Recently

Some recent snapshots/happenings of life. Just checking back in before I bombard you with travel pictures from my cruise last week!

Recently read:

Just gobbled this up. The illustrations in this book are beautiful.

Recently purchased:

Art supplies are the bane of my existence. Highlight of purchase: watercolor brush pens!

Recently painted:

My outfit yesterday. Testing out said brush pens!

Recently made a wish:

Nothing says screams 'summer' better than this picture.

Next post will be the cruise post! Prepare yourselves for quite a few pictures. :)

Be-YOU-ty

Earlier in the year, I showed you a few pieces of art that I'd been working on for my AP Art concentration. For my concentration, I focused my pieces around the theme of makeup and its effect on the user. Over the sequence of these 12 pieces, the girl and the makeup she uses both go through transformations. The girl, once pretty, curious, but a little insecure in her natural state becomes scarred and can only hide behind a mask -- a mask of makeup. I hope you can see the story as you view the images. 

While it's a somewhat negative take on cosmetics, I do still love it, but sometimes one can get lost in the sea of products out there. Beauty is only beauty if you be-YOU-ty. (Barf, I'm sorry)

Okay cheesiness over. Here they are! I think you'll be able to tell that I'm a lot more comfortable with watercolors as opposed to acrylic paint. I ain't for dat acrylic life. Yeah, I'm gonna stick with my watercolors.

Watercolor

Watercolor & Pen

Watercolor

Watercolor

Acrylic

Watercolor

Acrylic

Watercolor

Micron Pen

Acrylic & Watercolor

Acrylic

Acrylic

The photographing+uploading do not do some of these justice sadly. Can you tell that last painting is me? I couldn't find a model haha. I felt so accomplished when I finally finished everything. I feel a slight void now that I don't have to rush finishing a piece in two weeks, but well time to paint for leisure!

Five Things

Eeeek! Sorry for the absence this past week. It was a busy one. I got a total of 3 hours of sleep on Wednesday and Thursday combined. D: It was bad. But anyway, this week should be much more relaxed AND this weekend I'm going to be going with my Art History class to New York City! I'm so excited. I can't wait.

In addition to that, here are five things that have been keeping me going. If you're new to this blog, these posts (inspired by Emily of Cupcakes and Cashmere) are just a compilation of five things (not just beauty) that have been making me happy/lifting my spirits lately. Without further ado...

{Getting my Birchbox early this month.}

{My best friend lately.}

{Braided headbands I got for Christmas.}

{Filling up my makeup bag but not having a physical makeup bag, any good rec's?}

{Making my first speed painting video. Speeding things up always turns out so cool.}

I hope you're having a great day, and have a lovely week ahead! What's been floating YOUR boat lately?

Hello hello

Meep.

Remember me?

Hello everybody. I've done it again. I've disappeared again. But really now, I'm back. It's finally Christmas break, and I can get back to posting and reading your blogs, which I've missed so dearly. I've been so M.I.A. from the blogosphere and Twitterland (and even Instagram, shocking!) this month. I've been getting at most 4 hours of sleep a night these past two weeks, which hasn't been very good to me. The bags under my eyes...not a pleasant sight at all.

Anyway, I thought I'd report back to you all and notify you of my return! And I can't leave this post photo-less, so here's another painting I've painted for my concentration. This time it was hair rollers. :)

The camera washed out a lot of my shading on the skin, boo. :(

I look forward to posting again and catching up on your blogs. Also, we survived the apocalypse! Huzzah!

In lieu

Just wanted to check in with you ladies today! Sorry, but there won't be an actual post on the blog until after this weekend. I have quite a few college applications due by Saturday so I'm devoting most of my internet time to that. In lieu of anything beauty-related, here is some of the artwork I'm putting into my portfolio I'm submitting to colleges. Since I have these images already on hand, I might as well share them with you. I noticed that I hadn't posted much art on the blog lately anyway, so let's see some already, shall we?

For my AP Art concentration, my concept is about beauty products and their effect on a woman's confidence/way she views herself. I'm trying to have the concentration progress from the woman's natural beauty to something completely artificial and ugly. The first two pieces below represent the turning point and the beginning of the concentration, respectively.

Acrylic -- a monster's creeping out!

Watercolor -- the curiosity and seemingly endless choices you get with makeup.

And then here are some miscellaneous pieces I've done in the past year. Still searching for my own specific style, but it seems when it comes to drawing/pen-work, I favor heavy contrasting lines (see cross-contour, stencil, and ice cream pieces).

Watercolor.

Acrylic.

Micron Pen (cross-contour lines).

Original stencil printed on a matte medium transfer with acrylic paint -- a statement against our Starbucks overlords?

Micron Pen & Pencil -- experimenting with hand-drawn typography.

You may have noticed that not all of my art is as great as I make it to be on this blog (haha). And you might also have noticed that I quite like painting. ;) I'll be back soon (and hopefully I haven't pulled all of my hair out by then)!

