Ooh la la ^^, busy busy again :)

Woah long time no post but again, I've been so busy that I almost forgot about this blog. I just finished my finals last week and already am working seasonal at a bookstore company full-time. The job is pretty demanding and I found myself so overwhelming and frustrating but I'm trying my best to finish off my work at the end of the day but I still have to rely on others to get me through... Oh well but I will elaborate later on what I'm up to at another time.

I also am keeping myself busy making hand-made gifts for friends... Too bad I can't find much time to do these like I did last year. However, I am coming up with some images for a simple calendar/scheduler :D. I'm really really proud of them ^^. Here's a few thumbnails of what I've been working on, I have more but these are just samples until I print them off and bind them together.

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Walking in the winter wonderland :)

I felt very comfortable drawing this one. Possibly because I'm a very detailed drawer who is not used to express my ideas so openly, and the new drawing allows me to be just myself drawing the way I want to. The last one was more of a drawing to 'please' my professor. As much as I hate to admit it, the previous drawing failed short, and all the marks I made weren't genuine. To me, it's so important to be genuine in everything that I do... if I don't, I feel quite a big discomfort. I love textures and patterns and chaos... and this time, I did the same thing but in a much more order manner... and it pleases me so :). The whole drawing is just that: lines, and lots of repeating patterns. It's therapeutic to do that. I got in a trance working on this drawing 4 hrs straight this morning, and didn't feel tired at all! I guess the environment helped too. I was working in a quiet room with the snow drifting outside listening to thunderstorm sound on my Ipod (repeatedly, I only have this one track XD, it relaxes and soothes me so well, plus, it helps me so much to concentrate).

Some close-ups (click for bigger view):

Anyhoo, I'll go back to study now. Ja!

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Hello December!!!

Woah, truly I only had one blog post for November? What had I done all last month?
Well, the truth is that really I had been lacking quite a bit as of late, more on the matter of keeping track of this blog. Plus, there was just so much going on last month, with the holiday and parties and such, lol.

I was only able to complete one more drawing for Printmaking. This drawing was done on a much bigger stone (~ 24x30 in) and it took a while to get my ideas settled. Though I'm not sure how much I like this one, it seems like just a poor imitation of my previous one... We will see... I just lost my enjoyment half way through drawing this one, unlike the last one.

Progress shots again:

And this is my wood sculpture for the second project. I had just completed the third sculpture like two weeks ago, which was a metal project but I was just too lazy to take picture of it. And yes, I know the background behind this sculpture is totally distracting, but again, laziness got in the way XD. I'll see if I could have better pictures taken for my metal sculpture.

Another close friend of mine had her birthday just last week and I thought making an amigurumi would be an ideal gift for her. And guess what, she really liked it, which made it all worthy. I'm getting better at crocheting these little animals as well. I guess the longer you're doing them, the better you will be.

Okay, it could be because I haven't been practicing writing at all for a whole month, but today I feel like every sentence I made sound half-assed. Seriously! I'm not in the mood to talk anyways, so yea... at least, I put some works up finally -__-, I'm happy :).

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Let's talk... Clay!

Uhm, something has gotten into me, guess it was this urge to create these cute characters. I happen to have these Sculpey clays ready since last winter but never once touched them yet. So last night in between study sessions I decided to try doing something out of them, and the results can be viewed above, lol XD.

Some close-up shots:

That bear was a pain to make, but it was worth it :).

My mom is a fan of the male daikon figurine, haha XD. She said he looks like my 9th uncle, uhm yea...

As for me, I love the cucumber dude, hehe...

Ahhh, No-Face!!! I'm really in love with that character after watching Spirited Away.

While I was there, I made a new charm for my phone as well, a cookie and candy jar :).

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Lithography nightmare -__-;;

... as in how time consuming it could be.

I finally got my 2 drawings for Printmaking printed. And yesterday has got to be one of the most exhausting school days for me ever for I spent freakin' 19 hours in school, working nonstop. Guess how many hours were spent on printing these babies? 13 hours all together :D (though I was printing with another friend, so we did together 20+ prints, and not 10, so that's why it took so long). Uh-huh... talk about the aftermath of procrastination, lol XD. Though to be honest, I didn't procrastinate all that much for Printmaking which is a class I love... but more like lithography is just so time-consuming. I'm glad my instructor really likes the prints, and he proposed that I continue on with lithography in which he thinks I have the potential to go farther, and have mezzotint as a side project. However, I'm just so grateful I got these done. The feeling of accomplishing and completing something is one of the most rewarding feelings ever. I came home at 3:30 am this morning in the cold rain after standing and working for freaking 18 hours straight and my feet just wanted to collapse but I felt totally peaceful. It was just wonderful, wonderful I tell yah.

