Wedding Invites for My Lovely December Brides

While finding the right partner for you is exciting, getting married is pretty much like leaping to an icy ocean—you know it's going to be scary and risky, but you jump in anyway all because you love to swim. Or at least, that's how I see it. Haha.

And on December 2014, 3 lovely couples will be taking the jump and they entrusted the announcement of their beautiful leap to me. I feel so honored and blessed to have sweet clients. :)

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ALEX & DAWN

click the photo to enlarge

The couple's color motif was blush pink and champagne gold—very sophisticated. They wanted the overall look of the invite to be simple but pretty, it was a bit challenging to me since I tend to over-decorate sometimes, thank God I was able to pull it off nicely. I hand-drew peonies and roses as elements because it's Dawn's favorite flowers. I had this set printed at Illumina Digital Printing, also, shout-out to the wonderful staff of this printshop for accommodating my printing needs. :)

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MARVIN & LUCILLE

click the photo to enlarge

For this couple, a 3-page, pink and silver invite is what they wanted. The style is formal and baroque-ish but not heavy-looking. I was cautious design-wise since most of their visitors are honorable people. The bride was a good friend from highschool, it was really nice that she's finally settling down with a man that loves her so much.

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JUN & LHENG

click the photo to enlarge

This set has midnight and sky blue, purple and pink for its motif, so many colors! The style was laid-back and modern. Pol even bought me Kyle's Real Watercolor for Photoshop for this project, I was beyond happy. I had fun doing all its elements specially those forget-me-not flowers, each page was exciting because I have to come up with something more candid and quirky than the last one.

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CONCLUSION: These invites made my October and September really stressed-out, panicky yet fruitful. I'm thankful for my clients' trust and patience, and I'm really glad they loved what I did for them. I wish them all a marriage blessed with love, patience and understanding.

Other: I sometimes worry that when it's my turn to walk down the scary aisle (not soon though) I'm already out of invitation ideas that I'll end up handing out a paper to my guests announcing that I'm getting married. Heck, I might just send them a text message. Haha. ;)

Art Strollin: Blood & Stitches

Pol and I went to see Blood and Stitches, YEO KAA's First Solo Show and Krinini Toy Launch at Secret Fresh Gallery last Friday, Oct. 3, 2014,. It was marvelous.

(Image credits to Yeo Kaa's facebook account)

Let me go back a bit and tell you why I'm excited to see her show. I have been following her tumblr account since last year, I think. I don't really trust my memory these days. I trailed the source of an interesting painting and that's how I stumbled across her account.  I spent hours checking out her bizarre, colorful paintings, admiring them as there was that looming air of oddity in each one that I found really amazing. Since then, I've been a fan.

So, we went to Secret Fresh even if it was raining and the traffic was ridiculous. It was opening night and there were lots of people around, gawking and drooling over Yeo Kaa's Krinini Toys and paintings. We were really shy to enter at first because it felt like everybody knew everybody else. Still, we were able to get inside. The place was well-lit and brightly colored because of her pieces. A bar with shelf-lined walls are in the left and the exhibit on the right.

These lovelies are hauntingly beautiful.

Everything's candy-colored that I almost felt like licking them.

Pol looking over some sexy buns.

If it weren't of Pol's persuasive pushing, I won't be able to get a photo with her. Haha.

We spent the next few minutes entranced into her elaborate, colorful pieces, grabbed a couple of chicken pops and went home dizzy with colors. The show was really good and fun that we didn't mind going home with our shoes soaked with rain and our heads throbbing with ache.

Art Process: Mustardy Kitty with a Blue Bunny Beanie

Since I suffered from a creative-block today, I decided to make a tiny gift for my best friend and her guy because it's their anniversary. Yay! Cheers for good relationships!

Hey Kid

Dearest Future Kid,

If ever I decided I'd like to marry your future dad, this will be one of our wedding songs.

This is Greatest Lovers by Luke Sital-Singh. We felt like one of the greatest lovers this world has ever seen, it may be different tomorrow or the next day, who knows. It may sound so cheesy you can actually smell it, but it's true. Laugh with me darling.

