Fashion Illustration for 2011
Can you smell that? Yup! The scent of summer – or spring depending on which part of the world you are in – is in the air. You know what that means, right? It’s time to welcome a new wave of fashion trends. We’re not transforming into some fashion guru or runway expert if that’s what you’re thinking. We just think it’s time to update our imaginary wardrobes with a little magazine browsing and web surfing to give our illustrations a trendier and fresher look. So, what’s hot for 2011? Summer-inspired dresses for one. Last year saw the reign of the comfy professional look. You know the one sported by ladies on the go wearing smart blazers paired with skimpy shorts, giving off a smart, but casual look. This year seems to want to retain that comfortable feel, although with a more classic and feminine vibe. Enter long flowing dresses with soft fabrics and attention-grabbing colors. With their thin material, they don’t only allow your skin a chance to breathe in the summer heat, its natural contour also offers ease of movement – a good fit for people who are not fond of moving around during the unbearably hot months. Fabrics that have striped prints are also making a comeback. Of course, the classic black and white stripes still tops the list, but bolder color combinations are catching up real fast. Skirts seem to be getting more favored over shorts this year too, and the distressed denim style is moving aside to give way to soft, layered designs. Braided bags, studded shoes, oversized jewelries, belts, scarves, and other accessories are holding on to their rightful places in high end boutiques and retail stores as well. All in all, the first quarter of 2011 seems to be all about contrast. Contrast between volume and natural contour and contrast between femininity and boldness – just like the contrasting feel of the burning summer heat and the cooling effect of seawater on your...
read moreLearning Japanese
Konnichiwa minna-san! Nope. You did not visit the wrong site, and yes, that was a different language (which means “Hello, everyone!” by the way). Say konnichiwa to Nihongo*, because for this week, we’ll be having a Japanese class – or at least something close to it. Oh, in case you were wondering what has gotten into our minds to make us want to study Japanese all of a sudden, the answer is no, we have not been taking anything we should not be taking. J We have just been anime fans for some time now and we thought it would probably be fun to learn a bit of the language to help us get a clearer picture of what the characters are saying when the English subtitles can’t be bothered to show up, not to mention help us understand what the theme songs that we have been singing along to mean all along. Now that we’ve got that part clear, let’s start with the lesson and discuss: Japanese Greetings There are three basic Japanese greetings. First is “Ohayou gozaimasu” which means “good morning,” “Konnichiwa” which can either translate to “Hello” or “Good afternoon” and “Konbanwa” which means “Good evening.” You can also say “Oyasumi” which means “good night,” if you are about to wrap up your day. Introducing Yourself Meeting people for the first time almost always require you to introduce yourself, so if you find yourself in a similar situation, these sentences may come handy for you: “Konnichiwa, watashi no namae wa (insert your name here) desu” (Hello, my name is (insert name here) or “Konnichiwa, watashi wa (insert name here) desu. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.**” (Hello, I am <insert name here>. Nice to meet you) ________________________________________________________________ *Nihongo came from “Nihon” which is the native name ofJapanand “go” which means language. It means language of the people ofJapan ** Yoroshiku onegaishimasu can have a number of meanings. Sometimes it’s translated to “Nice to meet you,” sometimes to “Please treat me well” and sometimes to “I’m looking forward to having a good (working) relationship with you. All three are something you might say when meeting new people for the first time, especially people you will eventually be working with. _____________________________________________________________ Honorifics Japanese people have a strong social hierarchy system, and this reflects on the way they speak and address the people they interact with. Deviating from the standards you are expected to follow will be considered rude and offensive, so you’ll have to familiarize yourself with them if you don’t want to leave the wrong impression. A way to start this is by learning Japanese honorifics*. There are plenty of Japanese honorifics for just about every setting; however, a good number of them are rarely used, if not totally obsolete by now, so we’ll be discussing the more common ones here. First we have “san.” San is like the Japanese counterpart of the English Mr. Ms. or Mrs. It is usually attached to the last name of the person you are addressing if your relationship is strictly limited to business matters. For example, you have a co-worker named John Smith. Since your interaction with John doesn’t extend beyond the office, you are expected to address him as Smith-sanor Smith John-san (Japanese say their names last name first followed by the given name) Similarly, Jane Doe would be called “Doe-san” or “Doe Jane-san.” Calling either of the two by their first names would be considered too presumptuous, unless John or Jane themselves insist on being called by their first names. Second is “chan.” Chan is often attached to the first name of a female you are on friendly terms with. This may either apply to a female who is younger than you...