I call this piece Flow. This is the final print, but I'm not happy with how it turned out... too dark and lots of details were lost T_T.

Now this is the drawing on the stone... See, this is how I want my prints to look like, but my lack of experience really ruined it.

Progress shots.

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A quiet chaos

Got one of my drawings for printmaking done today... It was fun, but time consuming like always. What I'm afraid of is how to get it printed as best as possible. Hm... Here's also the process of the drawing, lol. I was bored as you can see :).

One more to go :D!!! And the stone for this next drawing is huge, hahaha... exciting ^o^v...not hahaha. I have an idea, but it's still so fuzzy that's why this time it's gonna be a challenge filling up all the big space. It's not like I have to work at it in such a controlled manner like how I did for the above drawing... but still, there's expressive line work and there's sloppy line works, certainly it's the latter I tend to fall into when I go loose.

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Stress reliever

A place where I belong...

Bigger view

I learned how to make patterns as above in Illustrator and tried it right away and came up with this little digital drawing ^^. To view a larger version, just click on the text below. I'm sorry for the ugly watermark, but we are living in a time where stealing virtually has gotten so much easier, and even though this drawing is not a pretty one by any mean, I still want to protect what little I have, so yea.

My mind is so troubled, and doing this drawing took away the stress until I could think straight again. I'm about to make some important decision, and I don't want to be rash or immature in this matter *sighs*...

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Say hello to Emolie!!!

Weird name, I know... :D

That sculpture was a real bitch >___<, a true and sound pain in the ass. Sorry for the foul language, but that one gave me a lot of frustration and took so much of my time. When I first started making it, I guess I wasn't thinking 'sculpture' enough and that must be why I put myself into so many troubles. If I have gone the usual route of making the entire thing out of foam board, that would have made my life so much...easier, you know. But here I have head, arms, and legs all done separately out of foam board, and chicken wire for the middle section, and strings to attach them together, and little eye hooks all around for securing purpose, and plaster and paints and just a whole bunch of stuff. However, I wanted to make this one for myself, so despite all, I must make it the way I wanted it to be... and the final result came really close. So the bottom line is, I'm happy with it, even when I was so frustrated with assembling it :D. The critique is today, and I kind of anticipated that my instructor won't like it as much as I do, because after all, it looks less like a formal sculpture piece, but more like a big vinyl toy... (that was what I was aiming for though, lol, so yay, success!).

The topic is multiples, so I went the literal way: multiple expressions; and if you looked closely you will see there is a little 'ginger-man' like figurine on the inside of the chicken wire, so in another sense, this is about the physical self on the outside, and the ego inside... If that's just too much random ideas together, I might succeed at having 'multiple ideas' for this project, haha XD.

\

Some other views of the sculpture without the head. I loooooove putting on the texture, it was soo much fun ^^!! The fun thing with this one is that it's totally customizable. The head can be taken off and changed to whatever expression you like. It can be put in a way that it looks like the head is looking up, or straightforward, or down, hihi :). And if you walk around it, you see the changes on the face. I know this is not the most original idea ever, but I had a lot of fun making it so it's all good. I didn't expect it to be a masterpiece, but just something I can be proud of for having it in my room, so yeah, I'm happy with it.

Two other expressions :D. My favorite is the angry one, and least favorite is the happy. For some reason, I think the happy face looks retarded; it looks more like a perverted face to me, lol.

That's all folks. I'm so busy with school now that it's a real miracle I can still write blog XD. I miss this blog a lot though. Wait until I'm done with my two prints for printmaking -_____-; Man, it means I will be working my ass off for this whole week cranking out prints of the highest quality for my talented instructor. His expectations are high I tell you. After all, he's a great and very opinionated printmaker so he won't allow for sloppy stuff. He had made people cry in the past so I'm all prepared for the worst, lol. And the project I'm working in Graphic Design really makes me want to cry here as well. It's hard, it's dry, it's just so...directionless and I have totally no idea what to do T^T. But yea, it's that usual stuff graphic designers are suppose to do: discussing with clients, brainstorming, putting together designer briefs, designing and re-designing and some more re-designing, making sure the designs are innovative and awesome, having more meetings, more presentations, it goes on and on and on and on...... you know the drill. Man, I just have to get that out of my system.

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It's time to part...