I love you kid.

Custom-Painted Kendama II

I got a handful of projects I really have to find time for, one of them was to custom design a kendama. For you darlings who're wondering what a kendama is, let me help you out.

From Wikipedia:

kendama (けん玉, also written as 剣玉 and 拳玉)} is a traditional Japanese toy which consists of a ken (sword) and tama (ball) connected by a string. The ken has three cups and a spike which fits into the hole in the ball. Basic kendama tricks consist of catching the ball in the cups and on the spike, however a huge variety of kendama tricks can be performed by juggling the ball beween the cups, balancing it in various positions on the ken, balancing the ken on the ball and juggling the kendama.

Image from funcheap.com

If you want to see videos of how to do kendama tricks, I would recommend visiting goenKendama's website. Aside from being a cool shop that can cater your kendama fix, they have tutorial videos as well. Click here. 

You can say a kendama is pretty much like the Japanese version of a yoyo. Personally, I like playing with it even if I'm not really that good yet. Some people may think it's a little challenging but learning to do stuff, of course, takes some time.

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So, yes! I finally got the time to paint a kendama. This is actually my second, the first one was sakura-themed. Now this one, I decided to go with aztec design. Considering the shape of the tama (ball), as much as I can, I avoid painting it with characters. Imagine what Howl would look like painted on a ball, oh poor, bloated Howl. So I stick with patterns, flowers and shapes, anything without a face.

I used hybrid acrylics to paint it and since they dry fast, I wasn't able to take some process photos. Or maybe I was too excited to have forgotten about the camera timer. I only got photos after I was done painting it. 

Here you go, aztec-themed kendama.

It was a really fun activity, finding a decent color scheme was challenging but I really love the result of this 2-day session. Cheers!

Art Process: Flourish

A few weeks back my favorite grandmom asked me to paint her a picture. She saw a couple of my illustrations and told me how happy she was that I got dad's skill. She asked if I can paint her anything with flowers on it. She's really feminine, my complete opposite but I love her just the same. Even if I got tons of jobs on my back, I just can't say no to her. And who am I to refuse to a queen's request?

So yesterday, I decided to work on it. I found a forgotten 8 x 10 canvas, stacked somewhere, primed black. It was supposed to be for an aztec design project, now it'll be for a girl and flowers so I have to make adjustments. Painting light colors on a black canvas can be a real pain in the *ss.

It's me, hello!

The draft and a couple of materials that got me so poor. Haha!

A few points before we move on:

• I'm not an art student, I studied by myself, most of my knowledge are either second-hand, from the internet and experience. So I might've missed a hundred techniques as I paint, but I don't mind. Art is a free form. :)
• The photos may look slightly different from the others. I paint next to a huge window so external light affects the photo quality.
• Please, ignore the clutter. Haha.

Moving on. It took me while to decide which kind of flower to paint, a very crucial info I forgot to ask my client. After a couple of pondering minutes, I decided to go with cherry blossoms since Japan is really close to our hearts.

Mixing colors can be both fun and scary. Nailed it though, I think. Haha.

By then I thought I'll just give up and throw the canvas outside my window.

Done after almost an hour and a few tears.

Drawing faces has been a challenge to me before. I was scared that I might have the "same face syndrome", gosh, they have it on Urban Dictionary. While I'm not really bothered by it, some harsh spectators can really slap it on my face.

This is the outline of my little lady's face. From here, it looks like she's from Hawaii. Haha.

Painting portraits isn't really my cup of tea, honestly, this is my first portrait painting. Well, you can't even call my girl a portrait since I didn't came up with a really realistic face. The skin tones became a real challenge for me. I can make decent skin tones while painting digitally since CTRL Z is really handy and color swatches are readily available. Live painting it is another thing, I have to manually mix colors and decide carefully how much reds and siennas are necessary.

I was like, "Eff it, I'll just ditch the idea of real skin shadows." Haha.

The eyes are my favorite parts to paint. I don't know, there's something about their shape, folds and the watery eyeballs.

Painting the eyebrows and eyeliner. Sorry for the wrong photo angle.

