Category: Watercolor

Our First Workshop

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Finally had time to sit down and blog! We joined The Craft Central’s 1st Birthday Celebration at Greenbelt 5 last September 26 to October 1 as January Makers PH. We held our first watercolor workshop there!

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I was honestly terrified teaching a workshop. First, I’m not sure with the basics of watercolor since it wasn’t taught formally back in college. Second, it was my first time to teach students who paid (lol, I had tons of guinea pigs though). Third, I was scared that my students won’t learn a thing from me. Finally, I’m an introvert so I had NO IDEA if I could pull it off.

Me, explaining the color wheel.

Thankfully, my stage muthers/a.k.a. the rest of the January Makers PH team: Jean, Monique, and Hannah were there to help me out the whole time. They helped with the paper cups filled with water, took photos while I was teaching, and also helped with the cleanup after the workshop. They were my support throughout the day. ♥

Karen, starting with the color wheel.

After the quick introduction, we started with the color wheel. Learning the color wheel is one of the fundamentals. It would help in color choices and also for paint mixing.

Shayne, starting with her sunflower!

Learning how to draw a sunflower is easy. They also joked about my methods. Step 1 is “draw a circle”. Step 2 is “draw a tear drop shape”. Step 3 is “surround circle with a lot of tears”. HAHA.

Busy, busy.

I also let them try my seamountainco palette so they could see the difference with student grade paints to artist grade paints. They also had their own seamountainco dot cards that were included in the workshop. Thanks again, Jean! ♥

The rest of the workshop I went around to check & guide them one-on-one. Most of the participants were beginners, so I had to check & comment with their progress. Even though I taught them my style of painting, their own style showed through! ♥

Jade’s painting. | Karen’s painting.

Shayne’s painting. | Celso’s painting.

Katya’s painting. | Paola’s painting.

Gillian’s painting. | Sam’s painting.

My own painting plus Katya’s watercolor paper given to me. Thank you so much! ♥

The final homework for the students. Beautiful lettering & pouch from Jade.

Overall, it was a great learning experience! I think I still need to improve on conveying my thoughts to people. I hoped my students learned something watercolor-related from me. I heard they learned life lessons from my workshop?!

Thank you to The Craft Central for the workshop opportunity and venue. To my January Maker sisters. To my students. And to my guinea pigs lol I learned something from teaching you guys hahaha. ♥

Hopefully I could improve some more & organize another workshop. ♥

Artworks (July 2017- September 2017)

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Another compilation post! The last time I did this was last May, I think. So here are the art works that are yet featured here on my blog. Picture heavy post ahead! ♥

An attempt with landscape.

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My cover photo was an attempt at plein air or landscape painting of my client’s farm at Iba, Zambales. I brought my seamountainco set with me, assuming that we’d stop by the beach HAHA. Unfortunately, they were far from the beach.

Left: Practicing hydrangeas again | Right: An attempt at magnolias.

Before & After photo of my phaelaenopsis orchid painting. I turned this one into an individual sticker. ♥

More magnolia practice. I’m also practicing painting white flowers recently. I like the challenge.

Paper tests by painting sunflowers. The left one is the Strathmore Visual Journal paper. The other one is Hahnemuhle watercolor postcard. Portrait practice using my W&N cotman set. ♥

Sunflower during another art tambay at Makati. ♥ This is so beautiful in real life! Andrea gave me a sample of her handmade sparkly watercolor which I used for this piece. ♥

Left: Peony practice on Berkeley paper. I don’t like it, haha. | Right: Peony practice on my Monologue notebook using Mikalaro’s waterbrushes.

Left: More peony practice. I still don’t like it HAHA. | Right: Another peony practice! This was done during another art tambay with friends.

I turned one of my early peony paintings into an individual sticker. Pictured here is seamountainco’s new product: a small tin case that houses 16 handmade watercolors with a separate mixing plate. Its sooooo cute! ♥

And that’s it for now HAHA. Looking at my artworks and my comments, it seems like I’m way too hard on myself. Maybe its because your worst critic is yourself? I’m still not satisfied with the way I do peonies. But I’m trying my best to improve. I think I’m comparing my current artworks with the previous ones. Right now, they are too “controlled” looking compared to my noob days with “careless, loose strokes“. Sigh. Its hard to find the balance that I want.

But let’s keep trying.

Art in Aura

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A few weeks ago, the January Makers PH team participated in Providore’s pop up weekend market at SM Aura. Due to the bad weather, we were relocated inside near the mall entrance. The usual members who joined were: Jean (owner of seamountainco), Monique (food illustrator), Hannah – who was absent during the event (various illustrator), and I (floral illustrator). ♥

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We were given a long table to display our products. I think this is the first time that we had a problem with too much space. Haha.

