Category: Art

Urban Sketchers Kyusi – UP Diliman

The last event of the 2022 is with USK QC at UP Diliman. Hannah and Shine were not able to join, but Kathleen (@deartoourhearts) was! She’s one of my botanical art friends in instagram, and apparently Aira’s classmate from high school. What a small world! We met up at UP Diliman, Sunken Garden.

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I’ve visited UP Diliman a number of times before. This is where Inggo spent half of his life. He also accompanied me that day as a moral support/body guard lol. He was supposed to jog but changed his mind. When we met up with Kath, we spent our first painting session near the benches. We tried painting the whole sunken garden. I hated my fist painting HAHAHA.

It started to rain so we looked for cover. I found a cluster of birds of paradise under the pavilion area and started painting those. I really liked this one because I got to do negative space painting. My talented friend started another painting, this time she painted the library:

Then it was latag time! Sadly didn’t get some pictures. I had a lot of fun that day. Inggo and I walked all the way to Maginhawa after. Plein air and landscape art isn’t really my thing I’m still game for future events! I think that I’ll learn something from joining more of this type of events.

PGW On the Spot Painting Competition

I mentioned before that PGW Convention is a whole month long event. I participated in the online on the spot still life painting competitions. It started in the morning until noon. The camera needed to be turned on, facing toward me while I’m painting.

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We were given numerous reference photos of the still life set-up. It was up to us on how will we interpret or express the composition of our artworks. I painted in portrait and focused on the leaves. What an experience. It was a continuous painting session that lasted for 3 to 4 hours. I was tired physically and mentally afterwards. But what an experience! Will definitely attend again.

PGW Convention

I wanted to write my experience of my first PGW Convention. The kick off event was held at GSIS Museo ng Sining in Manila. It happened the day before StickerCon MNL 2022, so imagine my fully booked schedule lol.

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I joined PGW on January 1, 2022 because I wanted to learn. So why not join a watercolor group? They have events every other month, and the biggest one is the month-long convention. I went there by myself, but I didn’t really mind. I bought great art materials for a discounted price, got freebies, met new people, won raffles, and learned a lot by watching the pros paint. I also joined the art exchange event. Received a bougainvillea painting from sir Manny Vailoces. A person who had a Day Pass ticket received my painting.

The most significant program that happened on that day was the artist personality test by Seeworthy. I realized that I’m a North West kind of person — and I agree 100%. Introverted, quiet, and someone who really loves organization.

I went home inspired, tired, and ready to fight the next day for Stickercon 2022. The convention continued for another month, with artist demos and live selling every other month. Was it worth it? YES!

Office events

I’m not sure why the I wrote this as one of my posts in my OneNote, but okay. Also not sure if I mentioned it here yet, but our office has an art club thing and I’m the head for that. We’re not that active, but we try our best! I even had our club logo printed on the excess spaces of my individual sticker sheets:

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Last October, HR asked us to make a lettering in our pantry blackboard for our office’s anniversary. I suck at lettering, but thankfully I had a lot of officemates who are talented! The above photo was done by Danica, with me as the assistant.

A few weeks after that, we had our Halloween event. HR tasked us again on decorating the pantry and reception area with the halloween theme – Coco. I had no idea why they picked this theme when its years old already, but anyway. We printed a bunch of coco-inspired graphics and taped them everywhere. The banderitas were hand cut by the art club members.

Grabbed the photos from our office’s Photography club. The photos looks so good!

I also did the welcome sign in our reception area. My metallic paints were finally used on something! HAHA. And that’s all of the photos! There also was a committee for our Office Christmas party and Design department party, thankfully we weren’t tasked for those!

And now its time to do all of my pending artwork trades with officemates.

StickerCon MNL 2022

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Our 4th StickerCon MNL experience as January Makers PH. It feels familiar and new at the same time. StickerCon MNL 2022 had a new venue – White Space Manila. We had a member shuffle – Monique opt out this time. Aira (@airadenisee) was invited to our group. There were restrictions in how many people were allowed behind the table due to covid protocols of the venue. There’s no custom pin for artist ids this year.

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This is our first time to table with StickerCon MNL on October. It is the organizer’s favorite event of the year, and we were encouraged to come in costume. I bought bunny and cat ears for our group! Sadly, Hannah and Jean weren’t able to attend that day, so it was just 4 of us. We had a random draw on who were our designated sellers that day – Aira and Shine (@tingeofshine) were our hardworking sellers! Clair (@claircolors) was our seller in front who was assisting interested customers.

