Kiehl's Contest: A Tribute to Earth Day

Kiehl's has always committed itself to making the world a better place by making sure the environment is well taken care of. Their products shout organic and at the same time skin-friendly - two reasons why I have always placed by trust in the brand.

Now that it's Earth Day week, Kiehl's Manila has come up with a simple photo contest to doubly encourage the 3-R's message, and when my friend in Kiehl's told me about it, I just couldn't wait to submit my own entry!

But first, what's the contest all about? The official mechanics of the game can be found in their Facebook page. Basically, it goes by these 5 steps:

MECHANICS OF EARTH DAY PHOTO CONTEST:

Step 1: Check out the Environmental Tips from the Earth Day Photo Contest Album.

Step 2: Pick your favorite one and share the photo on your wall.

Step 3: Take a photo of yourself living out that environmental tip. You can be as creative as possible! From simply showing that you make use of scratch papers to posing with your favorite reusable bag will be simply awesome!

Step 4: Send a message to Kiehl’s Manila (Facebook message) with your photo entry attached. Indicate which environmental tip you are showcasing in your picture and which product from the Rare Earth Collection you would want to have.

Step 5: Wait for the announcement of winners on Monday, April 29 and continue living out your own environmental commitments! (Entries will be judged based on creativity and alignment of picture to environmental tip.)

 Pretty easy, right? It took me just 5 minutes to complete everything! :)

What I chose was the 2nd tip that says "Turn Trash Into Treasure." I remembered a little project I did a couple of months ago where I made a photo montage using magazine cut-outs. I was fixing up my room, trying to get rid of all the trash I had piled up in a corner when all of a sudden inspiration hit me! I suddenly just started getting random old magazines and plastered pieces here and there.


And voila! This is what I created:

"Red Eye" - magazine cutouts

This piece is called "Red Eye." It's all about the vanity that we take with us each day; more so, the things that we allow to cover our own identity. I intended it to give out the message that we have to be naturally comfortable in our skin without all the superficiality and artificiality in the world - something I really do think Kiehl's supports. It's all about being able to free oneself from hiding his or her natural beauty.


Let's do hope though that my entry will bag some freebies! Winners of the contest would get Kiehl's Rare Earth products as prizes and let me just say that all of them are so desirable! There's the Rare Earth Pore Minimizing Lotion, the Rare Earth Pore Refining Tonic and so much more!!! They have everything a girl needs everyday!

So what are you waiting for? JOIN JOIN JOIN! Deadline's April 29, 2012, 7PM.

The Cupcake Project

Last April 9, I ventured into the most tooth-achingly, sweetest project so far - the make-my-boyfriend-something-nice-for-our-anniversary project. I dubbed it simply as *cue music* The Cupcake project.

Being one of the least cheesy, lovey-dovey people out there, I never imagined getting into the mood of actually baking for someone. I like baking a lot, but mostly it's just to appease my boredom or whatnot. This time around though, it's for a special someone and that really turned the pressure on! But, thankfully, with the help of some old Yummy magazines under the my desk, I created one of the best cupcakes I've ever made so far! Say hello to my babies, my very own S'mores cupcakes!

I don't want to brag, but don't they just look so pretty? :) I'm glad they turned out as good as they look!

Of course, what's sweet gift without a sweet card right? And a blog post without an artwork post, I guess! To complement these little cupcakes, I bought these cute cupcake boxes from Rockwell's Cooks Exchange and paired it with a watercolor greeting card. Check them out:

Reese's watercolor on Arches' watercolor paper

I'm so proud of myself. I actually conquered being sweet and so glad everyone else found it amusing (or should I be a little annoyed by this? haha)!

I really hope this isn't the last time I'll make something as amazingly yummy as this!

Tell me your cupcake stories!:)

Open Spaces Part 4 (Final Work)

After how many edits and posts (Click here to check them out! Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), I've finally gotten around finishing up this story book illustration! Woohoo!! With the help of other people's comments, here's what my final output looks like:

Spread 1

Spread 2

So main comments were the difficulty of reading because of the clutter in the background and the darkness of the whole thing. I came up with two resolutions: 1. make the text plain and straight, or 2. clean up the background. Well, as you can see, #2 won! Haha.

I really wanted to make this book fun, even if the story is kind of grim. And although I'd want to make the text simpler, I felt that the animation in the text more so emphasizes the art. Being a proud mama over the tiniest lines, I say YEY!! to seeing more of the details! Woot! Plus, the goal was to make this story fit for a children's book. So, the movements of the text and the shapes formed by the smoke and Lorena's "hair" (Do you see the shapes?) make the spreads pretty more interesting, if I do say so myself.

Finally finished with this project, I can't believe I could actually make something like this despite having used to softer illustrations and watercolor works. Now I can say I can take on cartoon-y illustration and bold sketches! Can't wait to work on more projects like this!

