Winter, Winslet, and Being Worthy of Drool

Allen of Eating out Loud recently impressed me with his many talents, and it got me thinking about the last time I did anything crafty that didn't involve food. Sure, I got a design job again (will post about it sometime soon, when it's public), but it's been a while since I did some serious sketching. So I picked up my pencil and searched Google Images for pictures of one of my favorite (if not my absolute favorite) actress Kate Winslet (and boy, my girl is NOT too shy to show off her goods). I didn't use a transfer or grid, I just did the stare-at-computer-screen-sketch-on-paper method, so some proportions may be a bit off. I love the freedom anyway.

(Click to enlarge. If you like what you see, please check out my other sketches. You can also ask for a huge scan if you really like it.)
Er, what do you think? I hope I captured some of her essential features (full lips, great nose, chinniness). I knew of her since Titanic, but lordy did I hate that movie. I really took notice when she was in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was enough goodwill to erase Titanic and even gave me the strength to sit through the big, honking chick-flick that is The Holiday (I mean, seriously, she's the only reason to watch that movie). Some of my other favorite actresses include Gillian Anderson (also weirdly chinny, not to mention she also has an English accent) and Ellen Page (and all of this is out of X-Men 3, I kid you not). It's a little difficult for me since I don't watch many movies and my other favorites have a nasty habit of signing up for horrible, boring projects (Uma Thurman, Meg Ryan).

Speaking of Ellen Page, Entertainment Tonight recently featured the cover of the new Vanity Fair Hollywood issue, featuring: "Anne Hathaway... Jessica Biel... Juno..." Excuse me? Her name is not Juno. It is Ellen Page. Morons.

Anyway. I was hoping to get this out before the ice melts:

Click here to listen to a digital recording of me playing Tori Amos's "Winter."
It's a song about a father's lesson to his daughter about learning to love yourself. I sang it and played solo piano for the graduation ceremonies of Class 2006 of UP Diliman Biology Majors (year above mine). I thought it was apt. My adorable friend Arnel told me once I'd finished, "So Manggy, when you gonna make up your mind?" Hahaha, he funny.


I've been meaning to do this for a while, but I don't think my presence in the blog world was prominent enough to name other blogs back when Anh from Food Lover's Journey awarded me with a "Droolworthy Blog(ger) Award" back in November. I didn't know many other bloggers at the time and I have to thank Anh for her part in my progress here; her linkage and good words have certainly helped me out. The award is for food bloggers who take great photos. I thought of awarding it only to men, but that might be highjacking the award and I don't want to be an ass (maybe I'll make the manly men food blogger award in the future, who knows?). I've refrained from including some very dear people who have helped me out big-time in the aesthetics department, but they are by now multi-awarded (not to mention with this specific award already-- specifically my bro in blogland Graeme of Blood Sugar and the lovely, lovely Jen of use real butter), so I thought I'd pass it along to other great blogs I've been loving recently. I feel a little funny handing this out as I'm not a pro and I use a semi-automatic camera for goodness' sake (my older brother's Canon Powershot G7).

Eating Out Loud with Allen. How did I find this blog? He linked to me and I found out via Technorati (he hadn't even commented on this blog yet, sneaky). I visited the site out of curiosity and it turns out he has a smashing blog of his own! Even if he just recently got a DSLR, his pictures are quite droolworthy already, and they really give you a sense of the imaginative home-cooking that is his blog's signature. Really a cool guy.

Spicy Ice Cream with Lisa. I'm not a designer (I just, uh, dabble), but Lisa is the real deal-- a young, vibrant pro designer. On her downtime she likes preparing food for her family in Australia, and I like her classic taste in food and uncomplicated style of cooking.

Cooking is My Passion, Baking Is My Adventure with Thip. This is a very young blog-- we're talking a month old, here. Already you can see great things in the future for the blog of this professionally-trained chef. I love desserts (NOOOOO. REALLY.), and even if she's just starting (?) her "adventure" in baking, I feel like she's been doing this forever, what with all the fantastic pictures and all.

La Vida en Buenos Aires y Afines with Sylvia. I promise that you will be very impressed with the amount of thought and effort she puts into each of her pictures. Sylvia has that magic touch-- she can even make black pasta look like fine velvet.

