Viewing: art

Peony in pencil

I never liked peonies before. I always associated them with Chinese paintings and bad tattoos. I’m not a fan of either.
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But ever since I first found them in the market here in late April, they’ve become my favorite flower. I love the huge blossoms (statement blossoms?), especially the ones that are colored intense shades of fuschia and coral. And I love how the petals don’t dry up or simply drop off, but fade slowly to white, each blossom at a different pace. Death by ombre, what a way to go.
The only thing that I could conceivably hate about peonies, I discovered during my last Monday sketching session. And that is the fact that they are a real b*tch to draw.

I almost gave up a couple of times. Now I know why the Chinese have stylized their shapes, otherwise these would never make it into traditional motifs. The repetition would have driven the illustrator (at least, a lesser one like myself) totally nuts.

Luckily, we have scanners and printers today. So, working with some fluorescent papers I bought for my Singapore job hunt more than three years ago, I reproduced the sketch I made to create my own peony print. I used Mod Podge for the first time and had awful wrinkles everywhere. Thankfully, most of them disappeared with a little ironing.

The fluo on black kind of reflects how I’ve been feeling about having these flowers at home: they were the only visual bright spots for me during the first two dark, dismal weeks of “summer.” Summer, I’m beginning to suspect, is a figment of the imagination over here, with as tenuous a connection to reality as corporatese, or marketing jargon. 

Ah, enough about this fictitious summer. If I can’t get it outside, then I’ll just have to find some way to enjoy it in my home. In petals or on paper, by nature’s hand or by my own.

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Posted on July 13, 2011
Category: Creative Projects · Labels: , ,

Watercolor lessons

I’ve always been into drawing and painting. The first medium I ever learned to use was watercolor. My mom hired an artist to give me and my sister watercolor lessons when I was about 9 or 10. He was a really precise, uber-detailed kind of painter who came to the house once a week. We would move a big desk from my mom’s study outside onto the front lawn, where he taught me how to mix colors and manipulate water and brush on paper. 
Over the summer, I produced two obsessively detailed watercolor paintings: a still life with fruit that still hangs in my mom’s house, and one of unicorns (another lifelong interest of mine) in a cave. He liked to go over my mom’s art books to find “inspiration”, and the unicorns’ cave resembled Da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks in quite a few places. 
Since then, though, I’ve kind of… lost the knack for watercolors. I started getting really impatient if I couldn’t finish something in one sitting. There are ways to pull off really quick watercolors, but because that wasn’t my tutor’s style, I never learned how.
It was a flyer posted on the bulletin board of the Van Beek art supply store on the Weteringschans that led me back to watercolors. Penny Johnson, an artist based in Haarlem, was offering watercolor sessions at her studio. After trading a few emails with Penny, I signed up for the last of the Tuesday afternoon sessions before her summer break.
The city of Haarlem is about 20 minutes by train from Amsterdam. A lot of Marlon’s colleagues actually live there because of the lower property costs, which makes it a good alternative to living in Amsterdam. Since I was running late (as usual) for my first lesson, I didn’t get to look around much. 

I went back with Marlon the following Saturday to walk around the center and explore a bit more. It seems like a pretty town, a lot smaller and quainter than Amsterdam, with not as many tall buildings and far less tourists (which is nice). Still, I haven’t quite decided if it’s a city we’d want to live in further down the road.

Penny, a late-middle aged British lady with a brisk and cheery manner, welcomed me warmly with a cup of coffee and my art materials for the day. I immediately felt at home in Penny’s studio. It was bright, with high ceilings and enough work space for a small group, with heaps of interesting odds and ends piled together in small vignettes… a charming kind of clutter.

I liked her little collections of ceramics and glass bottles, all ready to be captured by paintbrush and water. I suspect I’ll be like this someday. I already have a starter collection of wine bottles on the kitchen counter, which I kept just because I found the colors so pretty.

One wall was covered with cards, posters and various bits of paper showing different styles of watercolor. Some were loose and fast, with luminous colors bleeding together; others were more precise and detailed. These two pieces in particular caught my eye, and I snapped a photo with my iPhone. I would be more than happy if I could learn to paint like this.

