God bless us, everyone.

Merry Christmas.

Peace, love and forgiveness. And leche flan.

Someone forgot to buy ice cream, but it's okay.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Peace on earth, goodwill to men. And cake.

Not Waiting.

The check didn't get signed.

The person who made me rush those projects isn't returning my calls.

In the meantime, I'm painting cards, burning anime DVDs and making candles and lip gloss. Homemade prezzies are okay, right? :-)

Waiting

Last banking day before Christmas. Check needs one more signature. Bank closes at three.

It must be the chocolate, cause it sure as hell isn't the luck.

Which Chow Yun Fat Are You?

You are Ko Chun, the Rain-Man like master of cards from God of Gamblers. No one, including you, quite understands your gifts - however, they have never let you down. Your boundless confidence in your own abilities is exceeded only by your child-like pleasure for the simple things - like chocolate. Your friends often end up having to take care of you, rather than the other way around.
Take this quiz!








Quizilla |
Join

| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

Maples at Arashiyama.

I want to paint maples. In Japan. Now.

Hiatus 2

October has ended, but not the fall. I'm tired.

Hiatus.

Too many people and animals are dying around me.

Let this month end.

From the imaginary manga that stars my dog, this is Samurai Guy.

I really should stop drawing on random pieces of paper and use a decent sketchpad or sketchbook. It isn't like I don't have 56 million of them. But do I? No.
Now I wonder how to make it look like it's the same guy from different angles. Gah. I spose I could follow a seventy-five buck "How to Draw Manga" book, but the writing throws me off. And do I really want Flower's buddy to have flashlight eyes? Nah.

Yeah, I learned to draw out of impatience.

One sunny day in April, it dawns on you that that all your resignations have been preceded by a stockpiling of art supplies and learn-to-draw-and-paint books. Strange, You wonder why. If you're going to resign a writing job, the logical stockpile would be pens, inkjet paper and Writer's Market books, right? But no. You maxed out my credit cards on brushes, paint, and watercolor paper. And, of course, art books.

After three such abrupt resignations, it begins to dawn on you that having no job rules out going to the movies everyday or shopping or even eating, anything that requires a cash outlay, and the stockpile of art supplies and 56 million notebooks start calling your name.

So you begin learning to draw. Little by little. You start by drawing the same pig statue in front of you everyday until you get sick of the damn pig. Then after that, the fishy. Then the dragon. Then flowers. Lots and lots of flowers because, hey, they're pretty! And easy! (Like some girls I know. )

Then one day you decide to draw yourself in the mirror and realize, "Hey! It actually looks like me! (But crankier.)" The real artists (read: the ones with talent, and therefore not insecure) try to teach you what they know. Give you pointers. Books. Tips. And you get better.

So you're drawing. You've lots of paper anyway. And art supplies. Are you any good? Who cares? You're drawing.

My brain isn't working. So I decided to just clean my desk at home, but only got as far as hanging up my sumi-e brushes. I want a bigger inkstone. And rice paper. And wolf-hair brushes. And a real chop. And chocolate.

In other news, it is now illegal in China for Buddhas to reincarnate without government permission. Hm.

The Flowers of Mass Production.

My brilliant mother made something like 300 pieces of polvoron and decided they looked bare, so she wanted labels. So she handed me little dinky sticker labels and went, "Anak, gawa mo naman ako ng flowers. Yung madali lang" and no amount of eyebrow raising and hints about executive time worked. So, here. Yes I drew every single one. There's more.

I can almost hear my dad laughing.

More Demented Eels and What I Did With Them

Enough painting, it's the doggy's birthday. And we have cake.

Hm, they don't look so much like demented eels today. Hm. Maybe because I started out with this.

What I Did With the Demented Eels.

Yes, yes, I know perfectly well that there is no fixing a botched painting in CBP and sumi-e. But still.

And there's another one, I just haven't finished it yet. Heheheh.

...And Demented Eels

So we got home pretty early and I decided to give bamboo practice another shot. Ann from the group said when the painting wasn't going well to switch to orchids and rocks. The rocks were fine, but they were, well, rocks. But my orchids look like demented eels. Arrrggggghhhhh.

Mangoes and Bananas

My bamboo leaves look like mango leaves, so I decided to paint mango leaves instead. But now the mangoes look like bananas. Wilson said it was because the chi wasn't consistent. Oh well.

Butterfly In Sumi

Young bamboo
in the sun;
Purple butterfly
stops by
fans her wings
in morning mist.

The lovely Barbara from the CBP Group wrote the poem on the butterfly and bamboo. One day when I learn calligraphy I shall paint it on this one.