Hope you enjoyed:)

Open Spaces Part 3 (Lorena's Walls)

After a few days of lag, here's finally a new progress on the children's book art! (Check out how far it's come with the older posts! Stage 1 here and Stage 2 here)  I did a bit of change with the text by adding a bit of animation to it. I was hoping for it to look like it was "walling up" Lorena. Like some kind of barricade while she was sleeping. What do you think?

Hmmm... would this be better than the older version? And how about the other page? Haven't gotten around fixing that up too! Oh, the lack of time!

If there's a soul out there reading this, please comment to help me out! :)

Open Spaces Part 2 (Unedited Work)

From outlines to colored-in separated pages. Here are the unedited spreads from the Lorena Bumbilya outlines I posted last time! (Don't remember the post? Check out the initial stages of the project here.) You can click on the pictures to see them better.

1st spread

2nd spread

I'm still gathering some comments to edit these colored spreads. So stay tuned for more progress to come!

Do you have comments yourself? I'd love to hear them! Don't be afraid to click on that comment button down there and let me get some of your advice. :)

Open Spaces

A couple of months ago, I had this project to illustrate 2 spreads of an except from a "children's book story" (Lorena Bumbilya by Christian Tablazon). The quotations are intentional because although the task required me to draw for a children's book with bold lines, bright colors (y'know, the works), the story itself was not rainbows and butterflies. Set in the slums, it revolved around a malnourished girl who got her hair cut off because of lice, a symbolism (as I would take it) for her dignity and dreams.

The except went as such:

With her right eye, she watched the vehicles passing by all afternoon while she waited for alms. She was already unmindful of the smoke and heat of the noon.


It took her some time to find a place where she could sleep. This one didn't look so good but there's not much choice. Lorena curled up and tried to sleep and forget her hunger. She has tissue paper smeared with spaghetti sauce and banana peel for dinner. Now as she slowly dozed off, she imagined lots of expensive fruits in front of her instead of banana skin, or being inside a fast food munching on her coveted snacks and meals. But now, leftovers from the garbage can had to do. She also learned that the night was unusually cold when sleeping in open spaces. 


Sounds grim, right? Well, I hope my illustrations won't be too! Crossing my fingers here cuz this is actually the first time I'd be drawing a human person in such cartoony and bold (not to mention sad) outlines. Here are the first few stages of work on this project:

The bald Lorena amidst smoke

Smoke and Mirrors. Trying to create images in smoke.

Putting the two pages (of  the 1st spread) together. Too bad our scanner is too small!

Lorena in the cold cold night

Giving her back her hair and lost dignity

Dreaming of food

UniPin Water and Fade Proof Pigment Ink on bond paper

The next stages of this project has yet to be posted! :)

A Little Early For Gong Xi Gong Xi

I've been searching for some time and inspiration to continuously make new artworks, or at least finish the current ones I've started. So far, I've been a failure to my own ideals. Insert sigh here. I hope somehow school wouldn't interfere as much anymore! Hahaha!

Here's hopefully something that would dampen the creativity pool. An old poster I did over a year ago for a Chinese New Year event. It's kind of telling me to paint a series of Asian-themed works! Hmmm... let's hope I get to do so!

Chinese Ink, Photoshop editing

Doodle Nostalgia Part 2

Here are some of the more serious works of art that I've done in the past. Looking at these, I can't help but ask myself, how could I have done these?? Wished I still had that sense of artistic inspiration. Time to find some!

This is a design for frosted glass art. If you visit my high school prayer room, you'll find the finished work there.
(Pentel Pen black permanent markers on letter bond papers)

Close up on Christ. This was one of my proudest works :)

An old semi-crammed class poster project. No Photoshop or computer editing was done - all old school! That was when I didn't know the famous line in the 60s was literal!
(Faber Castel colored pencils, Faber Castel watercolor pencils, Unipin Water and Fade proof pigment ink on Oslo paper)

Here's to youthful creativity! :)

In Outline

A few months ago, I had my first try on making my own portrait. I'm not exactly very good in drawing people, or rather, REAL people. I never get to copy them right down pat to look like, well, them. It's one frustration of mine! But I went on ahead and tried my luck on drawing myself (It doesn't really quite capture what I look like - but that's not point!), and the finished work looked like this:

"Me" - UniPin Fine Line Water and Fade Proof Pigment Ink, Reeves Watercolor, Photoshop

Then I stumble upon this work's outline/pen-and-ink-only sketch (scanned) jumbled somewhere between my embarrassing picture files and year-old English paper files. I believe I scanned it just in case any art disaster happened. It looked like this:

"Me" outline - Uni Pin Fine Line Water and Fade Proof Pigment Ink

Now look back up to the final version of this work. And then scroll back down. Scroll up, and then down again.

Okay... so what, Kat? It's just an uncolored version of the final one.

