Gratifood
The cherry on top of our gratitude sundae
Hi there, phenomenal human. This is the weekly lesson-dispatch of “DrawTogether with WendyMac” by me, Wendy MacNaughton. We’re just wrapping up a series on art and gratitude. (Missed it? You can start right here.) I am grateful for the creativity and community we’ve built over the past five years with DrawTogether. If you believe in what we’re doing here, including DrawTogether Classrooms, The Grown-Ups Table, and more, please help it continue by subscribing. DrawTogether is a big ol’ labor of love, and I so appreciate your support. ❤️✏️❤️
Well that was a heck of a week.
Anyone else feel like a lifetime of highs and lows got crammed into the past 7ish days? On top of Thanksgiving here in the USA, there was just a lot going on - some great and exciting, some abysmal. None of it restful. So I am spending today drawing over coffee, getting a little exercise, and visiting loved ones. A solid reset before I dive back in.
How about you? What are you doing to take care of yourself before we launch into the final stretch of 2024? I want to know: how are you FILLING YOUR CUP for 2025? Are you taking walks? Reading? Watching movies? Cuddling with a loved one or furry animal? Hanging with chosen family? I think we’d all love to take inspiration from one another. So let us know: what fills your cup?
We have a couple weeks of reflection and drawing ahead of ourselves before we dive into our January adventure (why yes, we very well may do another 30 days…) so whatever you’re doing to recharge, you may also want to also sharpen your pencils.
One thing that always fills my cup is what also fills my belly: delicious food made with love. I hope we all had some of that this past week. It’s also what we’re focusing on in our final week of drawing gratitude. Let’s call it Fooditude? Better yet: Gratifood.
We Are What We Eat (and Draw)
I’ve spent a lot of time visually contemplating food and drink. Like, A LOT. I have published five books on the topic. *Snaps Suspenders* Considering I draw mostly from life, that is a lot of looking at food (and tea and booze.) In case you missed any of them, here they are in chronological order: I made two fun scratch and sniff books - one about wine and one about whiskey - with master sommelier Richard Betts and Crystal English Sacca. I drew a beautiful little primer on tea with Sebastian Beckwith and Caroline Paul. I co-edited an ode to the life and handpaitnted recipes of barrier busting designer Cipe Pineles with Sarah Rich, Debbie Millman and Maria Popova. And, of course, I spent years making the cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat with writer and chef Samin Nosrat. Making that book with Samin was how I myself learned to cook (and enjoy it.)
Drawing is a tool to help us pay attention, look closely at something, see it with fresh eyes, and celebrate it. It’s also a vehicle to communicate ideas and information in a form that is fun and approachable. A drawing is a lot more enjoyable to look at than a bar graph, IMHO. For example, the drawing above from Salt Fat Acid Heat (which was hilariously just spoofed on The Colbert Show??) is a “highly technical diagram” (yeah, right) of what makes the full grilled cheese experience just right. And below, is a chart of sources of fat for cooking. I based the design on old botanical charts.
Speaking of charts, here’s one I drew that helps you understand all the different types of wines from the Scratch and Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert (which was also somehow just featured on the show The Bear?! What’s going on??)
Another page from Salt Fat Acid Heat below: Smooth soups (this is one half of the spread from the book.)
You might never know it unless I told you, but the shape, shadow and repetition I created for this chart is an ode to the great artist Wayne Theiebaud and his dessert paintings! Take a look at Wayne’s painting below and I think you’ll see what I mean:
We are always inspired and influenced by others, and that’s a beautiful thing. As my friend
famously says, Steal Like An Artist. Part of stealing like an artist, IMHO, is screaming credit from the rooftops everytime credit is due. Which is, well, always. As my friend, previous collaborator and ultimate champion of good people, writer taught me decades ago: All Boats Rise.Up top I mentioned the great designer and artist Cipe Pineles. I’ve written at length about Cipe here before, but let’s take another look at her artwork for a different approach to food-drawing: the illustrated recipe. My friend Sarah and I along with our friends Debbie and Maria poured our hearts into publishing in the tribute to her work and life: Leave Me Alone with the Recipes. Here is one from the book:
And another one of my favorites:
(We made prints of these gorgeous paintings... Maybe we will do another small batch in 2025. Stay tuned.)
Feeling the Family in the Food
All the art above takes different approaches to drawing food. What they all have in common - and I believe what makes them feel special - is the care and attention being put not only one the food, but on the story around it. Baked inside.
In Cipe’s drawings - in the care with the salt shaker, knife, dishtowel and beet leaves - you can feel her family’s history. For Wayne, it’s the formality and care of the arrangement and composition - it captures the feeling of the time and art for him. For me, it’s my way to understand things visually, and delight in the study. These drawings help me make sense of the world.
We eat food every darn day. Three times even! Without it we die. For that and a million other reasons it’s also one of the most fascinating subjects to draw. Produce is always fascinating to look at. Recipes are alway challenging to visualize. Stories related to food are always entertaining to draw.
So today, and all this week, we’re focusing on gratitude for FOOD.
I’m inviting you to sit down, pick up a pencil or a pen, and focus on food. Give it some gratitude. Think about a food that is interesting to you - maybe because of its formal qualities - its shape and form and color and texture. Or maybe it’s a food that you’d like to learn more about. Or maybe it’s a food that you’ve cooked your whole life and has a huge story about it. Or maybe it’s something someone you admire makes and you'd like to explore that! Whatever it is, we are going to be making food drawings this week. Because while i’ve been talking so much about filling our cups, let’s remember, we are what we eat (and draw.) We best fill our plates with something nourishing, too.
Assignment: Grati-FOOD
Alright, here’s what we’re doing…