Yay, Paper! And Brushes!

It's really good to have real rice paper and good brushes. Heheheh.

But my sister decided to ration my supply. I'm only allowed to use 1/4 of 1/4 of the sheets of paper Wilson gave me. Bah. My sisters are dictators.

So I figured, orchids are easiest. Ve shall paint ze orchids. But I goofed on the fifth leaf.

In Chinese Brush Painting and Sumi-e, there is no such thing as fixing a stroke. But I really really hate wasting paper. So. I'll figure something out.

EDIT: AUGUST 22


And it comes with a haiku! (inspired by the calligraphy discussion, heehee)

harvest ready rice
snails come out after the storm
to make meal complete.

Nyahahaha.

Butterfly

It's been fun setting up the new agency, but we really need to be collecting a paycheck sometime soon, because we all have bills to pay. Once in a while, we look up at the sky (Sam and Me, at least, because Chubby still has both parents) and go, "Dad! Pengeng pera!"

So after the client loved today's presentation, we were all shaking our heads and laughing at the fact that our living will be coming from services for the dead. The client was a memorial park/columbary. Cool place, by the way. I could spend all day there just drawing. Even painting.

And then the butterfly came. Purple and black. At first we thought it was artificial, and then it moved. Sam goes, "Is that your dad or mine?"

Then the music came on. John Denver, Country Roads (Take Me Home).

I laughed. "Mine."

Sam nodded and said, "Oh yeah. Black and purple. Those are your favorite colors, right?"

Pages to color

Page Number 14

So I ended with 19 drawings before I fell asleep. This is one of them, by special request.

Gel Pens and Coloring Books

My sisters had this bright idea to torture me by making me draw them something to color with my 56 million gel pens. Being the oldest is hard work. Normally I'd drive them to the mall and let them shop, or feed them and we'd watch a movie. But my cold was still bad, and I was kinda broke. Okay, totally broke. So I gave them paper to amuse them. (Note: these are not three year olds, they're twentysomething and thirtysomethings. LOL)

And they told me to draw them something to color. The thing was, they didn't hand me just paper. They handed me whole notebooklets. And I'm supposed to fill them up with drawings they can color. I'm up to page 17 now. Maybe I'll put them up on another blog as I'm running out of space on Flickr, so people can download them to color, or their kids. I'm torturing them by drawing faster than they can color.

Hehehe. Too bad I forgot to scan the line drawings of these first two. AT least I took a pic with my phone.

Hm, the guy with the Chinese Painting website answered my email. I hope he has extra good brushes to sell. I really should call now.

It's called Chinese BRUSH Painting, dear.

Practice Bamboo on Newsprint

Practice Bamboo on Japanese Paper

The brushy pen I took everywhere finally ran out of ink. Sigh. Which means I have no other choice but practice my bamboos with a real Chinese brush. And ink. Bah. Oh well. It isn't called Chinese PEN painting. Unless I'm painting Pen, of course, who is half-Chinese... but I'm not. Nyaha.

Hm.

I laugh too much these days. I wonder if that's a bad thing. Ronan said he almost didn't recognize me. Hm.

I should be careful not to lose my passport and other identification, though. Might have trouble cashing checks. Heehee.

Horsie!

My hands are still too shaky to do do Chinese Brush painting practice, and my eyes are too watery to do major computer work, and the brushy pen ran out of ink and I didn't want to crawl out to the hot hot hot room to get my ink bottle so I used the Sharpie. I think I shall call it Chinese Brush Meets Caveman Drawing in Sharpie #56.

Sigh. I really really hate having a cold. If this doesn't let up I shall start feeling sorry for myself soon.

Phooey

I hate having colds. I can't practice with the sumi-e because my hands shake from the cold medicine, and I can't finish the blog projects and agency projects because my eyes water from staring at the screen. Plus, the laptop screen gets gross when I sneeze. Ewwwwww.

I don't like filing.

But the youtube Chinese brush and sumi-e tutorials are hard to find so I've taken it upon myself
to try to put them together in a blog. I put Haiying Yang's tutorials first, and am trying to get permission from the others.

Anyway, here they are.

The Chinese Brush Painting Videos

Why oh why?

Why is it that out of the hundreds of bamboos I've done practicing with the Chinese brush painting, my favourite one is the one that WASN'T done with a Chinese brush?

A friend of mine gave me this calligraphy brush pen (henceforth nown as my brushy pen) when I went to Malaysia. It's what I used. I like it better now that it's about to run out of ink.