Penny, and the two ladies who were here students that afternoon, stopped. “What are you doing?” Penny asked. “Are you taking photographs?” Then they all started talking about picture-happy people, how this tourist on one woman’s cruise couldn’t stop snap-snap-snapping away, blah blah blah.

I didn’t realize that taking photos could be annoying to others. Is it just the generation gap showing here? I didn’t want to be one of those “annoying types” so I meekly put away my phone, and resolved not to take my DSLR out of my bag for the rest of the afternoon…

… which was devoted to painting, of course. Penny started me off with a relatively easy project: getting a feel for the wet-on-wet technique, or painting on wet paper.  Wet paper makes the paint (which is also loaded with water) blend and bleed together, so it’s for quick, loose work; vastly different from the style of my first tutor, but perhaps more suited for the less deft and more impatient me.

I surprised myself by starting out… cautiously. Timidity is not something I normally expect of myself, but there I was dabbing tentatively at the paper, producing pale, washed-out landscape. Penny took one look at my work and pronounced: “Color, my dear. You need more color. Let’s put it this way: the paints are free.”
By the end of the two and a half-hour session, I had gained a measure of boldness with my colors and strokes. I was re-learning how to see things differently, to look closer at light versus dark, since with watercolors you start with the lightest colors first, before building up the darker shades. I was beginning to learn how to be patient with mixing colors to achieve just the right shade, and not to settle for what I thought it looked like, out of impatience. And I was remembering how to just… play. All of these things that I thought I’d forgotten were reawakening in me. 
And I have to say: I kind of like it.

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Posted on July 8, 2011
Category: Creative Projects · Labels: , , ,

Round and round we go

One of the smaller museums that I’ve missed on my previous Paris trips was the Musee L’Orangerie in the Jardin des Tuileries. It was an oversight that I was happy to correct on this visit.

Marlon, Gutsy and I were welcomed by Rodin’s The Kiss right outside the museum door. It’s the third I’ve seen, after the ones at the Musee Rodin and the sculpture garden in Martigny.

The centerpieces of the Musee L’Orangerie are a pair of tranquil white oval-shaped rooms that house Monet’s famous paintings of water lilies, Les Nympheas.

Six of about 250 paintings by Monet on the same theme are housed here.

Something about the scale of the paintings, or maybe the peace and beauty of its subjects, made the mood in these round halls somewhat contemplative.

The visitors remind me of people watching films on a panoramic screen… except it’s not the images that change, but what you’re thinking about them.

I was just glad that the rooms were cool and quiet, making them a perfect place to hide from the hot sun. I’m learning to love it when the sun is out, but too much still annoys me. Yes, I’m still Asian.
Downstairs was a collection of mostly impressionist paintings, including works from Cezanne, Modigliani, Matisse, Monet and others. The one I liked the most was this portrait of Coco Chanel by the artist Marie Laurencin.

It was annoyingly hot outside, so we scrapped our plan to go walking around the gardens after the museum. Instead, we repaired to Laduree, which was just a few minutes away.

I’d been to Laduree once before with Gutsy and Tria, in 2006. But I couldn’t afford more than just a coffee back then. Not even one of Laduree’s famed macarons.

This time, I had a lime-vanilla sorbet… with a fleur de sel (salted caramel) macaron. Both of them were absolutely divine: so light and sweet, flavorful without being overpowering.

Marlon immortalized my first bite of Laduree’s famous macarons on camera. Each bite was definitely a mmm-mmm-mmmmoment. 

In addition to the fleur de sel, Gutsy and I also shared a pistachio and an orange blossom macaron.

After the oval rooms at L’Orangerie, I guess you could say that round shapes were the theme of the day!

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Posted on June 15, 2011
Category: Food & Drink, Wanderlust · Labels: , , , , , ,

A tale of two artists

Norway’s two most famous artists, painter/printmaker Edvard Munch and sculptor Gustav Vigeland, were not only contemporaries, but bitter rivals. Munch, whose famous painting The Scream may have given him a leg up over Vigeland in death, was quoted to have forbidden a single cent of the taxes he paid to the state to be used for the construction of Vigelands Park, filled with over 200 sculptures by his nemesis, in 1921.

