PGW Art Tambay

January 1, 2023October 1, 2023

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.

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!

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

December 28, 2022January 2, 20231 Comment

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. ♥

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!

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! ♥ 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!

The last art tambay before lockdown

August 10, 2020September 16, 20201 Comment

The week after Stickercon, news about the coronavirus appearing in Metro Manila made everyone anxious. On Monday, our office announced that they are looking into the situation and are already planning on moving everyone out soon. The next day, the number of covid cases doubled. Our office then announced that whoever can book a grab at the end of our shift can do so. Wednesday, half of our office were already working from home. I was also forced to move out that day since nobody was coming to work anymore tomorrow. Thus, in a week our office made it possible for everyone to move out and work from home. For myself, I had permission to work at the office of fiance’s family’s resto business.

I thought that was the end of my problem. We even had an art tambay that weekend too lol. Here are the last few days of the outside world and meeting with friends:

Who knew that this would be our last art tambay for now?

Some peony paintings.

And then peony buds.

The week after, the government announced that everything will be on lockdown HAHA. So we had to move my work pc again back to my fiance’s house. We had to re-arrange the room to fit everything in. It was stressful. But it was okay, for now.

Noticed that the chronological order of the blog posts will jumble around now. Oops. Soon to come (hopefully) will be the Komiket and Stickercon posts.

Make Space Today – Art Tambay

July 26, 2020August 16, 2020Leave a comment

When was this event? I think it was in October last year? Anyway, Make Space Today held an “art tambay” event and invited other artists to encourage people to go and meet. The event started at around 4pm but I was already there around morning time lol since I needed to create the construction drawings for a residential project.

They rearranged the tables into one long table

I invited Hannah, Aira, and my cousin Sydney to the event. They also went earlier than 4pm so we could utilize the time spent in MST.

The table ♥

Left: My incomplete piece | Right: Sydney’s painting

TBH I didn’t concentrated much in painting. I was everywhere catching up / chikahan with my friends / and meeting new people lol. It was a fun event tho! The experienced artists were all game for the demos & question and answer portions. I hope the beginners learned a lot. ♥

Make Space Today – other visits

May 25, 2020September 23, 2021Leave a comment

On my first post, I wrote about my first visit at Make Space Today. In this post, I’ll write about my other visits. Particularly about my best friend’s birthday celebrations.

My finished works during one visit.

I don’t remember the chronological order of these photos. But I remember that on one visit I was with Shine (I helped her with her product shoots), another with Hannah(she did origami all day), another with Monique (I brought my color pencils), and the end of July was with Ivy and Hannah for their birthday celebrations.

Started and finished this piece in MST!

This was a re-paint of one of my older paintings.

Hannah’s collection of origami.

I really love my tilapia pouch lol.

My prismacolor pencils. ♥

On Ivy and Hannah’s birthday celebration, we first had a video call with Ruth (who’s currently working in Japan) touring the space together. A while after that, we went to Malingap Central since an eco-friendly event was happening. We went around the stalls and then had our lunch.

Ivy’s corner was full of green design and eco-friendly books.

Hannah brought her laptop and tablet so she could draw digitally.

I did these paintings.

Playing with the emboss machine. This was the first time that I took interest in MST’s tools lol.

The gurlz. ♥

Stickercon Pre-event Art Tambay

April 10, 2019August 7, 2020Leave a comment

Same with last year, the Stickercon team had a pre-event meeting for exhibitors to discuss the ingress/egress, additional reminders and rules, and to give out our Artist pins. I was the only representative again for our group. Thankfully, Clair and I were going to have our art tambay after the meeting. Some of our other friends were also planning this, so we all went to Shang after.

January Makers PH represent ♥

What’s interesting about this art tambay is that I finally brought my markers with me. I let Clair try out my favorite colors. After learning that you can’t erase your mistakes in markers, she decided to not pursue it anymore HAHA.

Warm up!

