Friday, March 25, 2011

tablecloth meat sections

pigtable
original crayon on paper tablecloth

So there's this pizza place in SF that I love - Pauline's Pizza. They have been in the city forever, and most of their produce comes from their own farm, and they even produce their own "pizza wine" on their family vineyards. It's a fun, low-key place with really creative pizza toppings (padron pepper puree, anyone?).

Anywho, they have white paper tablecloths, and a jar of crayons on every table, presumably to keep children occupied, but hey, it works for me too. I went there a couple weeks ago with a few friends and drew the little piggie during a lengthy wait for our special order pizza.*

No biggie, right? Except when I went to the bathroom, I noticed this:

pauline's pizza cow
original crayon on paper tablecloth

The tablecloth from my LAST visit a few weeks prior! Totally crazy, right? There are no other doodles up on the wall, so I of course took this as a compliment. I told our waiter that I drew that and he said that the whole staff loved it and pointed out where the crew had included the Spanish words for the beef cuts. They are super stars, those folks at Pauline's pizza.



*They actually made it incorrectly twice, but were super nice about it, giving us half of a correctly made pizza and then an EXTRA LARGE pie, all comped. Love them.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Portland Knows How to Pork

Portland Knows how to Pork full shot

Back to the left coast is the fourth in the "Meat My City" poster series: Portland!

Portland may be known as a vegetarian friendly city, but meat-eaters there know that Portland really knows how to pork. Especially if it's a heritage breed, woodland-raised, hyper-local, organic acorn-fed, use-it-all-nose-to-tail pigs (named Fred).*

Portland poster, words close up


This is a poster of a hand-drawn map of Portland neighborhoods, in the form of a pig butchery diagram. In addition to the (MANY!) neighborhoods, there are some pig parts diagrammed, like ham, jowl, secret bacon, etc.

Portland poster pig, close up

As I mentioned earlier this year, I'll be donating 10% of the sale price of each poster to a food charity in each city. For each Portland poster sold, I'll donate $2.50 to the Oregon Food Bank.

The poster is available in my shop, right here.


*I may or may not be watching a lot of Portlandia lately.

Friday, March 4, 2011

BIG MEATY NEWS

STEAK window display @ Williams Sonoma, featuring "The Cook and The Butcher"

At the close of last year, I alluded to a major collaboration with a big time company in my newsletter. I had to keep quiet for the time being, but now I can finally announce that I illustrated a cookbook.....
.
.
.
.
.......for Williams-freaking-Sonoma!!


The Cook and the Butcher

The Cook and The Butcher is a meat cookbook (obviously) written by Brigit Brinns with FAQs answered by Tom Moylan, of the Meat Hook in Brooklyn. It is helpfully broken into chapters by animal - cow, pig, veal, and lamb - and then further into recipes for each primal cut for each animal. At the beginning of each chapter, you'll see a badass charcoal butchery diagram illustration by me.

cow butchery diagram in The Cook and The Butcher

The publisher, Weldon Owen, contacted me back in September last year after stumbling across my work on Etsy. I was floored, to say the least. I love Williams Sonoma and it was quite an honor to have my art in one of their cookbooks.

pig butchery diagram in The Cook and The Butcher

Weldon Owen commissioned new charcoal drawings from me, based on the popular charcoal diagrams available in my shop. I think the printing came out so saturated and crisp, and the folks at Weldon Owen were awesome to work with (and even purchased the original commissioned artworks to decorate their office!)

veal butchery diagram in The Cook and The Butcher

sheep butchery diagram in The Cook and The Butcher


The Cook and The Butcher is only available at Williams Sonoma for the time being, but if you want my name in the book, you'll have to wait for the wider release in September (preorder on Amazon).*

Hooray for being able to add "cookbook illustrator" to my burgeoning art resume!!


* There was a snafu in the initial printing, where my credit line was accidentally omitted. It will most definitely be in the larger wider release of the book, however!!!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Happy National Pork Day!

Happy National Pork Day!
original pencil drawing

I apparently didn't get the memo until late in the day, but March 1st is National Pork Day. Which is of course super great.

I whipped up this little sketch in honor of the sacred day.