read more101 Christmas Tree Designs Finally Up!
At last, after two weeks of working on our 101 Christmas Tree Design Challenge, BNP is thrilled to announce that the final designs are already available for viewing in our gallery. It took us an extra week to convert all the illustrations into vectors, clip arts, and 3D graphics, but we can say that it was time well spent. Anyway, just follow the link above to see them for yourself. A download link for our free clip art design from the collection have also been provided at our homepage. Enjoy! ^_^
read moreCharcoal Drawing
There are some things that never get old even with the passing of time. Fads will come and go, but there will always be something to appreciate about them and charcoal drawing is one of those. For this, we’re going to need the following: Sketch pad Cotton buds / Cotton balls Regular pencil Charcoal pencil/Charcoal sticks Eraser (preferably the kneaded kind) For starters, we’ll prepare the sketch we’ll be working on. If you’re the talented kind who can sketch portraits with ease, you can just go and draw a rough sketch of your preferred subject using your regular pencil. If you happened to be sleeping when the skies opened up and showered mere mortals with drawing talents, on the other hand, you can do it the easier way by tracing photos from magazines or photocopied pictures of your desired subject. When your sketch is ready, we’ll move on to the charcoal painting process by identifying the so-called dark areas of the human face. These usually include either side of the hair right next to the jaws and cheeks, the thin line between the upper and lower lips, the outer corners of the eyes, half of the nose and the eyebrow areas just a bit above the nose. Doing this is important because the work we’ll be doing in those areas will give our painting its defining silhouettes. Next, we’ll whip some strokes on the areas mentioned above using the charcoal pencil. The strokes don’t have to be particularly heavy, but they should be heavy enough to be distinguished from the lighter lines of your sketch. After that, we’ll get some cotton buds and rub the pencil strokes on the dark areas lightly to smudge them a bit. If you want the smudge to cover a wider area, we can use some cotton balls, but if you want to control the area that will be covered by the smudge, we can stick with the cotton buds. From one area, we’ll work our way to the other sections of the portrait until we’ve got all the dark spots covered. Once we’re done with the smudging part, we’ll finish the rest of the painting by tracing our sketch so the lines we’ve made earlier will be more pronounced. We can also fill in the rest of the painting by shading the spaces in between the lines. When all of these are done, we’ll add some finishing touches to the painting by using a rubber eraser to erase certain parts where shading has been done to give them a sparkly look like what we did. And that’s it! Our finished charcoal portrait. Make sure you don’t forget to put your signature somewhere on the paper. Who knows, it might actually command a high price someday....
