Month: March 2024

PaperCon 2023

PaperCon was held last September 9 at Centris. It was technically my first time as a solo artist, but Inggo was there with me as my assistant. ♥ Look at my full table! It’s so cute!

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I felt pretty proud of my table set-up. We upgraded a lot of things after POTA July: laminated price tags for easier visibility, mesh wires so we could take advantage of height, a printed table cloth, more grass tiles, and more acrylic trays. It looked so neat! But look at the chaos the night before, packing all of these:

I also made newer business cards with two different designs. My previous one was too small and was not a standard size. This one is beautiful and the art speaks for itself. I also had a stamp made – the photo below was what they had made without my instagram handle. I sent some feedback and the supplier replaced the stamp with the correct request. The passport photo on the left is a new thing for PaperCon. It was a small booklet for customers and sellers, where they could collect stamps from all the artists in the event. I had a lot of fun asking for stamps from everyone!

I’m really thankful for this event. Even though the venue was scorching hot that day, we didn’t really mind it because there were a lot of people! It was also really nice to see some previous PaperCon kapitbahays and other artists. It felt like a post-pandemic reunion of sorts.

Really thankful as well to my friends who came and visited the event – USK QC people, POTA friends, officemates, discord friends, etc. ♥ Inggo also made me an orchid crochet headband because I requested one for this event hehe. One customer also wanted to commission me for a painting – which is what my next blog post will be about!

And lastly, I kept being sentimental about this one, it really means a lot to me that I can finally stand on my own as an artist. I’ve been boothing since 2017, and look at all of my products now!

PaperCon prep and products

August last year was my prep time for PaperCon that was held last September 9. I wanted to create lots of new products because it was PaperCon. It was a big deal for me to return to this event as a solo artist. So I made more paper products – specifically notepads, bookmarks, and new stickers.

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First of all the peony above, I had no idea where to put in my older posts so I put it here. This was one of the newer peony artworks that I did for my new set of stickers – 3″x 3″ sized sticker samplers! I wanted a sticker sheet that’s a midrange price, for those who doesn’t want an individual sticker but doesn’t want to spend on the bigger sticker sheet. I made 5 designs of these – rose, peony, hydrangea, orchid, and sunflower.

I had the idea of making bookmarks during Patrons of the Arts – where I saw that some art prints are laminated to achieve a glossy effect. So I thought, maybe I should do bookmarks? These did really well during my conventions last year – but I won’t restock them again this year because I don’t really have space for them in my table.

Now, notepads! It’s PaperCon, notepads are paper, so they should probably sell like hotcakes right? Well, not really! With their high production cost and bulkiness, I felt that I probably shouldn’t reproduce them anymore. It was a fun experience though!

Now my sticker sheets, my bread and butter during conventions. I added a new design- the sunflowers sticker sheet so they would finally total to 10 designs. I’m pretty proud of this set! Looking back now, I’m pretty impressed with the products I’ve produced just for this con. Next up will be the event itself!

Urban Sketchers Kyusi – UP Diliman Sketchcrawl

I’ve added another tag for all Urban Sketcher posts with USK QC. We’ve been active with the QC chapter since we also live in this city. So just in case we get to join other chapters, we could differentiate it with another tag. Anyway! August last year was USK QC’s UP Diliman Sketch crawl. This time around I invited my discord friends with me!

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I already forgot the location of where we sketched but its near sunken garden. Inggo was there as a guide for us just in case we’d get lost. We were with Hannah, Mico, Bea and her friend Ryzza. Bea is from Laguna and for some reason wanted to join us here in Quezon City.

I finally brought my foldable stool this time! And I finally used a bigger sized paper. This is a Hahnemuhle paper – around 9″ x 12″. I wanted to paint the tree and the field. It was hard because all you could see are greens and browns. But I loved mixing my own greens! It rained so the USK QC people took shelter under the film building. Another discord friend of ours also joined us here – he was having lunch near Area 2 and remembered that we were here for the event. After the latag session, we went to Friuli at Maginhawa so they could try it out.

I found it funny that the USK QC admin Nadj thought that our group was a bunch of tourists walking around UP Diliman but then realized we were one of them. Another group commented that we looked like a dance troupe because we all wore black.

It was a fun experience. I’m glad that more discord friends are interested in joining USK QC events. ♥

Personal Art

After Patrons of the Arts, I felt like I needed a break from con prep and make some personal art. Most of my works before are all for new products. But guess what, personal art is still flowers! ♥

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Above – I planned on making new washi tape designs. I made two designs – a rose and orchid combination, and a poppy design. I felt that I didn’t have enough roses and orchids, so I made some more. Eucalyptus leaves were also added just to have variety.

Below – I made the pink rose during our art tambay with discord friends. This was before our karaoke thing that night. The white rose is a practice piece on Baohong hot press paper. I didn’t liked it back then, but now it looks alright?

Above – you could see the difference in quality from the paintings. The middle one was painted on Canson 200gsm, and I really didn’t liked it. The magnolia on the left and the vanda orchid on the right were painted on Arches 300gsm cold press paper. Look at their details! The arches paper could really take a lot of water without buckling. I could detail a lot more as well.

Below – Left: Peony on Hahnemuhle paper. I don’t remember if I liked this paper – but I think I do since I’ve used it all up now. I still have a larger size that needs to be used up as soon as possible as well. Right: Poppies on my very old Strathmore watercolor notebook. I completely forgot about painting this one that I was pleasantly surprised when I found it again months later. Maybe I should hide my paintings? I end up hating most of my works and liking them months later after all.

I really loved this set of paintings. This was the pivot I think of using higher quality watercolor paper. I hope to paint a lot this coming Holy Week!