Food and watercolor

Although I have been focusing on portraits for the past year or so, I still love to do my pen drawings and watercolor them after. Apparently I am not the only one who likes them; I recently posted a little food montage I produced at a sketch-along with Nate and Sally from theydraw.com, and my friend Kirsti posted this:

"I do love your portraits, but boy do I love your pen and watercolor sketches, especially when they involve food! More, please!!!

So, partially to gratify Kirsti and partially because I wasn't in the mood for faces today, and also because I just made this and it was so SO good, here is a recipe for Magic Eggplant Casserole, done in my contour-drawing-and-watercolor style, and in proper format to get uploaded to theydrawandcook.com as well! (They have everybody do their illustrations in a format so that they will make a double spread in a book, and then they periodically collect some of the submissions and publish one.)

Because I did this "real size" instead of scaling up, I didn't manage to put all the detail into the "products" (canned goods etc.) that I normally would; but I also didn't feel like doing complicated math OR piecing things together in Photoshop today.

"Magic Eggplant Casserole"—pencil, Uniball pen, watercolors, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 16.5x6.25 inches.

I wish I had broken the border with the casserole dish, like I did with the carrots and the pasta lid—it would have been more consistent. Also, I wish I had put in a block of cheese instead of that grater, but oh well.

Note: I don't know why this is specifically eggplant casserole, since it has equal parts of many vegetables in it, but I copied it approximately from a dish they used to serve at the Good Earth Restaurant, now defunct, and that's what they called theirs. This can even make a fun party dish—you can divide it up into individual ramekins, top it with some really good cheese before baking, and then serve it with a small dollop of sour cream on top for fanciness.

Also, you don't have to include all these veg—sometimes I make it without the carrots and potatoes. And sometimes I add other stuff too, like green beans or individual pearl onions, or small chunks of sweet potato. It's quite versatile. And it's also good served up over brown rice.