Murals

I assisted Hannah (@hmb_urger) on her mural projects this year. One was in Tagaytay, and another one was just in Metro Manila. The Tagaytay one was an experience. Inggo accompanied us and offered his cooking skills for the trip. We stayed at Hannah’s client’s house over the weekend.

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We were planning on having bulalo, but surprisingly we couldn’t buy beef at the grocery. It seems like you have to buy from the butcher or palengke, but this was a few towns away from where we were. Actually, I’m not even sure if we were in Tagaytay?! The landmark was Twin Lakes, we were in Amuyong, Cavite. Huh.

It was a whole day of painting for us. We first sketched the design using colored chalk and started filling in the colors one by one. We both had one wall each to sketch and paint. Thankfully Hannah gave me a cheat sheet/print out of the design. Also since we couldn’t find any beef we took a picture with a cow instead:

The Metro Manila one was a quick mural. I assisted once again painting the flowers. I should also note that we attempted to do a mural last April, but went to Starbucks instead due to the heat.

Overall it was a fun experience. Will definitely assist again! If you want to check out the finished murals, please check our her instagram page @hmb_urger

White Nights

May 2022.

Inggo advised me to buy everything that I wanted since the dollar value will increase in the coming days. I bought one of the watercolor brands that I’ve been coveting for a while now-White Nights. We bought this at Deovir SM North Edsa. White Nights is a Russian watercolor brand. They have full pans with a reasonable price point. Below are some of the artwork that I did with it.

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I first tested it out using cheap watercolor paper. My go-to brand is Berkeley watercolor pad. This was my beginner paper back then. And even though most of my friends hated this paper, I love it because it can take a lot of paper. But the quality is so-so, and the artworks that I have using this paper have deteriorated over the years. Oh well!

Above: Katmon Megalantha workshop by Cynthia Arre! I used another leftover Arches paper for this one. I like that its square shape though. Then I painted a bird on baohong paper because why not? I had a hard time painting the feathers because it had to make sense. I need to sketch these some more in order to get it right!

I find it funny/interesting that I finally bought most of the brands that I coveted before in my post watercolor ramblings way back in 2016. I still don’t have a 45 color W&N set, but I don’t really want it anymore. Over the months I’m pretty happy with my White Nights set. I love the full pans and transparency of the colors. One thing that I would like to do in the future though is to use more of the blues.

National Museum of Natural History

May 2022 was a busy month.

Our exhibit “Natural Heritage in Focus: The Philippine Flora and Fauna Art Exhibition” at the Upper Courtyard of the National Museum of Natural History ran from May 24 until October 3, 2022. This is in partnership with Philippine Botanical Art Society and Philippine Fauna Art Society in celebration of National Heritage Month and International Day for Biological Diversity. We went to the exhibit opening last May 24, 2022.

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I went to work in the morning that day and bragged about the exhibit opening to almost everyone in the office HAHA. I was proud of myself and my officemate Trisha as we both got accepted in the exhibit. This was a juried exhibit where 3 botanists judged our artwork based on accuracy and talent. After work, Inggo fetched me from there, and we both went to NMNH in the afternoon.

Hello to Lolong! One of the largest crocodiles in the world.

It was our first time to visit the NMNH after renovation. National Museum visits are now free to public for a long time now, but we didn’t have a chance to visit because its too far from us. When we got there, we were treated as VIPs in the exhibit opening. It was a wonderful experience. Ms. Bing’s speech, even though I’ve heard it numerous times already, had more impact at that time because it felt like all of her hard work came into fruition with this exhibit. I also got to finally meet Sherilyn again! Here are some photos of the exhibit opening. Thank you to Inggo for being our photographer!

Definitely one of the highlights of this year! â™Ĩ

Mental and Physical Preparation for exhibits (Dec 21-March 22)

I will probably write about this in past tense as it is already December 2022. I joined 2 open calls by Philippine Botanical Art Society last November/December 2021. One was the Flora of South East Asia Botanical exhibition and the other one was at the National Museum of Natural History exhibit titled “Natural Heritage in Focus: The Philippine Flora and Fauna Art Exhibition“. It was a good thing that the announcement was months ahead. I had plenty of time to prepare. â™Ĩ

After a long break from creating any art, it felt like my skills were getting rusty. So I had to practice. A lot. You could also think of this post as a compilation post of sorts as well. Picture and lengthy post ahead!

