Blogmas Day 01: First Okinawan Food

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First Blogmas post will be a short food porn post!

After 3 grueling flights, 20-something hours later, my sister and I arrived in Naha, Okinawa around 3pm.  We cleaned ourselves up at the hotel and headed out straight away for some Okinawan food!

Above is Kokusai Dori, a very touristy street but ho hey, we were tourists after all.  A fantastic street for plenty of Okinawan eats and souvenirs.  Our hotel was within walking distance of the street and the first restaurant I wanted to hit, Yunangi, was near it.  Yunangi is number 1 on Tripadviser and is known as one of the best places for traditional Okinawan cuisine.  I'm far to much of foreigner to be a judge of that however the food was very yummy indeed! The restaurant is cute and small, and from what I remember it was entirely run by woman, including all the cooks behind the incredibly small open kitchen.

I'm afraid I don't have any interior or exterior shots of the restaurant! Yes, silly blogger mistake - taking pictures of venues was a habit I couldn't get into it but hopefully next trip I'll be better at this.  I do of course have food porn shots though!

Umibudo - Okinawan Sea Grapes - one of the super foods responsible for Okinawa's long life expectancy.  It's a sea-salty, refreshing seaweed, wish I had the chance to try this in a rice dish!

Umibudo - Okinawan Sea Grapes - one of the super foods responsible for Okinawa's long life expectancy.  It's a sea-salty, refreshing seaweed, wish I had the chance to try this in a rice dish!

Rafute - Braised Pork Belly - if you can only have one dish from this restaurant then pick this one!

Rafute - Braised Pork Belly - if you can only have one dish from this restaurant then pick this one!

Gurukun Karaage - Okinawan Fried Fish - don't let the picture fool you, its a petite little fish.  Nothing too special about this dish, its just a deep fried fish.

Gurukun Karaage - Okinawan Fried Fish - don't let the picture fool you, its a petite little fish.  Nothing too special about this dish, its just a deep fried fish.

Goya Champuru - Stir Fry with Bitter Melon, bits of pork, egg and tofu.  The Goya, Bitter Melon, is another super food rich in all the good stuff.  We ate a plate of this stuff everyday! We can get bitter melon here locally but it's slight…

Goya Champuru - Stir Fry with Bitter Melon, bits of pork, egg and tofu.  The Goya, Bitter Melon, is another super food rich in all the good stuff.  We ate a plate of this stuff everyday! We can get bitter melon here locally but it's slightly different and I only ever remember it being very bitter and unpleasant.  The Okinawan bitter melon is slightly bitter too but the stir fry combos work very well.

Mozuku Tempura - another new favourite of ours.  This black seaweed was served pickled with many other dishes on our trip here in Okinawa but this tempura version is super yummy, I never thought to buy any mozuku souvenirs, hopefully I can sour…

Mozuku Tempura - another new favourite of ours.  This black seaweed was served pickled with many other dishes on our trip here in Okinawa but this tempura version is super yummy, I never thought to buy any mozuku souvenirs, hopefully I can source it online somewhere.

Zoo drawing day

The cute penguins did not make up for the freezing weather! Face and fingers were frozen but I finally had a chance to go to the zoo and it seemed like a good idea at the time >.>



Also, I've had an instragram for a while now, it's mostly instagramey-type pictures of food and bits and bobs but I think I might try to take more snapshots of my sketchbook on it.  Follow me if you like! http://instagram.com/szekeiho/


I HEART NYC

Went on holiday last week to fabulous New York City.  I was in full-on tourist mode and did all the big main sites! I'm still very much exhausted and slightly jet-lagged but of course I took a sketchbook with me and doodled whenever I could.  I never bothered to take any water-colours with me because my shoulder bag was already so heavy with travel junk so my sketches are definitely lacking some colour and the one main advantage to drawing in cold weather are the several pockets in your jacket you can use to hold drawing tools, so summer in New York meant no jacket so an A5 sketchbook in one hand, a brush pen and graphite stick in the other, a heavy bag on my shoulder and a big SLR camera around my neck :3
 
