National Museum of the Philippines – Davao

I read about the term microadventure last January. It is defined as an adventure that is short, simple, local, cheap – yet still fun, exciting, challenging, refreshing and rewarding. Come to think of it, as kids we had this all the time. We didn't need to travel to distant places; every new experience, however small, was an adventure.

So I made a short list of places in my area that I haven't gone to yet. Just a short one, otherwise a homebody like me would be overwhelmed. I started listing our neighboring villages, which I realized I haven't ever explored. Then I moved on to important landmarks in Davao City.

On February 28, I initially only planned to go out to use my voucher in NCCC Mall grocery, Ma-a. But then my sister wanted to come with me and that meant we'd be wandering around somewhere. After buying the groceries, she suggested we check out sewing machines in the Brother store downtown (our mother wanted to sew curtains).

So we went there and were shown the different machines available. We called our mother, and she was fine with the most basic one. We thought we'd show her the brochure first, so we decided not to buy it yet.

It was still early in the afternoon, and we were near People's Park, so off to the National Museum we went.

When the plan for the museum was first released, I thought the durian-inspired design was a bit overused and awkward. In spite of that, the final building looked neat. It is hidden by trees when you enter the park and will only be visible once you get closer. It was interesting to look at, a modern structure framed by a green canopy, with an eye-catching interplay of light and shadow.

There are four floors that are open to the public. When we visited, however, the 4th floor was closed for renovation or something.

On the first floor, we found paintings by my former high school art teacher, Sir Bong Perez. My sister was impressed! I thought his were the best paintings displayed there.

Fisherman's Village by Bong Perez

We lost track of time on the second floor, particularly the display of rocks found in the different blocks of Davao Region. They reminded me of some small rocks I collected during my high school and college field trips to the geothermal plant at the base of Mt. Apo.

The second floor was dedicated to natural history, while the third floor was about Davao's cultural heritage. Overall, there was excellent representation of Davao City.

We then had dirty ice cream outside the park. I wondered why my sister looked at me funny when I ate it all, including the bottom of the cone. Turns out the vendor, who wears a plastic glove on his left hand where he holds the cone, receives money with the same gloved hand. She thought I saw it, too. Anyway, she finished the cone as well.

Before going home, we were back at the Brother store for some last-minute shopping.

DAYS 3-5: Object, Clothing, Fashion

Day 3: An object in the room

Day 4: Favorite piece of clothing

Day 5: Fashion Illustration

ehehehehe

:) Terrible drawings. Maybe that's why I don't have a lot of still life and objects in general.

DAY 2: Draw an animal

4 hours. I don't usually have the patience. :)

Who knows how to fix problem? I can't access blogger sites. Google thinks I'm a robot and I get this message all the time: 

Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot.

They give me a captcha code to enter. The problem is, I don't get past it. It just gives me another captcha everytime. :(

DAY 1: Self-Portrait

While this looks like a vain post, it more than makes up for the lack of photos of yours truly in this blog. I made that self-portrait above yesterday for the drawing challenge I mentioned. My brother says it looks like a cartoon. I think it looks like my mother when she was younger. Sketches below are more accurate. They were made back in 2000-01 just so I could remember how my hair looked like. I rarely have my photos taken. :P

emo mode

Sketchbook

Some drawings from my sketchbook -- most of them unfinished, too large for paper, disproportionate, or messy because I'm impatient like that. Someday though, I'd love to be able to sit down for hours just to make an art work.

nick drake #2 :)

"I'm a perfectionist without patience, I do not take the art of painting as a matter of live or die. I was perfectly able to enter into any other profession. In my case it was just a matter of commodity and circumstances, but in the end I prefer to be a painter artist. If I had not chosen painting, perhaps I would have been an actor, preferably a satiric one. I extremely love humor. Humor fascinates me in all mediums of expression. I pity people without humor they lose an important quality and healthy human activity." ~ Alex Perez

Leys & Lass

Leys & Lass.
That inspired this coloured pencil drawing. :)

An Invitation

An Invitation

Every night I hear maudlin music played

from a distance, or maybe two steps back.

Its strings are like a wonderful array

of stars that the skies now lack.

It sings right in front of me, but far away

waiting at the end of a cul-de-sac.

It's you, if not me, 'cause I never was

the very voice I hear of a latent lass.

~ julienne m.

My poem An Invitation was published in 2007 by EditRed in their collection Scream. That time I used a pen name: Hayden C. Clear. Now that I look back, it's a bit corny. =D
The image above is a bad watercolor painting I made yesterday. Edited with GIMP. :)

Nick Drake Sketch

I made this sketch last night while my mother was doing overtime work at home. This is an edited image. The drawing was photographed because there's no scanner. Then I used poster edges in photoshop filters. This was copied from a color picture of Nick Drake. I finally have a Nick Drake drawing! ^__^

All the wild horses

Watercolor is hard and my handwriting is a mess. I tried using the dip pen for the lyrics of Ray Lamontagne's song All the wild horses, but the ink started to blot. I guess it had something to do with the paper being wet before.


