only have a 10 minute lunch break and that's all you have time to draw. That's fine. Use that 10 minutes to draw and it'll still change your experience of food and eating and nourishment. This is where it becomes such a meditative process, drawing it is such a meditation. In that meditation in devoting our awareness and observation and energy to the subject at hand especially when it's food, gives us that whole new awareness of something that we engage with every day. That forms a new relationship, a new understanding, a new appreciation and I think that's where so much of the beauty, of food, and eating, and illustration and art really exists in that appreciation and the slowness of observation. I know my coffee is getting cold but this is things I'm so absorbed in this process and this drawing that I've forgotten a bit about the fact that my coffee is getting cold. I'm excited to drink it. I can reheat it and I know that when I get there, I'll have this whole other level of appreciation and presence with my coffee because I've gone through this process. That's my hope for you to is that, when you get to your drink or whatever the prompt is for that day, your snack, your breakfast, that you have more slowness and presence and peace around it by going through this creative process. Now that we've illustrated our drinks, let's all take a sip together. Cheers. So good, I love coffee. I'm curious after drawing your drink, if you noticed anything new, any new flavors, maybe the temperature, a different texture, or just a different experience of enjoying your beverage. Go ahead and upload those observations just one or two sentences with your illustration today to your class project. I'm going to finish off this hot cup of coffee and I will see you back here tomorrow for Day 3 and our prompt will be lunch. See you then. 7. Day 3: Lunch: Welcome back to day 3. Today's prompt is lunch, so whatever you might be munching today for lunch, that's your inspiration for today's illustration. For me, I'm munching a delicious salad with local spinach, local salad greens from a farm here in New Mexico, and then a side of really yummy rice and beans. I've topped the salad with some pumpkin seeds, a drizzle of olive oil. It's a really simple lunch, but it's very delicious and fresh. Very excited to enjoy that and that'll be my inspiration, but yours might be totally different. You might be having a PB and J sandwich. Maybe you're having takeout, maybe you're having leftovers from a dinner earlier this week. Whatever you're munching for your lunch today, use that as inspiration. When you're drawing your lunch, you can think about drawing the whole plate, drawing the individual ingredients, and you can also think about picking out one ingredient that really strikes your fancy. For me, I'm so drawn to the beauty of this fresh salad because there are so many details and textures and patterns and colors, and it's just gorgeous, but I like the fact that lunch is more than just that. I might include bits and pieces around this as the main focus. Whatever you're drawing, you can think about it as the final lunch meal or you can think about the ingredients, anything you want to draw from that as inspiration is great. This is a big plate, so I'm going to move this off to the side a bit, so I can focus on drawing it before we munch our lunch together. As I mentioned, I'm really drawn to those fresh greens. I am going to use my micron to start. This is the 01 tip, the one I usually start with, and I'm loving just the fluidity of the lines in these greens, how they're creating all these new ridges and marks. I'm going to record that first. But I want to include other ingredients from the plate. I'm going to start by doing just a few leaves in the center here to pick them out of the main bed of salad. I'm going to start with a spinach leaf that I see, isolate that from the group of lettuce. Then also, I really love the lettuce leaves because they're crinkly and wild, so I'm going to draw some of those. There are not as like fit and hearty as the spinach leaves, but I love the pattern that they create just with their exterior contour line. I'm going to draw that, love it, and then there's one coming out down here that's really wild, another lettuce leaf. Those are some of the leaves. I think I'm going to hold off here and start to draw some of the other elements on my plate. That includes some pumpkin seeds on the salad and then some olive oil as a drizzle on top. But first I'm just going to document these pumpkin seeds, and I'm going to move them in a rhythmic, that wasn't quite the shape I was going for, but that's okay. It's more of what I want, teardrop. I'm just drawing these intuitively. I don't know where I want that to lead yet, so I'm going to hold off there, and I'm going to turn my plate towards the rice and beans. Instead of jumping into the bean, I am going to draw the rice. What you'll notice is that this week I'll use rice in another prompt in my dinner prompt and something just as a pro tip that I like to do at the beginning of each week is make a big pot of rice or quinoa or pasta, and then use that in multiple meals and multiple dishes. Rice and bean burritos, rice and bean tacos, rice and curry. You can really use one thing in multiple ways. I always love the ease of that once I'm in the week. These are just simplified rice shapes, and I'm just defining this inner circle of greens. I started with the rice because I thought it would help me to find where to put the beans, which it does a little bit. I want to put some beans, maybe just one in here. There's also that olive oil. I love thinking that olive oil as another