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The rose painting above is the my artwork for my first ever art tambay with Aira and Hannah after lockdown. There’s still covid, but at least we finally had our vaccines so it felt a little bit safer to meet up. It also felt right that they were the first people I get to art tambay with again after a long time. Our last art tambay was around March 2020!

Physical preparation

From January to March of 2022, I practiced a lot. Just painted and painted so I could get out all of the bad art in my system. The rose painting is part of my art trade with my officemate for our Christmas Art Trade. The middle one is a periwinkle. I got the reference from one of my friends I think? The last one are daffodils I painted in my Strathmore watercolor notebook. I still have a lot of paper because of hoarding through the years. Hoping that I get to use all of them soon! I churn out a lot of paintings to get used to painting again haha.

Next up are more practice pieces on different papers. Above: Cattleya practice on baohong paper, Queen of the night on Strathmore, and a Rose painting on Canson 200gsm paper. We used to have a queen of the night in our family home. They would wake me up at night to watch this flower bloom. I didn’t really liked the rose painting, hence the color pencil layers.

Below: Sunflower painting, Poppies, and a pink rose. I could not remember what paper I used for the sunflower painting. This was also supposed to be sold off for a fundraiser, but I couldn’t find the original anymore so I gave another painting with the same reference photo used. The right poppy and pink rose are more practice pieces. The middle poppies I’m pretty proud of! â™Ĩ I gave the middle painting as my art exchange gift during PGW’s Christmas art trade.

Above: I tried practicing white flowers again. Gardenia (left) and roses. The left one is reserved for an art trade with a friend. I’m not happy with how I rendered the roses. It looks like a mix of cool and warm tones. Its all over the place. I need to practice some more.

Below: More practice works. I’ve been wondering why I kept on painting on Canson 200gsm paper when I wanted to paint detailed backgrounds. These paintings took a beating with too much water.

Mental preparation

It is now April 2022. The painting above is my Hoya Blashernaezii ssp siariae piece for the SEA open call. The sketch (for review and approval), progress, and final piece. Its just an A4 piece so it felt like I didn’t get to express and show the details of the flowers compared to a bigger paper. This one was hard. Because of what happened last March, it felt like nothing really mattered anymore. But I had to push through with both deadlines. I didn’t get to do a warm up sketch and painting for the SEA open call. I knew from the start that I didn’t do my best here. So it didn’t really hurt when I learned that I didn’t get accepted into Round 2 of the jury deliberation.

Feeling a bit guilty with the SEA open call, I did a warm up painting for the NMNH open call. This is so I could test out the colors that I want to use for the painting. And to get the “feel” of the flower shape this time around. I had to do this painting in two rounds, a first for me. Day one was the paper prep, sketch, and base colors. After that I didn’t continue working on it after a week. Day two was all about the details and polish. I knew it took me a long time to paint this. I started around 4pm and ended at around 3am. There was also a Day three but that was just scanning and submitting the painting for jury deliberation.

Can I also just write here that I have a love-hate relationship with the NMNH painting? I knew I did my best working on this piece. It looks beautiful and it accomplished the goal. But I really hated it. During the painting process there were times that I really wanted to tear it apart. Because it felt like painting, or whatever this hobby is, didn’t really matter. I felt like it wasn’t important to others, there were a lot of distractions, and it just…. sucked. My memories of painting and submitting this piece were all negative. When we got back the painting, I wanted to burn it lol. So it is now in safekeeping in Inggo’s relatives’ place.

It feels good to finally write about this. To finally let it off my chest. I still have 18 drafts left and 3 days to go before the year ends. Let’s do this!

