UPDATE: Try marscapone cheese instead of cream cheese…your life will never be the same…nor will your ass/waist/thighs- lol!

These cheesecake strawberries are light and tasty, perfect for this warm weather. With only five ingredients and no cooking, they’re also easy to make. The recipe for them is on The Sweet Life. I used two tablespoons of powdered sugar versus the three to four listed, and they were still sweet, so test to your liking. I also made the filling in a resealable container so I could just scoop some out into a plastic bag for filling as needed, rather than making an entire batch of these all at once. I figured they would be fresher this way.

Enjoy!

Then I thought how waffles look a lot like the eyes of a fly…

Which lead to making faces with our clementines.

Some days I’m easily amused…

Aaaand I’m now caught back up on my Art Every Day Month! Also exciting and of note, this might be the furthest I’ve made it in Betty Edwards’ book since high school!

So how’s everyone else doing with AEDM? To be honest, I’m really surprised (and proud of myself) for having caught back up and for making this much progress with the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book and workbook.

Anyone else got any accomplishments they’re proud of this month?

Since today was the first day since Friday I could actually stand to sit upright for any amount of time at a table, I spent much of the day catching up on Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain workbook.

Rather than create individual posts for each assignment, I’m posting the past week as one post. Here goes…

Blind contour drawing of the palm of your hand- Good for getting you out of your left brain and focused simply on lines and where edges of objects meet.

Drawing your hand onto a plastic picture plane- Tracing your hand on a plastic viewfinder to help translate 3-D subjects into 2-D drawings.

Transferring your traced hand image into an actual drawing of your hand.

A quick drawing of my hand that I did the next day, and from it, the realization that I enjoy and prefer to work quickly, both on these assignments and most other projects in general. Instead of fighting this aspect of my personality, I really think I need to embrace it.

Moving on…

Drawing your hand holding an object- You can tell by the funky fingers & odd finger nails that I wasn’t entirely present while working on this. My three-year-old was “keeping me company”, wanting to draw his hand on my page, color my hand in for me, etc. Obvious rush job here.

Drawing a Flower- Another “Perception of Edges” exercise. Kind of veered away from tracing the flower image onto the plastic viewfinder, then transferring that image onto my page (too time-consuming) and instead just drew it while looking at the plant itself.

Drawing an Orange- Final exercise of drawing using the picture plane view finder to reduce 3-D object to 2-D drawing. Again, I skipped the tracing image onto plastic viewfinder and drew straight from the orange itself. I honestly don’t think it came out any worse for not using the viewfinder.

Drawing leaves using negative space- Moving into “the perception of space” assignments. I always loved the graphic quality of these exercises, which is probably why I like creating designs and patterns similar to this.

All righty then, so I’m almost caught up. Just need to do today’s assignment and I’ll be caught up! Hope all the #AEDM folks are still having fun and rocking it out- half way there! To those who’ve commented, thanks & I’ll be by to visit your blogs as well!

Turned out like this-

I love that this exercise is done early on in Betty Edwards’ book, sort of a “see, you CAN draw” confidence booster. Certainly turned out a hell of a lot better than yesterday’s memory man!

This was another pre-instruction exercise from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The assignment was to draw a familiar face from memory, and good God, did this turn out funky! I can’t even bring myself to admit whose face it’s supposed to be- lol! Oh, well, part of the process, eh?

Nothing fancy here, today’s exercise was to draw the corner of a room. Obviously this is about perspective, scale, relations and whatnot. And obviously there are some areas that need some work.

I’m okay with that.

I’m not ok with using 2H pencils though; they draw far too light. I like the darker, smudgier qualities of the B pencils.

If you’re a AEDM participant, leave a comment and say “hi” so I can come pay you a visit as well, ok?

Details on this month’s project are on the main blog here.

Like I mentioned on my main blog, I’m spending the month working through Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book and workbook. This was another pre-instruction drawing. Yesterday’s AEDM drawing (a bloated self portrait) can be seen here.

Odd that I made my face too chubby yesterday and my hands too skinny today. This is why I find doodling so much easier…

I’ll be making rounds tonight and visiting other AEDM 2011 folks, so feel free to introduce yourself here if you’re participating as well!