Ximena Maier… has been working as a full time freelance illustrator since 1999, mainly with Spanish newspapers and magazines. She also illustrates cookbooks, travel guides and children’s books. (Source: Ximena Maier)
I discovered Ximena Maier’s whimsical artwork when an Essex friend (and printer) shared a sumptuous letterpressed illustration of a scene from Anna Tasca Lanza‘s Sicilian cooking school. A delicate and doodle-y (not precious) black and white line drawing sumptuously sunken into paper nearly 1/8″ thick… Bliss.
It turns out that most/all of the illustrations at their website, annatascalanza.com, were created by Ximena Maier. If you like what you find, you may also want to visit Ximena Maier’s food blog, Lobstersquad, and her art blog, Ximenita dibuja.. Enjoy!
Fun, right? Here’s what the punditry is offering after probing the illustrated booze cruise.
Cartoonish penguins and other wildlife are shown imbibing in “An Illustrated Guide to Cocktails,” a whimsical little book that offers recipes for 50 cocktails. It also includes lore,the author’s personal stories, advice about equipment and abundant references to historic figures like William Howard Taft, George Washington, the bartenders Jerry Thomas and Fernand Petiot, Rudolph Valentino, James Pimm, Giovanni Bellini and Ernest Hemingway… (NYTimes.com)
Orr Shtuhl and Elizabeth Graeber self-published their first run of An Illustrated Guide to Cocktails and sold the recipe collection via Etsy, but the book caught the eye of Gotham Books and a new edition, packed with stories and illustrations we haven’t seen before… (Village Voice)Orr Shtuhl and Elizabeth Graeber’s An Illustrated Guide to Cocktails is a bar gem. Penguins and historical figures make repeat appearances in this recipe book and stories of alcoholic drinks. You’ll accumulate fun facts, like the origination of the phrase “the real McCoy,” and delicious recipes for traditional cocktails. Shtuhl’s lighthearted tone and Graeber’s drawings give the book a childlike quality not often found in books about drinking. (Serious Eats)
I am an immediate fan of any book that can simultaneously make me laugh and make me thirsty. Illustrated with pictures of seals sunning themselves with mint juleps in hand (in flipper?) and cats making snide remarks about your state of tipsiness, this book is bound to travel from my home bar to my coffee table and back again many times over… I give this book a big ol’ thumbs up. (The Kitchn)
Taste? I know this is about cocktails, but coffee again.
Feeling? Waking up rested, then doing a bunch of stuff.
What is your favorite summer cocktail? Negroni! It’s light, refreshing, and just bitter enough to be grown up. The recipe’s easy to riff on (equal parts gin/vermouth/Campari). Swap gin for whiskey, and it’s a Boulevardier. Swap for champagne and it’s a Negroni Sbagliato. I love it so much we gave it 6 pages in the book — a real centerfold treatment.
And, hey, Elizabeth Graeber, what’s your favorite…
Sight? Colors and patterns.
Sound? Flipping threw a book or sketchbook.
Smell? Fresh rosemary. Or any herbs.
Taste? Olives.
Feeling? A sunny crisp day.
What is your favorite summer cocktail? A mint julep. (Design Sponge)
I’ve ordered a copy to tune up my mixology and doodle-ology. But until it arrives I’ll start experimenting with my own drunk doodles!
That image above is one of the “picture poems” I included in 40×41: Midlife Crisis Postponed and it combines contour drawings that I made in 1994 during my final year in college with abstractions from photographs that I took in Peru in 2011. I’ve previously posted elements of “Contours & Artifacts” in Choice (June 4, 2012) and Wonder (December […]
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