It was a gloomy, rainy afternoon when Marlon, my sister and I visited the Munch Museum in Oslo.

The weather turned out to be perfectly suited to Munch’s works. His paintings, and the prints he made of them, are filled with anguish, despair, betrayal, and life’s darkest colors. In Munch’s world, lovers only leave and betray; jealousy turns men into hollow-eyed corpses. Pretty heavy stuff for a Sunday afternoon.

Yet amidst the darkness of his worldview, some bright spots stand out vividly.


“The Seducer”… but who is seducing whom?

We saw some of his most famous works, such as his Madonna…

… and The Scream, which was accompanied by his journal entry about the evening that inspired the painting.

Munch was what we would today call a multimedia artist: he not only painted, but made prints, took photographs and films, and wrote about his work. “It was a Time during which Life had ripped open my Soul,” wrote Munch. “I felt a huge Scream—and I really did hear a huge Scream…”

Munch’s world is definitely not a pretty place. But the power he has to draw you into it, to mesmerize you with pain and paint, cannot but be admired.


Consolation and The Death of Marat, my favorites from this museum

In contrast, it was a bright, sunny day when we went to Vigelands Park, a park dedicated to Munch’s most bitter rival.

At first, Vigeland seems to be the antithesis of Munch. His figures play, leap, laugh and run, with joy coursing through bones, muscles and veins of bronze. Set against a brilliant blue sky, this boundless energy and happiness was a bit of a relief after Munch, to be honest.

But walk deeper into the park and happiness slowly begins to acquire a darker, deeper tinge. Mingling  with loving embraces and tender gazes…

are scenes of frustration, punishment…

… even desperation.

By filling the park with 212 statues, Vigeland is able to show a wide range of life’s nuances and subtleties, at every stage of life from birth to death.

With so many sculptures, every visitor is bound to find something that speaks to him or her intimately.

For me, what I noticed most were the sculptures of babies. Maybe it’s because of where I am right now in life: having a baby is on my mind a lot these days, and while I’m not 100% ready for it, I am looking forward to that next chapter. At first, it seems Vigeland does not provide encouragement to would-be parents.

Scary, right? I found the sculpture of the baby gagging his mother with her hair particularly disturbing. Overwhelmed and overrun, these parents echo the stories my mom friends have told me about the early days of motherhood, and I can’t help but feel apprehensive.

But then with one piece, Vigeland wiped that all away. This one piece, with all its tenderness and strength, told me to go for it anyway. That maybe, in the midst of all my questions and apprehensions, I would find something that would make it all worth it.

I can’t help but think that Munch speaks to my gaga-for-love days of yore, while Vigelands speaks to who I am now, and maybe who I am about to become. These rivals may have been at odds in their own lives, but somehow, set against the lives of those who behold their work, they have found a way to complement one other.

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Posted on June 4, 2011
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: , , , , , ,

Silhouettes

After a two-week hiatus (sister’s visit and Portugal trip, both of which are next on my blogging agenda), Make It Monday is back!

This was very different from my first Make It Monday, when I had absolutely idea what I wanted to make and took three hours to do it when I finally figured it out. I’ve been collecting ideas since that first Monday, and this time I knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish. It took me less than an hour!

I first saw these old photos of my parents last Christmas. My mom had unpacked an old box of family photos, and both my sister and I took snaps of our favorite ones since we didn’t have a scanner at home. These were taken in Hong Kong, probably when they were in their late 20s, somewhere in the vicinity of how old Marlon and I are now.


Mom really looks like my sister here! Through most of her 20s, actually.

Some of my favorite design blogs feature homes with cutout silhouettes hung on the walls. So I made my own version using these old photos, strips of this fluorescent yellow translucent paper that I’ve been obsessed with, and sections of unused Laura Ashley (80s flashback!) wallpaper that Marlon found on the same street corner as our dining room chairs.

