Finish This Book (FTB)

Heya Chia!

Happy birthday for yesterday!

I am so glad you liked your present! I love the dinosaur! I had looked around my place to find something that I could put in there, but had nothing. I even considered getting you a kinder surprise in hopes that when you open it, something cool would be in there, small enough to fit in your terrarium.  The T-Rex definitely fits! It looks like it's raging and hunting for food!

Me, I've been chilling at home and working on my creativity. As you would know, one of the presents I got you was a copy of the mysterious and intriguing book called "Finish This Book" by Keri Smith. I too have a copy, and have started my missions.  For all those who are wondering what the hell I am talking about, here are some snaps of the book:

Finish This Book is one that invokes imagination and creativity through exploring!
I knew that you and I would love it!

One of the preliminary activities

Definition of a sleuth, trusty Google!

 I completed the above yesterday while chatting on the phone to you... Tee hee! Nothing like colouring in while having a good chat about life!

Today I was feeling a bit tired, and so I kept a low profile. I stayed indoors, drank my hot water, snacked on a few choc chip cookies and then started looking up Moleskine notebooks because I had just finished the one that I was using.

And as you would normally do when Googling up things, I came across this video where a guy draws in his pocket Moleskin daily; and WOW - he is amazing.

After that, when I came across the warm up exercise in Finish This Book (lets call it FTB from now on yea?) I had the drawing style of Maykel Nunes in my head and I just stared out in front of me. Eventually, my new bamboo plant came into focus, and inspiration grew:

My lucky bamboo 

I now can't imagine how this page looked when it was empty.

My aim was to follow the instructions and fill the empty page with something interesting while trying something new.  I also wanted to be daring and draw outside of the designated lines. OOOH... risk taker! Haha, it may seem petty, but psychologically, for ages I just could not do that. I had to keep within the lines.

Thank you Maykel Nunes for your inspiration! I never knew I could draw something like this, free hand with no pencil work beforehand! Though it's a rookie start, I quite like it

Bird and Mr Shrimp

Hi Anna :)

Yesterday was Satoko's belated birthday dinner at Merrywell.

Food was delectable! I love finger food and sharing platters. I hate the idea of lining up to order food so a big thanks to Lainy for doing that :) Luckily it wasn't too bad because we went rather early in the evening, however later on a very awkward and unsightly line grew.

I think they just wanted to eat!

Must take photos before food arrives next time.

Someone's going to have really moisturized hands.

Outcome of weekly art class.

Christina drawing and painting away.

IN LOVE with Christina's bird and the luminous effect she achieved.

Cup of tainted water?

Christina worked on one drawing, whilst I experimented with a few.

Mr Shrimp made me laugh with his bulbous eyes and spindly appendages.

So I did a quick line drawing of him and splashed on some colours.

Our lunch, Don't worry, there was half a chicken left.

It's Friday and it's Chinese New Year Eve tomorrow!

Photo editing fun

Hi Anna :)

I've been having fun with some apps.
Yesterday I came across WigBoothCam. It's not the best quality but it was rather amusing experimenting with various looks.

I want red hair!

This morning I also found another app. This one is XnView Fx. I have no experience in photo editing whatsoever, and it was fun pretending I knew what I was doing. It's so easy to use, and I guess like art, everyone has their own preference. My favourite are the vintage and light effects. I tried to select pictures which you've never seen before just to make things interesting.

Hampstead Heath. Trying to depict nostalgia and serenity using frame and sepia effect.

Pipito and me. Black and white and vignetting

After our jazz night. A whole heap of effects I can't remember. The softening reminds me of loveghettys.

After the beach. Light effect

Snowboarding in Lancelin. Another light effect

Popsicles at Lancelin. Light spots

Picnic in Kings Park. Crackle paint

City views from Kings Park. My favourite! This made the original look significantly better.

First life drawing and jazz

Aren't we doing well with our blogging?

Now I'm not very good with keeping up to date with what's going on in Perth, but about a fortnight ago, I was googling art exhibitions and art classes when I came across this one night drawing event held at The Bakery called Dr Sketchy's Anti Art School. I've always wanted to try life drawings and thought this was the perfect opportunity. But of course, to make things interesting, these models are dressed in strange burlesque clothing with odd props. Who comes up with a man operated mechanical ostrich with a teapot beak?

The venue was really clever. Imagine an open rectangular space bordered with sea containers. It reminded  me of Trinity Wharf in London where  sea containers have been transformed  into buildings. Could this be the answer to cheaper Perth housing?