Left: Monique’s various food postcards, art prints, and stickers. | Right: My sticker packs, individual stickers, and post cards. ♥

Left: Hannah’s best selling Corgi sticker pack, and post cards. | Right: seamountainco’s handmade watercolors in individual half pans, handmade leather notebooks. ♥

Another view. We’re included in the poster! Woo. ♥

My loot! ♥ From left: Camera sticker pack by Inkscribbler, Washi Tapes from Tiny Basket PH, Hustle kahit Hassle by Pundesal, Girly stickers and Postcard from Cassykicks, and stamped things from Jean hahaha. 

A huge thank you to SM Aura for inviting us to this event! ♥ It was a good experience for the team. I’d also like to thank those who bought from us ~ ♥ Thank you for tagging me in your photos! I looooveee seeing what you did with my art. ♥

Until the next event!

Post cards

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Hello again! So sorry for not updating as much as I used to. I was busy with bazaar preps among other things. Now that things have slowed down a bit, I realized that I haven’t uploaded some better shots of my postcards yet here on my blog. So this blog post is dedicated to it! ♥

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My test prints with my seamountainco set.

This was taken during our dinner at Hole in the Wall.

At Seda Vertis North.

My bloom with Kenneth Cobonpue’s bloom chairs. ♥

Another Seda shot.

My postcards are 4″ x 6″ sized 300gsm which you can buy as a set or individually through our  Facebook page. Please check them out as our other products are also uploaded there. ♥

We also sell our products at a cheaper price during bazaars and the next one is this weekend! August 26-27, 2017 at Providore, Upper Ground, SM Aura. You can check our my Instagram page or our January Makers PH Instagram page for updates! Hope to see you!

Art Tambays

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First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of posts. I’ve rekindled my addiction to Ragnarok Online lol. We’re in Thor server! Weeks after our bazaar, I’ve met up with old & new artist friends for an art tambay.

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The first art tambay was during the Art Mod event at Megamall with Clair aka claircolors, Priane aka priichanpanda, kiyasurin, and Yin aka lostlibraryin. We looked for a vacant coffee stall and had our art tambay there. This is what I did during our art tambay:

Sunflowers again.

I also taught them how to paint sunflowers and hydrangea but I don’t think I’m an effective teacher. The only thing they learned was Step 1: Draw a circle lololol. I also let them try my seamountainco set. I’m also interested in Priane’s White Nights watercolor set. Apparently the price is a good deal for the amount and quality. You can get them at Deovir.

I did this one during my art tambay with my cousin.

The next art tambay was at Greenbelt Makati with Jan Makers PH Jean & Monique, Shine aka tingeofshine, and Andrea aka mabuhaydiy. I also invited other people but they were all busy huhuhu. This was a productive art tambay since everyone were all busy painting. We didn’t do this for a long time! It was refreshing lolololol. Andrea also let me try her handmade watercolors: the Mermaid gold and Rose gold. It made my sunflower painting soooo sparkly! ♥

Sunflowers & Eucalyptus leaves are my current favorites.

Another attempt at peonies.

We also did an activity where we exchanged and painted on all papers using our seamountainco products. This was a bit challenging since our timer was only set to 3 minutes each. It was fun though! We all got a souvenir to take home. This is a great idea! We could do this every art tambay next time. ♥

Our seamountainco sets and artworks. ♥

I can’t wait for the next one! ♥

Maker’s Market

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The week after our first bazaar, we joined another one! This is Maker’s Market at Century City Mall Makati. We were located on the fourth floor this time. And instead of 3, Hannah finally joined us! So the members of January Makers PH who joined were:  Jean (owner of seamountainco), Monique (food illustrator), Hannah (various illustrator), and I (floral illustrator). ♥

Table Set up! ♥

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Another bazaar meant new challenges. Since we were located on the fourth floor open area, we had to take extra care of our products in case it got windy. It was a good thing that we got tape.

The first day table set-up. ♥

I didn’t get to take much photos during the event. But our social media feed were updated. HAHA. Here are some of our posts:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BU31D8zAo2H/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BU5zwhmgM0O/

The last night.

We were in between beadsmustbecrazy, handmade by zaza, and Nifty store PH. Some of the sellers from the previous bazaar were also present here. My professor’s booth – Ubots were located at the ground floor. I also introduced my friends to madebykca‘s semi precious stone jewelry.

Thankful. ♥

Overall, this one was more tiring and challenging. We still had a lot of fun though. We also learned a lot here through experience and advice from fellow bazaar peeps. ♥ For now, the January Makers will take a break to replenish stocks & create more art for future bazaars.

