The Watched Pot
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As was kind of hinted at earlier in the chapter, I found it terrifying to draw food. To be fair, I wasn’t necessarily looking to make this pot of stew look appetizing, but I wanted it to look like food. So, I turned to the best source for drawing food:
While the studio is renowned for making generation-defining, poignant, and personal animated films like My Neighbor Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and The Wind Rises, there is a loud undercurrent of internet discourse about the food that appears in the films.
An example of Ghibli food in full effect. Screengrab from Howl’s Moving Castle. Image Source: Serious Eats
Basically, the food looks delicious and there seems to be a fandom all its own dedicated to it. But I’m not here to talk about that––that’s a risk you’ll have to take all on your own––I was more interested in figuring out techniques to make food look food-ish.
It’s a matter of sheen and shadow (as everything is) and I’m quite happy with how things turned out, even if it looks disgusting simply because I didn’t want to expand the limited color palette of the comic to make it look more appetizing. I’ve got standards.
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Thumbnail drawing for this page. Click for large version.
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