Psychedelandia and Other Stories

Hang To Dry

2010-08-31T23:00:00.001-07:00

Hang with me here, will ya?

Long Long Distance Love Affair, Oh!

2010-08-31T22:00:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! I'm back after more than a year of hiatus. I've been busy with so many things lately that I haven't had the chance to post my drawings here. Expect things to change from now on, as I am back with a new enthusiasm for doing more art projects. To start off, here's my latest ink and gouache drawing.

I made this drawing for my friend Mon Chong who is leaving for Singapore this weekend. I came up with the idea of paper cup phones for this drawing after watching Grown Ups starring Adam Sandler . They had a scene there where the kids started talking to each other using paper cup phones and it gave me a sense of nostalgia. Mon will be based in Singapore for a year or two and will be leaving her beau Charles back here in the Philippines. Oh the tragedy of long distance relationships! But of course I am optimistic that they will get through this challenge and that the distance will only make their relationship stronger.

I'm a believer!

Weekly Inks!

2009-04-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

New drawings today!

A typical Sunday includes brunch with my family and checking out books at the bookstore. Browsing through the Art and Lifestyle section, I came across this book called "New Yorker Lookbook: A Gallery of Street Fashion" whose photos were shot by Jake Chessum. I loved the images contained in this book, specially the expression of the girl in the green coat. I decided to make a quick sketch of her and did the same with the two other girls. When I got home later that day, i proceeded with inking them then added color with felt tip pens.

Check out the book here

*****

Since most of my drawings are colorful, I decided to experiment with just a small bunch of hues for this drawing. Inspired by The Sartorialist's photo of this lady. Although I made a change with the shirt design, I just had to include the contrast of the red clutch against her entire outfit.

Krisatomic and Garance Doré

2009-04-28T12:03:00.001-07:00

It's 3 am in Manila and I am still up, overwhelmed by so many inspirations for my drawings. I talked about acrylic on my previous post, and I cannot wait to give it another go. Unfortunately, time does not allow me to have a good sit down and paint away. Painting takes time, so I only get to paint on weekends. On weekdays when I am busy with work (I am a software programmer by the way), I do pencil and ink drawings. The latest ones were inspired by photos from The Sartorialist. Will post them soon, but in the meantime, check out these wonderful illustrations by Krisatomic and French illustrator Garance Doré. Looking at their drawings makes me want to delve into fashion-related subjects.

illustration by Krisatomic

Illustration by Garance Doré

Don't you want to go shopping now?

Who Loves Acrylics?

2009-04-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

One sunny day, I took an impromptu trip to a second hand book store and bought myself The DK Art School's Introduction To Acrylics. I haven't had a real go at acrylics since highschool, and that was 9 years ago, so I figured it was a good time to get myself familiarized with the medium. I immediately bought the book and an acrylic paint set..

Until a while ago when I tried the paint for the first time in a long time, I was a gouache zealot. For one thing, I am more inclined to use water soluble paints so that clean up is easy. Another thing is that I especially enjoy playing with a painting medium's opacity, which I can utilize using gouache. The disadvantage of gouache is that i can only use it on limited supports; the most obvious is paper. With acrylic, however, different sorts of surfaces can be used for painting since the paint has a characteristic of permanence since it is no longer soluble by water once it is dry. Because of this, when I apply a second layer on a wash, the the underpainting does not mix with the new layer. I'd like to be able to broaden the possibilities with different surfaces such as wood, canvas, or even tiles or flat stones. I've forgotten how fun it is to paint with acrylics, and it looks like I'm going to take a break from gouache and get well acquainted with my new favorite medium. Who loves acrylics? I do!

In search of a subject to paint, I came across a magazine that shows facts about poverty and food scarcity. This subject is quite serious unlike my usual subjects, but I was inspired to make a drawing out of this topic. According to www.thehungersite.com:

It is estimated that one billion people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. That's roughly 100 times as many as those who actually die from these causes each year.

About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000 twenty years ago. Three-fourths of the deaths are children under the age of five.

Famine and wars cause about 10% of hunger deaths, although these tend to be the ones you hear about most often. The majority of hunger deaths are caused by chronic malnutrition. Families facing extreme poverty are simply unable to get enough food to eat.

The Hunger Site was founded to focus the power of the Internet on a specific humanitarian need: the eradication of world hunger. Since its launch in June 1999, the site has established itself as a leader in online activism, helping to feed the world's hungry. On average, over 220,000 individuals from around the world visit the site each day to click the yellow "Click Here to Give - it's FREE" button. To date, more than 300 million visitors have given more than 500 million cups of staple food.

The staple food funded by clicks at The Hunger Site is paid for by site sponsors and distributed to those in need by Mercy Corps and Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest) . 100% of sponsor advertising fees goes to our charitable partners. Funds are split between these organizations and go to the aid of hungry people in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and North America.

Click here to help end hunger!

The Daily Pill

2009-04-19T02:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a new batch of drawings that I did over the last couple of weeks. A lot of them are simple sketches that I did during transit or in between breaks at my office. I recently got myself a small inexpensive drawing notebook for my daily doodles and sketches. I used to carry around a 9" X 12" sketchpad and for someone who has a 9 to 5 job, it can be such a hassle bringing such a big pad of paper at work when there isn't any guarantee that i can find time to draw anyway. At the same time, I felt like I was wasting a good deal of good paper on half done drawings and doodles. So what I did was get myself a really cheap notebook in which I can doodle, take notes, sketch and pretty much document random stuff on paper, then have a proper sit down and draw with proper tools on my big proper sketchpad. I think it works., coz I've been drawing everyday without having to worry about whether or not I'm wasting paper.