Fundraiser

We did a fundraiser for Ruth’s father last February. He was diagnosed with Non-Hodkin’s Lymphoma. We started a commission drive to help with the expenses for chemotherapy. For every 500php donation, Hannah or I will make an artwork.

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I’m glad that there were people who were interested! The artworks above are for the following: my practice hoya pubicalyx piece for a fellow botanical artist. A portrait for someone who saw Hannah’s tweet. After these commissions, I did a pet portrait of Nori (black american cocker spaniel below) for my mom. Then a high school classmate, Jake, donated for worth 4 pet portraits. He even added more for these to be framed. Thank you so much!

In total, we raised around 8.5k for Ruth. â™Ĩ I really had fun making these pet portraits. I looked at our commission excel sheet and noticed that some donors didn’t request their artwork subjects yet. Must follow these up!

Another break and winning a contest

This post has been sitting on my drafts for more than year. I had to go back to Instagram to check my posts so this title would make sense again. Anyway, this was after Inktober 2021. After successfully completing Inktober for the 2nd time in my life, I was burned out. I thought that I deserved a rest, and so I took a break. Here are some the few artworks that I did on this break.

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The painting above is a sunflower painting that I did with a scrap arches paper that I cut out from the huge sheet that I did for my katmon painting. Its still unfinished though! And I doubt that I’ll finish this. The ink artworks below are for Kathleen’s @deartoourhearts ‘ birthday giveaway where you need to create an artwork of an endemic plant or animal from the Philippines. I made a Katmon Dillenia philippinensis and a Tawilis Sardinella tawilis. Katmon because her name is “Kath” hehehe. And tawilis because for some reason I know some facts about this fish. Tawilis is a freshwater sardine only found in Taal lake! This species is now endangered due to overfishing and other illegal fishing activities

I also participated in PNPCSI’s symposium botanical art workshop. The recently discovered Begonia beijnenii was the subject. I did this using prismacolors and surprisingly won. â™Ĩ Happy for this achievement!

Inktober 2021 – Completed

I’ve been wondering on how should I present my inktober works last 2021. This is the second time that I’ve completed inktober. The last time was around 2017 – and look at the way that blog post was designed. I had Inggo do that part, and I really didn’t feel like doing that again. So I’ve compiled my works into 3s this time. The prompt for 2021 was #artoberflowers by @shealeenlouise. I researched for reference photos a month before and used her 2020 prompt before she posted a 2021 version. So my works are a mix of both. And again, another picture heavy post ahead!

Peony, Buttercup, Foxglove.

Peony – The first drawing showed how I was experimenting and planning on how I want to do this inktober. I used lines to form the folds of the petals, and I also tried out hatches and cross hatching for the shades of the petals. I’m not really fond of this piece, but it is a good reminder that this is what it looks like whenever I’m doing something again.

Buttercup – Inktober and October in general is another excuse to bring out my markers again. 

Foxglove – This is the drawing that shows I’m getting used to my inks again. More hatches and 0.05 goodness. I used my college unipin markers for this

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Above – Hellebore, Daffodil, Tulip | Below – Azalea, Primula, Sakura

Hellebore – With this piece, I’m experimenting on how I should render the petals. Should I focus on the petals? Shadows? What about contrast? Some things to think about when inking. 

Daffodil – The day that I made this piece was a good 0.05 thickness kind of day! From my hellebore work that showed the folds individually, this one showed the shadows of the folds for a softer look. I especially loved the lowest petal on the drawing.

Tulip – Pretty proud of this one! It took a lot of restraint to hatch shadows on the petals. Sometimes simplicity is the only thing that’s needed in a piece. â™Ĩ

Azalea – I didn’t write much on my instagram post about this one. I really liked the way I hatched the shadows on the petals, its similar to what I did on my daffodil drawing.

Primula – Getting tired of inking using unipins so I got out my freebie brush pen from @pennarr.ph when I ordered from them. I used it on the leaves and it made an amazing effect. 

