Swimming lesson again

The client designer relationship

Go and visit David the Designer now if you want cheering up.

Yummy pasta sauce ingredients

The first time I tried spaghetti puttanesca was in Rome – as I didn’t have a recipe I had to work out the ingredients for myself by eating very slowly. You, however, don’t need to, with the wonder of the internet you can easily find the recipe for this gutsy pasta dish which can be whipped up in minutes. I don't know why one associates garlic, chillies and robust flavours with ladies of the night, but there you go, that's why it's called ‘puttanesca’.

Corel painter sketchpad again

What with a new computer and a new wireless Wacom, it’s going to be a little time before I pick up an honest to goodness pencil. By the way the surface of the new Wacom range is great – matt with a slight ‘tooth’ – like paper. The slippery surface of my last Wacom was one of my main gripes about what was otherwise a great bit of kit.

More playing with another new toy

I was chatting to some older relations and we were saying that you can tell how old people are by their reactions to the internet. Their’s is ‘It’s a complete mystery to me’. As part of the generation that developed it, mine is ‘Wow, isn’t it fantastic’ and with my kids it seems to be ‘Yeah, whatever!’ And together with enthusiasm for the internet I do love technological developments in computer software. I’ve been so excited by the 3D rendering on my new computer. Aesthetically I’m not overly fond of 3D illustrations that are part and parcel of video games and fantasy art, so I won’t be going down that route, but it is such fun scratching the surface of what the software can enable you to do. In seconds I can try out something in Photoshop that a few years ago I would have had to have left my computer rendering over a period of a few hours.

New toy

There are some advantages in having to spend a fortune upgrading your computer. I bought a new Wacom pad (which I’ve had to return – but that’s another story). Anyway with the Wacom pad comes this delightful little application, Corel sketchbook. It’s like a very simple version of Corel painter, with a small handful of natural media tools (pencil, chalk, pen etc), and you can keep all your drawings in a virtual sketchbook. The other feature I absolutely love is that you can email a sketch from within the application. I can really see me using this for business – a client may talk on the phone, I can doodle on the screen and email a sketch before the conversation has finished. Wonderful! Now all I need is my replacement Wacom pad.

Depressing day trip to London

Despite the wonderful view of London from the 25th floor and despite having the first chance in ages to put something in my sketchbook, I really would rather not have been there. I wish I could go through the horrible root canal treatment for my son but I can’t. He’s been so brave and it just never seems to end.

World Cup chores and Adobe Illustrator

I spent this evening sewing an England flag onto a red top for Xavier. Even my sporty husband has zero interest in football, but tomorrow the school have a non-school uniform day where the children can come into school wearing clothes to support their team – so unlike the rest of his class Xavier doesn’t have a great stack of England football kit bought by an indulgent Dad, which is why we're having to create the home-made version. My eldest son Tom had the same complete lack of interest in football, but when he was little found life much easier if he simply pretended he supported West Ham. I just hope if Xavier does the same he picks a team with a more attractive colour scheme.

Due to work pressures I don't have time to post sketches at the moment, but if you're a user of Adobe Illustrator you may be interested in a collection of free scripts created by Haroyuki Sato – one of which solves the problematic dashed stroke problem (shown above) of ugly corners I’ve often been irritated by.

Waiting at the swimming lesson

I’m fortunate that I only have one child to take to swimming lessons now. When I had three small children with classes spread over a two hour period it was quite a challenge keeping them all occupied and well behaved while one of their siblings was swimming. This mother was doing well getting the homework done while they waited.

Browsing

A five minute break from work to sketch, scan and show that I am still here.