Then I put them into vintage gold frames that I bought during the Queen’s Day flea market in our neighborhood, just a few doors down from where we got the chairs, actually. A little old lady (there are legions of them around here) was selling them for €4 apiece. In hindsight, I wish I had bought a few more.

Now they’re hung on our dove gray living room wall, beside a pair of Indian miniatures from Udaipur. Or at least they will be until Mom visits at the end of the month… I suspect she’ll make a bid for them then!

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Posted on May 2, 2011
Category: Creative Projects · Labels: , , ,

Art in the Alps

One of my best friends from high school moved to France, then Switzerland after years of working as a flight attendant with Emirates. Eena and I would chat often about the things we would do when we both moved to Europe, and we would get so excited to be together again in such an awesome location. One of the things she suggested was driving up to the Alps to spend a weekend at her father-in-law’s chalet. Eena said: “We can drive to Italy for lunch! Imagine that!” which of course made me kilig to the bones. 
Two weeks ago, our idle YM daydreams became a reality when Marlon and I flew to Geneva to visit Eena on the occasion of her 30th 26th birthday. Julien, Eena’s Swiss husband (who is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met) drove us from Geneva to the Valais, a region of southwestern, French-speaking Switzerland. “This part of Switzerland gets the most sun,” Julien narrated as he drove. “Thus here we grow all our exotic fruits. Like asparagus and tomatoes.” LOL!

En route to the town of Martigny, we could only gawk at the view: snowy white mountains towering over vineyards and fields of mustard flowers (Dijon, as in the mustard, is just over the mountains in France). We stopped for lunch at Veytaux, a small town on the banks of the Lac Leman, the biggest inland body of water in Western Europe, otherwise known to unsuspecting tourists as Lake Geneva. Glad I got the locals to give me the downlow.

The weather was freaking awesome, by the way. So awesome that by the time lunch was over, my back was sunburned with odd cutout patterns from my dress. “You ‘ave the No Fear logo on your back,” chortled Julien. No Fear! Retro!

We also poked around the old town looking for ingredients for our raclette dinner. Nothing much to see, although I was tempted to break into song. “Little town, full of little people, waking up to say… Bonjour! Bonjour! Bonjour!“

Martigny is a small town with a big history. Hannibal, Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon all passed through to Italy via Martigny’s route to the Alps, known as the Great St Bernard Pass (Col. Grand-St Bernard in French). You guessed it: this is where those big, lovable St-Bernard dogs are from. So upon arriving at Martigny, we headed straight for the St Bernard Museum. Its upper floor is dedicated to chronicling these canines throughout history, but the ground floor out back is where you really want to be… with these adorable doggies!

Marlon has always been a big dog kind of guy, and he was in absolute heaven. Betraying my crazy cat lady instincts, I couldn’t resist squeeing myself. Especially when feeding time came.

This girl must have the best job in the town. As she called each of the nine joyously yapping, squirming pups by name and lifted each one over the fence to their feeding bowls, I could feel waves of jealousy radiating from my husband. “Sige nga, pati yung malaki buhatin mo,” Marlon murmured.

Cue wagging derrieres (wagging boddies actually), excited yips, a few fights over food bowls. *MELT* How can you not want one of these for Christmas?

Near the museum was the remains of a Roman amphitheater, where Marlon indulged his debating fantasies (he was a debater in high school and college) and pretended to be a great orator .

On the spur of the moment, we decided to visit the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, a museum that Julien’s dad had mentioned as being worth a look-see. In the late 70s, engineer (and obviously wealthy art patron) Leonard Gianadda found the ruins of an ancient Celtic temple on the plot of land he planned to build his house on. When his brother Pierre died in a car accident that same year, Leonard established a foundation and built a museum around the ruins to honor his beloved brother.

We came so close to not seeing it and I’m so glad we did. This small town’s museum can easily put museums in both the Philippines and Singapore to shame. Its collection of Roman artifacts and art by huge names such as Luce (my new favorite), Monet, Chagall, Degas, Picasso and more was simply amazing. There weren’t only huge names on the walls, but in the cultural calendar as well. Can you imagine one of the world’s greatest living divas performing in our National Museum or the Singapore Art Museum? I didn’t think so.