And then I remember why I hated markers again. I felt limited to the colors. Even though I already brought a bunch, it felt like I couldn’t get all the colors that I want. Plus the prices of these went wayyyy up. It used to be 88~100php each. (It still is though in P. Noval, but its not accessible to me). And the ink! A marker would only take months before it runs out of ink. When we compared it to watercolor though, well, we immediately switched mediums.

I finished the artwork with my Prismacolor pencils – another art material that I seldom use. My complaint with this one is that my hands are already sore and I’m still not done coloring! HAHA. With watercolor, its only just one stroke. Oh well. It’s still useful for the finishing touches?

It’s already the second week of April and I’m still not done with Stickercon blog posts! Stay tuned for the rest of the series HAHA.

Recent SW Art Tambays

March 26, 2019August 7, 2020Leave a comment

Catching up on blog posts. In our office, we attempt to have weekly art tambays every Tuesday. Unfortunately, only two pushed through (and two where my team were the only attendees lol).

January art tambay participants: Louie, Anjo, Me, Me-al.

I was in the middle of preparing for StickerCon during this time. The matcha parfait was the one I had in mind for watercolor practice. I did the large peony while waiting for the parfait to dry. It’s still not done, though.

February art tambay.

The second art tambay was in February. This time we invited more people and finally, somebody remembered to bring their own art materials HAHA.

Paint by Numbers by a lot of people, Bird artwork collaboration by 3 people, my sakura flower, Louie’s digital artwork, a girl painting by Von (Get well soon!)

We didn’t organize a March art tambay due to my stickercon preps. I hope we could organize an April one with more members!

Art Tambays

March 2, 2019August 7, 20201 Comment

I’m in the middle of preparing my products for Stickercon 2019, so I don’t have much time to blog recently. But I know I have a bunch of stuff to blog about still. One of those is my art tambays with my closest friends.

At our usual Banawe place with Hannah and Aira. I painted an apple blossom that day.

I also bought a bunch of post cards from Aira. So proud of this girl! ♥

Took these photos at my office LOL.

Waiting for Christmas eve at Inggo’s relative’s place. I had an impromptu art tambay with his cousin.

CBTL Art tambay with Clair, Hannah and Aira. The peony artwork is the most photogenic artwork that I made. It was used in different promotions lol.

December Art Tambay

February 9, 2019August 7, 20201 Comment

So sorry for the lack of posts here on the blog. It’s just that… I kind of lost motivation to blog weekly as I did before. I don’t have a lot of events that I could blog here anyway. But I will still blog so I could document those happy events that I had with friends and family. Something that I could look back to.

Another one of my backlogs is an art tambay with my cousin during her Christmas break. It’s been a while since we got together at their place due to her being busy with her thesis.

It was also a long time since I last painted that day due to being busy with work and the holidays. I was glad that I got to paint again. I started creating new pieces for my participation at StickerCon MNL 2019. Yes, we got in again. ♥

The warmup painting is my blueberry cobbler artwork. This is the perfect warmup since it was all loose strokes.

Thinking of new subjects to paint for Stickercon was a no brainer. I wanted to continue creating food illustrations.

I also brought this for the art tambay so I could finish it. Just needed a few touch ups.

And then back to my loose crazy phase. I wanted to paint a friend’s photo during her hike at Yosemite. Just did light pencil sketches and went crazy dumping color after color.

Not bad for a first time, I think?

Looking at my current artwork… I think a change of subjects is a good thing? So I won’t be labeled as the girl who only paints flowers lol. I hope to do more food illustrations and landscapes this year. Let’s look forward to that! ♥

SW Art Tambays

January 10, 2019August 7, 2020Leave a comment

It’s a new year, but I still have a bunch of things I need to blog about. I think January for this blog is for backlogs from last year HAHA. One of the those events is an attempt to have more art tambays after office hours.

I was supposed to do my artwork for the Cancervants event. Unfortunately, the papers that I brought that day did not pass the size requirements of the event. Oh well! There’s always a next time.

Since I had extra paper, I gave some to my officemates. They finally tried watercolor! ♥ They said it was a fun and hard medium since they’re used to CTRL+Z or Undo. But it was a nice experience.

I hope to do more art tambays this year! Let’s hope. ♥