If you’re looking at this site in 2023 or later, just keep scrolling to see the most recent posts about my art. Or you can load the Art Category Page.
You can safely ignore much of the rest of the site as it’s out of date, neglected from around 2012 to 2021 when I had retired from art practice. I was also too occupied with other things to have much interest in blogging.
This post looks at the original source drawings that served as inspiration for my Random Quadrupeds series. In my previous posts (Part 1, Part 2) about this series I wrote primarily about the process and the finished pieces. It was only in hindsight, while looking for a specific file for another purpose, that I remembered the origin story of the concept, as compared to the motivation for the series.
It’s now approximately eighteen months since I originally began this project, and some of the details are hazy because so much has happened since then. But at its essence, the origin is not a whole lot different from process I had normally used when conceiving of a new body of work.
This piece is about two things: first, the egg creatures that emerged from my Random Quadrupeds daily art project in late 2021, and second, a breakthrough that has led to a major change in my digital art practice. There’s also a hint of the origin story of my Chonky Bug People series.
First, let’s talk about my creative process and the parameters around Random Quadrupeds. As with most of my artwork, each piece begins with freeform drawing. Then I interpret and respond to the marks on the page/screen to refine the rough marks into something a bit more cohesive. With most of my serial work I set some basic parameters about the piece, and it was no different with Random Quadrupeds. Although I didn’t formalize them, I had these relatively flexible guidelines in the back of my mind:
In late 2021 returned to making art after having considered myself retired from artistic practice since 2012. I wanted to start with something with fairly low friction that could be sustainable. I decided to do something in the vein of Incidentals (series 1, series 2) since the art style was quirky and simple. I had been looking through scans of my sketchbooks and found a bunch of cute creatures, most of which were four-legged. I selected a handful of these sketches to work up, and “random quadrupeds” was born.
Continue reading
In fact, if there were rumours, they were that the site is dead. Assessing the degree of their exaggeration is an exercise left to the reader. Buuuuuut… 14 months between posts, 3 months before that, 5 years before that, and so on. Less like multiple revivals and more like a zombie blog.
The most recent rationalization/excuse:
Despite all the headwinds, I did manage to have a fairly productive year, which I will review in greater detail in (a) future post(s). Here are some illustrated highlights.
Completed a daily drawing practice (except for October), filling ~7 sketchbooks with over 700 pen-and-ink line drawings.
After a 9-year hiatus—what I refer to as my “art retirement”—I started making art again in mid-October 2021 and have been engaged in a daily practice since then. My initial intention was simply to see if I enjoyed the creative process, since part of the reason I went on hiatus was because there was no joy anymore. TL;DR: there is joy.
I have been doing fairly simple spot illustration-style pieces in Adobe Illustrator, reminiscent of my Incidentals series (series 1, series 2) and it has been a lot of fun. If you’re curious about what they look like, I’ve posted a selection below. If you want to see more, head over to twitter, where I’ve been posting them daily: @edpas_.
Random Quadrupeds
Chonky Bug People
Somewhat Creepy Cat People
I may eventually get around to posting them in my portfolio section.
I will be releasing an NFT collection at some point.
Lunch, Wednesday August 20, 2014
Cut your meat and vegetables into stirfry sized pieces. I like to quarter my long round veggies lengthwise, and then cut into thin slices on an angle. When peeling fresh water chestnuts, I like to put the peeled ones into a bowl of water. This removes a bit of the starch and prevents them from discoloring. I don’t know if it makes a real difference.
You can use any aromatic herbs that go well with your ingredients. Basil would work well. Because I was avoiding soy and a bunch of other classic Asian ingredients, this recipe doesn’t really have an Asian taste. It would work just as well with oregano.
I really like cutting my shiso into a chiffonade, but because of the size and texture of the leaves, they tend to tangle up when cooked. As such, I cut into ribbons and the cross cut so that they mix in well.
You can use canned water chestnuts, or omit water chestnuts entirely. Canned or fresh give a really nice refreshing crunch; fresh have a really nice sweetness.
Once all your ingredients are ready, heat up your pan (I used a carbon steel wok on an induction hotplate) and add the oil. Fry the ginger root for about 30 seconds and then add the chicken. Stirfry until mostly cooked, then add the water chestnuts and a bit of water or chicken stock; cover until the chicken is cooked through. At this point the water chestnuts should be fully cooked. Add in the carrot and stirfry until slightly softened, then add the zucchini. If you need more moisture for cooking, add the lemon juice now (or save it for the end). When the zucchini is almost cooked, add the rice, making sure to break up any lumps. Once the rice is heated through, mix in the shiso and any remaining lemon juice.
