Jaded Perspectives

Here's something a little different. So I was scrolling through my Facebook Timeline as usual when I came upon this article shared by a friend.  So basically, it's about Robert, a 20 year-old kid who is down on his luck. He used to be a call center agent but he got bullied out of work and his life has really slid downhill since.  Nowadays, art is the only thing that brings him happiness. Now you might think that this is pretty normal -- but consider this excerpt from KwentongTao's interview with him: "We have no electricity at home, so every night, I spend time in front of our neighbor’s house to have some light when I draw and when I read books. Until some Police officers confront me that it is not allowed to stay outside because of the new Oplan-Sita. So I decided to spend my time here in front of 7/11 store. Atleast no one will notice even you spend so many hours. And then, since I don’t have money, I decided to ask for alms. And some people buy my a

I may not have a whole lot of time for blogging anymore nowadays, but I will never forget the girl I fell in love. Here's some fanart for her birthday along with a video of me painting her. Born on December 3, 1991 in the manga's timeline, Nagi would be 28 years old now in our time. I bet she's older than most of you. Also, I will never forget to inform the entire world that on April 12, 2017, Hayate x Nagi officially became a couple along with the canon ending of Hayate The Combat Butler. I wish I could have done more, but I'm so pressed for time nowadays with my new job.  I've also managed to obtain the last official Nagi figure: the third repaint of her cat version from Orca Toys. Got it used from Solaris Japan, but unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have arrived yet. I'll be sure to take pictures when it arrives sometime this month -- I assume. Digital version For the digital version of her, I just stuck with 2D hard colors. i know many peo

For some reason, I forgot to post this video on my blog. Here I am painting Nagi again as usual. Her pose and expression are based on the Miku noodle stopper figure.

Just a short video to break the curse of me not uploading any new videos recently. I got a new revolving solar display stand for my favorite Nagi figure recently and thought I'd show her off. Apparently, only 3000 copies of this figure were ever made -- quite  appropriate since Sanzen 三千 means 3000.  

For the record, I personally don't care about spoilers, but I'm not one to impose my personal ideals upon others -- and if you disagree with me, then that's the difference between you and me. Food for thought. Just got back from the cinemas and… “sensually enchanting” would be the most appropriate adjectives that come to mind when it comes to Makoto Shinkai’s latest piece, “ 天気の子 ,”   (which was translated to “Weathering With You” for some reason. The accurate translation is “child of the weather” or “weather’s child” or even “girl of the weather”). With that aside, the production values definitely live up to the hype. The movie is basically an audio-visual feast for the senses with an entrancing soundtrack, breathtaking animation, and the cool, calming, yet extremely detailed scenery (and product placements) that anyone familiar with Makoto Shinkai’s previous works might have come to expect. Therefore, over-all, I’d say that the movie was simply a delight to

Miku's birthday is a good time to try out the Anilinky Watercolors I bought from Deovir. Over-all, the watercolors have a very rich and deep color and they're very highly pigmented. They actually remind me of Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors. There's 24 colors over-all and two types of white. Anyway, I'll leave you with the video right here.

Over-all, I really like this watercolor set. The colors are nice, highly pigmented and vibrant -- although lacking in intensity and they really do work great for anime style illustrations. I'd imagine they'd work great for florals and caligraphic stuff as well -- although I personally don't do those. I wouldn't recommend these for landscapes unless you're deliberately going for a washed out look. The colors also mix very well.

Just letting you know that I have a RedBubble account. Follow the link to see more of my stuff. Also check my pixiv account:  https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?id=16478040 Or tell me if you want to request a specific design. Most of the artworks I've done can be found tagged Fanart in this blog.

Thanks to anonymous for the heads-up on Tonikaku Kawaii (call it Cawaii if you like just coz that's how it's spelled in English in the magazine, I know, I know...) So anyway, I got sick again. As the seasons change, my throat acts like some kind of barometer because I have rhinitis and my throat and nose always act up whenever we transition from hot to cold weather. Speaking of hot weather, Tsukasa is quite hot here. With that out of the way, I’m just chiming in today with a quick update on Tonikaku Kawaii, Kenjiro Hata’s latest manga -- and probably an update that I should have done sooner. Anyway, in page 9 of chapter 67, we have a cameo of Hayate and Nagi being all kissy-kissy, lovey dovey with each other as Kaname educates her senpai on the different meanings of kisses. Of course, this was all in Kaname’s imagination, but when the author of the manga draws the two main characters of his former manga this way, I think it leaves little doubt as to how he wanted t