read morePlant-a-Berde; Painting the Town Green One Tree at a Time
Marathons aimed at promoting environmental awareness have been in vogue lately, and although we want to do our little part in advancing this cause, we’re afraid our less-than-sturdy physiques won’t be able to take all the strain, especially considering the only exercise we get during weekdays is the inconvenient walk between our work stations and the water dispenser. Luckily for us, the guys from Green Team Philippines had a different idea in mind when they invited us to join “Plant-a-Berde,” a tree planting project organized by the group in coordination with local government units and non-government organizations. So, equipped with backpacks containing some water and snacks, we left Lucena City in the morning of November 6th to head for the plaza of Sariaya, Quezon where we were supposed to meet up with the other groups who will also be participating in the said project. We initially thought we’d follow the organizers’ vehicles on their way up to Barangay Mamala, a sizable area covering a portion of Mount Banahaw-San Cristobal where we will be planting the rambutan and acacia saplings that we had with us, but it turned out that they had requested military officers to give us a hitch in their military trucks. Given how the medical doctors, teachers, and students who were with us that time gamely climbed aboard the imposing truck, we think it’s safe to say it was an idea that was well-received. After traveling for about an hour, we stopped a few hundred meters away from our intended destination to travel on foot after the narrowing path made it difficult for the large truck we were on to proceed. It was a good thing the day wasn’t particularly hot, thanks to the bulky trees along the road, so the uphill climb was still enjoyable even if we had to stop walking a couple of times to catch our breath. When we reached an abandoned patch of land that was said to have been cleared using kaingin methods, the coordinator led us to the spot where we were supposed to plant the saplings, although they had us participate in a native ritual intended as an offering to the guardians of the forest first. They gave us the signal to start planting after that, but they advised us to check the holes where we will be planting as there were some “buried treasures” in them. When all the saplings had been planted, they rounded us up to award the treasures which turned out to be some gift certificates among other things. After all the prizes had been given out and the organizers called it a day, we all prepared to leave, although of course, everyone flashed their best smiles for some souvenir shots first. It was already past lunch when we reached the town plaza where our short journey started, but in spite of our hungry stomachs and soiled shoes, it was an experience we truly...
read moreSculpture Experiment
Are you one of those people who collected cute figurines of your favorite characters when you were younger? So are we, but let’s not get into the details, okay? ^_~ Anyway, for this tutorial, we’ll teach you about our little experiment with traditional sculpture, but before that we will need the following: Plaster of Paris Molding clay Carving tool Petroleum Jelly Paint Paintbrush Mixing bowl Water Old cloth or discarded paper The first step in the sculpting process is thinking of a design you’d like to work on. It can be just about anything under the sun, although we suggest that if you’re not that much into molding, picking a simple design would be the best way to start. After you’ve made up your mind, let’s take a bar or roll of molding clay and knead it with our hands. Once the clay is soft enough, we can start shaping it according to our preferred design. If you want to include some fine details on your piece, you can use carving tools or any other pointed object to peel unwanted clay away. When you’re already satisfied with your design, let’s set it aside for a while and get a mixing bowl. Then let’s pour some Plaster of Paris on the bowl and add some water to it. We’ll mix the two until the mixture achieved a creamy consistency. Next, let’s get the molding clay we’ve set aside and apply a generous amount of petroleum jelly all over its surfaces. It’s important that we don’t forget this part because it will make a lot of difference later on. Once we’re done, we’ll put some old cloth or discarded paper under our molding clay. If you prefer, we can also use a basin or any container that will prevent the liquid mixture from staining the surface we’re working on. After that, we’ll get our mixture and we’ll pour it unto our molding clay. We have to ensure that no surface will be left uncovered then we’ll set it for an hour to dry. The finished product will be our mold. When the mixture is all dried up, we’ll flip our mold upside down until the bottom with the molding clay still partially visible is exposed. <insert matching photos here> Using a carving tool or any other similar object, we will start to dig out the molding clay out of the now hardened plaster. Once we’ve gotten all the molding clay out, we’ll pour some mixture unto the now hollow interior of the mold and set it aside to dry once more. <insert matching photos here> When the plaster we poured inside has hardened up, let’s get any slightly heavy object and use it to chip the mold until it crumbles to pieces. We must be careful not to strike the mold too hard or we may end up chipping a part of the molded product inside as well, though. This shouldn’t be a difficult task if enough petroleum jelly was applied on the molding clay before the mixture was poured unto it. When all the pieces of the mold has been chipped away and the molded product inside has been revealed, we’ll get our paint and paintbrush and start painting it with any color we desire. Just like in the previous steps, we’ll set the finished product aside and give the paint some time to dry. Once your own piece of sculpture is done, you can now place your work of art in your favorite spot, give it as a gift to a friend, sell it to interested buyers, or if...
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