Ahhh - Donuts, My Favorite Food - EDM #146

There couldn't possibly be anything better than donuts - better tasting that is, not better for you! I really do love donuts, any kind - except for the ones with coconut on them. The type that I have illustrated here are a lot safer for me to have around the house than my most favorite kind - Krispy Kremes! If you have never had a Krispy Kreme Donut, it is probably a good thing. Once you have one, you will always remember the flavor, smell, texture, and melt-in-the-mouth goodness of this local treat.

I don't know what city they were born in, but here in Jacksonville Krispy Kremes are sold at gas stations, grocery stores, church breakfasts, and at the Krispy Kreme stores themselves. If you are a true Krispy Kreme aficinado, you will make a trip to the Krispy Kreme store where you can sit, hot coffee steaming on the table in front of you, and watch how they are made.

First, tiny balls of dough become limp rings of white floating through space on row upon row of wire racks. They travel up and down the conveyor belt, through the warmth of the oven, where they rise. When they reach the end of their journey in the rising oven, they are flipped, shelf by shelf, into a vat of boiling vegetable oil. Sizzle, snap, hiss - the rings puff up as they float along in the bubbling fat. Halfway through this leg of their journey, they are quickly flipped over by a device that rises up from the roiling grease to toss them over a dam into their second bath in the hot oil.

At just the right time, when they are golden brown on both sides, they careen over a metal ledge through a downpour of white, liquid, sugar, to emerge as donuts that are "Hot and Now!" The flashing neon sign in the window announces their readiness for consumption, and you are about to learn the truth of melt-in-the-mouth delight. The line attendant uses a wooden chopstick to deftly pluck your donut from its journey to the packing area, places it on a clean napkin, and hands you the warm, light, sticky treat. Mouth-watering joy is yours. One bite, another bite, maybe a third, and it is gone!

What do you think, shall we have a refill on the coffee and have another donut, or, maybe two?

EDM #130 - School Supplies

The EDM challenge to draw some school supplies got a some great responses. There is no question in my mind about why that happened. In order to get school supplies, you have to go into a place where there are pencils, pens, ink, paper, erasers, rulers, tablets and notebooks. Office supply stores are second only to art supply stores in the heart of an artist! There is so much to see, touch and smell!

No matter what you buy, when you get home and open the bag, there is a sense of excitement about the "newness," and possibilities, that lie within each item. Just how long will it take to fill that notebook? Are those pencils the perfect ones for sketching? Will this brand of eraser work better on my watercolor paper? When I use this glue, will it buckle the support for my collage? So many memories and so much potential are wrapped up in new school supplies.

I have one pencil that I use only for special things. It lays down a smooth line, dark and rich. The lead seems to flow onto the page, almost like a gel pen! I have no idea how long I have had it or where I got it. I have searched for several years trying to locate others like it. The closest I have ever come to it are the "Mirado Black Warriors." Even then, the ones from the office supply are just a little bit too hard - not as smooth as the "magical pencil" of unknown origin that I love so much.

If I couldn't find the magic pencil, perhaps I needed a new pen! I did my own informal poll of my favorite EDM sites and discovered that the Lamy Safari pen and Noodler's Ink are the favorite of many artists. If they could draw so beautifully with a Lamy and Noodler's, what were the chances that I could draw even better with the same supplies? After a few searches on the web, I found just the pen I was looking for - a bright yellow Lamy, extra fine nib, and Noodler's "Bulletproof Black" Ink! Since many of the suppliers also sell pencils, I decided that it wouldn't cost much to see if I could find my special pencils on line. I decided to get a box of the Warriors with a 2B lead and see if they were the kind of pencils I was looking for. Yep! They are smooth, dark, able to produce a variety of marks, not expensive and available on line. That's about as "magical" as it gets!

The marvelous pencils and "highly favored" pen and ink haven't turned my sketches into works of art, but I'm glad I bought them. My drawing and sketching may not have improved at all, but I love using my new "school supplies." I think that if I do enough sketching to wear all twelve pencils down to nubs, and use a whole bottle of "Noodler's Bulletproof " with my yellow Safari, I am sure to be a better artist! Practice, practice, practice...!