Category: Watercolor

SW March – Watercolor Workshop by Thea Ong

I find it amusing that I’m just writing about this workshop now when I’ve emailed my resignation as club head last week. This year, the office clubs received some funding so we could hold our own events within the office. I did a survey on what topic are the members interested in – and watercolor basics was the top choice. So I asked a friend, Thea Ong, to be our workshop instructor.

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Thea Ong is a watercolor and mixed media artist, crafter, and art teacher. She’s a great art teacher that holds workshops of different subjects for all ages. I offered the workshop to all employees instead of gatekeeping this to our club members. Thea conducted the workshop online. We streamed the workshop in our office pantry for those who are in the office, while those working from home can attend the workshop via zoom.

I brought all of my watercolor sets and some watercolor paper for those in the office. Thankfully they also brought their own, mostly Prang and Seamiart sets. How nostalgic! I still keep my old prang at home. One thing that I didn’t expect on this workshop was that I was also the host. I would ask Thea questions or supplement her statements with additional info. Also, we were supposed to print the workshop materials but all of us just drafted the shapes. Just architect/interior design things. ♥

How was the workshop? It was my first time attending one as well! Thea taught us how to take care of our art materials, the basics of watercolor, some tips, and finally a workshop piece which was a landscape artwork. I think all of my members did great! They had some funny questions for Thea, one that I remembered was “What do I do if my paper already has a hole from too much water?”. Thea laughed so much on this one and suggested to please do not put a lot of water on your watercolor paper.

This was also the first workshop of all of the clubs in the office. More than 30 employees attended this one. I think it was a successful one! I got feedback from officemates that they learned a lot from that 1 hour workshop. It was a lot of fun that I actually planned the next one for May.

How time flies. I was really passionate that time for this club.

Daniel Smith launch at Art Caravan

Around March, PGW announced that Art Caravan now carries Daniel Smith, one of the watercolor brands that artists covet for. Their store is located in BGC, so we had to commute to get here. We had the chance to try out the watercolor sets from Daniel Smith in our table. I really loved the Jean Haines master artist set:

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We also participated in games, got to know more about the art store and the watercolor brand, ate some food (it was gooood!), got to chat with other PGW members, and managed to try out ALL of the Daniel Smith colors available. My wallet was ready for this event.

Look at all of the paints that you could swatch ♥.

And then there was a quiz bee about watercolor and Daniel Smith. I was grouped with 2 more people. We won because I am a watercolor nerd. Look at all of the goodies I got! ♥ I also won a Daniel Smith apron from their raffle, and I think that solidified their thought of how lucky I am with raffles. (I won around 4-5 last year).

I bought so much Daniel Smith paints. ♥ And then at home, it was the process of elimination for the reds. I wanted to replace some older paints with Daniel Smith alternates. I also wanted to switch up my custom palette to include colors that I could use for urban sketching (hence the Buff Titanium and Lunar Blue). I also got a Lunar Earth because I really liked the granulation of this one, and I thought this would mix well with my other paints.

So, was it worth it? Did it make me happy? Was my plan on using the custom palette for urban sketching successful? All of these questions have a yes as an answer. Will I buy more in the future? Maybe, if I had more money haha. I spent around 5k+ for 13 pcs of paints in 5ml and 15ml tubes. I hope to paint more, so I could buy more.

Urban Sketchers Kyusi – Retiro Sketch Crawl

Another USK QC sketch crawl – this was the March event at Santuario de San Pedro Bautista Minor Basilica at Frisco. Fun fact – I used to live nearby here! But I never knew that this was the oldest church in Quezon City.

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I initially sketched the church facade while waiting for Hannah. It was the first time that I brought my new folding stool. Really useful!

We were also allowed to sketch inside of the church. They toured us at the underground tunnel that apparently used to connect to Sto. Domingo Church. I found the atrium inside and sketched the parish’s dormitory. Really liked the capiz windows and the cast shadow from the trees.

Above – my painting vs subject photos are always blurry! Its so hard taking a picture with one hand. Below – our usual latagan. This was also the time that I got jealous of the sizes of the other artworks and promised myself I’d bring a bigger paper next time.

And that’s it! Really enjoyed this one. We also got a chance to hang out with some sketchers after the event. They told us of the April sketch crawl which was an exciting one – they were invited to Taal!

PGW Artworks

I tried to be more active in PGW this year. Every month, they have a prompt where you had to paint 5 subjects and post it in the PGW FB group. I tried. These are my February and March entries:

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Above – A rabbit for February. I used a new paper for this to test it out. I don’t remember the specific paper but it was a sampler pack from Canson. I didn’t liked it. Below – plum blossom on Canson 200gsm paper. Yup, still don’t like this one!

Above and Below – these are a mix of Feb to April entries. I really liked these ones. Especially the sunflower painting. ♥

Around April I stopped participating because my focus went to convention preparation. That’s it for this one!

Sunday Nudes

Hannah had always wanted to try out life drawing, but it was hard to look for an event like this. I already experienced this during a PGW Art Tambay before. I followed Sunday Nudes on Instagram after so I could be updated on their events. Thankfully, we were available on the weekend that they had they March event. The venue was at Art Whale – I bought a different sized Hahnehmuhle watercolor pad and a giant brush this time.

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I’m not the best at this. But at least I tried! We had 5, 10, and 15 minute poses with break time in between. I started with pencils, but was adamant on using my watercolors but I really had a hard time. The blue painting was the model’s choice and I won some stickers.

There is of course another latag session after the event. Its really cool to see all the other artist’s works and how they sketch. If I remember correctly, Hannah also won an award. Glad she had fun!