fun way to create a lot of movement in a work. I'm just going to do this drizzle around this whole thing, and I'm not going to connect them because I want to make this into olive oil pour from the bottle. I like how this is a defined area, I think another bean could go here, and I'm really looking at the beans on my plate, they're cooked. They look a little different than they might if they were dry. They're really simple shape just like the pumpkin seed and the rice. Taking a lot of creative liberty here obviously, with the composition and the simplification of these, and when I really want to get present to my food, this is one way, just drawing it, having fun with it. But when I really want to be present and slow down, I always pull up the blind contour exercise and do that, so that I'm just fully focused. This is more experimental, this is more creative style and having fun with what's on your plate and turning that into something new. Sometimes when I spend too much time on the paper, I have to remind myself the focus is the food and come back to that to really give observation and reverence and awareness to what's happening on the plate, and not that back and forth conversation between my food, my plate, and the paper. That's where the mindfulness around eating and around food can really start to come in is when I'm really paying attention to what's there, and then documenting that, even if it's in my own style, it's just about coming back to really appreciating the beauty of the food that's there. I'm happy with this just small composition, I like how the olive oil is going to become a plate. I could draw an olive oil bottle up here and why not. Lets, that end. I'm just doing this from memory from the olive oil bottle because I don't have it right here with me at the moment. Now I want to think about color. But before I dive into color, I am going to fill in these beans since I'm eating black beans today. I'm just going to fill those in using my prismacolor brush pen. The reason I'm doing this, true to color, I like the contrast that happens of black beans against rice, like your plate, your food even becomes its own work of art with color and texture. When I start to play with assembling a plate or making a meal with a lot of different colors of produce, or black and white color of the beans against the rice, it starts to become such a beautiful process to create a meal, and it also adds a lot of interests for me to draw it. We can find a lot of color and texture inspiration just in our food as it is. The lettuce that I'm drawing is pretty bright green and there's some purple as well. I'm going to get some purple and then a dark green for the spinach. I'm using this color which is a mulberry, so it's not true, deep purple, but it has a little bit of a pinkish reddish to it, which I'm seeing in the leaves. It's playing a little bit off of that not totally realistic, but that's fine. I just started eating my lunch and not taking the time to draw this, I don't know that I would have really paid as much attention to that rich, vibrant green as I am now. Here was when I made these oval pumpkin seeds and I want to really slow down to actually look at the seeds. I noticed that they actually come to a point, so that is what shifted into here. That's what I mean by just keeping that conversation going between your food, your plate, and your paper so that you're really observing the beauty that's there, and then translating that in your own way to paper. Now I'm taking my time with this drawing today for this class, but you might be on lunch break and have 10 minutes to create a drawing before you have to eat. That's totally fine, don't let that limit you, you can create a blind contour drawing within two minutes. You can sit down and create a five-minute drawing without color, you can really just make it a short drawing exercise, a minute, five minutes, maybe the full 10 minutes, just to get present to your food by drawing it, by observing it before digging in. That alone, one minute of blind contour before you eat, that will have an impact that will make a difference in your relationship to that eating experience. Again, these decisions, yeah, I'm taking creative liberties and you might be today too with your prompt. But think about if any of those creative choices are influenced by the food. I still chose a lighter color because of that light brown, and I chose the lime green because of the lettuce. Just think about if the design you see in your food is influencing what's coming into your drawing. I'm happy with this, I think this is a really fun demonstration, creative drawing of my lunch, and now I'm ready to go enjoy that lunch and really tune into the textures and flavors and colors because that influenced so much of today's drawing. I really want to tune into that as I eat. Again, as you sit down now to eat your lunch after drawing it, just notice if you taste anything new, any new textures that you might see or taste, any new colors that you noticed from observing your food for inspiration, for your illustration, or maybe you're asking new questions about your lunch. Where it came from, who grew it, who grew the food in your lunch? Who works at the restaurant where you got your lunch? Maybe you're just starting to ask more questions about how your lunch got to you. Whatever your new observations might be about your lunch that maybe you didn't have before drawing it, be sure to include 1-2 sentence summary of those observations with your class project when you upload this illustration. I'm going to go enjoy that delicious lunch and I hope you do the same, and I'll see you back here tomorrow in