rising suns

Mighty scorching hot here in the tropics. Even the slightest movements are tiring and afternoons get very conducive to napping.

I. SWAPS

I have been meaning to show you a couple of ace drawings I have acquired from swaps with friends.

This one is from Zeus Bascon!
Visit his blog at zeusbascon.blogspot.com

In exchange for:

my Wedding at Arnolfini fake. From time to time I do quick drawings or sketches of artworks by my favorite masters as drawing exercise, giving myself usually 5-15 mins to try to get the most details into my version. Zeus says the girl in the drawing he gave me is the couple in my drawing’s offspring hehe.

and second is by Aldy Aguirre.
Visit his site at 30alon.carbonmade.com
He says that’s me on the bougainvilla fish! I think the theme we had was flowers we remember from our childhood. I think!

In exchange for…

family gumamela silhouette portraits!
Patterned after my Rizal works.

It’s fun making things for friends. Drawings make for great presents! Email me, maybe WE can swap!

II. Ang INK Corner

Here’s something I did for today’s (Apr 21!) Ang INK Corner in the Students section of Manila Bulletin :) Every Saturday issue features a different Ang INK member.Brought about by many INKies having their birthdays in April! Happy birthday sa inyo haha.

III. Looking For Juan shirt, April

So I joined Looking For Juan’s shirt print contest for the theme “Kalayaan” (Freedom, in Filipino), and got into the finalists roster. You can see all the entries HERE on their Facebook page. If you’ll have me, mine’s #4 and you can Like to vote :) If not, my friend Aldy has #s 1 and 2 for you to Like instead! The best part is you can vote for both of us! Hah. If you don’t like our entries ( :( haha), there are 6 other participants you can choose to vote for! Yey.

I’m not sure if I can post my work here separately while the contest is going on, but it’s about curiosity as a privilege of freedom / being free. :)

IV. Meanwhile

Other things.

wallpapered offices

more living rooms

waking up too early

book pages on dining tables
(Particulary the ones in The Vinci, this good new find of a restaurant on Katipunan, on the 2nd floor of the building right behind Shakey’s. Try their BBQ Pork!)

crispy rice bars, best in packaging design

rootbeer

patterns

Yes, that’s about it. It’s almost 11 in the evening but the heat is just…everywhere. Even the water that comes out of the bathroom isn’t cold! Tropics, why? But work beckons anyway regardless of climate change etc, so yes! Until next time.

booked

Good morning! Dropping by to introduce you to a couple of first quarter babies.

I had the honor of having some illustrations for 100 Questions Filipino Kids Ask, Vol 2! Very interesting book to make for a first book project.

And it really is a book for the constantly curious, even if you’re not technically a kid anymore. I myself don’t know a lot of the answers to the questions featured in the book.

Like “How do people choose where to put cemeteries?” !

One of the two spreads I did. Cement!

They be watching you sir.
You may also remember him from here.

The main challenge for this spread was to make cement and its parts cute. So there. Also, I enjoyed putting the lime in.

And roads showing you their innards.

And the other spread.

She will tell you secrets about the death march if you get the book~

The rest of the gang.
Thank you Adarna House!

now available in major bookstores, and in the Adarna House book shop

Second baby! Is One Crazy Summmer by Ines Bautista Yao, under Summit Books.
It’s chick lit about a girl, two guys, lots of pastries, and well, one crazy summer.
Work done under Studio Dialogo :)

There are recipes inside for the pastries mentioned in the story!
One Crazy Summer is also available in major book stores already.

There you go! I have one more but I haven’t transferred the images from my broken computer to the one I’m using now. It’s this year’s WWF-BDO workbook, given out to grade 2 students in WWF’s project communities! It has whalesharks and deer. Will show you those next time.

Here’s to more book projects hehe. 2012, high five.

P.S.
I’m on Flickr now, too! Check the link on the sidebar. :)

the blizzard and the breeze

Well hello you all!

Also, hello Easter! I’m in the middle of a 5-day holiday weekend and I’ve been keeping myself busy. My body clock keeps waking me up at my usual 7am so I haven’t slept in since the start of the holidays.

The thing, though, is that my computer died on me a couple of weeks ago (major logic board problems) and I’m waiting for Apple updates before I get a new one. The first week without it got me into this shaky state of trying to recover from suddenly being without a computer I can work on! I’m ok now, thanks to my aunt who lent me a temporary computer, and to my mother who got me this iPhone which has been saving my life ever since my computer died.

One of the things I have been up to is filling up sketchbooks.

My 2012 Sketchbook Project (limited edition), which I’ll be sending back to Arthouse Co-op soon. Here are some pages. The theme I’m working around is The Secret and How to Tell It.

And more from the desk.

I recently cracked open a new sketchbook. It’s an A5 Grandluxe Monologue, as recommended by Yas. The paper is fairly good as it can hold paint and color without warping, and you can draw on one side of a page without any of the paint or ink showing through the other side. Also, it’s a steal at around 200+php, and comes in A4, A5, and A6 sizes. Got mine at Fully Booked. I have no regrets!

fake Vermeer addition to my personal fake artwork collection
I really like how this one turned out haha.

ALSO! Aside from the Mockingjay audiobook I’ve been listening to at work, I got myself a copy of Panitikang Pambata sa Filipinas by Virgilio Almario last night, having heard a lot of interesting things about it from Liza. I’m about 5 pages into the book and it’s a good read so far and I’m really curious as to how the rest of it pans out. On a different note, it’s really refreshing to read something in pure and formal Filipino again.

