I have finished building my race car for the StumpTown 40 event! I hand-crafted the car with rotary tools, spray paint, model tape and markers. I have made minor mistakes spray painting the stripes on the car seat a few times until it looked, descent. At the end of the day, I am happy what I have accomplished and this project made me realize how grateful I am as a designer.

The photo below is digital piece that I put together along with the back image of San Francisco that I gathered from Google search. I spent about one hour patching, color filtering, layering and gradient. More photos will be added of the finish project. Thanks for reading.

Happy painting!

Photo credit of San Francisco: FamousWonders.com

I have four days left before completing my model race car for upcoming designer’s conference. I am not only sculpting for fun and practice, I am doing this for a cause to encourage our young minds to be future CREATORS! I do encourage everyone of all ages to practice some type three dimensional on software, programming or traditional to study depth of an object and shape. I will write little more about the event happening at the conference once I complete my project.

This is my first time working on wood since a Creative Process and Beginning Sculpture at college, so it’s a been awhile. I am happy that I am using rotary tools to make the shape of a race car without drawing lines. Well I drew important lines to cut holes for the headlights, wing and hood. I was pretty careful using the saw bit to cut the wing; otherwise, I would have cut through the plastic table. After cutting and sanding, I primed five layers of gray primer before sanding again to reduce the appearance of wood grain. I continue this process so that the car be smooth as a pebble. Once this process complete, I will spray paint the car in either lilac or lagoon…Until next time, happy painting!

Yippy! I have created a set (excluding earrings) and it was fun to experiment with beads.

Finish!

Here is an update on the latest Self-Portrait Project. I don’t tend to add color because I am into the three color trend (white, black and gray) for awhile. I might add a fun color like green or fuchsia as the sky.Just wait until this illustration is complete. Happy painting!

I received my materials for the Stumptown40′s 2^nd Annual contest. The points of this contest are about creativity, functionality and mainly, have a great time with the product. I have not begun on this project yet but I have purple, blue and fins (or duck pillow feathers) in mind. I have to remember to keep the weight of my derby car under 5 ounces; otherwise, I will be disqualified from the contest. In addition, I cannot paint or have anything oil that will not dry before or at the time of the contest event. Below are photos of the materials…Good luck to me!

I have never in my life wanted to make necklaces or jewelry pieces until now. Over the weekend, I went to Micheals Arts and Crafts store in Mountain View to buy pens, Prismacolor pen set; instead, I glanced at the beads that were located near the Easter products sold in front of the store. I asked my boyfriend about making necklaces, and I was stunned to know that he made jewelry from beads at a young age. He explained to me a simple technique of making beaded jewelry pieces which consists of string, beads or stones, pillars, clasp and crimps…And that was it. I was like, “Really, that is all I need to make a necklace?” and he nod. Later in the evening I began making my very first necklace while I was watching, “Puss in Boots” on iTunes, and I estimated about an hour and thirty minutes of making the necklace.

I was a bit skeptic to blog about this but I do adore Angry Birds’ characters after reading this tutorial article presented by Fabio Sasso, illustrator/designer, who created a Angry Birds parody. So, I practiced drawing illustration on Adobe Illustrator CS and the instructions drawing an Angry Bird was simple. The only tool I had difficult time adjusting to Pen Tool — adding anchor points and curving the lines. It was a great practice and you should try it too! Below are some samples of my Angry Bird version. ANGRY BIRDS, yay!

Click here to read more about the tutorial.

Average time:1.5 hours

A few weekends ago, I participated in a photo scavenger hunt with the Adobe Create Suite User Group for the first time. The group and organizer were really nice and professional with their photography skills. I did not stay with the group too long due to air or temperature in Pacific that made me felt sick. I felt great before arriving to Pacifica and eating at the cafe, so it must be the morning breeze from the ocean that made me felt like I had the flu. It was really odd.

major tea bag at Salada Beach Cafe – Pacifica, CA

So the photos were to be taken in Pacifica, CA and we post to meet in this popular cozy cafe, Salada Beach Cafe that was once a historic grocery store, Anderson’s store. By the way, visit the website because the background music is very bossa nova and soothing that will get your toes wiggle. I had this refreshing organic tall glass of made up name “Cha Chi (and third word I don’t remember)” tea and blueberry muffin. The tea pretty much tastes like Toasted Rice tea that I normally purchased online once a month from NUMI tea website. I began my hunt too early while the group was eating, drinking and conversating (I am going to assume this is the correct spelling because Chrome auto-correcting my spelling. URGH!) for an hour. The group and I were to look for and photograph objects in Pacifica, so the group began photographing at this nearby “castle” located few blocks on a steep hill. For your information, if you do plan to see this “castle”, park your automobile and walk because my Miata (not automatic) had to drive a little beyond the speed limit to travel on this steep hill, so be careful rolling backwards. There was not much to take photos of this castle because it was not opened to the public. In addition, I was not enthused about this castle because it looked more of a miniature mansion with double windows. What I did like the about the spot was the green mold growing on the side which preserves the age of this castle. I was hoping to see a castle that you would see in Ireland, England or France, or from my favorite scandal-romantic television series, The Tudors (Can you hear the sound of spring violins?)! From what I learned about this 106 year old castle, that the last person (a lawyer) who lived there, spent twenty-six grand to fix the castle ’til his death. There are photos inside of this castle and history on this castle website, click here.

castle in Pacifica, CA

The purpose for this scavenger hunt is to be creative and have fun, so I took some photos with my Canon G7 and Camera⁺ mobile software application from my iPhone. Enjoy!

• a reflective object
  
  
  
  
• five things that are similar
  
  
  
  
  
• something red
  
  

  

  
  

• something that’s delivered
  
  
  
• something lacy(for Sally)
  
  
  
• something that is black and white
  
  

  
  

• something breathes
  
  

My nephew and I received our 4×4 canvas–museum version in the mail from the Art House Co-op for the Self-Portrait Project…This is going to be interesting, small and full of creativity. I am not sure what medium I will use for this little canvas but it surely going to be black and white with a touch of color. Good luck to me!

Happy Painting!