N.Y. - I've not gonne too far...

12-02-2010
Well, I've not gone too far,...
New York was my first stop on this trip, briefly visited some lovely old friends here for 2 days 2 nights, and planned to fly out at 7:45am on 12-02. I had troubled my kindest friends who I visited and stayed with to get up at 3:30am, drive out from White Plains at 4am, we came across a car crash accident on the fwy side at 5 am, my friend helped set up the emergency flares on the fwy, then dropped me off at the airport at 5:30am, exactly 2 hrs-ish before my 7:45 am international flight ! Nice ! and sharply on time ! ... However, as I was confidently self-checking in my luggage, the airline person came over and wondered if I was going to Santo Domingo......Santo Domingo !? I'd love to visit there one day, but...I wasn't ! Read my flight schedule again, then realized, it was supposed to be "7:45PM" instead of "AM"!!... ohoo nooo ~~~ with terrible guilt, regret, and dumbfounded..... too shameful and sorry to call my friend back... I stayed at the airport for another 5 hrs waiting for the luggage storage to open, then transited to Manhattan to kill time before my actual flight at night.

Beside all the stupidities I'd made,  the day actually turned out to be a great one after all ! I got to spend some time walking around the city, trying out famous burger joint, and got to sketch a little bit. Though the temperature quickly turned from cold to freezing, I end up retrieving into a cafe facing the Madison Square Park, and found a lovely view right outside of the window. How a lovely city !

" Expedition ! " ...here we go !

11-31-2010 
Here I go, set off onto a little expedition of mine from San Francisco ! From now to the early next year, I'll be traveling here and there visiting friends and family, exploring places I love, and places I've never been. It's a rare fortunate chance and time in my life, I got to, and better use it well ! Hopefully there will be easy wifi on the way, that I'll get to upload some sketches here !

ROUND ROBIN Available online !- Update

Round Robin is NOW available on Katy Wu's blog ! We have a limited run of 300 books, all books are numbered and will be signed and sketched !

Here is another illustration I made for the book -

Quick, quick, Sketch !

Took a swift 4.5 days trip to Tirol, Austria, for a family wedding a few weeks ago, we stayed with family around lake Achensee, a lake between high mountains. As we arrived at late night in the complete darkness, the second day morning view out of their apt. was especially spectacular ! It was a sudden realization of being in a perfect Austrian mountain town calendar ! the only equivalent I could relate this to was probably - waking up right in front of Half Dome in Yosemite ! but in a very sweet setting of lovely music box wooden houses with lots of colorful balcony flowers, cows and horses strolled in the green meadow, and all these surrounded by high mountains with trees started to change their colors into Autumn flame....lovely lovely... unfortunately, as usual, traveling on a family agenda with a tight schedule, I started a sketch, but never got to finish it before we left this dreamy place ! but I thought it was probably just enough to express that bit of an impression....
Also, I got to spend a few hrs in Munich before my flight back home, few hrs was definitely too quick for this amazing historical city, where every turn was a new view of architecture and time.

Round Robin & Mr.R on Gallery Nucleus !

Gallery Nucleus starts to carry Round Robin on their website ! 

As well as a limited postcard booklets of an Expedition with Mr.R( the Raccoons), Daniela Strijleva's Collected Sketches, and Katy Wu's Tiger Bee Comics and Tiger print ! Please take a look !

So, What exactly is Round Robin about ?

In this book, me, Daniela, and Katy, three of us played a word game - we each takes turn add a random word to make a list of 15 words,  and each page contains 2 words that are connected to the page before and the page after. Say, p.1 => X+Y, p.2 => Y+Z, p.3 => Z+Something......and so on. The words are random, can be noun, verb or adjective..... Each artist would take turn making an illustration inspired from the 2 words given by the two other artists.

The process was very fun and challenging, as it throws you out of the comfort zone, because you probably would have never chosen those particular words yourself ! And the best and the most 'magical' thing about this is, each artist can interpret each word very differently that it's always a great surprise to see the next page !

Thanks ! A wonderful weekend at APE !

Thanks everyone who came by say hi to us at APE !

We had such a great time seeing our friends and meeting new friends! 

I hope you enjoy our collaborated book, Round Robin, as much as we did making it !

 

( we got to make some bookplates at the table !)

Thanks again everyone !

Thanks Daniela, and Anita for the photos at APE !

an Expedition with Mr.R ( the Raccoon )

" In search of a dim memory from times past,

Mr. R (the Raccoon) packed up his pouch 

and set off alone on an expedition.

Through fields and forests, villages and towns, 

storms and sunshine, through all the seasons of the year.

He came at last to a gate 

hidden behind a thicket of shrubs......"

Here is a 5 pages accordion postcard booklet made for Mr. R ( the Raccoon) ! Each illustration on the postcard follows Mr. R on his journey through four seasons of the year... This is also a little tribute to the Bay Area weather - where grass on rolling hills are yellow in summer, and heat is greater in fall....
I hope this would be a souvenir of the Bay Area, and also a friendly personal postcard to send to someone at far.

Each booklet is handcrafted, illustrations printed on watercolor paper and perforated to 5 postcards. There will be limited number available at APE this weekend, along side with Round Robin, and Daniela and Katy's beautiful books !
Our table number at APE is #330, please come on by !

  

ROUND ROBIN

Alright ! it's now two weeks away from APE ! The illustrated book I've been working on with Daniela Strijleva and Katy Wu, now officially has a title, called, " ROUND ROBIN" !
What is it about ?? well, ...give you a little more hanger and surprise till you see the actual book in hand,... Instead of a conventional story line, our illustrations were created along with a word game. Here is a sneak peek of a finished painting I made for the book, and please also check out Daniela and Katy's blog for a glimpse of their beautiful work.

APE 2010 !

APE ( the Alternative Press Expo) in San Francisco is once again coming up on Oct. 16th !
It'll be the 2nd time for me to exhibit at APE ( after 2 years...), and this time, I'm sharing a table with 2 amazing artist friends from work, Daniela Strijleva and Katy Wu.  Also, for the first time, we're collaborating to make a small illustrated book, which will be coming out at APE !
More details will be posted soon, for now, I could only say, we're working feverishly to make this happen, and the collaboration process is definitely one amazing experience ... I hope you'd enjoy the book when you see it at APE !

Also, I'm brewing to put together a little postcard booklet for Mr. R ( the Raccoon), hopefully, it will also be exhibited at APE.

Here are some pictures of my work-in-progress, and meet me and my hubby's new kittens of the family - Pocky & Mikado !   ( they keep me company while painting, help chewing on my brushes and lick away the water-color paint.... What's in the paint anyway...? )

Mr. R, the Raccoon.

In my previous little cottage apt, there lived 2 Raccoons in between the ceiling and the roof, Mr. & Mrs. R. (perhaps). They ran marathon at night, above the ceiling, in the wall, sometimes even cracked nuts rhythmically. In a foggy summer day, they'd come check out the whimsy peach tree in the little front yard, surely, it was a bit too bitter for their taste...... So, every once a while, Mr. R keep popping in my head, did nothing much, just unpack his travel pouch, pull out a thermos and make some tea.....

The Whimsy House

A little studio loft, full of windows, settles in the middle of tree shades. It's a magical experience to wake up on the top floor bed, feeling like waking up on and between trees...My friends' family built this loft by themselves with their own hands, they named it, " the Whimsy House ".