The antique car museum was equally impressive.

But what I loved most about the museum was the beautiful sculpture park out back.

We wandered around for nearly an hour, until closing time at six.

We were so lucky that day, to see these massive works displayed among trees, sunshine and blue skies.

Everywhere you look, you see the Alps. A breathtaking backdrop for such a collection.

The best came last: two of the most famous works by my favorite sculptor, Rodin: Meditation and The Kiss.

The entwined lovers of The Kiss seemed to belong perfectly in this setting.

I can’t fully explain how wonderful that park was. I know everyone in our group was amazed too. We were all quiet on the way back to the car.

We drove onward, deeper into the Alps, watching the scenery change with every tight curve in the road and every last shifting ray of light. Soon we reached Bourg-St Pierre, and night fell.

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Posted on April 22, 2011
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: , , , ,

Make it Monday

I’ve now been living in Amsterdam for an entire quarter. Time goes by so fast, doesn’t it? The last three months were all about leaping up and down, clapping my hands and squealing “I’m living in Europe!!!!! I’m living in Europe!!!!! I’m living in Europe!!!!!!” Now, I’ve entered a phase where it’s more of “I’m living in Europe! What now?” Multiple exclamation points give way to a question mark as I begin to ask myself: What do I want out of my time here?
So last week I sat down and looked into areas that I want to devote time and attention to this year. I won’t go into all the details because it’s very personal to me. But mostly I thought back to last year when I was dying to move here. What made me so excited was a picture of the kind of person I thought I could become, wanted to become, for which The Big Move would be the catalyst. 
One of those versions of me that I pictured was a more creative me. I know, it’s ironic for someone working in the creative industry. I mean creative beyond what is required. I used to draw, but don’t anymore. I love to write, but I don’t make the time to do so apart from work and blogging. So I made some promises to myself, and to give them extra weight, I placed those promises in a structure. I drew up a plan to do certain things, for a certain amount of time, on certain days of the week.
Which is how Make It Monday was born. I designated Monday as the day on which, every week for one hour, I will sit down and make something with pen, paper and/or paint. I will draw, paint or collage something fun, creative and very me! I just wanted to give it a name, so Make It Mondays it is. It might change if I think of something better.
So here’s something to kick off my first ever Make It Monday.

“Stepping Out,” mixed media collage

Did I say one hour? Once I sat down at our long wooden dining table, I didn’t get up for the next three hours. I had completely forgotten how much I love doing this and how much fun it is.

I love collage. I used to draw and paint when I was a kid, but when I was about 18 I started my long-term love affair with collage. I can remember exactly when I made my first collage and why. I’d just come back from my first Europe tour with the ACGC and had this inexplicable hunger return to Europe. (It really bothered me back then. I thought I was depressed.)

One evening at home I found a Newsweek picture of a girl trapped behind a barbed wire fence. I tore it out, and started filling the holes between the wires with bits of maps, brochures and photos from my trip. When I was done, I felt that each little piece of paper that I had chosen with such care finally, adequately expressed everything I couldn’t say. I still have that first collage. And what I so yearned to do 11 years ago has been fulfilled: I’m back in Europe.

This collage is a little about that fulfillment, and more. Strange, when I was choosing all the elements I knew exactly what it was about. Now all I can say is that it’s about flight, spring, leaving the grayness behind to start anew, testing the waters, and walking on air. And that making her outfit was fun, like playing grown-up paper dolls!

I started out being slow and uncertain, but when I was done my mood had completely changed. From thinking “I’ll just throw something together to make a start, I’ll make it better next time,” I found myself quite pleased with what I’d created. And when I stepped outside to receive a delivery, I saw that I wasn’t the only one who had been busy creating today.

Here’s to Make It Mondays… may they make Monday blues a thing of the past!

