Day 378 – a little Heaven – Blue Heaven

July 21, 20153 Comments

Blue Heaven is a wonderful funky restaurant on the corner of Petrona and Thomas.

Blue Heaven – the colors are so Key West – Sooner or later this will be a painting but If you want to paint it feel free.

It’s been various things over the years including the place Hemingway had cock fights and a bordello. Now it’s an open air restaurant where u done with chickens under feet. The food is wonderful which is why I drew their eggs Benedict with pink Key West shrimp.

A band jammed under an umbrella.
Eggs Benedict with pink Key West shrimp.

There’s even a chicken graveyard as well as an artist selling some great chicken paintings.

The wait for a table can be long unless you are there by 9am but they have plenty of chairs to wait in. Sometimes there’s a band. Sometimes there isn’t.
The view from our table. LOTS of shade.

A funny sign on our table.
Andy’s Cabana across the street on Petrona. The home of the most delicious fish taco I have ever eaten. Also owned by the people at Blur Heaven.

One of the iguanas at our condo. I call him Mango. He poses for me most days. I talk to him and tell him to hold still I just want to take his picture. He poses for me. He’s not always benevolent. A 7-8 yr old boy was chasing him and throwing twigs at him. Mango whipped him with his tail. He’s got a very long tail. He’s at least 4 feet long. OUCH!

A key West Iguana tale. They are cold blooded animals. Occasionally it does get pretty cold in Key West. Iguana live in the trees. During one cold snap they started falling out of the trees. One of the locals decided to clean up the island and started throwing them in the back seat of his car. The car was warm. The iguanas woke up and tried to desperately claw their way out of his car. They also pooped in his car. The man was so shocked with his car load of wild wide awake iguanas that he wrecked his car. Poor guy got a ticket for wreck less driving!!

Moral of theses stories don’t mess with iguanas. Lol.

But if you want to paint Andys or Mango feel free.

One more chicken. This is a handsome one from Blue Heaven which is why I posted him. Happy chicken drawing!!

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

Day 375 – Food Tour part 2

July 18, 20152 Comments

The whole enchilada. Wanted to post before I pass out from a fun four mile bike ride with Lloyds Bike tour. Color me worn out. Lettering done with my pentelbrush pen and my noodler creaper Ahab.

Annlises logo. Can’t go wrong with her tour. Viking would be proud to say she did their tour!! Terrific local food and local color!! And Annelise worked hard to keep us hydrated. We each got our own fresh coconut to drink. Amazing!!

All the food was delicious but I fell I love with the fish taco at Andys cabana. I have eaten a lot of fish tacos lately and this one was perfection. I also drank coffee something I NEVER EVER do. Cuban coffee from El Siboneys could be my new energy drink.

We also learned about the history, architecture, the real estate market, and the flora and fauna. She does a super tour. A native of Key West she shares her huge amount of knowledge with her clients and if she doesn’t know she doesn’t mind telling you. Chances are good she does know!!

We also got a list of other restaurants tha specialize in local fresh caught seafood and fresh local veggies. So far we have eaten at two. Louies Backyard and Camilles. Fabulous food. Just fabulous. Great atmosphere. Can’t recommend either of them enough or the Food tour.

Annlise. She’s actually prettier than this wc.
The pages

Up close for your enjoyment.
More after I recover from fun with Lloyd!! He’s so funny and so knowledgeable.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

Day 374 Key West Food Tour

July 17, 2015July 17, 2015Leave a comment

led by our fearless knowledgeable Annlise.

A very quick Pentel brush sketch done while we were enjoying our conch fritters with lime aioli sauce at Camilles. The fritters had just he right amount of hot. And a tall glass of ice water to keep us hydrated on our journey. Annlise is a font of info about all things Key West from the local food scene to the history and stories and even real estate pricing. You can not go wrong with her southernmost food tour.

Colors : cad red light, yellow ochre flesh, mineral Violet, cerulean, cobalt, Inathradone blue, alizarin, Burnt sienna, Andrews turquoise. Hair is Inathradone blue and burnt umber. Drawing done with Pentel brush pen.

More about the food tour tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret ️xxx

Day 372 Hog Fish Grill

July 15, 2015July 16, 20152 Comments

Yum. They do a great hogfish taco. No idea if their other food is good because that’s what we always get. Just like we always sit out on the dockside.

This is the 180 view from our table. Still in the awful moleskine. Only a few pages left. Thank goodness. Then back to my super bee.

I think I ended up with two separate paintings though they are the whole view from where I sat. A great shot down the wharf from where I sat and then out into the marina. Also where I was sitting.

Wanted to add a note about the color.
The green is Daniel Smith green apatite a granulating primatek. Love the way it granulates.

I added Quin gold to it to simulate sunshine on the tree and darkened it for the fir with Inathradone blue. The palms are down with it too. Yellowed with Winsor yellow a transparent yellow.

The marina side from our table. Colors cerulean Yellow ochre mineral Violet burnt sienna and burnt umber to make the greys. The sky got way to dark. This paper just seems to suck the color and not let you add water to it to make it sheer. Most annoying.

