Thursday, June 23, 2016

Surreal

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An art piece created by me. It is called "Surreal," a word reflecting how I feel towards God's creation, especially the sky.

Praying for Myself

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An art piece created by me. It is called "Surreal", a word reflecting how I
feel towards God's creation, especially the sky.
View larger size here: Surreal
I've been praying a lot lately, and it just feels so good like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders. But it has always been hard for me to pray because I'm always full of doubt. Is someone actually listening to my prayers, to my woes, and to my cries? Is there really a God? But it feels good to look forward to praying every night because I have so much to say, ask for, and be thankful for.

These past few days I've been praying for my enemies, those who make me suffer, sad, angry, and those who I just have bad relation with. Boy, was it hard, but it made me feel like a good person to pray for them because it's love...and God is love. However, the hardest person to pray for is for myself. It's hard because I tend to think during prayers that I am innocent, perfect, and free of guilt, but I, too, am at fault as much as my enemy.

To pray for improvements in yourself is one of the hardest thing ever because you think you're already a "good person." It feels uncomfortable to reevaluate and reflect on yourself because no one wants to hear that they're not a good person, especially hearing it from yourself. But I managed to do it, to pray for myself. I watched one of Joel Osteen's videos once. I don't remember the theme of the sermon, but I remember him saying that when you want change, whether it be in a certain situation or person, you should pray for yourself too because what if the situation or person isn't changing because you aren't? Maybe if you changed, things will change too. And I do kinda find truth in that.

I hope it becomes easier for me to pray for myself because I want to be a good person - someone who loves, is kind, and gentle, but most importantly, to be humble. Humble enough to pray for their enemies and to forgive them because God is love.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Not So Quiet... by Helen Zenna Smith

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Not So Quiet...by Helen Zenna Smith writes about middle and upper-class
British women's experiences of "doing their bit during World War I, 1915.
In the midst of monstrous bombings, guns echoing in the distance, and piles of wounded men, the middle and upper-class British women are "doing their bit" for their country among the French frontlines during World War I. In Not So Quiet... by Helen Zenna Smith, it is 1915 and 21-year-old Smithy is one of those women enduring the horror of being a nurse in the frontlines. Not So Quiet... is one of the most absolutely captivating and gruesome book I have ever encountered!

This novel explores the troubling conflict between the home and front, especially a women's identity transitioning between their Victorian Angel role at home to the savior and nurturing nurse in the front.

To further understand this book through a certain lens, I was introduced to an essay called "Constructions of "Home," "Front," and Women's Military Employment in First-World-War-Britain: A Spatial Interpretation"
by Krisztina Robert where she discusses the "front" and "home."

There is a traditionalist and modernist representation of both sites. As Robert puts it, the traditionalist representation of "home" is the female utopia where it is the domestic setting for women who must remain here to keep the fire burning and think of the soldiers. The "front" is depicted as a place of destruction, nightmare, and exclusively for men. On the other hand, the modernist saw the "home" as a second front where women have to step out of their domestic setting and play active roles in the conflict. The "front" in modernist terms describes the war zone as heterogeneous in gender terms, which shows that women are integral parts of the "front" and not out of place.

Zenna Smith not only does tremendously well on illustrating the traumatizing experience of being in war but also on showing the collision of both representation of the sites. Perhaps both representations are not as distinct as they're made out to be. Through Smithy's transition when entering the "front" and "home," and with each a different mindset, both definitions become a blur. 

Going into the front, women are to be nurses, however, they too are affected and traumatized by the war equally to men. They are to return home, take pride of their in "doing their bit," and then continue the role of a Victorian Angel despite the traumatic events they have experienced. This is the case as to why Smithy's perception of her virtues are different when she enters each site because each site has different standards she feels she must abide to.

In a book I read called, Fighting Forces, Writing Women: Identity and Ideology in the First World War by Ouditt Sharon, she says that women are conflicted between whether or not they're finally stripping their role of being just a woman and finally being masculine by going out into the front where it's supposedly exclusively for men, or if their feminine role is being utilized in the front to nurture these wounded men only, as they similarly would at home.

I've never quite had an affectionate interest for history or war literature. They just bore me, to be honest. However, Zenna Smith's book is quite the gem. Although, the mothers in this novel make me just want to pull my hair out! They made me so angry! You will definitely understand if you read it. Even though they're total a-holes, I think they were a really great part of the story, especially to make it heart wrenching for the readers! Anyway...following there is an afterword by Jane Marcus to further understand this novel, which is very insightful!

I implore all you lovers and smellers of books to check Zenna Smith's Not So Quiet... out! With her amazing storytelling, narration, and plethora of descriptive diction it is indeed not so quiet. I mean...that imaginary exhibition from the battlefield Smithy initiates in the story is just perfection, it is such an award-winning scene!

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Chin Up, Buttercup

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Buttzilla Buttercup from episode one of The Powerpuff Girls (2016)!
This weekend I had a chance to watch episode one and two of The Powerpuff Girls (2016). It was pretty cute! The first episode had me giggling!

I am looking forward to watching more since it was such a big part of my childhood. I remember my doodles would be nothing but The Powerpuff Girls. I got every single feature on them down!