Surrounded by sea containers. Sketchers getting ready.

I suspected we weren't allowed to take photos of the models.There were six characters, and my favourite one had a rubber mask on with a fusion of frog/troll/chameleon/lizard features going on.  It was a very intense 2 hours, and we started off with a 2 minute time limit for each pose, and eventually progressed to 15 minutes. Talk about pressure! Christina and I were concentrating hard and it really was a race against time to sketch everything I wanted.  You've seen my colour pencil sketches and they take at least three hours to complete anCjd of course this pushed me beyond my comfort zone. Not only that, but the host was intrusive and talked incessantly, throwing jokes and insults whilst he Iwas walking around surveying what people were drawing. It was a really hilarious and unusual experience and one I'm glad I went to.

My favourite character. Hope he doesn't give you nightmares.

This was the final pose with all 6 characters posing on stage. Man on bottom right was very good looking. Use your imagination :)

I really need to develop my skill in drawing people but I'm not in a real hurry because it's currently not my main focus currently. I love drawing nature because it's pleasing to the eye and more forgiving if you make mistakes.

I spent tonight not drawing, but PAINTING! Found my old watercolours and experimented with them. Below is my second attempt of a glassy eye snapper.

This looks very oriental. Ignore that orange splodge. The paint tube exploded on me.

Does this look familiar? It's based on the same coral reef picture that I used for my drawing.

  I am certain that painting this cooled me down on a hot summer's night.

The drawing version that I started at Christina's place.

Good ol Aussie bush and water reflection.

 That's three paintings in a night. Can't say I've done that before.

Here's a sneaky peek of our Vintage Glam Jazz night! My first live jazz experience! I'll let you fill in the rest for our lovely readers :)

Nibbles and cocktail at Bivouac

Hairband that gives you a headache, and necklaces that strain your neck. Oh to look the part!

LOVE this! Flapper queen!

Jazzing away

Thank you for the date! As always, plenty of fun and laughs. Happy weekend ahead :)

Still drawing strong

Hi Anna :-)

The week is nearly over and the long weekend is just around the corner. To think we were in Lancelin last week. The hilarity of it all was relived through your post. Your recount, photos AND videos captured what I missed. I am thoroughly ashamed (and amused!) about the videos and I've been told that it conjured some laughs for our readers so that is all that matters. Life is too short to be too serious yes?  It's addictive though. I want more adventures and more experiences.  I'm a greedy guts :)

Back to placid old Perth. This is what I made for lunch for Wednesday's drawing sesh with Christina.

I call it The Gazillion Veggie Thai Salad.

 I read a couple of Thai crunchy salad recipes online and thought I'd increase the amount and variety of veggies because we love our veggies. Crunch, chomp, crunch. Yummy, but there was plenty of chopping involved.

In went:

beansprouts
snowpeas
carrots
capsicum
spinach
red cabbage
coriander
Thai basil
mint
spring onions

rice noodles
chicken
peanuts

and for the dressing:
lime
lemon
soy sauce
fish sauce
chilli flakes
sugar
white vinegar

I really love our drawing sessions. I'm embracing all this free time to unleash my creativity and master drawing with pencils.I don't know if I mentioned, but each Wednesday we aim to complete a drawing.

First Wednesday I drew the orange as you've seen previously and Christina drew this wickedly delicious apple. Doesn't it look like it came straight from Snow White? Who would blame her for taking a bite of this apple.

Second Wednesday she drew this

In action

 And I drew this Australian rodent

Rough outline

Getting there

Finished. A bit of instagramming touch up

And yesterday she drew this. I think she said it was a Kingfisher.

Before water

After water

Isn't it incredibly stunning the way the colours come alive when you add water with a thin brush and glide the pencils over whilst it's still wet?

As for my drawing, it's incomplete and not ready to see the world yet.
 
Time for bed and a little wishful thinking... maybe one day we'll make millions as illustrators.
Nighty night!

Ribbit

Hi Anna!

Indeed it was a hot morning and what followed, a very hot day. Would love to make it to the beach with you but I need to save some of my skin for the rest of the summer. Oh and for this weekend too :)

I chose to stay indoors today even though I had a few errands to do.

This is what I drew today.

Graceful treefrog. I call it My Frog Prince.

This is what I bought yesterday. They were all half price so I couldn't say no. 

Coral, red and nude.

This is what happened on Friday. 

Really friendly strangers that really know how to party

Spontaneously I went dancing and had excessive amounts of fun. I danced... and danced.. and danced... in heels! Four days later I'm still paying for it :(  It was a great night and felt as if I was on a mini escapade because we were at Elephant and Barrow and Mustang Bar and I haven't been there in years. There was live music at both places and the atmosphere was definitely conducive to dancing all night long.