I really liked this group. Unfortunately, this was the only Sunday Nudes event we participated on. We focused more on urban sketching and conventions this year.

If you’re planning on joining a Sunday Nudes sketch, please follow their instructions on their instagram account. Its also strictly LGBTQ and ally only, which is understandable given their history. Please respect and don’t push yourself in this group if you’re a male.

Urban Sketchers Kyusi – SketQCthlab 

Another USK QC Sketch crawl, this was the February event at Quezon Heritage House Social Hall, Quezon Memorial Circle in partnership with the QC government tourism and promotions department. I mentioned before that I joined a discord group of PH artists – so I invited them to this event. Hannah also joined this one! ♥

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The first part of the event was a brush and watercolor painting workshop by one of the USK QC members – Nadja. I didn’t have a decent photo of our works there, but I remembered that Hannah was struggling with Chinese style of painting. After the workshop and demo, we were free to sketch around QC Circle using our newly acquired techniques.

Can I just say that I still suck at Urban Sketching. But! I still attended a lot of events this year because I was with friends the whole time. ♥ The photos above is my painting, plus a blurry photo with the subject HAHA. Really liked the trees here. Below is a photo of the Heritage House where we had our workshop. I would love to sketch this one in the future!

A compilation of our works ♥. The upper right one I think is made by a first timer with watercolor. The lower right one is from Mico. After that, we went back to the venue for the usual latagan of works.

Thankful that a few days after this event, the QC government bought our paintings! I appreciate that they support our local artists. ♥

SW Office Art Trade

Just a quick one! It was our annual office art trade and I finally did them this January lol. The cat paintings below are for Heddy – an officemate who resigned a few weeks later. It was a good thing that I still got to give this to her!

This one – in a cute chibi style is for Loreen! This was for summer 2022’s art trade lol. She requested her chibi character hugging her cat. I did her character as well last 2021!

And that’s it! Writing about this one reminded me that I should probably start on the art trades this 2023.

Urban Sketchers Kyusi – Banawe Sketch Crawl

Finally, we are now at 2023 posts! The first one is about Urban Sketchers QC‘s first sketch crawl of the year at Banawe street in celebration of Chinese New Year. I went with Hannah on this one! They closed off the area at Banawe street corner Quezon Ave. They had food stalls, a stage, and decorated the place:

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I really liked the red lanterns. It was also the first time I actually got to admire the arch. If I remember correctly, they made this as a Filipino-Chinese friendship arch. We painted at a building nearby where there were a lot of policemen. I painted the arch:

Since there was still enough time, I painted my left view as well. I really loved painting those lanterns and the red tent. Below is our selfie after finishing our paintings:

After the activities were over, we met up with the other urban sketchers and did the usual latagan. All of them were soooo good!

We went home afterwards. Look forward to more USK QC event posts here. We were active this year with this group. ♥

Strathmore Watercolor Pad

While writing about the previous post, I realized that it had wayyyy too many images. I decided to do a separate one for the artworks I made in this watercolor pad. I bought the small strathmore watercolor pad during the PGW Art Tambay at Art Whale and I’ve been bringing it around whenever there’s an art tambay or an urban sketch event this year. The works in this post however were practice paintings at home, getting to know the paper, etc:

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I really liked the dark backgrounds I made for these paintings. It made the main flower the focal point of the piece. I made the lotus painting below during an art tambay with Hannah and Aira:

Above: Just a compilation of botanical style artworks in this pad. The orchid was from an art tambay with Hannah, anemone was a practice piece at home, and the slipper orchid was the second painting for the same art tambay with Hannah. Below: Another lotus. Wasn’t happy with how it looked so it gave me an excuse to experiment with: using ultramarine blue as a background color + metallic paints. I had fun though!

Here’s to hoping that I use this watercolor pad more for 2024! ♥

November 2022 – January 2023 Artworks

Let’s start with a compilation post! This was around November 2022 to most of January 2023.

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We start with food! I think I painted these as potential stickers or products for StickerCon 2022. I’m pretty sure these didn’t make it to production. After that, I had a painting commission. I still wasn’t confident with my roses in general so I practiced. I painted on my old moleskine watercolor notebook and finally filled up the remaining pages. ♥

Since the commission also consists of orchids, I might as well practice painting these as well. The most popular one – white phalaenopsis orchids, while simple in form and color, is usually hard for me for the same reasons. How would you render this in your style? I still think about this now.

Feeling satisfied with these practices, I went and filled up the remaining page with an apple blossom. I don’t remember why, but I like the simple look of this one. Not too detailed. The background looks nice.

And then it was 2023! The photo above is an attempt at painting an angel’s trumpet. It started out with watercolor on a paper I really didn’t liked and was trying to use up the remaining sheets. Wasn’t really happy so I took out my newly bought (at that time) Holbein gouache. I still didn’t liked it at the time so I considered this finished. Looking at it now, it looks okay? I liked the variety of greens in the background. The photos below were paintings during different months of 2022 but only managed to scan around January 2023:

Above: a compilation of paintings in my Berkeley watercolor pad. I considered this pad as my “play” watercolor pad where I wouldn’t feel guilty painting freely. I really liked the middle rose as its really loose compared to my usual ones. I’m not really sure with the lotus, I think if this had a dark background the “white” would pop more. Below: I remember painting this at Starbucks Banawe. I was supposed to help Hannah with a mural painting for her alma mater, but it was too hot so we went to Starbucks instead.

It feels weird to be blogging again when most people are vlogging. But this site is mainly for me to record my events so its okay. xx number of posts to go!