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Posted on April 4, 2011
Category: Creative Projects · Labels: , ,

Inggitera goes to the fair

Full disclosure: inggitera ako. 
After hearing so much from friends and blogosphere about Art in the Park, to which I’ve never been, I went full-blown green-eyed monster last week and looked up the dates for the next Affordable Art Fair. I missed the one in Singapore last year because we were in Bantayan. The one in Amsterdam is scheduled for October, but lo and behold! The one in Brussels was just a week and a train ride away! 
I have to say I could get used to getting to another European country with zero hassle. I booked Benelux return train tickets online for less than a hundred Euros for both Marlon and myself (if we had booked a few days earlier, it would have been just €35! Cheaper than dinner out!). Then I emailed Uncle David to let him know we were coming. We just hopped on the train early Saturday morning, and two hours and forty five minutes later, we were in Brussels. The conductor didn’t even check our tickets!

Uncle David and Michele picked us up from Brussels Centraal at 11 a.m. and brought us straight to Tour & Taxis on the Avenue du Port.

Tour & Taxis was formerly the Customs warehouse. When the European Union abolished internal customs duties (can you imagine?!?!? No customs?!?!?! What an alien concept to us Asians), it was converted into a retail, dining and exhibition space. Uncle David said that the last time he had been to Tour & Taxis was when it was still used as the Customs building; it was the 70s and he came to pay customs duties on his car, a Buick that he had imported from France.

The whole experience was amazing. Nakakalula sa dami ng art. There were galleries from all over Europe, plus some from the US, Singapore and China. But you can bet your pwet that I didn’t come all the way to Europe to buy a painting from Asia.

We lost Michele and Uncle David (who we later learned made a beeline for the restaurant) and ended up wandering on our own. Marlon was attracted to sculpture and I was attracted to collage, but in general we were both really attracted to things that were way beyond our budget. (Isn’t that always the way?) In the end, we fell in love with not just one, but two works that were priced just right for us.

While doing my research on the artists and galleries exhibiting at the fair (’cause I’m a geek like dat), I had already spotted the works of Belgian figurative artist Inge Dompas. A strong theme of motion, restlessness and transit runs through her work and that really resonated with me.

Everyone and everything is restless and constantly on the go. People walk past each other, literally and figuratively. Dompas’ recurring topic is the mass being in motion, and the scarce and precious moments of genuine contact and intimacy in the turbulent sea of people. She says: “The road you traveled is more important than the goal itself. The tour supports the story of who you are, it is you.”

When I saw Inge’s works up close, they didn’t disappoint. And because of the experiences we’ve shared, from our endless craving for travel to the sense of restlessness in Singapore that led us here, Marlon totally got it. We were both struck by this large work of hers called “On the way home.” It seemed to sum up our life over the last few months: always on the move, rushing to a place unknown and unseen, pulled onward by the promise of home.

Naturally, it was leagues out of our budget. Let me tell you though, we seriously considered it for a very long moment… a moment that ended when I reminded Marlon that the price was nearly twice our monthly rent. I surprise myself sometimes.
But wait, there’s a happy ending! We were able to walk away with one of Inge’s works… the smallest one! This one is called “Running on Empty.” 

Marlon and I agreed that we have felt these moments all too often. On the commute home from work sometimes, you stop seeing people’s faces. Everything fades into a blur when you just want to get home. Or could it be that these people are not commuting home, but to work in the morning? Because there are mornings when you feel like you’re running on empty, too.
We had enough left over to go back for one of the few artists that had first caught our attention: Latvia-based Russian artist Viktor Sheleg and his series of ink and acrylic drawings. 

Marlon liked how the artist brought out the tension of her pose (legs crossed, body twisted) with such concise strokes. I was drawn to the dynamic energy and graphic quality of his work. Black and white with a pop of bright orange—a definite yes. This is a woman with attitude. 
An info sheet from the Le Siants Gallery in Prague tells us the artist’s work can be found in the collections of Princess Stephanie of Monaco, Jack Nicholson and (paging Drei!) Montserrat Caballe. A princess, the Joker and a diva? Sounds like we’re in good company.

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Posted on February 28, 2011
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: , ,

On buying art

Tonight Marlon and I went to our first art exhibit opening as potential buyers (emphasis on potential than actual buying). Since discovering the wonderful art of Yasmin Sison via Jessica Zafra’s blog, I’ve embarked on a sort of internet scavenger hunt, unraveling a trail of paintings, artists and galleries — clues that lead from one thing to the next until I find just what it is I’m looking for, something which I don’t really know just yet.