Created this two-page comics (sort-of) for Illustration class... I wish I had more time to work on it. Doing comics took longer than I thought, or perhaps I'm just a slow-worker. This one took me approximately 7 hrs to complete, including sketching and panel-planning time in my sketch book. I hesitated a lot during the first 3 panels, but after I finished the first page, the following page was done pretty quickly.

Uhm, lol, the title of this post can be quite misleading... I was preferring to the actual story of the comic, not like I'll be abandoning this blog or anything ^^. I've been having a tough time to go through recently (duh, as if it's surprising XD, I say that in almost every blog post, lol). But no one cares if I keep on rambling about my life so I'll just keep it at that for now.

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Fallen Angel...

The picture above is the image I did on a stone (it is a huge stone, but has a perfect surface to draw on), supposedly a lithograph ^^!! Printmaking is so much fun. I am lucky this semester to be in a small class, totals of only 5 people including myself. Therefore, the instructor (a great instructor and artist, btw :P) gives us all his time and is very patient in making us understand all the processes involved with lithography. My love for Printmaking increases each passing days :). If I discovered this sooner, who knows, I might change my major to become a printmaker myself. The program for Printmaking is really good at my university, as opposed to Graphic Design. Anyways, I'm not going to go there, hihi :). I can't wait to see these going to prints.

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My prayer

Once upon a time, I prayed to grow up fast.
Now that I'm all grown up, I wished that time would turn back.
But...
-Time- waits for no one.
So I learned to stop wishing, and start living.

My design skills are not improving at all for the past 3 years; on the other hand, they seem to be deteriorating fast!!! It's so alarming >___<; I spent a freaking 1 hour and a half to do an in-class assignment again for my Illustration class today, and the result was horrific -_-; Hic T^T, it's time to hit up on the TutsNetwork Photoshop site. Btw, the graphic above was not done for that class... the one I just did was worse than that.

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Fade away...

I sketched up and painted this quickly during my Seminars Illustration class so it's quite sloppy. It looks so different on my monitor comparing to the one in my computer lab, oh well. This is not really a good piece, but for some reason, I could totally see it as a cover for my diary, lol XD... with some Korean words to spice things up, hahah.

*yawn*... gosh I'm so sleepy but I still need to work on my sculpture -___-; been in school for more than 12 hours today, and got through three tedious studio classes. Good thing I did not sign up for Art History, otherwise, I would have gone insane with all the amount of work for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Anyways, short post. I'm going to sleep now because I have to wake up in 4 more hours -___-; Ja!

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________ Flight C ________

Series: Flight C
Date: July 8, 2009
Location: Lake 70th

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First few wedding album design spreads...

I'm currently designing a wedding album for a friend, and this is my first time so there's a lot of difficulty. These are pretty much just thumbnails for me to see the work without having to open up Photoshop and waiting for the files to load for like 2,3 minutes or more -___- (yea, the pdf file sizes are pretty big, ~600MB for each). There's still a lot to go, but I'm dreading the traditional nha` trai going to nha` ga'i ones. Gotta work hard!!! Ganbatte me, hihih ^^;

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||_____ Les Amis _____||

The last two/three days I crocheted like crazy, in hope to complete these as gifts before I pack for my trip to Missouri this coming Thursday. So far I'm pretty much done, save for one more, but that one will not be given until 2, 3 months later so I'm not so worried yet ^^.
I'm so glad that the more I crochet, the better I am at it, and now I understood which side I should use as the outside and what should be the inside. I thought they were all the same, but they obviously weren't, hehe. One thing I don't really like about this is that it is just sooo time-consuming, lol. One project could take up the 4, 5 hours or more depending on the difficulty level. Or perhaps I'm just slow, hihi.

A few pictures to showcase what I had done so far ^^:

This is a picture to show all the parts of this Woofie before I assembled them. Hopefully you can read that it says -My crochet- *winks*.

A complete family with Woofie as the Dad, Moi as the Mom, and their veggie kids Ai and Pe-ar.

So this is the black version of the Monokuro Boo white piggie I crocheted before. They usually come as a pair, but I was just too busy and lazy to make them all at once.

... and Woofie, oh how I love him, he's chooo kawaii
"Woof woof!!!"

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A blessing arrived...

I crocheted another coffee cup again. This time it's for a certain kid, lol :P. It reminded me of this morning when I waited for my mom at the airport, I drank quite a lot of coffee since I had to stay up late last night helping her pack some last items and dyed her hair and beautify her, hehe...


Below is a random poster I made... I even had a little of the story written but got lazy a little after that so I quitted. Writing fanfiction is not an easy task, plus I'm just not that into writing. Designing/drawing is fun enough for me ^^v.

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