Dreaming up new art

I'm excited about a new series I want to do. Its all about The Pantry.

I've always been fascinated by people's pantries, and love to get a glimpse of a good one when possible (no, I didn't say "snoop". A good ploy is to be helping with dinner, and have the excuse to offer to get something from the larder.)

Very few (OK, none) that I have seen are as cozy and charming as this one.

© Jill Barklem from the Brambley Hedge series

(I believe its from Autumn Story)

To stock a basic pantry, one definitely needs some dry pasta.

And spices.

And chocolates and olives and capers and tins of things and anchovies and are those chocolate espresso beans in that middle row jar?

I'm not sure about storing the cooked ham in the pantry, but the plum pudding is OK (for a bit) and of course attractive serving ware always helps to dress things up.

This is too perfect and staged to be real, but I was taken with the white pitchers, since I have a collection myself (which I can assure you are not stored in the pantry).

Oooh, yummy looking things in jars.

And cheese! OK, this is not someone's larder, but its cheese! One could keep cheese in the pantry, I suppose, if its cool enough. In my fantasy there is cheese and plenty of it. You know Wallace and Grommit have plenty of cracking good cheese in theirs.

And fancy unreadable labels done with a calligraphy pen.

So anyways. This is what I've been doing - looking at larders and mulling over what I want to do with this series, exactly. When I get started I will post about it, you can be sure. It might be colored pencil, and it might be watercolor + pencil, not sure. Like I said, its in the incubation/dreaming stage. I love that stage.

Here's to your art dreams *clink*