Feeling artistic...

I feel so artistic and crafty lately. Seriously, I can't comprehend what is going on within me... The more time I spend doing art, the more I feel inspired and motivated to do more. It's so true when you think that it's most difficult getting start, but once you get into the motion, it gets easier. Last Sunday, Chi, Hue and I spent the afternoon in Pioneer Park taking pictures. I was a little disappointed the weather wasn't as nice as I'd have wanted it to be, and the beautiful colors of fall had somewhat diminished, still, it was such a joyful occasion. We had a ton of fun :D, and the pictures came out nicely. There's still a lot I have to learn about the right exposure, composition, but for now, I'm begining to love photography a little bit more. At least, I feel much more freedom doing this than what I had done for my Intermediate Photography class last Spring. Anyways, here come the pictures!!! Click to view bigger versions :).

That's it for this post, and before I go, I hope your day shall be a bright and beautiful one :), so I send you: Kiki the smiley, my creation of many moons ago!! See you later ^^v.

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Autumn shower and serenity....

I love November: the vibrant colors of changing leaves, the crispy fragrant smell of damping grass lingering in the air after a fresh autumn shower, the exuberant joy of Thanksgiving together with the sweet serenity of it all... A day ago, we Lincolnites experienced such solemn weather as it rained from morning until night time. Such weather excited me surprisingly... I love rainy days, and I love Autumn, so it's no surprise I felt utter bliss when an autumn shower came along. Inspiration blossomed... and minutes later I found myself with a camera, pointing it vigorously outside into my little yard and yapping pictures after pictures. The result can be view above...

My life has been pretty peaceful recently. I seldom go out, enjoy spending time alone reading, daydreaming, and studying. It has been so long since I last do any of this... My ex told me I needed to get out more, to associate and mingle with people. Of course, I know that's true... but no doubt I still want solitude time... the feeling of me working on things that I enjoy: drawing, reading, designing, etc. is a total satisfaction. For a long time I always felt like I am different, or more like an outsider in this very fast moving world. I dreaded phone calls and conversation without a certain purpose. Small talks scare me... All these feelings made me feel as if I was abnormal, unfitted and that alone devastated me. For a while, I tried to be like my best friend, Huong, who is a total extrovert. But of course, I could never be like her... and after some pretty horrible changes, I realized I am just myself, an individual who is absolutely normal in my own state. Bit by bit I came to appreciate the person that I really am. It's amazing how a simple thought could make one's life happier. I no longer seek to be that someone else... I understand my strengths and weaknesses and am trying to balance things out in my life.

A book I'm in the middle of reading which I think is quite helpful for an introvert like myself: The Introvert Advantage: How to thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Olsen Laney.

... that and Harry Potter book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I'm nearing the end now and it's getting quite... violent :).

That's all for today. I have a lot to do tomorrow so I better get to bed early :). Ja ne!

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The wind in my hair....

Lately, I haven't been doing much artworks, but I'm beginning to sketch more now. PopArt has gotten to me a lot. Anyways, I did some character designs in Photoshop a while back and came up with these two robots. They are supposedly to be based on my ex-bf and me, I called the girl version Cookie (my nickname) and the boy Windie (a play on word of my ex's name). They took me forever to finish as I did everything from scratch, and not to say I'm pretty much REALLY bad when it comes to shading or knowing my light sources, so don't be surprised to see the weird shadings -___-, I gotta learn more about it.

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Food, PopArt, Tokyobay, yeah, I'm rambling....

