Totally off topic - trying my hand at food illustration

My wife loves to cook. When we have friends over they ask her how to make the food. This finally got to the point where she decided she should put together a website with the recipes on it and I volunteered to do the illustrations. So I've been learning how to illustrate food (I did say it had been a busy month!). Here's a few of the images that are up now:

Attachment 27727 Attachment 27728 Attachment 27729 Attachment 27730 Attachment 27731

It's fun - and totally different from mapmaking. If you're interested in cooking (or more of the food art) then check out the site here:
http://www.ifyoucanmakethatyoucanmakethis.com/

Nice job, if I could make a suggestion, and you can try it then decide against it.. but going outside the lines so much is distracting (tomatoes are the worst offenders)... if you want try erasing the overflow, or most of it, then see how it looks.
Other than that your watercolor look is very pleasing.

I don't really mind the out of line stuff, hehe nice pun intended. I especially like the yellow onion - great work. The garlic looks like it could use a small knife in the image somehow.

Yep, i's amazing how close you can get to a watercolour look with just the wet edges turned on in PS and a nice splattery brush. The tomatoes are indeed the worst, and I'm pulling back from that on the new illos.

As for the garlic - yes I tried it with a knife, but I couldn't really get it to work. Might have another shot at it in a bit.

Thanks for the compliments and the critiques - really appreciated. Now I want to get my hands on the wet media tools in CS5... but still can't quite justify the upgrade cost.

That's fantastic Torstan. Until I scrolled down, I couldn't believe you'd done these in photoshop. They look just like watercolours. I really like the 'high key' in the tones you've used. The style is very similar to many I've seen in recipe books. Fab!

Thanks :)

I had meant to note that these were very much inspired i style by Emma Dibben - the illustrator who used to illustrate Waitrose Food Magazine:
http://www.emmadibben.com/

Her stuff is extremely lovely - I definitely recommend having a wander through her site.

lol! We do most of our shopping at Waitrose....that would probably explain it!

mmmmmmmmm.... Food! :)

My wife the painter says, "Oooh! That is nice!"

I feel I must concur.

Thanks :)

Here's the image from today's recipe:
Attachment 27806

and a handful of raspberries for fun:
Attachment 27807

I was taking some advice and tightening up the lines and colouring on the fish fillet. The raspberries of course are totally in the other direction - much looser and more splattered. I'm not too sure which way I prefer. Anyway, it's a fun change from all the recent maps. I'm illustrating a forest adventure and I swear my hand will fall off from drawing trees...