I was so cool.

Speed Art: A Girl and Her Pet Fish + Video

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A little cutie with her pet fish! She's very outgoing, clumsy, and believes she is from a different planet.
I decided to try something new, so I did a watercolor piece! I sketched the drawing on paper and then scanned it later. The sketching process took about an hour or so and the digital art-ing took almost two hours. Despite this, I have shortened the whole process to 5 minutes. You're welcome!

This is me conquering my fear of using Photoshop, so it was quite difficult! However, I was motivated and excited to try out some new watercolor Photoshop brushes I got! They're sooooo nice!!!! This piece was so much fun to create! I loved playing with the shadows and highlights!

If you want to see how this piece was created, click the link below!


Thank you! 


Saturday, April 2, 2016

Comic art: Day 1 - When you're funny and you know it

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Day 1: When you're funny and you know it.
I was inspired to do a cute comic diary illustrating me.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Once You Find the Answer, You Risk Completion

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"Is that all there is?", Fresh Hell, Palais de Tokyo (by Martin Tod)

I realized that I write the most when I am sad.

I find that being sad is when I am most inspired. Right now, I am not happy but rather content. Never had I wanted to be so sad before. I am drained of inspiration!

I believe Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre puts it best when Jane describes this feeling as a 'still existence;' "an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes; just as much good as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a 'too easy chair' to take a long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my circumstances, as it would be under his" (Brontë 137). I still thank God for helping me conquer the day, but sometimes I become "incapable of appreciating" this "still existence." I feel nothing.

How can one be happy/content AND sad? I want to be happy/content and sad, but whenever I am happy/content, I feel like sadness is temporary, therefore inspiration is temporary. On the other hand, when I am sad all the time, I feel like inspiration is always there. I can feel everything, from soft whispers on windy days to the warm embrace of the sun on my face.


As of late, I feel like I'm too busy chasing life, too busy trying to survive and make it out there somehow that I can't feel anything anymore. I am drained from feeling anything at all. But then again, isn't that what life is all about? "Making it?" I just want to be sad and lost and excited about it, again. I'm not saying that I'm completely found, but I can feel myself becoming.

Over these past few years, I've come to know that life is mostly about trying to "make it," but I also know that it's more than that.

Life is more than bills, taxes, jobs and education. When I see these words, they horrify me. They confine me. Adventures, love, wanderlust and spontaneous are some words I like to think of when I think of life. Yes! Unfortunately, there's always the contradiction of "you're supposed to have money in order to travel the world or be happy because, supposedly, you get everything you want."

For me, it's the feeling of yearning when seeing winding roads on mountains that disappears between them. For me, it's the continuous flowing of the river. For me, it's that leaf, that balloon, that dandelion spore, that floating speck of dust that keeps on flying and drifting further and further away, and you'll never know where they have decided to rest, or die. Sometimes I'm just dying to know that happens. I mean, this is such a big world.

I wish there was more to life than just trying to "make it" then maybe we won't lose so much of ourselves or the things that makes us happy and our life meaningful. I would never want to lose myself, yet I don't even know who I am, and that's the exciting part. I know it sounds contradictory; not wanting to lose myself yet wanting to be lost, but life is strange...

I don't want to know who I am. I don't want to figure it out. Human beings, along with the world, are too complex to be just 'something.' I want to be more.



There were certain moments in my life when I was pestered to find my identity. I hate it when people tell or ask me to find my identity. I don't know who the hell I am. Yes, it does get frustrating sometimes to not know, not just who I am but anything, because that is what makes it exciting. I want to be wanderlust, a wanderer, a nomad.

Jason Silva, host of Brain Games, is the creator of the YouTube channel Shots of Awe. According to Silva's official website, Shots of Awe is a short film series of "trailers for the mind" that serve as philosophical espresso shots exploring innovation, technology creativity, futurism and the metaphysics of the imagination. (Pretty cool beans!)

In one of my favorite videos of his called "We Need To Be Lost To Find Ourselves" Silva argues that we need to be lost to find ourselves because aren't we "ultimately" wanderers? Wandering and seeking? He asks why do we love open spaces? Why do open spaces have more appeal than beautiful cozy, small spaces?

"Why do we look at the infinite ocean and actually feel a sense of reverence and awe? Instead of being afraid, we look at it as it beckons us to the unknown, to the mystery, to the question," Silva said.

That is why night, the sky, and oceans exist. I love staring at the night sky. I get lost and captivated. It's so beautiful. It makes me want to cry. Don't tell me you have never stared at the night sky and been awed. Go ahead, try it!

I want that feeling of being lost, like I am striving for something because it is out of my grasp. I know I don't like the bumpy moments in life, and I'm probably going to jinx it, but that thrill, adventure and anticipation makes me alive like when you watch a horror movie and that jump scare just makes you cry! Being lost for me creates vivacity in my life. When I find happiness/contentment, it feels good, but then I don't know what to do afterwards. What now?

Even if it means being sad, I don't want to find myself, I don't want to figure 'it' out because when I find 'it,' it's over.

"Once you find the answer, you risk completion," Silva said.

As cliché as it sounds, it's only when we are lost that we are found

If you want to be.