Thankful to my officemates and friends who came by – Abie, DJ, Jerome, Ate Jen, etc. They bought some of our group’s stickers! As for me, even if I had no cash in hand that day, I managed to buy stickers. In the surprise of no one, every store had QR code payment options (Gcash, Paymaya, Paypal, even BDO pay). This was pretty useful since some people people cashless payments nowadays. It was a good thing that we offered this as well!

My humble set-up. I bought acrylic trays from Daiso for my individual stickers. I also re-used my acrylic display stand for my other stuff. I should also mention that we loved that there’s a food and drink concessionaire outside. The ones they selected had really good food!

Monique also stopped by StickerCon! I would like to congratulate her as she had her first pottery exhibit last November. We weren’t able to visit sadly due to conflicting schedules.

Thankful for the chance to do this once more. â™Ĩ

Sticker Catalogue 2022

Flexing my hard work here! I’m pretty proud of my new stickers!

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Above: My circle stickers. Hand cut around 400+ pieces. There used to be 7 designs, I removed 1 because I wasn’t happy with it anymore. But I’m really happy with the newer ones!

Below: My rectangle stickers. They weren’t as popular as the other ones. But I’m pretty satisfied with them as well. Thinking that these would go well with paper frames for journaling?

Above: The solo stickers that are hand cut. 5 of them are in glossy laminate while the rest are in pearl laminate. I’m pretty happy with this collection as well! Its a mix of early works and newer ones.

Below: My sticker sheets! One of my best sellers during StickerCon. I want to make more in the future.

And finally, my washi tapes! I wanted an orchid one and a seafood one. One design is what I’m known for, and one design is “because I want to”. You gotta have a balance of both in order to be happy. â™Ĩ

And that’s it! Next up is my StickerCon 2022 post.

Road to Stickercon MNL 2022

July-September 2022

For the fourth time, our group January Makers PH was accepted into Stickercon MNL. I had plenty of time to prepare – around 2 to 3 months, to design, print, and cut my stickers. With almost 3 years worth of art, I had plenty of existing artworks that I could choose from. But I also wanted new sticker sheets. The plan – select the artworks that I want as a sticker, layout, send to printers. I made individual, sticker sheets, and finally, washi tapes for this event. I also got some old stock of my old stickers.

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I had the individual stickers printed at Dexact, my usual supplier. I received the package early September, and after that I had to hand cut most of it. I was also required to work in the office for 1 week straight due to training, so I brought my stickers with me so whenever we had a break time, I would cut my stickers.

I also took photos in our office for the sticker sheets. It was a LOT so please check our my instagram page instead HAHA. Pretty proud of the layout I did below! My resin rose ring fits perfectly:

I then had my sticker sheets printed by my former officemate. She now has her own printing business named DC Designs & Prints. All of my sticker sheets are in glitter laminate. You could see some of the artworks I did on my previous blog entries.

Above: My berries sheet were inspired by the amount of berry desserts I had over the years. The oldest works were the blueberry panna cotta in the middle, and strawberry cakes on the lower left and right side of the sheet. My desserts sheet is a collection of popular stickers (taho, banana con hielo, mango parfait) combined with new ones. I’m pretty proud of this one!

Below: My drinks sheet were mostly 2020 works during the height of ECQ. These were mostly my cravings at the time. I add leaves because why not?!

Above: While creating the sticker sheets, I had this idea that I should make a poppy & anemone sticker sheet as well. I had a big collection of artworks of these flowers. The white anemone is the oldest artwork there which dates back to my first sticker sheet (when cut-it-yourself sticker sheets were popular, so around 2017!).

Below: My 2020 gold orchid sheet. I was supposed to make a colored orchid sticker sheet, but it felt redundant since I already made a washi tape with my orchid artworks. So I chose my gold orchid instead. This was the main reason I had my stickers laminated in glitter. So it would look fabulous lol.

I also sold my stickers at a pre-convention price in my personal account for those who cannot attend Stickercon 2022. The new venue was in Whitespace Manila, somewhere along Magallanes, so most of my friends cannot come. Thankful to my friends who supported my sticker business. I had to re-print my sticker sheets because I almost ran out of stock! â™Ĩ Next post will be my current sticker catalogue, because why not?!

Painting anything that I wanted

July to September 2022 compilation post.