 

Above – Anemone, Sunflower, Orchid | Below – Lilac, Forsythia, Crocus

Anemone – This was actually the first one I inked for inktober! I used my new brush pens creating the lineart and left it for a while to get started on the peony one. Pretty proud of the hatched petal folds! I was also practicing how to use my brush pens. I love the various line thickness that I can have with just one pen. Hatches are still 0.05 unipin and a lot of patience.

Sunflower – Also another happy piece! I used my brush pens for lineart, and the unipins for the hatch shadings.

Orchid – Feeling a bit guilty of not using my markers, I used them in this piece since I had the colors needed. Some warm greys, yellow, and green for a phalaenopsis orchid. Mental note that if I ever wanted to pursue markers in the future that I need to hoard more greens. In my IG note – I did this in markers because my hands were hurting from too much inking and hatching.

Lilac – This one took 3 days because we discovered Pokemon Unite lol. The start of distractions!

Forsythia – One of my attempts of lessening my hatches to help my hand recover. If you’ve noticed my works, I have a hard time doing minimal lines and go crazy on hatches. But sometimes simple is a bit better.

Crocus – I find it funny that after writing about wanting to help my hand recover, I went crazy with the hatches here. Oops.

Above – Magnolia, Hollyhock, Hyacinth | Below – Poppy, Iris, Dahlia

Magnolia – I would consider this one of my more simpler works lol. I really love the effect my brush pen did on this leaves. 

Hollyhock – But my heart is already set on intricate petal details. Because look at what I did on this! 

Hyacinth – Nothing much to say, even on IG. I wrote that I’m slowing down a bit – maybe due to work and IRL responsibilities? 

Poppy – Liking the subtle pure black shadows that I added after hatching everything. I feel that this is also one of the simpler ones.

Iris – In an attempt of lessening my hatches yet again, I used brush pens to create the line art and big hatches for shadows. Looks a bit messy but I like it a lot!

Dahlia – The petals with the streaky and spotty pattern was a challenge to ink this time! And I changed how I hatched the petals. Only in one direction but some parts are denser so it would imitate shadows. 

Above – Daisy, Rose, Fritillaria | Below – Hibiscus, Clematis, Begonia

Daisy and Rose – nothing much to say here except both were simple. I needed to rest my hands again.

Fritillaria – The reason for resting my hands was so I could go hatch crazy with this one. Who knew that there’s a flower that has this cute checkered pattern!? I love it.

Hibiscus – I was not really feeling this one when I was inking it. I found a really old marker pen and used it for shadows on some parts. After scanning and cleaning it up, I sorta like it?

Clematis – Hatch crazy again. I liked the left part of the petal where I made the shadow parts.

Begonia – I had this thought “Ballpens are INK too”. So I used my Titus pens for this.

Forget me not, Geranium, Pansy, Gardenia

Forgot me not – The REAL forget me not is blueish and fuzzy. Plumbago is mistaken as forget me not here in the Philippines and I could see why!

Geranium – I wanted to focus on the leaves. Its not really visible here, but I did pointism on the stems because someone was requesting it on Instagram lol

Pansy – This is similar to the way I hatched my dahlia piece. It felt a bit simpler to do!

Gardenia – One of my favorite flowers made with brush pens and unipins.

And that’s it! I learned a lot on this inktober run – my preferences, habits, and perseverance. I also learned that I love using brush pens! I bought some more as a reward to myself for completing this one lol. Looking at my IG page – it seems there’s not a lot left to talk about for now. We’ll see!

The very few watercolor paintings

After painting landscapes and seascapes, I had the confidence to practice white flowers. Since it was around Aug-September, I had time to prepare for inktober as well! So I bought some new materials from PennarrI got some baohong academy (student grade paper) to try, and some brush pens for inktober.

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The beautiful gardenia above was painted on my sampler Canson Montval paper. I finally got used to the paper when I only had a few left haha. Super proud of this one, because it was sold before I even posted it on Instagram! This is now proudly displayed in my client’s home in Subic. The gardenia below is another practice piece, this time on my old Strathmore watercolor pad. I felt a little guilty that this expensive watercolor pad is not being used as often as I wanted. So I tried practicing on it without feeling guilty of making ugly art. It looks messy but I like it. The only problem I think is that its hard to scan on my scanner!