What I love about a drawing diary is that not only do I get to put images and ideas on paper, I get to document what I could be feeling or thinking at the time. With the drawing shown here, I was feeling a little nostalgic about a certain song, and missing someone who was as passionate about music as I am. In this drawing, I made use of watercolor pencils for the first time, and I had so much fun experimenting with the medium.

I'm also starting a new handmade card project with the concept of using different greetings around the world. The first one that I did was this French greeting "Bonjour" with girls peeping back at the receiver. I made this with a certain person in mind while I was drawing it, but I've got tons of ideas about this project and I'm really excited to make them happen! Stay tuned!

Hummingbirds and Melodies

2009-03-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

This is another one of those "fuck it" drawings where one thing leads to another and all you could do is work around what you've already done. I started drawing the girl's head without anything really particular in mind, then began sketching in the flowers and i just thought I might add a hummingbird right there. I have no idea how big a hummingbird is in real life, so this drawing is probably inaccurate.

Used felt tip pens and poster paint on paper, scanned the drawing and of course edited using the ever reliable Adobe Photoshop. Hooray for technology! If Adobe Photoshop was a real human being, I'd marry it. I shit you not.

In other news, I've been sick for days, and it's not just any cough or colds sickness. It's fucken bronchitis and I've missed tons of stuff--mainly a concert and an out of town surfing trip. I am becoming a hermit, retiring to my room and sketching or painting or putting whatever's left of my creativity to good use.

Oh bloody curses!

Enjoy The Process

2009-03-11T02:55:00.000-07:00

I have a secret. It is not everyday that I disclose secrets in my blog, specially if the blog is dedicated to design, illustration and photography. I know I should be discussing technique or inspiration, but bear with my rambling. This is my blog after all. It has a lot to do with my point, I promise.

I have always been afraid to make mistakes. Whenever I buy new paper for my drawings, I make sure to save the best ones for a major drawing that I plan to do. That major drawing never happened. Why? Because I was too afraid to start, knowing that I might make a mistake. With the digital age, mistakes are easily remedied. This is very good for those who do not rely on the traditional process of image making. For us who are more conservative however, one wrong line can be very difficult to correct. It is quite frustrating. There came a time when I would rather not draw because I was thinking too much of the mistakes that I might make.

I changed that mentality just recently when I bought a new sketchpad. I would draw and doodle away without a care, and I see a pattern. The ones that I start using pens or paint without much ado or reluctance are the ones that I finish with that satisfied feeling inside me. The ones that I start using a pencil to be outlined eventually, always end up being erased.

I am all for aiming for perfection. But sometimes, we should simply jump right in and enjoy the process.

Here's one of my drawings in which I didn't use a pencil during the entire process of its creation. With my paint brush and paint, I started doing my strokes like I could do no wrong.

Flickr Friday!

2009-02-26T11:28:00.000-08:00

It's 4 AM in Manila and I am still up because I just simply cannot sleep. I've been browsing through Flickr since I sat in front of the computer at around 12 midnight to scan a drawing. I've been looking at photos of lotuses and water lilies as subject references and ended up researching about them in Wikipedia.com. After feeding my mind with semi-useless scientific information, I ended just looking through groups and sets of different random photographers and artists in Flickr. I can go hours on end doing this and never getting bored.

I have my own set of drawings and photos but I most often update my Drawings and Doodles set whenever I complete a new sketch or painting. Hopefully I can get a Pro Account soon. This counts as my online portfolio already, but I'm planning to build a website as well.

In the meantime, here are my favorite illustrators and photographers in Flickr. These artists and photographers just amaze me to the core and I check out their sets for updates regularly.

Krisatomic

Thad Lawrence

Olivia Bee

Chrissie White

Magazine Stints Anyone?

2009-02-11T10:08:00.000-08:00

I got another stint as an illustrator last week and I was so psyched to get in touch with YOU Magazine's editorial coordinator again. I remember getting so worked up the first time I got a text message from one of the magazine's editors who asked me to become a contributing illustrator for their November-December 2008 issue. A writer friend referred me to him and I immediately pulled a bunch of works from my Flickr account for my portfolio. I was simply doing a Project 365 then, and never thought about the idea of getting my work published. But since the opportunity came up, I was definitely up for the challenge.

I was assigned for work in Syracuse, New York in early September 2008 and had managed to make the illustration despite my lack of tools. I lived in a hotel and they didn't have a scanner! I had to drive for 4 miles to the nearest Fed Ex Kinko's on Erie Boulevard to have my drawings scanned. When I checked the file in my flash drive, half of it was ruined (remind me to curse that lady. I paid 2 dollars for that!). I used my friend's high megapixel camera and edited them in photoshop. My raw drawings were not even scanned properly, but they didn't seem to notice. Thank God!

I went back to Manila in December and as I was browsing through a rack of magazines in a bookshop one day, I saw my drawing right there on page 86 of YOU magazine. I grabbed it immediately and bought myself a copy. It was the best feeling.

Doing something for fun is one thing, but to have it become a part of something that is way bigger than you are gives you that sense of accomplishment.

For the record, none of my exes ever stalked me.

Every Day Counts

2009-01-10T07:12:00.000-08:00

Everyday we wake up, do our usual routine and try to accomplish things that we've set out to do. Everyday can be a wonderful adventure or just a 24 hour wait to another tomorrow.

Look up. There's always something to look forward to. :)

Designing From The Ground Up

2009-01-01T21:01:00.001-08:00

I'm no designer. Neither am I a trained artist. I know I have an eye for things or I guess a hand for creating, but I never got to learn the fundamentals. This is my blog--another one of many--but I'm dedicating this one purely for illustration, design, photography, and visual arts.

Hello to you 2009! This is the beginning of a new adventure!

Image by Faye Marcos (c) 2008