We got news around June that StickerconMNL will be back last 2022. We applied and thankfully got accepted for the fourth time. Knowing that we got in, I started planning and forcing myself to make more artworks so I could choose my new stickers.

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Artwork above is my first page on my Strathmore landscape watercolor pad. Most artists I know are pressured into making the best artwork on the first page so they would continue loving their new sketchbook. As for me, I try not to start another watercolor pad when I know that I still have a bunch more that needs to be filled up. Take note of the word “try“. So far it worked on my Hahnemuhle pad.

But I did fill up my Canson XL Watercolor pad. I really like this paper for food illustrations. Pretty proud of my strawberry cake artwork!

Above: A berry tart I made during one of our art tambays, a purple anemone on my strathmore pad, a blueberry cheesecake. Below: Matcha parfait, halo-halo and leche con hielo from Icebergs (this was the dessert we ate when we learned that I got accepted into the NMNH exhibit. Our dessert tasted sweeter with the news), strawberry cake from Old Baguio Cafe (the one I went to after PGW Art Tambay), and a random pampano fish lol because we noticed that it became popular recently.

Based on the artworks you would notice that most of these are food illustrations. I was thinking of making them into sticker sheets. Stay tuned for the Stickercon prep post!

Urban Sketchers Manila & Kyusi

Last year (2022), I also participated in Urban Sketchers Manila and Urban Sketchers Kyusi events. What is Urban Sketchers? Their mantra can be found here.

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There are two groups that I know of here in Metro Manila – Urban Sketchers Manila and Quezon City. But the sketch locations are not locked within their areas. So we try to participate in events that are nearby.

It was actually Hannah (@hmb_urger) who wanted to join these types of events. So when I heard that they’re active again, we went to Binondo for their Binondo church sketch crawl. USK had permission to paint/sketch inside the church. We wanted to paint the church architecture but sadly it was raining that day.

They gave us a free watercolor paper. We could sketch on it and submit the painting to be included in their Chinatown Museum exhibit, I think? I sketched the church’s intricate column. Sadly forgot to take a photo of the finished piece. My second painting was one of the doors with dramatic lighting. I tried my best. This was done on my strathmore landscape watercolor pad. One of the members also made a video about the event:

Next up is the Quezon City, or Kyusi event at Quezon Memorial Circle.

Most of their events usually falls on a Sunday morning. Hannah was not available for this event due to the morning schedule. She’s not a morning person haha. Shine (@tingeofshine) was available, so we went to this event. Inggo also accompanied us because he wanted to jog.

I used pens for my work because I was too lazy to set up my watercolors. I also prefer this location since I got to draw trees. I’m not really an urban sketcher, but I’ll try everything! It just feels like college plates all over again if I only draw architecture. Instead of drawing the iconic memorial, I drew this local coffee shop.

Overall it was a fun experience. I especially love the latag time, where everyone will display their works on the ground. You could see different styles and techniques which is always interesting. The next thing that I love are the stamps lol. I LOVE getting the stamp whenever I finish an artwork. â™Ĩ I actually got to join another one recently, but that will have a separate post.

See you in another sketch walk this 2023 maybe? â™Ĩ

PGW Art Tambay

I finally joined the Philippine Guild of Watercolorists last year (since its already 2023, oops!). The first event that I participated is the August PGW Art Tambay at Art Whale Maginhawa. It is a nude sketching event partnered with Sunday Nudes. It was an event with many firsts – antigen swab test, meet up with PGW, and painting a nude model.

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The order of my paintings are from the beginner up to the end. I think it is a bit obvious on how comfortable I got to painting the last one. I am not used to painting the human figure. (I paint 90% florals, 5% food & 5% fauna). This was a new and welcoming experience to PGW. Everyone was friendly! It was nice to meet everyone there. I’m excited to join future events .

Also can I just put a disclaimer here that I was NOT the nude model. Someone on IG asked if I was the model since we had similar hair. Ugh!

Art whale also had a discount for PGW members so I couldn’t resist buying some art materials for myself . I bought a Strathmore Series 400 Landscape watercolor pad and a Hahnehmuhle watercolor pad. I’ve been using the strathmore watercolor pad in future events (aka Urban Sketchers events – in future posts).

After the event, I met up with Inggo at Old Baguio Cafe so we could finally tick it off the “to eat” list. I also wanted to take reference photos of the desserts because of –Stickercon MNL 2022. More posts to come!