Back to the topic of footwear and wise footwear choices, would you consider pair of those Vikram gorilla feet lookalike things. Or is it called bikram? No, that's yoga. 

I love your terrarium! That is sad to hear that poor Phyllis didn't make it over the break. Do you have a name for your new plant?

Also, you have to show me this video that Chinny made. He seems to have a talent in the video field if I recall correctly, they can be rather hilarious if they aren't about you.

Enjoy the beach!

Feeling Loved

Hey Chia!

You're doing a lot better than me in the blogging department! Two back to back posts! Fun for me because I have fun stuff to read!

Your holidays looked so sunny, fun and bright! I lovvvvveee the colours! And the beach! I haven't been to the beach this year! So I really want to go soon!

The drawing session sounds like a wonderful time! I think that so long as you guys are able to finish one piece, whether it's atrocious or art, I think you guys would have achieved something! The time spent together, the catching up, and just being with the 'creative moment'. It is hard to get such moments these days when life is just zooming by. That's the rate that I think life is going on for me at this moment.

How are things going with my new years resolution? LOL terribly!

I've had bad sleep so far this year! Especially Fridays. I come home and get into bed, and then I find myself on YouTube. Terrible! I end up getting to sleep around 2.30am and then I wake at 6.00am out of habit! As a consequence, I am exhausted all Saturday, with only Sunday as my full 'alert' weekend, and by then its now looking towards the new working week.

I have been working on my posture though. That's a plus.

This week has been by far one of the most happiest weeks I've had in the longest time! Obviously it started off when we met up for lunch on Tuesday! You were such a dear to come into the city to see me, and brighten up my day! Not only that you came bearing gifts! Ah! Your homemade muesli is now my breakfast and I look forward to eating it every morning!

Yummy! And so lovingly wrapped up!

Then on Wednesday, I had an awesome time at volleyball! We all played very hard and despite being a little rusty from the holidays, we all played well! Shaz, Els and I played one man short as Kev was sick, and we were so sweaty, puffed and physically tired from the game. But I loved that feeling!  After that, we all went to Hungry Jacks to undo our good work and met up with Chins who had finished his basketball game.  He also brought his laptop into the restaurant which was a little strange, but little did I know that he had brought it in for a hilarious surprise!


He and Shaz, and a whole bunch of people - Joyce, Suey, Jason, Wilbur, Kev, Els, Seh and Ben had put time in, to make me a song and a music video to go with it! It was a belated birthday present, which I was told was initially made in 2009, but Chins had lost the video due to a computer thing.  So this year he re-made it, with a different song, but with snippits of the old song included, and footage from the old video too!

It was so good Chia! It made me laugh and was really really thoughtful and touching. Here's some screenshots of my favourite scenes:

What does it spell? :)

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery right?

Love it!

The colourful sporty clothes was just soooooooo awesome! I loved it so much! I just love watching it because of all the fun and summery vibes it gave off! I must admit though, seeing Chins and Kev in girls clothing made me also realise that they perhaps have way too much fun in girls clothing... but for the love of the art, I guess they must do, what they must do! HAHA!

Chins and Shaz told me that the park scenes were filmed in 2009, which made sense as Sarah was in the video. It also was filmed prior to Kev and I getting together and also prior to Chins and Shaz getting together. Those scenes just remind me of when life was fun, and reckless and just happy. Everyone would come out to play after work regardless of having work the next day. How times have changed.

Jason, Joyce, Suey and Wilbur's spelling scene apparently was filmed in December last year! They are so cute! They all hopped around the floor to spell my name for the video! Awww guys!

I have loaded the song and the video onto my iPhone now! And I know that when things get too serious, or down, I'm going to listen/watch this song in order to remind me that life isn't always serious and sad!

Then on Thursday, I bought my first terrarium! Something to keep me sane at work!

I've named the little duck Fredrick!

I saw this in a pop up store at 140 William Street called Society Handmade. Kev had bought me a pair of earrings for me from there, and I just so happened to stumble across it when I was walking around during lunch time on Wednesday. I saw this and fell in love! Though it was a little pricey, so I didn't buy it initially. However, on Thursday, I knew I had to have it for work, as my other plants had died over the Christmas break. It's like a little world in there. I am unsure of what tree is inside at this point in time. I've contacted the seller and hopefully I'll find out soon!

Hope you have a great weekend Chia!