Friday, February 20, 2009

The Maiden



This is one of my random illustrations from almost one and a half years ago. It resembles the characters from one of my earlier stories, which was set during the Spanish colonization period in the 16th century. This story was also related to my fascination with religious icons.

When I was a child, I was very much into religious icons. Every time we went to our province, to my mother's hometown, I sometimes looked at my aunt's cabinet, where on the top were some old religious statues, most of their colors fading because of time and of the poor quality of the paints. I don't know why I was so fascinated with them. But during our stay there, I sometimes drew some of them and presented the drawings to my aunts. This fascination was a main influence to one of my stories for a beloved friend.

Another thing that had an effect in this particular story is the film "Itim" or Rites of May, directed by Mike de Leon. It was a very good as well as eerie film. I watched it when I was a child, during the Holy Week. Unfortunately, I can't find any copies of that film. Even online, very little is there about it, only a few features mentioning it in brief.

The wooden Floor


The wooden floor...a very random title for a very random work.


Mary Barton, in the form of a ghost, talking to an Engkanto under the Lake




We were required to create a portfolio for a final plate last year. This was one of my works included in that plate. It was inspired by the earliest story that I wrote, and which is probably the best work I have written so far. I started it in 2004, back in high school, for a friend who was brokenhearted. But in spite of this, he was always happy, and made other people happy too, besides me. Right now, as far as I know, he found his true love. I also created this story because I wanted to remember that time as one of the happiest periods of my life. This will also served as a memory book for those whom I've met, whether they were a friend or an enemy. I have no intention to publish this work yet, but maybe someday.

Anyway, this scene is from the second part of the whole story (there are eight parts, and I have a plan to condense it into two, because it was requested by a beloved girl), in which the protagonist, in a form of a ghost, is swimming in a lake to talk to the underwater beings there.

I already finished it in 2006. But lately, I revisited it, and started to make revisions to the story.

Nineteen Demons


We were required to display our work in our college's recent art fair, so I decided to create a new work based on a required dimension and should be about yourself. So I came up with these, I was inspired by one of my favorite children's book illustrator, Arthur Rackham. Since around 2007, I wanted to emulate his style, as well as how he depicted his figures, which is quite graphic, and his amber atmosphere, my favorite color.

Fortunately, my work wasn't sold so I was able to give this to my very good friend, the squishy bunny.
This is the second time I displayed my work in our college. The first one was back in September 2007, wherein the piece I displayed was also inspired by Arthur Rackham, and is based on my second story about angels and the afterlife. That story was for another friend, to whom I also gave the said illustration.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Search for William Salter by the infanta Catherine of Arkhesus accompanied by Sir Maximus and Jeremy Clemens.






A little noble girl riding on her white horse through a dangerous woods, searching for her beloved friend William. She is accompanied by her mentor Sir Maximus and William's enemy Jeremy Clemens.

This is a work of mine from my first story for a great friend I met when I was in high school. It is for our college's Artfair held some time during August 2007. It was made with ink and acrylic executed on a 8.5 x 11 board. I was still trying to master acrylic during this time, as well as umber, amber, and moss green colors that I wanted to establish in my works for consistency in style.

I'm still revising this story until now, changing character names and altering the settings. Since I was not that done yet, I gave this work to this particular friend in quite a raw stage. The squishy bunny told me that she wanted to look at it so that she may give some comments to improve it.

The story has roughly eight books, each with have around twenty to thirty pages, executed in pen on my old notebooks. Each of the eight books represented my friend, the people around us when we were in high school, and myself; and almost every character there was inspired by a real person, although not all.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

My Cathedral Facade


I made this facade of a Gothic cathedral for my plate in Art History class last semester. It was a very hard task despite that it is only imaginary, and it is about one and a half feet high, from it's base to the highest tip of the west tower (the highest structure in the cathedral), and is about eight inches wide.
I remember back when I was in high school, I saw on TV a man creating a small version of the White house in Washington D.C. I decided to create a small-scale Gothic cathedral, about eight inches high. After this, I made a new one, but this time much bigger: about fourteen inches high. Later on, I burned it for the sheer fun of it. It was made out of illustration board). The next was much higher, more elaborate, and more detailed. But after I finish the apse, I also burned it. After that I didn't have time to create a new one, until I had a opportunity to build it again in a much more accurate way. Unfortunately, I only finished the facade because I didn't have much time and would have had problems in how to transport it from my home to the university.



It was not an easy task. I collected some photos of Gothic cathedrals as basis, Amiens to be precise, and sketched its initial format and design. When I was done, I used some readily available materials so that I could save more. It is made of illustration board, with small wooden sticks for poles. I cut it according to their appropriate form and then I assembled it using wood glue. I painted it with a latex primer before adding the finishing colour in acrylic. Unfortunately, I couldn't achieve the colors I want since I painted it just two days before the presentation, instead of getting ivory for the walls and dark green for the roof, I came up with lime yellow walls. But it turned out okay and got a good grade for this.

The cathedral is now in the possession of The-Bunny-who-Likes-to-be-Squished.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Bright Sky Afternoon.



I took this picture during our semesteral break last year. It was a very nice day.


I like cloudy weather, whenever the sun is almost just bright white light, covered with clouds that almost looks like as thick as cotton candy.

I remember that when I was a child, I used to look at the sky during this kind of weather. I scanned the clouds so that I might find unusual shapes. And I found rabbits swimming in a sea of cloud, a chariot with unusual shaped horses, and others.

My sister, who sometimes did this too back when she was a also a child with a friend of hers, drew some of it. She had drawn turtles, a dressed-up lady walking, and a lizard.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Pop-ups for Math






I had a Mathematics 1 subject last semester. Unfortunately, I got an Incomplete grade because I didn't pass our final group exam/project. My group mates didn't remind me about it, so I worked on my own in order to complete my grade.
The project is about myself, my impressions on the subject, my classmates, and my professors.
While I was gathering ideas for my project, I saw a pop-up book in our library while I was browsing. I became interested with it, and wanted my math project to be like it. So I started buying and collecting some materials scattered about our house to start the project. It was a hard task because it was the first time I made a pop-up book. It took me two months to complete it. Today, at last, I was able to pass it to one of my professors.





This is the first page. Actually, I got the pictures from a magazine, which had eerie Victorian illustration of butterflies. They were just later additions. I found out that the collage was good with the pop-up illustrations. I also had a painting of Santa Claus with gold-colored laces as the border. The scroll, which is where I wrote the text for the
first page, was coated with gold-colored acrylic.

This is the second page. I was about to enter to the city of mathematics. It is very confusing, full of bizarre images that I, at the lower left, was standing motionless. I cut pictures from a book about Alchemical images during the 16th century and then I colored it with yellow and gold acrylic.

This is the third page. it is about my classmates, as depict on the pop-up images of bizzare beings. I want to depict them strange enough as what they are in actual. Well, maybe I depict my classmates in astrange appearance because I am not much close to them.

This is the Fourth and last Page. Its about me walking into the city of mathematics guided by my two professors (As you can see at the bottom left was my professors in color blue followed by me in red.).