the studio for day 4. Our prompts will be one ingredient. See you then. 8. Day 4: Ingredient: Hey, welcome back to day 4. Today our prompt is just one ingredient. I want you to choose one ingredient in your kitchen cabinet, on your counter, maybe something you used in a meal that you made this week, but just choose one ingredient. For me, I'm choosing a can of coconut milk that I used in a delicious curry I made earlier this week. But you might be choosing a bottle of olive oil, a container of salt, pepper shaker, a can of chickpeas, a can of beans, dried beans. Whatever your ingredient is that you're inspired by today, use that as inspiration for your illustration. I've set aside the empty can of coconut milk from when I made my curry this week. I'm really interested in the packaging because I think it's fun. I think it'll be fun to practice the lettering. I could expand off of this can and think about the coconut itself, how the coconut is grown, and move into that as inspiration. Today I'll be just focusing on the can. But depending on your ingredient, you can really play off of that and move into other inspiration as well. Using your one ingredient, I am setting mine off to the side of my sketchbook and I will begin drawing. I'm using my trusty 01 Micron again. I realize now doing that, that was a little bit skinny of a can. I'm actually going to move over to the other side of my paper to do one that's wider because I know I'm going to be working with this lettering and I want to make sure I can include all of that. That already feels better. I'm going to set this out in front of my sketchbook for now just for reference, but I'll bring it back into the frame to show you what I'm thinking about as I do this. Again, as I draw, it's bringing me into a world of questions about this food. It's making me think about the amazing meal I made, and how fun it was to cook, and how delicious it was on this chilly winter day. But I'm also starting to think about the food itself, how is coconut milk retrieved? Where did this coconut milk come from? All of those questions start to come up as I give my attention to this ingredient. Then I love these little square squiggles. I did not notice that as a detail on this can until right now with you. That's what's really fun about drawing food. Is it starts to unveil new patterns in food, new details and that's really lovely because that is a fun design that I had missed. There's a lot of information on this can, there's USDA organic, there's non-GMO certified, all that, and then there's all this on the back. But I'm asking myself what I can leave out. I'm going to leave out these two moments, these two details. I think I'm going to include the net weight, I might leave out unsweetened. I'm going to play with that as I move forward step by step. I'm going to start by adding in net. Now I'm going to move into writing using my colored marker. I'm going to use the dark brown, and I'm going to go for it. Now, this is tricky because if I don't have enough space, then I don't have enough space, and I'll learn from that. You are always seeing something new. I almost always write out something before adding color to it, but I was really interested in just going for it in this one. What I might do, I want to define these letters a little bit more so they're not just lost in the background color. I'm going to come back in with my Micron 01, and this isn't on the can. There's a little bit of a highlight around each letter. But instead of that, I'm going to take a little bit of creative liberty and try to do this little squiggle design around the lettering. Now I'll start to add some color. Your ingredient is probably different than mine, and that's amazing. Just notice what new things you can discover, what new patterns, details, colors. Then when you eat that ingredient in your meal, flavors, textures. Curiosity is such a beautiful doorway to connection. Curiosity can guide so much of art and why we create the things we do, why we draw our paints or observe the things we do, is because we're curious about them, we're curious to know more and to share that potentially with other people. It's why I illustrate food. I want to know more about it. I want to feel a deeper connection to it, but I also want to share about beauty and joy and connection with other people. I want to give them this tool that we're doing right now so that they feel a renewed sense of reverence and joy around food and their plate. I noticed that these cool designs are in black, so I don't want those to get lost. I might just draw right around it like that and then I'm defining the letters by filling in the background. I might leave those letters white, I might not. Again, each step can inform your next step. Allow the process to guide you and allow the process to be what it is. I think sometimes there's a temptation, at least in my personal creative experience to control the process for a desired outcome. But what happens when I, when we, when you surrender to process are the outcomes we didn't even imagine initially. That can be even better than our first thought. The process by surrendering to it cannot lead us there? Similarly, when we're eating, the process of eating, sometimes it's skipping to the end to feel full, to feel nourished, to get onto the next thing. But when we slow down and we draw our food and we eat our food when we get into the process of consuming. Can it be its own experience? Can the outcome be within the process? Can it be in and of itself? A beneficial practice. When we slow down to eat, can we notice new magic and new nourishment and new things that we've never seen before? Got