An Artwork A Day

My mother is 1/4 Spanish. It shows. Although she didn’t inherit the gray eyes and height, she got the wide hips, which she passed on to me. 🙂 My mother’s petite for her height and weight – she stands 4 ft 11 inches [although she will adamantly say that she’s 5 feet and I’m 5’3″] and weighs 120lbs. Yes constantly complains...

My friend posted this pic of her and her dad on facebook. She missed her dad terribly. One look at the pic and you could see why. There’s a loving bond between a daughter and her father and it the photo reflected it in their eyes. I hoped to capture that moment. Yes, this is a practice portrait.

I wanted to try doing another portrait of Charlie, this time with his wife. This was actually the portrait I painted after my 2-week hiatus [from painting animation background]. It felt like I’m re-learning the craft. 🙂

I’ve been wanting to do this for quite some time. I wish he was still around to see this because I know he loved paintings. Yes Mr. V, I know you’re still watching over your family and their friends. Am still glad I had the chance to get to know you in this lifetime. This is one of a series. I feel I need to do an...

These are Sabrina’s doggies. One is really photogenic and the other one’s weird. He’s weird because I’ve never seen a red dog with yellow, glowing eyes before. Yes, they’re yellow and according to the owner, they glow like a cat’s.

This is a watercolor portrait of my brother. It’s not one of the best I’ve made but it shows me how much I’ve improved in the past 3 months. Yes, three months ago I started this 100 Portraits projects. I decided to try and paint my brother again after three months. This is what I painted three months ago. That was...

Amado and I were talking about watercolor techniques. There’s one that was so light that it leaves the barest hint of color. I was lucky to find a photo to try it out. If I painted watercolor this way, a single box of 5ml tubes would last me a year. Yes, a normal tube of artist grade watercolor is just 5ml. Imagine my...

This is another ‘test’ between Amado and I. The challenge was how to paint the dress and her hair.   This is my version: This is Amado’s version. I love how he did the dress, the hair and the shadows. With this one, I had problems doing the hair. I guess it is something I have to learn. I will check out youtube for...

She was my first boss.   I was in college and a friend told me that her mom was looking for an artist to illustrate a few materials. That’s how it started. Her office became my home away from home. These were the lessons I learned when I worked for her for 3 years: Just because you are an artist doesn’t mean you...

I think this will be the last time I will ever do a full body painting of a dog on a 9″ x 12″ paper. How to do the fur and the level of detail drove me nuts. I didn’t realize how difficult it was to paint a Shar Pei. Ha! I know, there are hundreds of dogs. I wonder how many I will get to do till I master...

Did a painting of my friend’s mom. Doing commission pieces is stressful. There’s the pressure of making it perfect and at the same time, the client has to want it. Since this is watercolor, it means starting over…and over … until I get it right. I had that problem with this piece. I felt that the image didn’t...

Somebody said painting children is difficult. Aside from getting them to pose (and I’d rather have kids doing stuff than smiling at the camera), it’s the facial features that make it difficult. Why are children difficult? Because they have no wrinkles or cheekbones to define facial features. Even in daylight, the...

It was my first pen-meet. That is a group of people meeting for one reason – fountain pens. It was held at my friend’s place and Thom happened to be there. He’s a shy guy and got flustered when I kept taking pics. The reason why I kept on taking a lot of pics was because it was sunset and it filled the room with gold,...

I’ve often admired artists who could really paint sunlight into their portraits. Inspired by the national artist Fernando Amorsolo, I’d seek out paintings where the entire canvas would be flooded with sunlight. It was one of my frustrations, until now. Details. I know nobody looks at paintings this close – but I...

When I was new at blogster back in 2009, I had no idea how to blog or how it was like to be in a blogging community. Sure I had a job to fulfill, one of them was learning how to blog. Charlie (Abifyt) happened to be one of the few who visited and commented on my blog (Anacoana, ceilede, Strider333, Ekyprogressive and...