Last week when I was organizing my workspace, I found some of my raggedy old sketchbooks¹ and suddenly got a burst of inspiration to pick up a pencil and draw for no specific reason — not for a job requirement and not for anything other than fun. I’ve been trained² to sit in front of the computer and work, work, work for so long that I was concerned that I didn’t know how to draw in freewheeling fashion anymore; you know, draw without having to think if it’s “marketable”, “on-strat”, or “what the client wants”. I’m the “client” in this case. My Arn³, the true artist in the household, says that sketching is just like riding a bike⁴ — once the ability is in you, it’ll always be in you — and that one should never overthink what he or she doodles.
.
Armed with that thought, I sat down and came up with the following. Don’t ask me why I decided to draw cutesy girls in nippy weather wear, that’s just what came out. Maybe I’ve been listening to too much Swedish pop?
.

“Jumper Girl”; “Scarfed Sweetie”
.

“Kitten-Smitten”; “Mittened Miss”
.

“Bohemian Belle”; “Pleated Posh”
.
And because I’m ever the multi-tasker, I just had to slap the illustrations onto some items over at my shop The Paper Basket so do feel free to spread the love and purchase a tee or two if you like. 🙂
.

Clickety here.
***

Now to prove that I never really stop working, here’s a real project. Lori of Dessert Comes First, one of my favorite food blogs, recently asked me to design headers for her website using photos that she took. The food shots were gorgeous so I made a simple template to allow the images to do the “talking”.
.

Yummy, huh? The fourth one is my favorite – photo and layout-wise.
.
Fortunately she liked 5 of the 6 studies I submitted so I suggested that maybe she can ask her programmer to make them all load randomly each time the page refreshes, kind of like what I did for my friend Tippi‘s site. I’m happy to see that it’s now being implemented. 🙂

1. Back from when I was a college freshman so hello, that was 20 years ago![ back]
2. By my OC self. There’s no one else to blame, really.[ back]
3. He’s the other way around, he churns out illustrations like they’re liquid.[ back]
4. Yet another activity I haven’t done in years. Let’s see if that metaphor is true… [ back]

Because I have a new efficient workspace, I thought of giving my nearly two-year-old yet never-been-used Print Gocco a whirl today.
.

Finally! It’s been sitting inside that box for too long. These pics were taken in October 2006.
.
I bought my Print Gocco PG-5 at the Shibuya Tokyu Hands in 2006 for an amazing 6825yen (or US$63.60)¹ — I say amazing because it can cost as much as US$195², about thrice what I paid for!, in some US Gocco supplier shops so I would say that Japan is the best place to get it from³. Just remember to pronounce it this way, Purinto Gokko, to avoid awkward Rost in Transration moments. 😉

UPDATE (9.20.08): Exciting news, everyone! I just found out that the Gocco and its supplies are available here in the Philippines! Tin, a stay-at-home-mom based in Iloilo sells Gocco kits, inks, bulbs, and other paraphernalia you will need to lead the Gocco life via her cute little shop, One Tiny Party. Her site also features pics of her pretty Gocco’d artworks and a lot of helpful tips and links for everyone interested in going Gocco. [go!]
.
So let me take you through my enjoyable Print Gocco experience.
.

.
1) Aww, that’s little PeeGee with all her accessories inside her crib. Since Gocco supplies are hard to come by in the Philippines⁴, I made sure to stock up on inks, screens, and bulbs when we were in Japan.
2) I wanted to conserve my bulbs and screens (the bulbs especially since you need two bulbs per print and they can only be used once) so to make the most of them, I made 4 gift tag designs to fit one 4″ x 6″ screen. I used the special carbon ink based pen that’s specially made for use with the Gocco to sketch my master.
.

.
3) The bulbs are now screwed onto the print hood and my master has been inserted into the PG window.
4) A quick, heavy press on the lid will cause the bulbs to flash, indicating that the master image has been burned to the screen.
.

.
5) And the fun begins: here’s my screen after I squeezed paint on it. I made sure to put blocking tape in between the portions where I didn’t want color to bleed into each other.
6) The screen is now positioned inside the PG’s lid again and we’re ready to get it on. Printing via Gocco produces results similar to silkscreen printing except that the process is easier, less messy, and lots of fun but, okay, more expensive because of the limited availability of supplies.
.

7) Tadah, my very first print!
8) Here they all are, waiting to dry. Incidentally, the wooden case is a cassette tape crate given to me ages ago by my brother. I haven’t used it in a while⁵ but I discovered that it makes a good card-drying rack.
.

.
Not so bad for a first print although I would’ve wanted it to be less colorful. And now I can’t wait to try using layers and different paper patterns and textures so I guess you’ll be seeing more of these printing experiments from now on.
.
(For those who ended up on this site looking for Print Gocco PG-5 instructions, allow me to point you to the excellent tutorial by Felt Cafe which I myself referred to while working on my prints.)

1. PHP 2,565.20 according to the XE-UCC[ back]
2. PHP 7,868.25[ back]
3. But if you can’t wait and must have it NOW, then it’s worth coughing up the dough for.[ back]
4. And ordering online internationally is mucho expensive.[ back]
5. Who listens to tapes anymore?[ back]

Sigh, my only excuse for not updating except is that I’ve been preoccupied¹. Anyway, here are a few notes:
–
* It’s been out for a while but here’s a plug nonetheless: our mag Wedding Essentials came out with the annual Beautiful Weddings issue last month. It features 25 real-life weddings, over 75 wedding element inspirations, plus over 200 pages of articles, tips, and everything there is to know about planning your big day! Please do grab a copy now, it retails for a very reasonable P200. 🙂

You can see a bigger photo of the cover here, and view the launch party pics here.
–
* You can find a couple of artworks by Arn in the September and October issues of Rogue mag² one’s an illustration for our dear Quark Henares‘ really funny article about meeting Sarah Silverman and the other’s for Quark’s Quentin Tarantino fanboy chronicles.

–
* A sister publication³, Imagine Magazine‘s maiden issue is now out. It’s the new, innovative fashion and design glossy by the team behind the i section of the Manila Bulletin. A high-end, 280-page glossy, Imagine takes fashion coverage to the next level, following the trends in international fashion publishing, where fashion is treated as an exhilaration of an art form, and a magazine serves both as a portfolio and an idea platform. .

There’s an article on Arn in this issue⁴ penned by no less than one of our favorite writers in the world, Luis Katigbak.
–
* I was invited to judge for this year’s NU Rock Awards, yes exactly 10 years after I won one. I initially thought that I was only judging for the album packaging design category; it turns out I had to pick winners for the other sections as well. Gasp! The result: a night of cram-listening to all the finalists’ albums because I wanted to be fair to these musicians⁵ and make the right decisions after all.

–
* We managed to squeeze in a week of R&R in Hong Kong. I’ve been there tons⁶ of times before for leisure with either family or friends and mostly for work⁷ but it was my first time to go with Arn so we allowed ourselves to “do the touristy”. 🙂

More here.
–

1. With this, this, this, this, and this.[ back]
2. A new-ish cutting-edge literary lifestyle magazine for the modern and might I say intelligent Filipino man.[ back]
3. Meaning they also belong to Manila Bulletin’s roster of magazines.[ back]
4. Which we haven’t seen because we haven’t gotten a copy yet, oops![ back]
5. Never mind if I only got to hear of some of them and their music for the first time last Sunday night.[ back]
6. Also because I’m old na.[ back]
7. When you’re in the advertising biz, going to Hong Kong becomes just like going to Cebu or Baguio. Most post-prod work is done there.[ back]