Don't Let Go

Before my summer internship becomes an irrelevant topic on this blog, I wanted to share the design I created for my program. The purpose was to create a design that speaks out about a certain societal issue or charitable cause. There was a competition for best design, and though I did not win, I really really enjoyed this project and what it did for myself personally.

The topic I chose was something really close to me, depression.

Don’t Let Go: In a day and age where so much is at our fingertips, there are still millions of people suffering from depression. And thousands of people who commit suicide every year. Whether it is because of bullying, societal pressures, failure or love, it is all such an agonizing feeling. People are put down by societal pressure, familial pressure, and above all, internal pressure. We have come so far, and yet we are so fragile. I am trying to speak to these people and tell them, Don’t let go. Don’t let go of your life. Don’t let go of your love. Don’t let go of everything you’ve worked for. Don’t let go of your dreams. Don’t let go.

This was such great therapy for myself. I've come such a long way, struggled so much, and I don't want to waste all that I've done for myself. This surprised me because it helped me think about so many things.

I pulled images I found online and did this all on Photoshop over the span of a few days. It was actually my first time using Photoshop too. It was such a learning experience both personally and technically. Despite my whole description, what does this design say to you? I would really love to know.

Recently

Hey y'all! 

I can't believe summer's almost over. I don't want to go back to school and go through the dreaded college process yet! This summer has definitely been one of the most different summers for me yet. It's been such a new experience for me. And it's gone by SO fast. Excuse me while I go grasp onto as much of the summer I have left as possible. Here are some recent happenings in my (sadly ending) summer.

Recently listening to:

Passion Pit's new album Gossamer; this album is just amazing. Period. I've been listening to it on repeat for the past two weeks. Above is one of my favorites from the album (though they're all basically my favorite).

Recently purchased:

Dunnies; I collect mini toys (mostly Domo), and my friend was selling his repeat Dunnies so I decided to get some of his. They're so adorably small and intricate at the same time.

Recently read:

The Stranger by Albert Camus; this was one of my summer reading books for school. It was surprisingly a really really good, "short and sweet" read. The story progressed quickly and the whole mood of the book was quite...unsettling. It made me think and made me not want to think at the same time, yet I really enjoyed it a lot. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a quick, but intense/involved read.

Recently been enjoying:

Painting!!! I found this untouched set of watercolors from one of those kiddy artist sets lying around my house. They actually aren't half bad! Blasting music while painting has been such a great escape for me lately.

So that's what I've been up to this past week. What have you been up to recently?

HUGE Life Update!

Wassup y'all?

I'm back! I'm back! I'm back! I'm back! I'm back! I'm back! I'm back! I'm back!

Where have I been? Well, school and extracurriculars have taken over my life lately, but I'm basically done with all of that! I only need to take my SAT Subject Tests in June and then I shall be done for the year (hopefully)! I also had a little job hunt going on as well, interviews and everything -- which were a little nerve-wracking. However, I did get the job I wanted! AT A DESIGN FIRM! I'm so so so SO excited!

I've missed you all SO MUCH! I totally abandoned the blogging world for a few months (no twitter/blogspot, my goodness), but it was worth it to get ahead more in my schoolwork AND life!

The thing that's been taking up so much, though, has been my baby.

Yes, my baby.

JUST KIDDING! Fooled you, didn't I? I meant my metaphorical baby: my stage backdrop for my huge Asian Night/talent show! I spent 3.5 months (blood, sweat, and tears -- the whole sha-bang) with my volunteers on it! They're all Asian landmarks, see if you can ID a few? Check it out!

I'm pretty mean thuggin', aren't I?

If you want to see more of what this 'Asian Night' I speak of is like, and if you want to see my baby in action, check out these videos my friend recorded of the show! The whole show was completely student-run and planned, I'm really proud and happy that it turned out well. I hope to make an even better show next year!

In addition to painting for that up there, I've also been spending more time painting and making things on my own for pleasure. It's been really great. Very calming and joy-inducing!

"Birds of a Feather Flock Together" Watercolor + Pen

I also dabbled in my first 3-D art/recycled art/sculpture/thing/I-don't-know-what-to-categorize-it-as, and it was really fun! Meticulous, but amazingly enjoyable!

"Whoops!" Craploads of metal stuff

What do you think I was trying to express in these? I'll answer you in the comments! But anyway, enough of my boring life. I'll write about more interesting things like makeup and fashion...with some of this still of course!

Picking it up again

Today, I painted for leisure for the first time in years. I've been so swamped with school and art projects that I haven't had much time to draw for myself. It had also been a while since I last picked up my watercolors set. Boy, was I rusty at first. I've kind of converted to acrylic paints in the past few years, and I'm definitely more comfortable with them compared to watercolors. I would have used acrylics if I had some at home (need to go down to the art store soon). It definitely would have helped me create a more realistic/creepier (yes, I want more creepy) look. 

WHITE WATERCOLOR PAINT IS JUST THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE! It does hardly anything.

Recently I've been juxtaposing various animal heads on people. Most of the time, I give them crazy scary facial expressions. This time, I decided to try to give it a softer approach. I must say it came out delightfully creepy.