Two of my custom watercolor sets that I used for my paintings. The bigger one is my Mijello Pure Pigment set! I alternate my watercolor sets depending on my mood. If I want brighter colors, I use my Mijello set. If I want subtle desaturated colors and a mix of my usual, I use my custom palette. The blueish thing below is a Jade vine or “Strongylodon Macrobotrys”. It’s my part of the art collab with Rochelle. I think we did well! This was also done on my Strathmore pad.

Above: more practice white pieces! The left one is a practice piece of a Katmon painting. I asked @theateneowild for permission to use their katmon photo and thankfully they agreed! The white poppy in the middle was also bought by the same client. Really thankful that there are people out there who really love my work! The stargazer lily on the right was painted on Arches paper. ARCHES PAPER! This was the extra paper that I cut off from the big paper that I used for an open call painting. Painting on arches paper is a different experience. You could really tell the quality of this paper. It was a wonderful experience. â™Ĩ

The last three paintings before Inktober (October). A random poppy painting, an anemone painting (on Baohong paper!) and the Katmon painting. I already blogged about the right most painting here. This is my entry for PhilBas exhibit last year!

9 paintings for 2 months. Its not a lot for my usual standards, but I think I did great! Next up would be my Inktober write up, and I’m already dreading the editing time. Wish me luck!

Landscapes and seascapes, finally!

I’ve been planning on painting landscapes and seascapes for years now but never really pushed through. This time, I finally did! I painted all of these on my Hue&Ai No Paint No Gain watercolor pad. I love that its small and I can work on studies like landscapes and seascapes.

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I also tried out using washi tape to make borders for my paintings. Its surprisingly effective!

The top and bottom landscape works were referenced from photos from the Free Photo Reference group in FB groups. I’m a bit jealous of other countries since they have Fall, and the color gradations on the trees are just so much fun to paint! Also, I tried out painting water as well. It looks okay for a beginner! â™Ĩ

Can I also just say that I completed all of these while binge watching New Girl? Having a Netflix account is now a blessing and a curse lol. After painting landscapes, I went ahead and did seascapes. The blue green photos are mine, from our trip to Siargao a few years ago.

Except for the one above! This one is from Kayangan lake from Coron, Palawan. I experience swimming there without a life vest. It was hard! Since there wasn’t any waves, you would sink quickly. I had to float and swim myself to the docks. But the water was really clear. So beautiful! Nowadays, its now required to wear a life vest while swimming because of an incident.

The next photos are from the FB group I kept on mentioning. I loved painting clouds and waves, so I went ahead and painted a lot. The gradients were also challenging to paint, since I’m not used to doing it. The reflections on the water were also fun to do:

And that’s it for landscapes and seascapes! I filled up my watercolor pad with these. I hope to do more pieces soon. Hopefully in a bigger size? Let’s see!

June paintings

The month of June is about my Hue&Ai No Paint No Gain watercolor pad. This is a small pad that is perfect for quick paintings, perfect for practice. The artworks are in chronological order – so let’s start: wax flower practice (photo reference from my officemate), a pink rose with a watercolor base and color pencil details, and a white poppy. I used a masking fluid on the yellow things of the white poppy. It was my first time using masking fluid, and I’m glad that I got to experience it. 

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The next two set of paintings were peonies, loosely painted and detailed with color pencils. I guess this is my color pencil phase? Check out the difference between the photo (left) and scanned (right). I love how vibrant the post-processed artwork looks.

This was also the phase where I thought I should try to paint fruits. So I did! Most of these were done while watching Haikyuu!! anime. Since the manga was finally finished, I started and completed reading this series. One of the best sports manga out there, you should go and read it! Its about (male) volleyball and friendship. Wholesome and action packed!

And that’s it for June! I had a lot of confidence creating these works because the pad is smaller to what I’m used to. It also made me feel like I had the excuse to experiment and try out new things, which is what I’ll be blogging about next!