View from a window at the MOMA, you weren't even allowed to draw with pens at this museum and most of these places were incredibly overcrowded but I managed to find this sweet spot at the MOMA to draw this view because this window hid behind a wall where most people thought the exhibition ended not realizing that there was another display behind it! :)
 
Rodin's Adam at the Metropolitan Art Museum
I bought these brush pens in Kinokuniya, a big Japanese book/stationary by Bryant park and they're meant for Japanese/Chinese calligraphy.  I'd tried different ones before but this shop had 'testers' of all their different pens, which was how I found this one and I think I've finally found a brush pen that I love and love drawing with! I've tried every available brush pen at my local art shops but all their nibs crap-out on me after not much use.  I wish I bought more from the shop in New York so hopefully I'll be able to get them online.
 
Leopards at the American Natural History Museum.  Great displays of wild animals that you would rarely get to see, at least not still and in a great pose! :)
 
Spider Monkey at the American Natural History Museum.
 
View from a window on the fourth floor at the American Natural History Museum.
 
People sitting outside Macy's.  Didn't do too much drawing of people but this was me experimenting with drawing figures with that brush pen really.
 
Spent our last day at Central Park.  It was a perfect day for it and I were so tired from the week that it meant after a little exploring around the park, I could just sit for a couple hours and draw.  Real bummed that I didn't have water-colours with me though! 
 
Highlights for me was definitely walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, we walked across from Brooklyn to Manhattan, just as the sun was disappearing, it was really a magical way to view the Manhattan skyline and then watching Polina Semionova dance with the American Ballet Theatre and the Metropolitan Opera House was a dream come true.
 

Zoo Sketches

It is so outrageously sunny in Scotland just now.  I had the computer running at half ten this morning and I was preparing for a day of animation but then I decided that I needed to get out, so I drove up to the zoo and had a fun drawing day.  Spent most of my time in the outdoor enclosures, of course.  It was so nice to be drawing out in the sun! :)


Class 1 & 2 Progress Reel at Animation Mentor

Here is my Class 1 & 2 Progress Reel finally up on youtube!  I'm already on week 2 of Class 3 and the intense syllabus means it won't be long before I get to add my Class 3 stuff to my progress reel! :)

Oh and Happy New Year everyone, here's to a new term!

Last Life Drawing of the term!

Finally found some time to record the last couple weeks of life drawing, so prepare for a big sketch dump! :)

A2, Charcoal, 40 mins
A2, Sharpie, Quick drawing - 2 minutes

A2, Charcoal, Quick Drawing - 1 minute

A2, Sharpie, Quick drawing - 2 minutes

A2, Charcoal, 10 minutes

A2, Charcoal, 10 minutes

A2, Charcoal, 40 minutes

A2, Charcoal, Warm-up sketch - 3 minutes

A2, Charcoal, Warm-up sketch - 3 minutes

Life Drawing and another Christmas Card

Here's last weeks life drawing, the focus was on tone.  I still feel very out-of-focus with my life drawing drawing skills, I was kind of hoping I would get back into the swing of things by now but maybe I need to switch things up a bit and look at some new techniques that I've never tried before.  I'm finding life drawing really frustrating >.<
Charcoal, A2, 10 mins-ish

Charcoal, A2, 30 mins-ish

Also here is another Doctor Hoo Christmas Card. Available on my Etsy!

Zoo Sketches and a Pumpkin!

So I may have skived life drawing this week but it's the first one I've missed this term in order to get some more animation done, I did however manage to squeeze a wee drawing day at the zoo.  It was the only day I could go and is probably the last chance I'll get to go until next year.  I also carved a pumpkin for Halloween this year :)






Animation Mentor

For those wondering, that is all 10 of my fabulous followers, my blog posting was pretty vacant this summer because I went back to school! I applied for Animation Mentor in May and started in the summer term, so I've been animating my summer days away!
The course has been incredibly overwhelming but going back to the basics and getting some solid training in character animation was really what I needed.  The syllabus for this term is really quite different to what I had to do in the first one so I'm hoping to start blogging my work from the course plus I've just started back at a regular life drawing class again, so hopefully there will be some regularity in my posting again! ^_^