super fun? Now I'm just going to go on a whim because that led me to feel like filling this in with bright blue. Instead of overthinking much, which sometimes in my process I do, I just went for it. Sometimes that in itself can be really freeing and our practice is to just go with that first inclination. I think for now I'm going to leave that lettering white. I'm just noticing it again now that I'm right up next to it, so I'm going to leave that white. But the sprouts section, that little circle, oval, I want to fill that in. It feels a little too bright white right now. I'm going to think about in a moment what to do there colorwise. Then up here, what color should that be, that sprouts? Looking at my current palette, I'm thinking maybe this brighter blue. I think the darker blue would drown out the lettering and there's a lot of light blue happening already. I'm just going to fill this. What I like about this too, is that it balances out this bright blue here so it talks to each other across the can instead of just being drawn to this corner. That's tying into composition and placement of things and colors in a work of art. If you want to dive deeper into that, I have a class here on Skillshare that's all about composition. You can go take that class as well to dig deeper into that topic. I feel pretty good about that. Now I have my ingredients, that prompt drawn on my paper and I'm happy with that. I'm going to call it good for the day. While you might not be eating the raw ingredient especially if it's a dried bean or a whole bottle of olive oil. Just notice when you do use that ingredient later to cook or in a meal that you consume later. Just noticed if you observe anything new, if you taste any new flavors in that meal, or just in the process of cooking, if you have a different appreciation or awareness for that ingredient when you're using it to cook. A gain, I would love to hear those observations as a 1-2 sentence little overview when you upload this illustration to your class project. I'm going to go enjoy this coconut milk and a delicious curry, and I will see you back here tomorrow for day 5 where we will use snack as our prompt. See you then. 9. Day 5: Snack: Hey, welcome back to day 5. Today our prompt is snack, one of my favorite things. Today I'm choosing a classic go-to snack, which is a barb dark chocolate. I have that right here, it is the Theo brand, salted almond dark chocolate, one of my favorites. That'll be my inspiration. But again, your snack is probably different. You might have some chips and hummus, some mixed nuts and fruit. You might have some candy, you might have, I don't know, snacks or ingles, some Ritz crackers, whatever you might be snacking on today, use that as inspiration for your drawing. I have a couple of options here that are already half eaten. I have this salted almond dark chocolate from Theo and there's hardly any left of this one, but I have this orange dark chocolate of Theo as well. But what I love about these two packages right now is that they are obviously being eaten, they're not perfectly contained, so I want to be sure to include that in my drawing as well. For this drawing, I'm starting to think about a little bit of layout. I want the bigger bar, I think to be here and then the smaller bar here, and then have a piece of chocolate up here. I'm just going to sketch those over a little bit. I'll start that process. Again, I am using the trustee 01 micron. I'm going to start by outlining this larger package, and then I've put this smaller package down here. I decided to line it up with the bottom of the larger package and show a little bit of this foil detail here of it being opened. I'm going to open up this package to see the chocolate inside. So yum and there are some pieces that are already broken. I love the shape of this piece, so I'm going to draw that. Here's a little almond shape. Here's an almond shape. We've done there for now. Then we have these chocolate elements and I'm thinking about the lettering, what I want to include, and I think I want to include organic salted almond, all of this, but probably not these things, maybe the net weight. There's this really vibrant yellow stripe and I'm going to include part of that noting where it's broken up by the almonds and the chocolate. I'm not going to include every almond that's on here, but I will include this one. That should have been more of a point but it will, and then the salt, because it is salted almond and you can taste the salt in this bar, it's very delicious. I'm going to include that. I love those details and I'm going to move down into this organic part where the lettering happens. I can tell I've made it real big, so it's not going to all fit on this one line, but that's okay. I'm just going to offset it underneath so it's leading the eye from here down to here. I'm going to start with this a because then it'll mirror that letter, which is fun. But there's some mirroring happening. These line drawings are always how I start my work, gives me a good foundation. If you want to learn more about line drawing, I have a class about line drawing that you can go check out here on Skillshare. It's a lot of fun and it's a good way to just get the foundation of your work before diving into color. Now I'm going to dive into this half or this third of a bar. What I love about this is that you can see part of the letter and you can see part of the design, but not everything. I really like that as a creative challenge right now I'm drawing it. What's fun about this is it really helps my brain, my eye, and probably yours too, to reduce to shape. Because since all of the info isn't there, I