kiddie art for my nihongo class

"All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. 
It is the very nature of fantasy and fable." 
--Walt Disney

on the 16th day of january 2014, our sensei introduced us to some imaginary animals (そうぞうのどうぶつ; souzou no doubutsu) in japanese stories. since mermaids and something similar to the abominable snowman were included in the そうぞうのどうぶつ sheets that she distributed, i decided to write about the manananggal when she asked us students to draw and write about imaginary animals in our respective countries.

this is the work that i shared to my sensei and classmates after about fifteen minutes of thinking, drawing, and writing...

impromptu drawing-and-writing activity output
this photo shows that i can still draw and write like a kid. :) hahahaha.

this is the rough translation of what i wrote:
"this imaginary creature lives in the village. in the morning, it's human.
in the evening, its body is cut in half.
the upper part of the body has wings. the wings are large and black.
this imaginary creature is called aswang. another name for it is manananggal.
this imaginary creature is bad. the eyes, teeth, and face are very scary.
the aswang likes various types of people. and, (the aswang) eats them."

i wanted to mention blood and exposed veins and internal organs but, until now, i don't know yet the nihongo words for those. i wanted to write more but... see, this is what happens if one's nihongo skills are very limited: stuck with simple statements and simple words and forced to an abrupt ending.

p.s. my drawing shows an aerodynamically-challenged manananggal. ;-)

notebook of poems

i couldn't seem to finish the handprint i was trying to paint. my motivation to do so went on vacation, i think.

i'd like to blame those two eeny weeny whitish worms i saw crawling on my ultra-sweet slice of mango for that bit. who knows, maybe i accidentally ingested one of their equally eeny weeny siblings? (yuckkkk. i feel somewhat sick at the mere thought.) i should have been suspicious when i realized that mango tasted way soooo sweet. those worms, although they seemed harmless, must have scared my motivation away.

hence, this. with motivation to finish 'the handprint' out of the window, i decided to work on something else -- something not completely different, but different enough. i did away with the chinese brush and the watercolor tubes and the sketch pad. instead, i gripped some colored pencils and pulled from the shelf my notebook of poems. now, this.


from time to time, i encounter beautiful words and enchanting lines; and i have this habit of compiling them. i write them down in a notebook, the notebook which i call my notebook of poems.

using the colored pencils, i added something to the notebook -- i decorated the pages with my doodles. see?


someday, i'll finish that handprint. for now, i'm happy to have doodled on the pages of my notebook.


note: click on the images to see the hi-res versions. you may also click here to view other pages of the notebook.

first love

" When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, 'You mean they forget?' "
--Howard Ikemoto

about the images: each of the ten pieces was done on 9” x 12” paper. half of them were my output while i was still staying away from home, the other half were done after i got back.

let's paint!

It has been said that art is a tryst,
for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet.
--Kojiro Tomita

as i've mentioned before, one of the things that i did on my last day as a 22-year old was to go painting in starmall...

i successfully transformed a pre-designed plaster of paris from its boring white look to definitely something else.

first, my block looked so devoid of colors...


then, colors crept in...


finally, the flowers bloomed!


actually, the people manning the "let's paint" booth didn't think black would make a nice background for the flowers, but i didn't mind them. i knew and had faith in what i wanted so i followed my own heart. in the end, they liked what i did. i liked it, too. i still do.

thanks to my friend, yoni, for taking me there. her own block underwent a similar transformation.

taken, gone

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping
for that which has been your delight.
--Kahlil Gibran

remember this?
somebody ripped it off my wall. i don't know where the big piece is now and i don't wanna go looking for it -- i'm trying to avoid more pain. most likely it's in one of those big trash bins, crumpled and torn. i imagine it must have been carelessly thrown away... in the same manner that it was torn off as indicated by the bits of yellow crepe paper left on the wall.

the one who ripped it off didn't know how much i valued what was taken. if only the person had known, if only i had known beforehand my work's fate... perhaps it could have been saved.

it's beyond saving now.