Some clickthroughs lead to dead ends — artists that I find too leftist or emo or simply not my type. Some have led to amazing events with surprising finds, such as a Juvenal Sanso sketch at what seems like (to my uneducated sensibilities) a bargain price. It’s been a happy and fascinating path, and one that I’ve been traveling with Marlon by my side. I’m lucky to have a husband who loves art just as much as I do. We may not always like the same things, but he says he appreciates the difference because my taste leads him to take a second look at artists and paintings he wouldn’t normally look at.
I never understood or agreed with the idea of buying art mainly as an investment. For me, you buy art to love, not to sell. And if you buy something you truly love, God forbid you have to sell it. My mom collected paintings primarily because she loved them; it broke her heart to have to sell them when business began to go bad.
A painting on your wall should bring a smile to your lips and a lightness and spaciousness to your heart, not the anxiety of “Why isn’t this appreciating? When can I sell it? How much can I make off it?” For me, the only reason to buy a piece of art is because you love it, you’re blown away by it, and it speaks to you; if it should ever appreciate in value over time, then it’s a thrilling but unexpected bonus.
I can understand though why people take such trouble to make well-studied purchases of art; art can cost so much money, and there’s so much of it around, that you want to be assured you’re choosing something that is worth your hard-earned money. In that aspect, it’s simply like reading movie reviews or doing research before you buy a digital camera — an informed buy is a better buy.
Marlon and I have yet to decide on what our first purchase will be, but there are a few options. For now, I’m simply enjoying the process of discovery as it unfolds, meeting really lovely people and talented artists, and being welcomed into this beckoning new world that seems to have a soft spot for “young collectors” — a phrase which I would like to apply to myself, but only when I’m absolutely ready.

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Posted on November 20, 2009
Category: Uncategorized · Labels:

Back to the drawing board

the last time i picked up a sketch pad was two years ago, right before i moved to singapore. even back then, i wasn’t too happy about the way i was drawing.
i used to be capable of copious amounts of concentration when i was a kid, something that changed as i grew older. if it wasn’t finished in ten or fifteen minutes, i would drop it. the thought of spending hours working at a drawing or painting appealed to me less and less. ironically, even though i was spending much less time actually drawing, i started believing that the reason i didn’t do it as often was that i just didn’t have as much free time as i used to.
i started toying with the idea of drawing again after seeing fashionation’s post on outfit drawings vs outfit photos. although i love clothes and dressing up, i never got into the whole posting-what-you-wear daily phenomenon sweeping the blogosphere. but the idea of drawing myself in my outfits seemed fantastic! mainly because it could be a way of drawing regularly again, like i did one semester when i had to keep a visual journal for an art elective. and… i can make myself thinner!
my first attempt at style journaling was an affair that can be summed up in four words: cute outfit, terrible drawing. and so while browsing one friday night at kinokuniya, i decided to get serious about overhauling my drawing skills and bought this.
i finally got to crack this book open on saturday (after stuffing my face with salpicao). i must have spent an hour to two hours just sketching.
my first attempt at figures. you can see that the very first one, on the right, has the same figure flaws as i do: short legs, saddlebags and knock knees :P using the eight-head rule of proportion, i quickly got the hang of it after a few repetitions, although my figures still tend to have overbroad shoulders and too-long thighs.
after a few tries, i was confident enough to draw a figure without the guide lines. i think it turned out pretty well!
moving on to profiles, however, presented a bigger challenge. i don’t think i’ve ever drawn a profile in my life. thus the many, many disastrous attempts. such as the presence of the joker.
this is one of the better (and quicker) profiles i produced, thanks to the neat trick marlon taught me about drawing guide lines for profiles. he draws much more realistically than i do, by the way.

EFFORT! and that’s just the face! after i nail these profiles, it’s on to the back view (which honestly seems SO much easier) and three-quarters… and poses upon poses.

only then can i start having fun with the clothes. baby steps, baby steps…

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Posted on October 11, 2009
Category: Creative Projects · Labels: ,