Here’s the whole double page spread. This really is what we saw from our table when we looked to my left. The reason we always try to sit here even though it’s Hotter out there on the deck. They do have huge fans to cool you down. Thanks goodness.

I hear from a local, Pam Hobbs of hobbsart2015.com that their shrimp tacos are divine as well as their calamari topped Caesar salad.

Off to watch the sunset. Thanks for reading.

338 this and that

June 11, 2015Leave a comment

I was told by the manager of french Market Grill that this was expensive top drawer tea sold only at the best restaurants as he charged me $8 plus gratuity for this tea. Also available at other fine restaurants like Waffle House. Never bought another meal at french Market Grill.

Thanks for reading

Margaret xxx

Day 329 – Urban Sketching

June 2, 2015Leave a comment

in Columbia at Nonnahs on Gervais.

The view of the restaurant from our table. Delicious awesome from scratch biscuits made with the famous SC flour Adluh and great chicken salad on a bed of mixed greens with artichoke hearts and lots of iced tea. Deliciousness.

I had hoped some more victims I mean patrons would come in but all there were walked by on the sidewalk after I drew the buildings. OPPS!

Noodler Konrad with Lexington Grey ink and Caran d’ache.

The zigzags of color are applied after the base color dries. I think it gives a little Zing to the sketch.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

Day 316 of my almost year long odyssey

May 21, 2015Leave a comment

Fifty more days and I will have posted daily for a year. Oh my!! I drew Rhineharts the other day while waiting for friends. Rhineharts motto is beyond casual and it lives up to that. It’s one of Augustas favorite restaurants and is a higgily piggily old house that has been added on to over the last thirty years. The floors are concrete, you sit at picnic benches, oyster shells cover the pine shaded parking lot. Both the picnic tables and walls are covered with names inscribed with magic markers. I added ours with my Noodler Creaper Ahab. If you’re lucky a cat will beg for your shrimp tails.

The drawing had problems. The building is very long and hard to fit on the double page spread. The bits and pieces that jut out here and there make it a perspective nightmare or maybe it’s that nothing in this place is level or square. A builders nightmare!!

Fun making all the greys out of various blues and Browns. Dashes here and there. Of the two colors and greys everywhere. Like the sparkle of the turquoise and the three cooks hanging out in the back porch SmOkiNg done with their lunch shift.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 315 of my almost year long odyssey

May 21, 2015Leave a comment

I drew Rhineharts the other day while waiting for friends. Rhineharts motto is beyond casual and it lives up to that. It’s one of Augustas favorite restaurants and is a higgily piggily old house that has been added on to over the last thirty years. The floors are concrete, you sit at picnic benches, oyster shells cover the pine shaded parking lot. Both the picnic tables and walls are covered with names inscribed with magic markers. I added ours with my Noodler Creaper Ahab. If you’re lucky a cat will beg for your shrimp tails.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 296 – A few Barred Rocks

April 30, 20154 Comments

you know what those are. Chickens. They were so cute and fluffy. Eating constantly. I drove all the way across the Great Smoky National Park just to draw them. Over a huge mountain. I may be in love. There’s just something about these chickens that’s so appealing.

I hear you shaking your head. I used to do the same thing before I started drawing birds. If the cars were all Lapins fault the chickens are all Roz Stendahl’s fault. I want to go to the fair and draw more in the fall!!😳

These were actually drawn as the chickens ran around me at the Oconaluftee Farm. I should have drawn them with black or grey ink but for some reason I drew them with De Artrementis Brown in my Noodler standard flex.

It’s not a good idea to draw in the rain but I did that a lot the week I was in Gatlinburg because it rained almost daily. Thank goodness the ink dries quickly.

They were colored with my Caran d’Ache using the side of the flat end. I decided it was easier and quicker to use them than my watercolors though thinking back I don’t supposed it mattered that much.

I still have two more pages of chickens to color – silver wyandottes a much shyer chicken that ran any time anyone was near it and even worse to color than the barred rocks. I will probably use my watercolor pencils. But these will take a while to color!!

Silver Wyandottes

I also had fun journaling stray thoughts about the chickens as I drew them and later as I colored them.
Hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I need some chickens.

Thanks for looking.

Day 292- Inner Bean

April 26, 2015April 26, 20154 Comments

I love go sit in the inner bean and sketch the diners but I have never drawn it from this angle before. I say in the middle of the place drawing and nobody noticed me. They were all too busy with their conversations.

There were all kinds of coffee things to draw from this angle. So many cups!!!

I started by drawing the bar and as people filtered in I added them to the scene. Biggest problem is the counter is so high you can’t see the moms and their worker bees fixing coffee and sandwiches and cutting the delicious cakes.

For some strange reason a lot of people were wearing black. It’s spring and it was Friday. Where are the bright colors?! I actually changed some of the black shirts to other colors or it would have been deathly dull.

Noodler creaper Ahab loaded with carbon platinum black in my Stillman and Birn Zeta.