Fresh From the Oven with Mandy. I don't know why bakers in Singapore all have lovely photographs. Is it something in the air? Does the government give them a camera and studio when they start up? Ha ha ha. If you love desserts, your monitor will soon be violated by your tongue constantly licking the screen when you visit Mandy's blog. Everything really does look "Fresh From the Oven."

You can visit any of the other great food/food blogger links on the right. They're all on my RSS feed aggregator. I've removed food indexing sites such as Tastespotting from my feeds, because I really have to get a move on studying for the medical licensure exams. When it's all over, I'll put it back on. However, that also means less entries for this blog (not to mention I'll be making a short trip to California next month). Priorities! :)

Women's Health in Full Circle: From Concept to Final Work Series 2

I'm still in the process of organizing my thoughts on the time I spent in Europe, but some places truly inspired me in a permanent way: I'm talking about Prague. The hotel we stayed in was beautifully decorated with prints from Czech artist Alfons Maria Mucha, an artist whose work I was familiar with (due to its extensive influence in the Arts and Crafts movement, as well as Art Nouveau and modern comic book art) but I couldn't pin a name to before.

When there was a contest to make a poster for the upcoming 2007 Obstetrics and Gynecology Postgraduate Conference, I knew the time had come to test how deep I had been imprinted. (The previous year, I also made the official poster, but my influence had been Gustav Klimt-- a blog post for another time.) The theme was "Women's Health in Full Circle." Mucha had made a number of awesome series, from the muses to the different times of the day, plants, and flowers. I used my previous training in plant taxonomy (when I was a Biology student a million years ago) and tried to integrate a series of my own into the theme-- from the start, I knew I would be making the seasons of the year.

On the left is Mucha's "Laurel," which is part of a series. On the right are some of the initial sketches I made, obviously drawing inspiration from that particular piece. I made several more sketches:



Then I laid them out in traditional Art Nouveau (oxymoron) style. Thick white borders (if I had more skill I'd do the flourishes myself).

I proceeded to color the art as it would appear in nature. The backgrounds would look infinitely better as a mosaic I drew myself (as Mucha did for "Laurel" above), but I was pressed for time, so I used the Crystallize filter in Photoshop on a few choice stock photographs.

Once the colors are in place, antique the whole thing with a global adjustment layer, on the color balance, levels, and hue & saturation. This is what was shown to the committee, and what won the competition.

I had a few minor problems with the collaboration (winning doesn't mean the end of work!). First of all, they wanted a postpartal woman, not premenopausal. Second, they wanted to use local fruits and flowers (I protested this, since technically there aren't even 4 seasons in the Philippines, so the distinction doesn't exist in terms of flora). Third, they wanted the young girl to look more like a child. You can't Photoshop those away, so it's back to the drawing board:


Even younger, they said. They wanted pigtails. Only to be grossly obvious... Anyway, I protested that it wouldn't look classy (I WAS going for the Czech/ Parisian/ Belgian feel), so I made "classy pigtails."

Here is the pre-final work, after adding color (blush on the cheeks, shadows, etc) and warmth. Lesson: you have to listen to your client, but always have legitimate reasons for not wanting to do something. Also, if you can draw a little, the effort will show.

Arwen

Liv Tyler has disappeared. Why? (Did she give birth or something?) Anyway, I do miss her despite her uncomfortable acting, because she is a very luminous beauty.

The face has a distortion I can't get rid of because of the angle I was drawing on.

Eowyn

Because my first sketch for Eowyn was not well-received (something wrong with the harshness of the face? I'm not sure), I made a second, more difficult sketch. Blond hair is not easy to depict in pencil.

Note that with time my pencil lines are more deliberate and darker.

Boromir

Here is another one of my favorite characters, Boromir.

It's also noticeably one of my earlier sketches.

Gandalf

This is one of the simplest, but most-complimented early sketches I did during the Lord of the Rings era, Gandalf.

Which is funny because you only have to get a few details right. I did not yet adopt an Art Noveau style of sketching, as you can see, the details are very soft and my objective was only to exercise my facial anatomy (er, sketching the facial anatomy. I wasn't exercising my face).

Faramir

Here is one of my favorite sketches during the Lord of the Rings era. It's one of my favorite characters, Faramir.

As is with the Art Nouveau style, the hair is stringy and my shadows are hatched, not shaded. I actually already received a request for this sketch but I found I couldn't let it go.