have to just look at what is there, which is just part of this lettering. It becomes more abstract and I can really see it just as shapes instead of as a word. Sometimes that can be really helpful to draw something is when we can either turn it upside down or cut off part of it to just see it as lines and shapes. As you've seen, I like to draw salt. Sometimes it's just like a very small polka dot pattern. I'm going to use my chisel tip Prismacolor pen to do that. Great. Now this is ready for color and I'm really excited because it's so bright, this orange and this yellow and they talk to each other as well. I think that'll look really nice in this drawing. Instead of diving right into this, I'm going to go have a scrap piece of paper. On this scrap piece of paper, I'm just going to test out my colors to see because there are some similarities between the oranges and differences. I just want to see which I would like to use and I can label them. I usually just abbreviate for quick reference until I've decided on the palette. As I draw this packaging, loving the colors, and I'm just slowing down enough to really see this delicious snack I'm about to have, to really see it, to enjoy the packaging. Then again, because I'm drawing the packaging which includes some of the ingredients that almonds and salt and then this piece of chocolate has the almonds and salt. I'll be aware of those flavors when I take a bite of that chocolate. Even though I didn't have enough room to put salted almond all on one row like it is on the package, I like how this turned out because I like how the a and l both mirror each other with each line. I think that's a fun visual difference in this drawing. That's the beauty of illustration as yet you observe reality, but then you get to play with it and make some changes in the drawing. Make it playful, make it your style and by doing that, you're showing the world in a new way which can actually make people stop and look and listen in a new way as well. Especially with food that can help us stop and see our food on our own plates in a new way and that connection with our own body in a new way too. Now, I am thinking about that little ridge here showing the thickness of the chocolate. I don't want to make up the same tone because I feel like it'll just muddy everything and you won't see that division. When I try to think about that next step, I have to stop because then I'm not paying attention to what I'm doing. I'll get there when I get there and this portion will inform that portion. This is just process. Cool. Because snacks are delicious and we just spent a lot of time drawing them, let's all take a bite together. I have this little piece ready to go. Let's all take a bite of our snack. Again, I want you to notice if you observe anything new in your snack after drawing it, any new flavors, textures, maybe just on the packaging itself, you notice new colors or new text, or you started to learn more about the company by asking more questions about where this food came from. For me, I'm starting to be curious about how chocolate's made and what the cocoa bean is like, and how that's grown and how it's harvested. I'm really curious about Theo as a company and learning more about what they do by drawing this packaging. I'm really curious what your finding in your own illustration process and in your own snack today. New observations, again, include those with your illustration when you upload it to the class project. I'm going to go enjoy more of this chocolate with some coffee and I'll see you back here tomorrow in the studio for day 6. Tomorrow, our prompt will be produce. Think about fresh, frozen, or canned produce that you want to draw and use as inspiration. See you tomorrow. 10. Day 6: Produce: Hey, welcome back to day 6. Today, our prompt is produce. This can be fresh produce from a local farmers' market or your garden or the grocery store. It can be frozen produce. It can be canned produce. It can be whatever produce, whatever veggie or fruit is thrilling you and giving you inspiration for drawing today. For me, that is a delightful, gorgeous piece of spinach. This is from a local farm here in New Mexico, and I think it's miraculous because it started as a seed and with some water and sun and time and tending from the farmer, it became food. When I really slow down with produce, it's one of my favorite things to draw because it has so much beauty, color inspiration, texture inspiration, pattern inspiration. I mean, there is such a world of inspiration in this single leaf. I'm really excited to use this today as inspiration for my illustration, and I cannot wait to see what produce you choose for your illustration. I'm using this very, very baby piece of spinach. The reason I'm only using one piece of spinach, instead of multiple, for this drawing is I really want to allow myself space and patience to focus on the beauty that is held within one leaf. Instead of getting distracted by more is better or filling the page, I just want to focus on the leaf and the detail on the pattern within this single object. Instead of using a lot of color, I'm actually going to just use pens for this. I'm really just diving into the pattern that I see before me. I'm going to start with my Micron, the 01 tip. I'm going to just start by drawing what I see in this leaf, and I'm going to enlarge it a little bit on my paper and exaggerate the size. I know that I want to just make this a line drawing, so I'm not thinking about a color palette. I'm just really using this as a moment to pay reverence and appreciation for this beautiful food that was grown locally. What I noticed when I draw a produce