But thank goodness for image editors I can erase the text. The second image is an edited version with the full lyrics of the song.
My father says the horse is fat. =) I'm not very good with shading that's why it looks like he doesn't have any muscles.

listen to the song

Anna Pavlova

I was at the BASA Reading Out Loud campaign at SM City Davao the past two days and yesterday I made this while Chi painted a portrait of a little girl. This is from a photo of Anna Pavlova, but I don't know if she's recognizable in this drawing.

The Hobbit

Lee Pace

The past month was full of news for The Hobbit movie, which got me all excited. Shooting has started and most of the major characters has been cast. So for those who don't know yet, eight of the original Lord of the Rings actors are returning including Elijah Wood, Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom whose characters are not even in the book.

I trust Peter Jackson's judgement when it comes to casting and it's great that I only recognize two actors for the dwarves, Richard Armitage and Dean O'Gorman (Young Hercules' Iolaus!!!). Time to give credit to lesser known, great thespians. But what surprised me was that he chose an American actor for the Elven King Thranduil and he's none other than Lee Pace (The Fall, and Pushing Daisies). *fangirl squee! Lee Pace, who will play Legolas' father. Lee Pace, who is younger than Orlando Bloom. How cool is that?

In other Hobbit-related news, the Polish Book Cover contest hosted by 50 Watts has just been concluded. I've heard about the contest two days before the deadline and it really interested me because I've always been fascinated by Polish Graphic Design. All you needed to do was make a Polish Book Cover version of your favourite book. And I thought why not? I just have to decide first which book I liked best.

I narrowed them down to The Secret Garden, The Name of the Rose, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. But since I couldn't think of designs for the others, I settled with The Hobbit. The image on the right I sketched on paper, photographed and edited in GIMP. Personally I think it's a rough version of something that needed to be redone by a professional graphic artist, or at least someone who's better than me in using a graphic software. The handwritten J.R.R. Tolkien text still makes me LOL. Nevertheless, I sent my entry.

Of course I did not win, but contests like these are great thinking exercises. Gotta join the next contest in line... =)

Link to the winning entries here

Sun Rays in the Dark

This copy is 1000 x 1000 pixels. Feel free to download. =)

Totally Bored

Photoshop and other graphics software were totally made for boredom. These were some of what I did back then when not making websites at Cubepixels Design Studio.

Finger 11

Leevat

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image credit

Google has a very comprehensive Crisis Response page with information on where to donate, person finder, maps and realtime updates.

Old Drawings Part 2

Dickon and Mary from the Secret Garden

mushrooms!!!

nonameface

willy wonka

Old Drawings Part 1

Nate Duval

This is the screen printed calendar I won from Nate Duval, an illustrator and graphic designer from the US. It arrived last week in a paper tube packaging and came with an interesting business card. I like it very much. What's nice with this kind of printing is that you can really touch and feel it. When the year ends, I can turn it into a poster.

Old Drawings Part 1

Ghostfighter

wizard in black

legolad

elyon

denise

Christ

Rejects

It's been a long time since I've had any new drawings. Because I had none, I looked up my old scraps, photographed them (due to the absence of a scanner) and edited some in Photoshop. This one here's an unfinished portrait of Nick Wheeler, one of the All-American Rejects, I made back in college, which almost made it to the trash can. Since it looked trashy just the way it is, I used the fresco effect of Photoshop and got this:

Buy a print

I also uploaded the drawings to my multiply account. Here's the link to the album

Art Rediscovery Workshop

October 22-24. I was able to attend a 3-day Art Rediscovery Workshop sponsored by the Dugukan Gallery. Everything was free, thanks to Mitandi. I was accompanied by Amras and Pachi. We were supposed to be student observers, so we acted like we were. We didn't participate in the discussions and had our own little discussions and debates ourselves. They've given us these bond papers, I guessed for drawing, and used them for a chat room.

The first day, for me, was already not good (sorry). There was no program, or if there was, I don't think it was followed. The participants, particularly those who were more than responsive, couldn't seem to control themselves. It sometimes resulted to a cycle of the same questions and answers! Luckily, as said earlier, everything was free and snacks were served: pansit and sandwich for the first half and another pansit and sandwich for the second half.

Day 2. We were told from the start that we'd be making our own concept in writing (oops! I forgot the term hehe) before sketching or painting, whatever. But the discussions and sharing of heartbreaking art experiences were unending it was given as an assignment. Somebody started that everyone should have the chance to share and obviously, I didn't like that. I was lucky it stopped with Amras. Sadly, I'd have to start the next day. makalagot! The snacks by the way were another set of pansit and sandwich.

Day 3. I was late haha! My ... started that morning and... Anyway, I was late period. I hoped I was too late for the snack, and I was! But Pachi, who was also late, gladly served me another plate of pansit (English term pls.) and sandwich. I could not take another bite of it so I set it aside. Eventually, when the workshop resumed, they remembered who'd be the next speaker -- me. I made my speech short, I'm master of that! After everyone has spoken, lunch break at 2 p.m. I didn't return for the last session to attend my cousin's, uncle's and late grandpa's birthday party. Relief. I have learned a lot about art, though. One is that my art is called 'cutism.' (?? hahaha)