As for me, I have to go back to the interior design world for a while. HUHU. I hope I could still squeeze some time to make more art.

Please follow January Makers PH on Instagram & Facebook. Thank you! ♥

Aside from sunflowers

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I’ve been trying to diversify my knowledge of floral watercolor aside from sunflowers. Though its not my favorite flower, I always paint this due to the reason that I think its the easiest HAHA. I noticed that some of the more popular flowers are peonies, roses, and other flowers with complicated petals. I did attempt to paint those like these examples:

Found in a previous post.

But impatience got the better of me. Sigh! And I think asides from that, I need to really take time to sketch instead of making squiggly lines. One of my former office mates just suggested that I’d let my IG friends guess the flower, and so I did with this artwork:

This is a peony. ♥

Recently, I’ve asked people from Instagram for suggestions on what I should paint. Here are some of those that I finished:

The CBTL Table. ♥

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Poppies as requested by Frances.

Bar area. ♥

Stargazer Lily as requested by Claircolors.

Asphodelus as requested by Sydney (my cousin).

Couldn’t help painting bouquets!

Carnation is my favorite flower ♥.

Last week’s #MondaysMadeBetter (finally went on a Monday HAHA) art tambay was composed of my cousin & I, plus a random Hannah appeared. During our art session, there was this little girl who was looking at us painting. So I invited her to paint with us! I taught her how to paint my favorite sunflowers. After that, I asked her “What flower do you want to draw next?”. She replied with “Roses”. Eeep.

 That’s one of the reasons why I want to learn more flowers. So I could teach people the simplest way to draw realistic flowers (instead of combined rose macaronis).  They were challenging, but they taught me a valuable lesson: being patient!

Here’s to more floral diversity. HAHA. ♥

Tuesdays made better

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Sydney and I went to the newly opened CBTL branch at Banawe last week. I was supposed to blog about this on Monday to mimic the current hashtag of CBTL Philippines. But we went there last Tuesday so might as well make a parody of it lol. I love the place! It gave ample sunlight that brightened the interior, which in turn made our watercolor session easy.

My Hydrangea postcard that I gave to the baristas. ♥

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I painted sunflowers that day. ♥

Sunflower cone & sunflower stems. ♥

I’ve been thinking of organizing an Art Tambay session for the North peeps. Any suggestions on coffee shops / cafes? 🙂

Birthday Month

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April is my birthday month. ♥ I did a lot of things recently. Let me photoblog them below:

Art Tambays with my cousin. ♥ This is 90% seamountainco colors! The green is from Winsor & Newton Cotman.

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Art in the Park weekend with Hannah, Ruth, Jean & Monique. ♥ This is my artwork during our stay at CBTL. The color I used for the hair is #Jeandigo.

2nd painting from Art in the Park. I was explaining to Ruth that I suck at other flowers (as shown here LOL). I must improve!

Inggo had some leftover photo paper. I printed these as postcard samples but the paper was too slim. They look nice, don’t you think ? ♥

Days after my birthday. I met up with Hannah at Serenitea. ♥

I’ll never tease Hannah about her androgynous drawings ever again! I tried painting a guy this time. It was so hard!

More floral practice. ♥ Left: Hydrangea that I tried to be detailed but got lazy LOL. | Right: I just let my IG friends guess what flower this is. The reference is a peony though!

Left: A gerbera painting that is “too light”. | Right: This is a “rose”. I liked the way the leaves look though!

Some paintings I did at a cafe nearby Inggo’s place. ♥ This is at Fecha de Cafe, Kamias.

This isn’t even 50% of what I did for April. (But these were the art related stuff). I availed every birthday promo that I knew of during my birthday. We tasted different cuisines at Madrid Fusion Manila & had a fantastic dinner at Izakaya Kikufuji, Little Tokyo. Did a lot of sketches during Holy week.

The January Girls are currently preparing something exciting. ♥ I can’t wait to blog more about it!

Artworks (Dec 2016 – March 2017)

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When was the last time I did a compilation post? I think its been months. So here are some artworks I did during December last year up to March. These are the artworks that weren’t featured in previous blog posts.

Self portrait in different styles.

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Watercolor test on a local paper brand. I hate it so much lol.

Fabriano paper test. This is the 63php pack that I found at Fullybooked. They also sell it at National bookstore. Both sides are okay for watercolor. Currently loving this brand. ♥

More portrait practice. Left: Berkeley watercolor paper | Right: Monologue notebook.

Sunflower art I did when Hannah came over to visit one day at home. ♥

I need to make more art. I’m running out of blog posts HAHA.