and really allow myself to be slow in that process is that the patterns remind me of my own body. The veins in the spinach leaf start to remind me of the veins coursing through my body. It starts to remind me of the patterns of my own skin. When I start to make those connections, I feel such a deep connection to my food, not only visually, but when I eat it, I know that it's nourishing my body as well. That's one of the reasons I love to draw a fresh food and fresh produce. It's because those patterns can help me feel really grounded, and I hope that they help you feel that sense of connection and grounding as well. Also, when I draw fresh produce or fresh food, it allows me to again ask questions about the process of how it got to me and a revel in the magic of growing food. I mean, a seed with soil and sunlight and water and tending by a farmer's hands, or me in my own garden, and I get this magical piece of produce. I mean, it's really incredible. Now, something I like to have on hand, I just got this in a kid's science kit. They're just a simple magnifying glass. I really like to use this to get up close and personal to my subject to see some more detail within, especially, the line work and the patterns. What I'm noticing by just giving a close-up view of this is that that middle vein, it's not exactly straight lines. It has these ragged edges to it. There are so many more veins in the leaf than I might notice at first glance. That's a fun tool to have on hand if you want to dig deeper. Not only does it remind me of my own body, but now I'm thinking about it as a river from above or a river within a landscape, looking at it from a bird's eye view. All these connections just really open up this whole world of beauty. With line drawings like this, I like to reference back to blind contour, not exactly the exercise. I still look at my paper, but I'd like to go slowly. I think I went pretty quick around this outer lines. I'm noticing I missed some really beautiful details. If I were to do it again, I would go more slowly to really catch those. But looks just amazing. It's like this pathway of veins and lines throughout this whole spinach leaf. This tiny spinach leaf becomes this whole world of beauty and magic. Since I'm not using color, I'm thinking a little bit about how I'm going to add some contrast or a little bit of visual interest to this. I think I'm going to come back in and fill in certain areas with just black ink. I might thicken some lines to give a little bit of weight, so they're not all the same thickness. But I will cross that bridge when I come to it. I'm taking some creative liberty here. I'm not doing any shading or shadow, or through dimensionality to the spinach, I'm keeping it flat, and I'm making up some of these lines just by observing and then drawing roughly what I see, not holding exactly to it. I like where this is, with the line drawing. I can just leave it here. I'm very tempted to do so, actually. The only thought I have is potentially using my brush tip, my Prismacolor Illustration Brush tip, and maybe filling in this center line and maybe filling in some of these shapes. I'm going to leave this one as is, and I'm going to hop here to do it again, seeing what new things I might notice in the second drawing, and then perhaps adding in those elements of contrast as well. That's the beauty. You could draw something again and again and try something different each time. I'm going to make this one smaller, more true to size. But again, I'm not concerned with getting this exactly realistic. I really am looking at how this is a process to admire the beauty of my food and to document that beauty. That includes adding a little bit of creative style and your own personality to it. I'm happy with where this is. I don't want to overfill it even though that's tempting. I'm going to set this here and with this one, I will experiment with adding some contrast using this brush tool from Prismacolor. I'm going to start by filling in the center line. The reason I hesitated on this one, I wasn't sure if adding this Intense black, this contrasts with no color, in just black and white, was going to be distracting or too much. I wanted to do a little test run here before applying it. I'm tempted to make the outer line thicker, so I'm going to start there. Just to define that visually even more. This is a little hole. I'm going to fill that in. I like that. Then just because I'm in this realm, I'm going to experiment with filling in some of these shapes, so just see what happens with that. There are ways to add this visual contrast and intrigue and difference without using a whole color palette. You can really play with this just in black and white, just with ink, which can be really fun, and it can help us later when we apply color because then we're thinking in terms of a more limited palette, in terms of contrast. I'm going to stop there. I'm more pleased with the line drawing. Again, this is just practice. This is how we learn, is by doing these daily practices, by drawing frequently enough that we can test and retest and again, really observe the beauty before us. All right. Again, the same questions come up. Now that you've drawn your produce, whether it's canned, fresh, frozen, whatever it may be, when it comes time to eat that produce, whether it's by itself or in a meal, just notice if you taste any new flavors, see any new textures or patterns, find any new colors, color variations. Or if you start asking questions about where that produce came from, what farm was it grown on? Who are the farmers? How did it get to my plate? How many steps did it take to get here? What a gift this