Category: Art & Illustration

DIY Sticker Flakes for my Hobonichi

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I would like to make a confession, I’m a sticker hoarder.

I’ve been addicted to stationery since I was  little girl, always eager to grab the coolest pencil cases, milky color rollerball pens, and food-shaped erasers. However, my greatest addiction are stickers, lots and lots of stickers.

I had a plastic sticker book where I store my collection of Hello Kitty sticker flakes, Dragon Ball manga characters, and even action figures such as Power Ranger and Superman. As the stationery market become more developed in Taiwan,  I grow to be a sophisticated planner user, and stickers are necessary decorations to my daily diaries. There are daily diary stickers (the cute and expressive ones are from South Korea), sticker flakes designed by Taiwanese illustrators, and endless selection of envelope seal stickers from giant Japan stationery manufactures. I hoard stickers like there’s no tomorrow, and I’m reluctant to use them because they are too pretty!

IMG_4472(showing off my latest conquests: Cosplay Ojisan, Bruce Lee Cat, and Veggie birds)

It’s no wonder that I soon wanted to create my own stickers. Using label sticker papers from wholesale office supplies, I started to design my own round stickers featuring my penguins. I have a few pieces of these sticker papers lying around, and I thought, why not make customised sticker flakes for my Hobonichi Journal entry?

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Drawing Tips – Painting with Waterbrush

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Friday was a national holiday in Taiwan because the government was compensating a day off for Qingming Holiday where everyone goes home to pay respect to the ancestors. My friends and I took advantage of this day off to go on a Picnic to Qingtiangang, a beautiful expanse of plain on top of Yangming Mountain.

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Of course I brought along my paints and sketchbook in hope to capture the beautiful scenery. I wasn’t disappointed, because the weather was super nice and I’d say it’s even feeling like summer has arrived!

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I recall when I was here last time (about two weeks ago), the weather was dreary and there was heavy mist up on the trail. We couldn’t see a thing within 10 feet, so we gave up and went home disappointed. (However, we did get to see some cherry blossoms on the way down the mountain).

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Hobonichi Flip Through January Part 2

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wHAT ARE YOU WRITING IN THERE ALL DAY?

says Mom.

In today’s post, I’m continuing with my Hobonichi Filp Through of January! This month I had the opportunity of visiting many exhibitions and art shows, so there are a lot of colourful things to draw. It’s also when I started exploring and experimenting different uses of washi tape and stickers in my diary as well.

I’m contradictory in that I wanted to use up all the cute stickers that I own, but at the same time I wanted to keep my diary in a minimalist style, keeping everything in black and white. Apparently with my latest addiction with watercolour, that’s not going to happen anytime soon (the black and white thing).

A dear friend sent me a happy mail of Sai Watercolour brushes! I immediately wanted to try it out in my journal. Unfortunately my first grasp of this pen is not very well, and I ended up with super saturated strokes. However, I love how many colors this set of pen has! Too lovely for words.

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I love to use washi tape to save all the tickets of the exhibitions or shows that I’ve been to. Usually the tickets are beautifully designed, and can be a colourful reminder to your adventures.

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Drawing tips – Waterproof Pigment Ink

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For many doodlers out there, there must be some discussion on what’s the best pen to draw with. Some people might want to use water-colour together in their drawings. In this video I share my favourite waterproof pigment ink pens I use in my Hobonichi Techo. They are Uni-pin fine line, Sakura Microns, and Unchida pens~

They have a harder nib than normal pens, and their waterproof nature makes it very convenient to paint over them without the lines smudging. Check out this video for some speed doodling using these pens!

Doodle book project – Shapes and Faces

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Lately I’ve been asking myself whether it is worth it to take some time off to do drawing and illustrations each day (amateurish ones of course). Shouldn’t I be focusing on some other priorities such as trying to make more income for my upcoming graduate studies, or spend more time studying and understanding the professional field I’m heading into.