when i realized it was gone and saw the torn yellow bits stuck on the wall, anger welled up in me and i thought i was going to explode. i did not. the more i looked at the yellow bits, the more i was made aware of my loss and i just wanted to cry. gawa ko 'yon eh, pinaghirapan ko 'yon... tapos... argh! i didn't cry -- i stopped myself from doing so because i didn't want my roommate to see me crying. heck, i can talk about crying but i don't want anyone to see me crying. as i've said, i didn't cry... 'though i wanted to.

i didn't cry but i felt defeated. i only had 1.5 hours of sleep in the last 36 hours and i got back to my room tired... and what was there waiting to greet me?

not warmth but the empty wall.

the absence of a symbol of comfort and something personally valuable and irreplaceable.

another embrace from the feeling of loss.

the latest addition to my piled up frustrations and blues.

-¤-finding meme oh!

i got tagged by the trickmeister and in the spirit of friendship and blog-citizenship, i'm gonna do this 23/5 thing...

So, here are the instructions:
1. Go to your archives.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Post the fifth sentence or closest to it.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same thing.

my 23rd post is time travel -- posted last year on the 27th day of august. the 5th sentence of the said post is '5 years ago, i was a college freshie and was finally free from wearing uniforms!' ngeork. if you're game for this, you're IT!

ten thousand strokes

Life beats down and crushes the soul
and art reminds you that you have one.
--Stella Adler

my sketch pad has been with me for over a year but except for a single, faint pencil mark, it's empty. i wasn't able to put anything substantial in it until a little more than an hour ago...

yehooooo! my sketch pad is empty no more!!!


the lone sketch pad entry
it took me about an hour to finish this 9" by 12" piece, which is loosely based on a picture i took while a dewar was being filled with liquid nitrogen. the "clouds" represent what's readily seen when liquid nitrogen gets in contact with the surrounding air and evaporates -- a creeping fog.

i'm not quite satisfied with how the trunk turned out because it has too much black in the wrong places but i like the way i managed the greens. using oil pastels, i experimented with short, heavy strokes to represent the leaves -- the process was quick and the over-all effect was better than i expected.

the picture of the artwork is a li'l bit blurred... resolution was compromised by the cellphone cam. argh.

cards and colors

The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away.
It is always on his doorstep.
--Paul Strand

last week, i had to make these two cards for my labmate who celebrated her birthday last august 23. although i was asked to do the task on ultra-short notice, i gamely grabbed an ordinary short folder from the nearby store, paid for it and brought it to the lab where i cut it into two. then, 22-year old me went back to who i was before i became a full-fledged nerd (ha ha!) -- the "old school" artist. voila!
in the process, i found out that my 64-color Crayola crayon set (which was bought many months ago but was never opened until last week) has purple mountain's majesty.

has whaaaaat?

last week's "my discovery of the week": purple mountain's majesty. it's a name of a color and it's the most outlandish crayon color name i've ever heard and known! tsk. there's mauvelous, tumbleweed, wisteria, timberwolf, bittersweet, periwinkle, orchid, cornflower, dandelion, tickle me pink, asparagus, granny smith apple, macaroni and cheese, cerulean, robin's egg blue, golden rod, and chestnut, but, for me, nothing beats the name purple mountain's majesty. what can i say? it's... outlandish!!!

purple mountain's majesty. sounds like kalokohan, right? abaniko ought to add it to his list of weird-sounding color names.

watermelon art

i like 'em juicy, i like 'em sweet, and i like 'em like these...





click here for more!!!

ain't this cool?

take a good look at what we have here. this is what we call an ambigram and i made it myself.



an ambigram is a word or group of words which can be read equally well from at least two different points of view. this particular ambigram can be read the same way when it's rotated by 180 degrees. if you don't believe me, go behind your monitor and look at the image from there (so you'll really see what i mean).

okay, okay...i'll make things easier for you. this is the same image as above, but this time it's rotated by 180 degrees:



nice, huh? anyway, i'm not yet satisfied with this one. i still need to improve the symmetry, and i'm planning to try a different font style.

in the meantime, if my ambigram really got your attention, i suggest you check out this site: http://ambigram.matic.com/ambigram.htm, an online ambigram generator. once you get there, try submitting your name and see how it looks like when written the "ambigram way". have fun!