food is, this nourishment? When we slow down to draw our food in this way, and then to ask these questions, to notice, to observe, we can welcome in such an act of reverence and respect for the gift that food truly is. If you have produce that is ready to eat, I have this spinach leaf, maybe you have some fresh carrots or peas or something else that's fresh that you can eat right away, let's all take a bite together. This is some winter spinach, and it's almost as sweet as that chocolate yesterday. It is so good. What I'm noticing is just the sweetness of that flavor comes through even more after spending so much time drawing it. I'm also noticing again, as I mentioned in our illustration practice, that the veins of this leaf, it's reminding me of rivers in the landscape. It's reminding me of the veins in my own body, the pattern of my skin, and all of those connections are making me feel so grounded and at peace when it comes time to eat this beautiful produce. Again, any new observations that you have of your produce that maybe you didn't notice at first glance, be sure to tell me about it when you upload this illustration to your class project. All right. I'm going to go enjoy more of that delicious spinach, and I will see you back here tomorrow for our final day, day 7. Tomorrow, our prompt is dinner. So get cooking, and I'll see you tomorrow. 11. Day 7: Dinner: Welcome back to our seventh and final day of this class. Today, our prompt is dinner. So whatever you're cooking up or munching tonight, use that as inspiration for your drawing. For me, I cooked up a delicious coconut curry using that can of coconut milk from earlier this week, and some of the spinach as well. I also included yummy local potatoes, local garlic, and some brown rice. So I cannot wait to eat dinner and I can't wait to draw it beforehand. Whatever you're cooking up or eating for dinner tonight, use that as inspiration for your illustration today. This is my inspiration, but your dinner could be takeout, it could be leftovers, it could be a sandwich, it could be a pasta dish, a soup, whatever you're eating for dinner today, use that as your inspiration for your drawing. For this, I'm really taking note of the bowl. This bowl is handmade by a friend. It's beautiful. I'm taking note of all of the finished ingredients together in the curry, and then I'm thinking back to the process of creating this meal, so the different ingredients, the rice, the potatoes, the spinach, all of that beauty, the garlic, coming together into this meal. I'm thinking about all of those ingredients. I'm imagining a really playful illustration where those ingredients are all coming together into the bowl. I'm going to start, I'm going to move this off a little bit, move my sketchbook a little closer. I'm going to start by drawing this bowl, but as if I'm looking at it straight on. I'm using my 01 micron, that is my trusty micron, and I'm just reducing the shape of this bowl and to a half-moon, and then it has this really beautiful foot on the bottom and I am just going to make that a tiny little exaggerated foot there. Now I want to imagine all of the ingredients coming into this bowl. Because I cooked this, it was a process in and of itself, I want to allude to that in the drawing and to the beauty of that process and the presence it takes to create a meal, to cook it. From start to finish. I'll start with some simple grains of rice. Again, I'm looking at them in my bowl and I'm reducing them down to these pointed, tiny oval shapes. Similar to some of the previous days and prompts, I'm playing with the movement, the repetition, a pattern of these dancing their way into the bowl. I don't think I'm going to show anything through the bowl. I think that'll be a flat color. For now, I'm leaving it empty. But now I'm thinking about they were all this beautiful leaves of spinach and potatoes. There was the coconut milk, there were garlics, and so I'm going to draw some cloves of garlic also making their way into this bowl. So this one, rather than drawing directly what I see, like we've done with some of the previous prompts, I'm playing with imagination and running with it. That can be really fun to start a new conversation of again, playing with your food, finding new discoveries, new details, new beauty, and through that, finding your own creative style, what you want to share from your experience of eating, from your experience of cooking. Then there were these potatoes and I'm thinking about how to display those, and I might reduce those down to a circle, but I know I also have the chickpeas and so I want to reduce those down. I'm going to start with the chickpeas first and then the potatoes. I do want to reduce those, but not to perfect circles because some of them were old buds and I cut them into smaller shapes. Actually, I'm going to draw them almost as cross-sections. I might do some that are in quarters, like the shape of the bowl mimicking knots, and over on this way, I'm going to draw some, let's see, I think I'll draw some spinach. I did tear up the leaves for this meal, but I'm going to draw the leaves as whole leaves. I'm going to start with the center vein, and all of this, as just right now, this is from my imagination and it's really reducing the reality of the ingredient, because I'm drawing from the memory of cooking this. It's already a cooked meal, so I'm drawing from the memory of cooking it. Now, if you're eating a dinner that you didn't cook, that's totally fine. To just draw your ingredients, draw the final product, draw the to-go container. Draw the food as a whole, as a final meal. Draw what you see and you can play with that