The last week of July

Started working on a draft for my first ever commissioned artwork!
Discovered these beautiful words of love by Beethoven.
Working on those loops...
...a favorite from Tyler Knott Gregson's Chasers of the Light
One of my favorite songs by Ellie Goulding
Felt like doing patterns and found a pillowcase for inspiration
Had a quick shoot at the Absin house in Dumaguete; truly an eye-candy for anyone who visits!
Just another day at the office. Happy to bump into online friend, Jem at one of the weddings!

Inspired by Pluto Flyby

I'd finally done it. Planets! I mean moons. I would've painted a galaxy but that's too difficult to do. So I started with simpler ones. I initially wanted to do all planets in the solar system but Earth and Jupiter would pose as challenge so I did Jupiter's four largest moons instead. Among all 67 moons, they are the most interesting, appearance-wise. I also did Pluto, because yes, it's an amazing thing to see something that is so unbelievably far from Earth in that kind of clarity. NASA and New Horizons, thank you.

If you don't already know, I have this fascination with the universe and everything about it; planets, stars, moons, asteroids, galaxies. I guess it's mainly because we always see wonderfully rendered photos with the spectrum of colors and shapes, even though they're not the actual colors. It's quite unbelievable to see them when we're just these tiny tiny beings in space and time. It's very uniquely interesting to know how so many worlds could exist out there and we can't even comprehend the vastness of the space surrounding us. Whew! Just thinking about it makes me speechless.

By the way, this was also the first time I've used salt. It proves to create some white specks on the artwork. I don't know though if I was able to use it properly to generate the right effect. These four moons look simple but I think my desk never saw a mess like this before. I'm very new to watercolor so I only did and used what I could to get close to the final look.

Painting Feathers

I have recently tried to do better in drawing just so I could have a more detailed guide when I color them. But I have long accepted, I'm really not so enthusiastic about it. I only finish drawings because I know I can paint over them afterwards.

Most of the time, I don't have a specific plan on how to design the elements of my artwork. In this case, the feathers. I just know the feathers have to be colorful and should vary in design. I usually decide on colors first and then add patterns afterwards. I don't try very risky moves because it might ruin the whole thing.

Post-vacation Painting

I was in fact, very excited to try a newly-acquired brush, super-fine tip 20/0 by Ashley and the wonderfully sleek Moleskine watercolor notebook. The texture and pages are simply wonderful in feel and color and the page thickness is just enough so that I could still have another artwork at the back of each one.


Seen at Sabah, Malaysia

My motivation to visit Sabah was my interest in hiking Mount Kinabalu. That plan was cancelled due to the recent earthquake that deemed the trail dangerous for people to pass. It had been planned a year ahead together with the wedding of a friend of mine who's hometown is Kota Kinabalu.

Despite hiking plans getting cancelled, I pushed through with the trip for the sake of seeing a new place and to experience a traditional Chinese wedding for the first time. I stayed in Kota Kinabalu (KK) for four and a half days. The best thing I saw there was of course the big and beautiful Mount Kinabalu. I may have looked at it for quite a long time and had taken longer time to take pictures of it. It would have been quite amazing to see the world standing at its peak. I'm sure to go back and do that in the future, when it is safe to hike back up.

While we were there, we went to the islands Sapi and Manukan, visited the picturesque Desa Farm, stayed at a nice pool-side room at a resort for a night and made a quick stop at Gaya street in the city to get some souvenirs.

A summary photo below including a link to the full post if you want to see all photos from the trip.


Desa Dairy Farm || Sapi Island || Manukan Island || Langkah Syabas || Kota Kinabalu