However, browsing through the various artistic community and seeing everyone constantly producing such beautiful artwork has definitely spark my envy at this craft. I realised that if I ever want to achieve that level of consistency and dedication to this hobby, I need to practice, and practice, and practice, and practice. I justified that this time for drawing is time well spent, because I feel relaxed and happy when colouring and building pictures with simple lines.

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Starting with the basics again, I refer to the second lesson from the doodle book that teaches how to draw human portraits – Shapes and faces. Emotion and facial features can be a daunting thing to capture when drawing portraits. So the book starts on a easy-going level of simply creating comic-like expressions on different shapes.

It asks me to fill up the page with bold drawings, so I decided to go one step further and practice more than it instructed.

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In this practice, I definitely drew some expressions that I’ve never tried before. The main lesson here is that the position of eyes, nose, and mouth can make a huge difference on expressiveness.   Plus, I snuck a few of my penguins into the array of faces.

What do you think? Try this exercise out in your own sketchbook!

 

Portrait Practice – Magazine Girl

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Did another portrait practice sketch by drawing a model in the magazine. Again, I made a mistake of not using a pencil to sketch first, therefore I drew most of the lines by instinct and at-the-moment adjustment. In the end, the whole body proportion is not…quite..right…?

Plus the relaxed hand position in my drawing just looks as if the girl had a sore neck lol!

Hobonichi Flip Through January 2015 part 1

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It feels really good to start off the new year by art journaling in the Hobonichi. The format of the Hobonichi Techo and the constant reminder to put in something wonderful each day really helps give a sense of purpose in keeping this journal.

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To recap, this is a A6 Hobonichi Techo English Planner. Although it lack the detailed timeline bar, the check boxes on top, and has a different type of format from the Japanese Techo version, I feel that this layout allows more blank spaces for writing and drawing.

I wanted to start this year with a bang, so I figured I’d buy a lottery ticket to test my luck. Well, if I had won, this ticket won’t be stuck to this page now ;). I love cutting out cute pictures from beautiful brochures and flyers, especially in the city of Taipei where there are many artists showing off their trade.

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Portrait Practice – doodle book project

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I came across doodle books by the way of online recommendations. I’m always interested in books that teaches art at book stores, and I’ve always love to watch art tutorials on youtube.

Yet it is clear that you cannot improve if you don’t start drawing things yourself. Videos and books can teach you techniques of give you an idea of how to draw certain shapes, but to learn art, the best way is to pick up a pen and paper and start drawing.

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This is why I’m beginning my pursuit of drawing people through a series of exercise as guided by this book I found: Easy Drawing Note, 10 minute a day, learn to draw people.

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Hobonichi Flip Through December 2014 – part 2

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Continuing my previous post on my December page flip throughs, my daily entries consisted of a main illustration for the day, and surrounding it are my journaling of the day’s events! I’m not that great a writer, and I don’t want to pressure myself into writing fantastic entries that are full of meaningful thoughts or anything like that. Therefore I try to focus my art on doodling and replicating photos that I’ve taken in my iPhone for that day.

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Sometimes I take inspiration from Hobonichi entries shared on facebook pages or cute images I’ve seen on Instagram. Luckily I don’t have to rely much on prompts yet to come up with things to draw. There are too much interesting things around me that I would love to put into doodles and writing.

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Hobonichi flip through December 2014 – part 1

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I got my hands on the Hobonichi Techo planner in November last year. It was the English planner, and its December pages actually start from the 24th. Of course I couldn’t wait to start using it already, so I skipped ahead and actually started using the 2016 December pages! I figure that I would have gotten a new planner during planner season (September – November) later this year, and it will all cycle out eventually.

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My hobonichi planner set-up includes a cover page that I put on the inside of the planner cover. This one is a collection of inspirational phrases that make up the Good Life Project Creed. For those who would like to know more, the author and host of this website Jonathan Fields hold talks and conversations with entrepreneurs and incredible people. I love watching his videos and listen to his podcasts. This creed really speaks to a lot of things in life that we face, and which inspires us to be amazing everyday. I would always flip to this cover page for daily inspiration.

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