That's exactly the point.

Every art work always reflects the artist. Everything I've done has always felt like a part of me. And - sue me for the cliche if you want - but I like relating to whatever I draw.

So now I stare at these two versions of the same work - two versions of me. It's really dumbfounding to know that all I can think of in doing so is...

Wouldn't it be so much simpler to merely be black and white?

Sometimes, it undoubtedly would.

I'm Not Lost, I'm Just Undiscovered

It's been a very very very long time since I last posted here. Apologies for that, if anyone is even reading! Haha! It's been a stressful month and nothing seems to be looking any brighter for me. Ego's crushed and I can't seem to find something that will keep me running aside from the fact that, well, I can't just stop right here, right now; or else, I'll trip and fail. It's like I'm racing on this endless road, not exactly sure where the finished line is. Everything is just blurry. Oh well, as Dory says, just keep swimming... in this case, running. :)

All this emo-ing  reminds me of an editorial work I did a few months ago. It's not official or anything, but it's an interpretive illustration for the poem, "Textbook Statistics" by Arkaye Kierulf. It's all about how we live out everyday , deaf and blinded by the shallowness of numbers.

This is for everyone out there who's feeling lost and forgot the few things that made them more than what the world measures them to be. Don't worry, keep walking and we'll all find our way some day! :)

Textbook Statistics | Arkaye Kierulf.

On average, 5 people are born every second and 1.78 die.
So we’re ahead by 3.22, which is good, I think.

The average person will spend two weeks in his life
waiting for the traffic light to change.

Pubescent girls wait two to four years
for the tender lumps under their nipples to grow.

So the average adult has over 1,460 dreams a year,
laughs 15 times a day. Children, 385 more times.

So the average male adult mates 2,580 times with five different people
but falls in love only twice in his life—possibly

with the same person. Seventy-nine long years for each of us,
awakened to love in our twenties, so more or less

thirty years to love our two lovers each. And if, in a lifetime,
one walks a total of 13,640 miles by increments,

Where are you headed, traveler?
is a valid philosophical question to pose to a man, I think, along with

Why does the blood in your veins travel endlessly?
on account of those red cells flowing night and day

through the traffic of the blood vessels, which if laid out
in a straight line would be over 90,000 miles long.

The great Nile River in Egypt is 4,180 miles long.
The great circle of the earth’s equator is 24,903 miles.

Dividing this green earth among all of us
gives a hundred square feet of living space to each,

but our brains take only one square foot of it,
along with the 29 bones of the skull, so

if you look outside your window with your mind only,
why do you hear the housefly hum middle octave, key of F?

If you listen to the cat on the rug by the fire with
the 32 muscles in your ear, you will hear

100 different vocal sounds. Listen to the dog
wishing for your love: 10 different sounds.

If you think loneliness is beyond calculation,
think of the mole digging a tunnel underground

ninety-eight miles long to China
in one single night. If you think beauty escapes you

or your entire genealogical tree, consider the slug
with its four uneven noses, or the chameleon shifting colors

under an arbitrary light. Think of the deepest point
in the deepest ocean, the Marianas Trench in the Pacific,

do you think anyone’s sadness can be deeper? In 1681,
the last dodo bird died. In the 16th century,

Queen Elizabeth suffered from a fear of roses.
Anne Boleyn had six fingers. People fall in love

twice. The human heart beats 3 billion times — only — in a lifetime.
If you attempt to count all the stars in the galaxy, one

every second, it’ll take 3 thousand years, if you’re lucky.
As owls are the only birds that can see the color blue

the ocean is bluish, along with the sky and the eyes
of that boy who died alone by that little unnamed river

in your dreams one blue night of the war
of one of your lives. (Do you remember which one?)

Duration of World War 1: four years, 3 months, 14 days.
Duration of an equatorial sunset: 128 seconds, 142 tops.

A neuron’s impulse takes 1/1000 of a second,
a morning’s commute from Prospect Expressway

to the Brooklyn Bridge, about 90 minutes,
forty-five without traffic.

Time it takes for a flower to wilt after it’s cut from the stem: five days.
Time left our sun before it runs out of light: five billion years.

Hence the number of happy citizens under the red glow
of that sun: maybe 50% of us, 50% on good days, tops.

Number who are sad: maybe 70% on the good days—
especially on the food days. (The first emotion’s more intense, I think,

when caught up with the second.) So children grow faster in the summer,
their bright blue bodies expanding. The ocean, after all, is blue

which is why the sky now outside your window is bluish
expanding with the white of something beautiful, like clouds.

Fact: The world is a beautiful place—once in a while.
Another fact: We fall in love twice. Maybe more, if we’re lucky.

Textbook Statistics Page1

Textbook Statistics Page 2

Reeves watercolor, Staedler pencils, Faber Castel colored pencils, Uni pin water and fadeproof pigment ink