Serve and enjoy!
Our dinner on Tuesday:
We were in a hurry to eat so I didn’t get a great photo. If I was to do this again, I’d likely add some tumeric to the basa so that it isn’t quite as camouflaged on the brown rice.
This is a pretty basic recipe. Get some root vegetables. Cut them into bite-size pieces. Toss with salt, then toss with the olive oil.Lay out on a baking sheet and put into a preheated oven and bake/roast until they caramelize.
The quantities and types of roots really depend on what’s available and what your diners prefer to eat. Personally, I don’t really like beets (I usually refer to them as “evil red roots”) and no one in my family likes parnsips. For this meal I had one diner who can’t eat potatoes. You could probably use turnip, rutabaga, or radish, and throw in some onion chunks if you want. The key is to spread them out on the baking sheet so that they aren’t overcrowded: you want them to dry out a bit as the bake rather than steam themselves into a mush.
I preheated my oven on bake mode (conventional, non-convection) to 390F and baked them for 45 minutes in the bottom rack, then moved them to the top rack and raised the temperature to 450F so I could put the fish on the bottom rack. After that it was about another 20-30 minutes of baking and then I took them out and mixed in my basil puree. Baking/roasting time varies on your oven, the size of your pieces, how close they are together, etc. I usually take them out when the sweet potatoes have started to brown.
While they’re still hot, put all the veg into a large mixing bowl and add your chopped herbs. Normally, I use chopped fresh herbs but this time I used a cube of basil that I had made from fresh leaves pureed with extra virgin olive oil and then frozen. It was about 2 tbsp, in a finished ratio of about 2 parts basil to 1 part olive oil. Yes, I defrosted the cube before mixing it in. But since the veggies are hot from the oven this step might not have been necessary. Adjust seasoning. You could also add a bit of lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, or freshly ground black pepper at this point to round out the flavours, but it really depends on what you have available and how complex a flavour you want for this one dish. I wanted to keep it simple since there were going to be so many other competing flavours on the menu.
First, the brown rice. I made this in a rice cooker using standard rice cooker proportions. If you have a rice cooker you should be able to figure this one out. If you don’t have a rice cooker, then I’m sure the internet is full to brimming with instructions on how to cook brown rice. The only thing to note here is that this was plain brown rice: no added salt, oils, herbs, or other impurities added.
The Basa:
Combine the basa, lemon juice and ginger root in a large ziploc bag and marinate in the fridge for a few hours. At some point you might want to flip the bag over so that the marinade gets into all parts of the fish. As an alternative, you could just put your frozen fillets in a ziploc bag with the marinade the night before, and let it thaw overnight. The only issue here is that your marinade will get diluted by the liquids that come ot of the fish as it thaws.
Procedure: sprinkle about a third of the ground almonds on a baking sheet in basa fillet-shaped patterns. Lay each fillet on its own bed of almonds and then sprinkle the rest of the almonds on top. Pat down gently. You’ll likely have some marinade left in the bag. I extracted the remaining ginger from the bag and put it on the fish, but I like things gingery. Then I sprinkled the fish with a bit of salt. I discarded the leftover marinade. You could probably turn it into a nice white sauce if you’re feeling ambitious.
Remember the 420F to 450F oven from the roasted veggies? The basa goes into that oven on the bottom rack for about 20-30 minutes. I can’t remember exact cooking times for fish, but in general fish likes short cooking at a high temperature so I’m probably breaking all sorts of rules. In any case, I baked it until it was done. It was more of an open braise since the fish is pretty wet to start. By the end, the almonds crust over quite nicely but don’t really roast.
After about 15 minutes the root vegetables were ready so I took them out to add the herbs, and left the fish in the oven.
Due to some timing issues all the food was ready about 10 minutes before the diners so I turned off the oven and let the fish sit in the cooling oven. I was lucky that it didn’t dry out.
Once all the food (and the diners) are ready, plate everything up. I put the basa on top of the rice. I had prepared the cucumber pickles earlier in the day.
Prep tip: line your baking sheets with parchment paper for easy removal and cleanup.