Consider this part 1 of ‘How Fran Deals’ series of entries. The most important thing I have learned so far is how much time I really have on my hands without the internet. I get to do a lot of other things and talk to more people in real life (haha) and sleep (at least 8 hours everyday on weekdays). Of course, there’s the part where I can’t really do any rush freelance work at the moment, but all the this “free” time I can spend not sitting in front of the computer is doing me good. This is me trying to see the forest, not the tree!

In other, other news:

trips to the bookstore without buying anything. Bookstores destress me.

trips to the art supplies store
I am grateful for the Deovir people’s accomodation, but sometimes it’s really therapeautic to just stare at rows upon rows of brushes and generally colorful things, and not really buy anything.
But yes.

annoying my sleepy sister

musical instruments and fried chicken on Black Saturday

remnants of bipolar weather

Moonleaf. This one with Kim and Billie.
My all-time favorite is their Honey Milk Tea, but the other day I got Passion Fruit Green Tea and it was golden. Notice my lie of a name because they keep misspelling my real one.

And a friendly reminder. Rommel brought his copy of Steal Like An Artist (Austin Kleon) to the office last week.

According to my list, my next entry is about a couple of drawing swaps I’ve made, and some handmade gifts I’ve received. In the meantime, the house smells of puttanesca, which means it is food o’clock.

Enjoy the rest of the holidays! Wuhoo.

PBBY-Alcala 2012

The winners of the Philippine Board on Books for Young People’s Alcala Prize were announced last week! This year’s story was Russel Molina’s ‘Ano’ng Gupit Natin Ngayon?’, which is about a boy, his dad who’s a barber, and his whimsical musings on hair; the story is also this year’s PBBY Salanga prize winner. I thought I’d share the winning illustrations with you! :) (Images from the PBBY site)

Grand prize: Hubert Fucio

This is my favorite from the three pieces he made, mostly because of the sheep.
And look at that dog, sarap ng tulog o! Which makes perfect sense considering the boy’s fro.

Honorable mention: Domz Agsaway
I really like the colors on Domz’ pieces; I think they serve the story very well. I also like that he grew another head out of his hair (upper right piece), and that there is a dog with a pot on his head.

Honorable mention: Aldy Aguirre
Piece on the left is my favorite! And that sparrow with a balloon waiting in line to get a haircut.

Honorable mention: Jonathan Ranola
Punk papercut cat right there! What’s with the animals in everyone’s entries haha.

Congratulations all around! Also, a bit of trivia: they’re all members of Ang INK! :D

On this note, another bit of trivia is I gave the competition a shot myself. It’s my first time to join the PBBY Alcala prize competition, and my first time to draw for a story! So it was a challenge because I draw a lot, and I’ve been making illustrations for projects and whatnot, but I haven’t exactly drawn for a narrative before. Here are the pieces I came up with:

I haven’t looked at them in a while and now I can see all the things I still need to work on. On top of the list is that it doesn’t look as fun as how the story really is. I think I chose to draw them with warm colors because I thought the story was a bit nostalgic. Also, it feels like a girl’s book. Which is off! I mean, I put the boy in a teacup. I still have a long way to go! Haha.

With that said:
Three Things I Learned From my First Shot at PBBY

1. DON’T CRAM. Just don’t. DO. NOT. No.

2. Research. aka Franny, What is a boka-boka? It’s one kind of saranggola, but I put in all sorts of kites except that one. I’m pretty embarrassed about being careless about this one tsk tsk tsk.

3. The last thing you should get lazy about are details. Big difference between cute and cute that matters.

All-in-all, it was a fun challenge and I’m primarily happy that I even got to submit. Let’s draw again for next year, yes? : ) And are you not excited for when the book comes out?! Because I am :D I get to take home the sheep haha.

rooms

Some watercolor pieces.

Living Rooms

I made these for Art in the Park, but they’re still available now. :)

Also, this week, Give Nomama One More Chance Day happened! The first time I tried the place out was during their opening month last year, with Dialogo. I personally found their house ramen bland and didn’t enjoy very much during that first try. The other day we went there again for lunch and had a better experience with the food. I ordered the lunch set which included amuse-bouche, salad, a main dish, dessert, and a drink of either green tea or lemongrass iced tea (I had the latter).

On a different note, their food items are picturesque.

the salad. mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, tofu

amuse-bouche was a croquette

mango and miso glazed organic chicken, served with vegetables and brown rice

dessert was panna cotta with mangoes

I also had a sip of the Thai Ramen and it was pretty good. Verdict is it’s now on my Where You Can Eat on Special Days list.

Nomama by Chef Him Uy de Baron is located at G/F FSS Bldg 2, Scout Tuason cor Scout Castor St., Quezon City. Beside Zucchini’s, in front of Wheatberry.

big skies

Hello! It’s been a while, but hello again. Here have a fish drawing I made this past weekend. Click :)

Sagada is where I’ve been. It’s this gem of a place up in the mountain province here in the Philippines. If you’re here and you’re young and game and not so afraid of heights, I say you should spend some days there. I went with some friends and we spent about three days risking our lives to get to see caves, mountains, and waterfalls. We’re still alive! And Sagada was wonderful!

: )

In other news, I have to draw more. We all have to draw more! Let’s draw more.

Elias

Thursday night was dinner at the newly-opened Elias with Studio Dialogo (where I work : D). We worked on the brand materials for Elias: logo, menu, other collaterals, plus the wall art. : ) Nice warm fuzzy feelings seeing this project come to life. Kilig!

store signage