Sharp contrasts of bright green and dark shadows lend an alluring and almost otherworldly ambiance to this lush green forest. The seemingly random placement of the trees belie the artist’s subtle intent—which is to draw the viewer’s attention into the blank space at the upper left portion of the painting wherein the paper’s natural whites were purposely left intact in order to create the illusion of shards of light – sharp as daggers piercing into the thick veil of foliage below... is the kind of insincere, artsy, pseudo literary description that relies on empty prose and complex-sounding words to make something out to be more than it actually is. It’s also not the kind of description I’d ever want to give any of my paintings. You know how long it took me to think up that description? All of 3 minutes at the very moment that I decided to start writing this essay. In fact, I could make up artsy sounding, insincere descriptions like that all day long – but I don’t, because I don’t

Inspired by a poster from Globe Philippines. No narration because I was on vacation when this was uploaded.

In all honesty, I didn't think this final day would be worth blogging, but as it turned out, it actually was. So here I am again with the final chapter of this year's trip to Manila. We started the day by cooking the last of the bacon and eggs that we'd bought at the start of the trip, as well as finishing off our supply of bread. Check out was at 12:00 PM, so we decided to make the best use of our room and come down by around 11:00-11:30 AM. My aunt and cousin arrived at our hotel room by around 8:00 AM. My cousin would be coming home to Iloilo on the same plane as us, while my aunt had to leave to make it back to work by 1:00 PM. By 11:00, we'd finished packing up everything and we were ready to check out. Things went pretty smoothly and we left our heavy luggage at the hotel reception. We'd be coming by to pick them up by around 4:00 PM. The hotel was near the airport and we had plenty of time to explore Manila a little bit more before our 7:35 PM flight. We

We started the day with breakfast inside our hotel room. We need to finish off the groceries we'd bought at the start of our trip because we're leaving tomorrow. My mother had set a meeting with a friend in the Greenbelt area just next to our hotel by lunchtime. We spent the morning just watching TV inside our room. Just in case you didn't know, the Warriors won and Raptors fans are probably quite salty about it. We made our way to the Greenbelt Mall by 12:00, but the friend sent a text that he had a meeting right now and by 2:30 PM, so we could only meet up at around the 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM time window. My mother decided to call off the meeting since it seemed it would be a hassle for him as well. After that, we had lunch at the Glorietta Mall inside of Shakey's. We'd actually accumulated quite a number of credit cards rewards points, so we used up all the coupons we accumulated and had lunch basically for free. With lunch out of the way, we walked

Today was a bit more laid back than the previous ones. We started off with some light breakfast inside our rooms and then went straight to the pool by 8:00 AM. Miraculously, through youtube tutorials and some coaching from my friend, Roop (online), I'm now able to swim freestyle while breathing normally in and out of water. Anyway, Prince Plaza II's pool is kinda small, so I can actually swim the entire length of it in 3-5 strokes. After about 15 minutes, the pool got pretty crowded with people, so my mother decided to come out. We made our way back to our hotel room by about 9:10 so she could make it to the 10:30 AM Holy Mass at the Ayala Chapel, which was literally just in our hotel's backyard. Of course, I managed to take several nice pics of Nagi in her bikini before we left. I took my mother to the chapel and she told me to go ahead and shop around the malls for a while and we'd meet up in an hour. In case you didn't know, I'm an atheis

Since we bought some groceries yesterday, we had a light breakfast inside of our hotel room. After that, we got prepared and booked a car to take us straight to Manila Ocean Park where we met up with my aunt and cousin.  The Ocean Park is actually just one big building with lots of nature-centric attractions. This trip was my Aunt's treat and she bought everyone unlimited tickets for the entire day.  The Ocean Park is actually relatively small, but they hold shows at staggered times within the different areas of the building to keep you busy throughout the day. Also, there are several commercial stalls selling all kinds of goods and services as well as a few snack stands and restaurants scattered throughout the building. We started out by going through the creepy crawlies section that features all kinds of lizards, snakes, amphibians and exotic insects inside of glass cases. I managed to take some nice pics with Nagi inside this section. After we were done with t