Saturday stay-in!

Cool cats. Planning to do tons of these for a promo piece.

Sad panda with a mustache. Um, what?

Catching up on my travel journal backlog (again… more on that in a future blog post… when I finish the journal).

Photos are from my Instagram account (@wedgienet).

Hope you had a good weekend! My Facebook page, by the way, recently hit 200+ likes (thank you!). Get in on that for occasional, non-spammy, and non-annoying updates: http://facebook.com/wedgienet.net :)

See related posts on this blog

1. My Sketchbook Project
2. Quirky, illustrated Japan
3. iPhone retina wallpapers
4. Oops, I did it again
5. Wordless Wednesday #001

Tumor-like globs of acrylic paint that jiggle when you poke them.

I really was just looking to test out my new paints so I quickly sketched on the sketchbook cover and came up with this:

I love working with cardboard– it’s so “unfinished” and not as intimidating as
a blank piece of white paper. It screams out, “I’m brown and blank! Do something with me!”

It’s basically just a doodle with color, but I like how imperfect and loose the overall look is. Might have to consider working in this loose style for future paint work– it’s fast, spontaneous, and raw in this digital age where everything is clean and perfect and polished.

So maybe the sketchbook project isn’t a bust after all. At least I have a cute, personalized cat sketchbook to use when my current one is all filled up?

See related posts on this blog

1. iPhone retina wallpapers
2. Illustration Friday: Messenger
3. Quirky, illustrated Japan
4. DIY Muji colored pencil tube
5. Instagram-ing!

The iPhone wallpapers work best when set for the lock screen; they are already sized to fit so you won’t need to scale or adjust. Check out the Downloads page to get these, as well as their desktop counterparts and other wallpaper designs. I’ll be adding more wallpapers from time to time!

See related posts on this blog

1. It’s the most wonderful time of the year
2. Illustration Friday: Messenger
3. Quirky, illustrated Japan
4. DIY Muji colored pencil tube
5. It’s a washi day

I have a lot of personal projects brewing in my head all the time but I usually have no time motivation to act on them… except when I’m procrastinating on more important tasks at hand.

Last year, I bought mini colored pencils from Muji, a Japanese lifestyle brand with beautiful, minimalist, and “unbranded” household/stationery/travel/furniture/clothing products. The colored pencils came in an unmarked brown Kraft tube– perfect for personalizing, I thought, as with everything else Muji sells. It took me a few months before I thought of what to do with it, and when I did, I used my Letraset Tria markers.

Three nibs in one marker!

What’s special about these markers is when used right, they blend very nicely and you can layer and mix colors and they’d come out looking like watercolors. I’ve had my eye on these markers since college, but couldn’t afford it with my college student allowance. I was only able to afford it when I started working, but then I had no time to do anything with the markers, so I held off on buying them. It was only early last year that I finally went and purchased them. Let me tell you, it’s a good feeling to be able to work for something you’ve wanted for a long time but couldn’t buy before with your own money :)

This is how I used those markers. I’m still trying to get the hang of working with this medium.

I thought I’d make a Japanese kokeshi doll since the stout canister shape was perfect for it and because the pencils are from a Japanese brand. Nice logic, no? Haha

Oops… that year under my name is supposed to be 2012, not 2011.

The coloring could be better/smoother, but for a first try, I don’t think it’s that bad :P

This short tube of pencils is perfect for traveling and on-the-go drawing, which is why I purchased them in the first place. It holds 30+ pencils with room inside for a small sharpener (non-Muji, which I bought separately). I went back to Muji yesterday to maybe pick up a few more tubes of pencils I can dress up but unfortunately, the short tubes were out of stock. They had the tall canisters of 60, full-length colored pencils but they were too pricey at Php 1,000++. Better grab the short ones next time you see it in stores so you can also DIY and customize it :)

See related posts on this blog

1. It’s a washi day
2. Instagram-ing!
3. Quirky, illustrated Japan
4. It’s the most wonderful time of the year

One such opportunity came up when my aunt invited me to go to Osaka, Japan with her family last month. Japan was not in my immediate/foreseeable travel plans, but they had already been to Japan numerous times and I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to tour a non-English speaking country with people who already knew how to get around the place and the language barrier.

My aunt wanted to go in mid-November to catch the autumn foliage. Being from a tropical country where the leaves are green all year round, I’ve never experienced fall in my life, but I was a bit more interested in all the quirks and cute stuff Japan had to offer. And Japan did not disappoint!

On our first full day, I was first alerted to how quirky Japan can be when I spotted this sign at the subway. After-work socials and drinking on Friday nights seem to be the norm for the average Japanese office worker, and drunk businessmen on the subway are not at all uncommon. This is one thing they need to watch out for– falling on the tracks while intoxicated! Hopefully the chances of that happening will be nil, thanks to this sign.

We went to Minoh, a nature park that led to a waterfall. You know it’s a family-friendly park as someone took the time to commission this illustration:

There were also monkeys around the park though we didn’t see any. But we knew they were there by their presence on signs all around.

Smile– boulders are falling down the mountain!

Scary-looking monkey

And their manhole covers– they’re not just “illustrated”, they’re also colored. Oh em gee. I dunno, am I making a big deal out of this? Where I’m from, manhole covers are plain and the color of rust… if they haven’t been carted off by some goon to sell off as scrap metal.

Manhole cover in Kobe

Colored manhole cover in Minoh Park, Osaka. This isn’t just a manhole anymore. It’s street art (literally)!

Everywhere you look, there’s something cute and quirky, whether it’s a print ad that’s not afraid to use every single color that exists on earth…

Jewel Pets, whatever those are

…an attention-grabbing storefront for an optical shop…

If you miss seeing this, you’re as blind as a bat and may need this shop’s services

…random pandas on vending machines…

So much cuteness… bordering on ridiculous!

…or a HUGE display of kawaii right on the subway station’s ceiling!

Sorry for the blurred photo, it was rush hour and I was trying to keep pace with everyone.

Even their food is illustrated.

Yep, I totally bought the apple juice just because it was cute.

Pig and panda-shaped steamed buns (a.k.a. siopao)

Chocolate panda cookies. These were good AND cheap.

I have to admire the Japanese for their penchant for the seemingly-trivial and inconsequential quirkiness. Take this ad, for example. We can tell they’re advertising sightseeing spots during the different seasons. The ad can stand on its own without the illustrations. However, they upped the ante (and budget) and really hired someone to add those little characters. And you have to admit, doing so is enough to warrant a second look for these ads (and in my case, an inclusion in this blog entry).

Japan is heaven for illustrators and designers. These are just a small sampling of the hundreds of cute, illustrated, and well-designed things that can be found all over the place. I’ve uploaded the photos here on this blog post plus twenty more of Japan’s quirks I saw on my trip on my Facebook page, just in case you need more cute in your life.

Oh, and the autumn foliage my aunt wanted to see? Fantastic.

Taken with my cameraphone.

These are some of the reasons I fell in love with Japan– enough to want to go back next year (with my family this time). I’ll just need to keep an eye out for CebuPac’s bagsak-presyo seat sales to Osaka. I also want to go back to stock up on more kawaii stationery supplies I bought there, but that’s another blog entry for another day :)

See related posts on this blog

No related posts.