A first entry always is difficult for me to compose as I am not very good at introduction. I'm pretty excited to tell what I've been up to lately through pictures so screw the pretentious introductory standard-ness many blog writers feel so obligate to begin their blogs with, I'll just go on with the meaty details now. However, my writing is getting so bad (as in horrible grammar, poor vocabularies, awkward sentences, etc.) as of late that I believe it is time for me to practice writing more. It used to be much easier for me to express myself, my emotions through writing, but now, I don't think I can say that anymore >__<; However, all this self-criticism is not important now, because this blog entry is not gonna be about how I'm gonna improve my writing skill, or how I should treat myself, blah blah... well, undoubtedly those issues will come up one way or another in the future, but as of now, they are not welcomed. So, let's start with... bento!! Bento is a Japanese term for what normally is known as packed lunchbox. Lately, bento packing has become tremendously popular in the US. I've always been very interested in bento ever since I saw beautiful beautiful pictures of well arranged foods by the Japanese, organized and packed so delicately in tiny bento boxes. But I didn't persue the subject more until I came across a livejournal community called bentolunch and that was when my interest had transformed into something more. I wanted to do bento, to get into the art of food-arranging, and to eat healthier. Since a bento box is tiny, it forces me to eat less, and to practice portion control. Below is the image of my third bento lunch, I was pretty proud of myself even though the face I was trying hard to make didn't really look like a face, but whatever, I had a lot of fun making it and that's all that matters. And I'm proud to present Kiki the clumsy and overly curious kitty you see roaming over the food below (^__<;)a

I have some more bento pics to post up later in other entries. Too bad I haven't been making much art with bento lately because I'm currently on a very strict diet, one that I signed up with SparkPeople.com (to ensure that I will keep at it and won't give up half way again, there's plenty of motivation there at that website which is just what I need to keep up with my goal of losing 16 pounds before Christmas) that generally my packed bentos just look very unappealing because my food choices are limited to mostly just Cheerios cereal for breakfast, some lean meat and rice or bread together with some fruits and veggies for lunch and dinner that I don't even feel bothered to capture them. But hey, once I lose 10 lbs, I will reward myself by packing a beautiful bento lunch again, you can count on that, well, only if I make it, lol. Inability to follow-through has always been one of my biggest weaknesses, so I make it a goal to reward myself whenever I make some positive progress. Beside packing lunch, I offer myself an ownership of a TokyoBay watch as a Christmas gift if I could ever make it to the wanted weight, which watch I don't know yet... but I'm leaning more toward the ones that are on sale, lol. Yea, I'm broke as a bum. My three favorite watches from Tokyobay are below. I'm really interested in Candy, but boy, it IS expensive for a poor college student like myself.

Lately, I'm really into PopArt and designer toys. When I was in Barns&Noble last week, I was very lucky to get a hold of Hi-Fructose magazine volume 9, an art magazine that talks about under the counter culture. I was so excited to see the magazine covering artists I'm really interested in like Audrey Kawasaki, Kukula, Amy Sol, Brian Despain, etc... and it also talks about many many other artists whose works are just simply AMAZING!! I'm such a weaker when it comes to beautiful artworks. Once December comes I'm a definite subscriber to this magazine. Why not now you might ask, well, simply because if I subscribe now I might get another volume 9 which I don't need a duplicate of and there is no option on their main website to let me select which volume I want to get start with. It's all okay... Hi-Fructose made me addicted to the point that I have been bringing the magazine to work just to be able to read and scan through the images when I'm on break.

By the way, since we're on the issue of magazine, I'm also very interested in Giant Robot magazine, it uhm, talks about Asian Pop Culture and Beyond, sounds very appealing to me since I'm Asian myself. Any comments on this magazine? It's a bit cheaper than Hi-Fructose, 6 issues per year as compared to 4 issues of Hi-Fructose per year. But since I have not seen or touched Giant Robot, I'm a bit hesitant. Well, I figure I'll keep a look out for this for a while.

Well, I have more to talk about but this blog entry is getting long and I'm getting very sleepy. It does not help that I have to wake up early tomorrow for my ceramic class (throwing anyone? I suck at that, it frustrates me to no end T___T, I guess ceramic is just not for me, period.) Next entry I'm gonna talk more about designer toys, my venture into the world of PopArt, probably some old designs I created and clothes, lol. Have a good day, everyone!

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