"The notion of limitless knowledge is more illusory than real..."

Peeking at you =)

Visited the Singapore Art Museum today and saw the "Thrice Upon a Time: A Century of Story in the Art of the Philippines", "In the Eye of Modernity: Philippine Neo-Realist Masterworks from the Ateneo Art Gallery" exhibits and also some contemporary Asian artworks at 8Q. Took a lot of pics and will share some of them here. There was this portrait that I totally fell in love with.

Gonna read up on Philippine history tomorrow I guess... Kinda late now and i gotta get some snooze.... -.-

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Scrapped 2010 Calendar Design

Jan-Apr 2010 Calendar Version 1

This is the first idea that i had... a bottom up progression of the dates whereby there will be 'tabs' which can be pushed up/down along the dates as markers. Decided not to use this design cos I just don't find it special although i spent some time designing it.

I wanted a vintage theme like for example, the first symbol for the month of january represents Mary Poppins, 2nd one is Wizard of Oz (her magical shoes), etc, etc... but oh well, it doesn't seem to turn out as strong as i'd like it to.

A very different design is in progress undergoing production =)

And yes wani u r considered as one of my *ahems* diamonds. Lol.

I'm not gonna reveal the final calendar here just yet.... until i send it out that is.

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Self Portrait in Pencil and Ink: Purple Hair

If I were a superhero, I'd have long flowing purple hair.

Another thing i like about the notebook is that it has curved edges as u can see in the first pic.

Decided to do a sketch of myself as the first drawing in the book... which solidly marks it as my property, my territory... rawr!

Reference image:

A pic taken recently which looks decent.

If you didn't know, I'm back to solid black hair. Couldn't wait for it to grow out all black so i dyed it and i'm happy with how it turns out.

It's been years since i had black hair and i've been getting compliments after the change from those who actually noticed =)

Another reason to truly accept what's naturally been given to me by God and accepting myself. I think i won't go back to dyes anymore... i hope!

Having brown/blond hair has been fun but it gets tacky with the maintenance and damage.

And speaking of the drawbacks of having light colored hair, i had an encounter with someone who was VERY judgmental hinting that i wanna be caucasian or something especially since i used to wear colored contacts as well. Well he just didn't know fashion i guess.

Although it was probably just a passing remark, i wonder if others view me the same way.

However, this is not even a consideration for dying my hair black, it's just that i learnt from his obtuseness not to judge others like how he's shallowly judged me...

Cos being misunderstood, that's one of the most frustrating things that can happen.

I think for 2010, i'd like to keep those friends who has stuck with me through all these years close. I think this time i've come to realise where my real diamonds are at.

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My New Notebook from Cat Socrates

Top left pic: Front cover;

Top right pic: Back cover;

Bottom pic: Inside pages

I like the the pages inside have a brown shade almost like a brown paper bag color giving it an 'aged' look.

Already have some ideas on maximising its pages... filling them with drawings of course.

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Current Work-In-Progress: Pencil Sketch, Dandelion

Full view:

Sketched using 5B pencil on my sketchbook. Was going for a more doll like look hence the large eyes =) And if you know me well you'll know that i'm a fan of hats! Love the vintage looking ones especially. Made the dress real simple to give it a contrast to the more structured hat. And also corkscrew curls for her hair to match.

It's much lighter in real life, had to increase the contrast in photoshop to make it more obvious after scanning it in.

And omg hands are so difficult to draw! Had to keep erasing it several times and finally went to look for reference images of REAL hands holding a dandelion. And most of them with the perfect gesture for my drawing are cropped off. So I had to estimate how the rest of the parts looked like.

You can tell a lot about a person from their drawings... for example their strokes. I'm still working on achieving smooth long strokes which will i will hopefully achieve with practice. Right now if you enlarge the drawings... you can see that they are uneven, feathery, and short in some areas... which means that i'm still not confident in drawing (esp. the hands, the hands!).

Alright.. I'm intending to watercolor it... still have a fear of spoiling it cos I'm not using a watercolor paper and so many things could spoil it like bleeding or warping of the paper when its wet..

Well at least I've already have a soft copy of the original sketch if it turned out to be a miserable fail~

...

On a different note...

My first 'wish' for 2010 came true. I had typed a personal message on my messenger saying "can't school start a-wee-bit later?" thinking that lessons will begin on 4 Jan. And guess what... on 4 Jan i woke up at 5am so that my dad can drop me off at my dorm since it's on his way to work. Reached dorm real early about 7.30am so i took a nap and got up later on for my 9am lesson. Reached school at 9.15am (late) and opened the door to an empty classroom. Started smsing some of my classmates and found out that the semester starts next week.

That was probably the only time that i was embarrassed and happy at the same time.

Lastly, I'd like to wish everyone a wonderful year ahead =)

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