too, and draw what you imagine based on what you see. Now, drawing the spinach here is very different than when I used it for our produce where I was more interested in the veins and I had it right in front of me. This is reducing that even more and it's fun. I'm going to switch to my chisel prismacolor illustration marker. The chisel has a point on it, which is really nice for getting exact lines and I'm going to use it to create these really smaller than the brush polka dots to represent some of the spices like the curry powder and salt, and some of those things that were added. I have some of those polka dots and I'm liking that, and I'm actually just going to start adding some color to this, but I'm going to do something unrealistic. Instead of doing exactly the color palette of the curry, I am going to do a limited color palette based on the blue of this bowl. This bowl is a really beautiful combination of blues in the glaze, a dark blue or white blue. So I have this blue, this is similar to the coconut milk palette. The dark blue and then this really bright, true blue. I'm going to use these three and I'm really going to challenge myself to just use these three. Because this drawing that I've created is so reduced in detail and it's really limited flat shape, and it's entering into abstraction, I just want to push into that even more with abstract colors. I want to really dive in fully if I'm going to do that with this drawing, just to see how it feels in the process, and then what I think of it at the end too. Choosing a very limited palette of three colors can actually be really freeing because you're not overwhelmed with choices on what to fill in and what color to make it. You have three to choose from, and so because my other options for this leaf of spinach were the really bright blue or this light blue, made it easier to choose this. What's nice about this process, again, it's so meditative. I can't get too far ahead of myself. If I start trying to think of what color to make the bowl, then I'm not fully focused on drawing and filling in these garlic cloves, and so rather than being distracted, I just have to come back to the present. I think a lot about that with food too. It's the same when our mind starts future tripping when we're eating or we're going over our to-do list. We're not really present to the eating and we can get through a whole meal without even realizing it. This practice of drawing my food reminds me that when I'm actually eating as well, to come back to the moment and to be present to that nourishment before me. I will tell you, drawing your food before you eat it gets you real hungry. I'm very excited for this dinner and I know that through drawing this, I'm just going to find a lot of joy in munching it just a little bit. I am really hungry now, after spending that time to illustrate and draw my food, and my guess is that you might be too. So I'm really excited to go eat dinner, and when I do, I'm going to pay attention to any new flavors or colors I might notice, any new textures, anything new that maybe I didn't notice while I was cooking or haven't noticed in a coconut curry before. I would love for you to do the same as you eat your dinner after drawing it. Just notice if you pick up on any new flavors or any new observations, and share those observations when you upload this illustration to your class project. I can't wait to hear about your experience. I'm going to go eat my dinner and really enjoy it and savor it, and I hope that you do the same. I'll see you in the next lesson to talk about next steps. 12. Thank You & Next Steps: Thank you so much for joining me here in the Prints & Plants studio all week long for this class. I hope this class has encouraged you to slow down and take time to appreciate the seemingly mundane, but actually, also magical gift of food. I encourage you to continue this creative practice outside of this class as well. Maybe try drawing your food one meal each week, just as a way to get grounded and connect with your plate before diving in. Personally, when I'm feeling particularly stressed or anxious or rushed and I sit down to eat, I like to just pause and take a moment to express gratitude for the meal. I also like to set a one minute timer to draw my food, maybe doing that blind contour exercise. That can really drop me into a place to express gratitude and connections to my food and find the piece that I'm looking for. Now I hope that you're walking away from this class with the tools to feel the same. If you'd like to keep the conversation going about all things, art, and food, then I'm your girl. Come hang out with me on Instagram at prints_and_plants. If you'd like to learn more about my work as a food illustrator, you can check out printsandplants.com. If you'd like to keep learning from me, then I would love to have you here in the studio again. Be sure to hit the "Follow" button up above for my future classes here on Skillshare. Lastly, if you want to spend more time digging into creating art about food, you can download a free set of coloring pages through the link in the about section of this class. I'll end today with a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, who said," If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel and touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you're grateful, you're happy." It was such a delight to have you here in the Prints & Plants studio this week. Until next time, happy creating and happy eating. See you soon. That was really good. I might have chocolate on my face. This is a test run. That is a weird way to say that. I'm going to go finish off this hot meal.