Similarly, this painting at the Manila Peninsula Hotel reminded me of the album cover of Masayoshi Takanaka's jazz fusion album, The Rainbow Goblins. Both have the same vibe in the sense they are detailed artworks of nature. I just thought to add that since I just found the connection interesting lol.

After a recent trip to Japan, my mother got this design book for me called Tokyo Hotel Sketch by Kei Endo. The premise is that this is a collection of watercolor sketches that Endo made during her stay at several hotels. Surprisingly, it is extremely detailed as in she [Endo] records the floor plans and measurements of each room as well as the furniture/objects in said room. What is even more interesting is that minor things like a towel or something as little as a door knob is drawn.

I read more about her and she actually graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts with a degree in architecture, which now makes sense why she really got the proportions and details of the hotel rooms right. Personally, I really love her art style and how in-depth this book takes me (despite my nonexistent understanding of Japanese). Her artwork is peaceful and it is like I can explore the room in the book.

If you asked me if there's a meaning to it, I would say a bit since I wanted it to seem like a foggy memory because of its abstract and medium degree of iconicity. It's nothing deep, just me experiementing with paint and having fun. I'll try painting more often for sure.

As for the Au Féminin exhibit itself, I liked Orlina's sculpture as well as Sunshine by Marge Organo, a glass figure of a balloon dog. Other than that, I liked the colorful paintings of flowers presented there. In fact, I plan to compile all the pictures I have taken in exhibits like these into a single google drive since only 1 picture per upload is allowed here on this website.

van Gogh is one of my favorite artists not because he is popular but because I like how he paints and that he has many underrated artworks like Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette (1886) or A crab on its back (1888). To know more about him, I got this book and started reading it. Basically, it's also kinda biographical as in his life is told thru letters between him and mostly his brother which is very intimate and deep to read. In a a way, its both wholesome and sad because it talks about the challenges van Gogh went thru in his personal life like loneliness but then it talks about how Theo (his brother) was like his #1 supporter and encouraged him to paint.

There's a lot of sides to it that I have yet to read more about, so I cannot fully create a review of it just yet. But this is just my first impressions of the book.

Because of that, I just looked it up online and see for myself what it would have looked like in the daytime. So, this artwork has a dual meaning apparently. The first is that it is like the triumph of the filipino spirit and second it is the development of BGC itself. You can say there's also a 3rd meaning which is that it's a respectful homage to the filipino construction workers who built the city.

One of the things I like about art other than creating it is always finding out the context of each piece and the process that allowed them to create it. There's always some history tied into each artwork and I think that's cool and how it still speaks to people years after it was made.

Its very timely since just yesterday I was drawing Paul McCartney free-hand applying the lighting/shading techniques I have learned from the previous lessons and also the chiaroscuro application. Here is the initial sketch of it beside the reference so that I have like a before and after image of it. Of course, I'll give an update to it of how close I am to finishing it.

It's a freehand of John, I wasn't really intending it to look realistic. I was just experimenting with my art style. I realize when I do realism, the result is kind of cartoony so instead of trying to go all out realism at once, I wanted to see where my art style would take me.

I went to pinterest first and picked out a picture of the band Red Hot Chili Peppers first and also their logo, then I went to canva and edited it to a square size (I used the instagram post format). After that, I searched online for a way to make the inlay layout (like how to make the size of it fit perfectly into the cassette case) and I found a website that does exactly that:(https://unixispower.gitlab.io/jcard-template/). So, I just typed in the tracklisting of the songs I wanted, picked out the background color, edited the font size and boom I've designed a cover.

For the cassette label itself, I used sticker paper and measured the dimensions of the cassette so that it can fit exactly. Then, I used a cutter to cut out the curved middle part so that the tape can be seen. The only thing left was to write the side number and the songs on it, so I did that with a dual-tip Sharpie (the one that has a thin tip).

Honestly, it didn't turn out too bad. My handwriting and the homemade vibe adds a personal touch to it. The picture and the background color (I think) complement each other. I'll be doing this again for sure, if I still have any blank cassettes.

For the editing, I literally searched up photo editing websites and came across this: https://pixlr.com/express/. I just experimented with the features like there's filters and whatnot. Originally, the picture was slanted but I used the crop feature to rotate it and remove some parts of it. Then, I used a retro-like filter on it but turned it down as I did not want the colors to be exaggerated. I will search for better photo editing software as this website is (at first impressions) not the best.

I've admired the builders of Minecraft as they undertake bigger and more complicated structures like the Eiffel Tower and entire cities that are shown here. I have decided to use this as an inspiration and motivation to go back into experimenting with builds in Minecraft.

I have made a Japanese style pagoda base in my Minecraft world. In a nutshell, I had to grind a lot for materials as this is a large house I am making. It just started off with chopping down some trees and going mining for hours to get the spruce wood and dark deepslate bricks I needed for the walls and roof of my house. It felt rather empty so I added a hedge maze surrounding it using leaf blocks to give it some mysteriousness. That wasn't enough though as I think I wanted to make it like an emperor temple kind of thing so I started making a giant wall out of white wool, deepslate bricks, and wood. It takes much time to complete this so I will finish the wall and some details of it to achieve the Meiji reign period of Japan I am looking for.

For the majority of this, I used Tom Selleck, George Harrison, and Farrah Fawcett as references (I really need to save the pictures I used) as they have wonderful & neat hair. Other than that, I tried to remember how I did Princess Diana's hair for the recent activity we did in VA class. Here, I just sectioned off Fawcett's hair into sections to make it manageable and also so I know how to see it in different/seperate parts. I also studied the movement and direction of hair like in braids and curls. I need to get used to drawing it softly instead of etching it in too sharply.

For reference, I actually just set up a mirror in front of me and stare and look closely at my eye to observe it. If lighting is needed. I either shine a flashlight or lamp on my eye to see the highlights and see my pupils dilate in order to understand where the shadows are and how the eye interacts with light.