But at the same time, something just seems kind of off to me. I might just go will fix it later, but for now I'm sort of pleased. I was painting for five hours straight. No pee break or snack break or anything. Just painting. And it was very very therapeutic. Will definitely try to do this again next week or maybe tomorrow!

Cupid's Colors

"Life without you would be like a broken pencil...pointless."

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I hope you had a lovely day with your friends OR your significant other (if you have one). I spent mine at school (of course), but it was still a festive day full of my lovely friends!

For my school newspaper, the past two weeks I (along with my fellow associates of course) had been selling our yearly carnations with cheesy pick up lines in tow. They're always such fun and games, and look! I got a few from my friends! :)

Carnations are actually rather pretty flowers, no?

Also, for my art class we decided to do a little something special today. That was to put our interpretations of the heartbeat into four 2x2 squares. This is what I ended up with! They contrast and correspond with each other.

My favorite one of the four (and also what I think most applies to me) was this! "A world of colors..." I actually made a mistake on this at first, but it turned out well, right?

And so, in honor of this love-filled day, I decided to swatch some makeup! I think this is going to be a series called 'Color Play,' starting with the one I did a few weeks ago. Today, I went for some romantic, cute, sweet shades like rose, pink, and red.

Starting with the lipsticks and going clockwise:

• Revlon Superlustrous Lipstick in Pink in the Afternoon -- this is the most unique pink lip color I've ever encountered. All the other pinks I own and quite a lot of the pinks on the market are cool-toned. Pink in the Afternoon is a warm, mid-tone pink that I find so sophisticated. I adore it and I should probably wear it more often.
• Revlon Colorburst Lipstick in Soft Rose -- a soft, romantic, effortless rosy shade. This has been my everyday lipstick as of late; I love it very much!
• Sephora Flashy Liner in Flashy Pink -- you know those cutesy pale pink-tinted pearls? This is basically that in an eyeliner. Looks lovely on the waterline and the inner corners of the eye!
• Urban Decay Eyeshadow in Woodstock -- the craziest fuschia pink eyeshadow ever! It has a lovely satin finish and the eyeshadow itself is buttery smooth (like most UD shadows).
• Rimmel Powder Blush in Pink Rose -- I raved about this on my old blog and I still think it deserves that praise. For such a cheap price, the pigmentation and texture of the blush is phenomenal. Too bad it's discontinued now!! This gives such a cute pop of pink on your cheeks.
• Covergirl Outlast Lipstain in Plum Pout -- this is the only red lipcolor I own and I love it to death! It creates the prettiest berry-stained lip! I really want to get more red lip products, any recommendations?
• MAC Pigment in Kitschmas -- a gorgeous silver glitter with a pale pink sheen/duo-chrome running through. It definitely is a really unique color.
• Revlon Superlustrous Lipgloss in Pink Pop -- the best neon pink lip gloss ever! The swatch below does not do it justice at all (I was too focused on making it into a heart).

CAUTION: Abusing of hearts! Please avert your eyes if you must!

Ah, well I thought it was cute. But it kind of turned into too much...what do you think? Too much? LOL! I guess making my swatches into a gif is going to be a thing for this series, huh? This time it's much clearer!

1. Pink Pop, 2. Plum Pout, 3. Flashy Pink, 4. Pink in the Afternoon, 5. Soft Rose, 6. Woodstock, 7. Pink Rose, 8. Kitschmas

Do tell me (or show me) how you interpret a heartbeat! May the rest of your week be just as cheery as well!

Linoleum Block Printing

Stemming from Japanese Woodblock printing in Japan, linoleum block printing is a somewhat easier, more modern twist on the magnificent art.

We just wrapped up our project on block printing and carving in my Art class. I'm quite proud of my carving. :D Many back-breaking hours were spent carving this sucker out! Because I want to enroll in AP Art next year, I had to do a self portrait. Here is what I ended up with!

I'm really proud of how I did my hat and sweater sleeve. I actually accidentally cut off part of the other side of my nose. The nostril was so perfect, but alas my hand slipped. You really have to try to make it work, so I just cut it all off and ended up with only one nostril. O! if only I had been more careful! Le sigh le sigh!

This is the original photo. I wanted to go for a more fun/interesting self-portrait, which my Art teacher thoroughly enjoyed! (Rather than a pretty pretty one.)

Some of the prints I made!

For some reason, I really like this print. It might just be that it has my favorite color, but I also really like the gradient I made. It reminds me of the sun/summer. Not the best print out of the bunch (a bit too much paint -- goopy goopy), but I really like it.

Whoooaaa trippy? I made a 3-D print, which ended up being super cool! I was blown away by all the awesome things I could do with my block.

This was the best print I had. The paint transferred really well in this, and I really enjoyed the colors I made (maroon was black + red and navy was black + blue)! It's kind of like a comic strip, yah?

I feel like my actual block carving looks more like me than my prints, but ah oh well. I'm really proud overall despite the non-resemblance to myself hahaha.