The eyes from afar. I picked out brown since it's my eye color.

Baby brown eyes. Haha.

Next to the eyes, I love painting lips. While I take some time in forming a nice lip shape, I enjoy coloring it. I was so engrossed to doing it that I forgot to take some pictures.

Thank God for I came up with a cute face. Haha.

Close up. I don't have freckles but I love putting them on my girls. They seem like stars.

After painting her face, I suddenly got lost. I don't know what to do with her hair, let alone decide if she needed it since I like the minimalist approach. However, the queen might ask why my painting looks bald. So I figured I was just tired and decided to tuck in for the night and my girl shall have her hair tomorrow.

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Today, I have to drive my mom for some errands, while on the road an idea popped on my head: "Why not teal?" After all it's my favorite color too.

Now she looked like a mermaid. Hahaha. I have to apologize for the camera angle. My acrylics are glossy so lights reflect on them. Or I'm just lazy. Haha.

Last night the problem was her hair, now her hair looks blunt and empty. I considered placing clouds, weird shapes, raindrops, flowers and Jupiter knows what else on the length of her hair but they all seem wrong.

After a couple of good songs, I went with cherry blossom trees and stars.

It feels so good to have this painting finished for my grandmom. The whole experience was so much fun and tiring. It's my first go on documenting my process and it's not even that detailed. I hope it's not that bad though. I just thought: why not blog about it and have a good laugh in the future? And who knows, my kid (if ever I decided I need one, haha.) might want to see how I work too.

Flourish. 8x10. Acrylic on canvas.

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BONUS VIDEO! Haha. Here are snippets of the process. Since it's my first art process blog post, please forgive me. :)

Audio: Sky Full of Stars (Instrumental) - Coldplay

From Him: Overjoyed

The first message I received this morning was from him asking me to listen to Matchbox 20's "Overjoyed".

It was one of those days when we found a song that fits us well and ask the other to listen to it. Overjoyed got me a little teary-eyed. Well, I can't quite explain why. One thing's certain though, it made me feel really safe.
 

Overjoyed
Matchbox 20

Feeling my hands start shaking
Hearing your voice I'm overjoyed
I'm sorry but i have no choice
You're only getting better

Maybe you have your reasons
Maybe you're scared you'll be let down
Are you crying when there's no one around
Then maybe

Maybe if you hold me baby
Let me come over
I will tell you secrets nobody knows
I cannot overstate it
I will be overjoyed

The smile on your face like summer
The way that your hand keeps touching mine
Let me be the one that make it right
And maybe

Maybe let me hold you baby
Let me come over
I will tell you secrets nobody knows
I cannot overstate it
I will be overjoyed

And if you want, we'll share this life
Anytime you need a friend I'm gonna be by your side
When nobody understands you
Well, I do

So maybe let me hold you baby
Let me come over
I will tell you secrets God only knows
I cannot overstate it
I will be overjoyed

Baby
Let me come over
I will tell you secrets nobody knows
I cannot overstate it
I will be overjoyed

Well, I will be overjoyed
Well, I will be overjoyed 

(lyrics for azlyrics.com)

Bleak Expanse

It was 2:14 AM and I woke with a start and immediately felt lost.

The room suddenly looked different to me. The faint light cast different shadows on my walls. Something was wrong but I have no idea what it was. My mind was hovering above something I can't comprehend. Maybe I wasn't accustomed to waking up this early. My senses felt amplified. I decided to look outside my window while trying to ransack my head for that hollowed spot I woke up with.

And then it hit me.

It was how alone I felt. That at that hour, even if I live in a city crammed with people running on the same direction of inevitable oblivion, I felt lonely. I got nobody. It was weird waking up feeling astray. I felt like taking away the building where I live and see myself suspended mid-air along with everybody who dwell in it. All of them sleeping soundlessly, tucked on their dreams and nightmares, clouded with the feeling of belonging somewhere.

 As I stare at the flickering lights of lamp posts, I realized that maybe when the darkest part of the night kisses the city, gloom befalls those who aren't dreaming.