SF Stories Postcard for Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival

Now with the date, time, and location confirmed on PAAFF's website, I finished the postcard as well! 

(top image is front, bottom is back, click on image to zoom in!)

Maddie + Eagul Comic Strip 6

(click on strip to zoom in.)

Maddie + Eagul Comic Strip 5

This is a San Francisco local strip! I LOVE San Francisco, but not so much for its fog storm. (click on strip to zoom in.)

Maddie + Eagul Comic Strip 4

(click on strip to zoom in.)

Maddie + Eagul Comic Strip 3

(click on strip to zoom in.)

Maddie + Eagul Comic Strip 2

(click on the strip to zoom in!)

Maddie + Eagul Comic Strip

Boy! I finally got to scan these comic strips I did months ago, but my brain kinda die on ideas so I haven't done more, but I'd like to share what I had! So, this is a comic strip about a girl named Maddie and a seagull named Eagul become friends. They have opposite personalities, they are different in every single way, they don't agree with each other, they drive each other bananas... I don't know why they are still friends.
(click on image to enlarge the strip!)

No Bait, More Fishes!

So I want to share another secret here from learning at the Pacifica Pier today, and boy! Pacifica Pier is truly an interesting place to fish because its ever-chaning fish crowds! My first post about fishing shows all big surfperches like Silver and Walleye and 2 little smelts, and they were totally after artificial sandworm. But there was one time we went and there was no big surfperches so we didn't catch any fish with sandworm but everybody else was catching baby surfperches, and we found out baby surfperches only chase after shrimp, and then we bought some shrimp from a guy at the pier and as soon as we dropped down the rig, they nibbled like crazy! 


And today all fishes we caught are big Jacksmelt and baby Silver Surfperches and Shiner Surfperches, and we've never seen big Jacksmelt there before. At the very beginning we were still using all the left over shrimp bait and we did catch Jacksmelt but very slowly, and there's this guy who came later and all the sudden he became the focus because he caught big Jacksmelt one after another or I should say three after another three...I'm not exaggerating, it's really like every other minute he'd catch something, and we didn't even see him put on any bait, and there we found that he used very shining fly rig! I was thinking if I'm a fish I'd like to check out the interesting shining bug in the water, too! So he had like probably 8 fly rigs on the line, and he caught the most fishes without using ANY bait! And because he didn't need to spend time cutting and putting bait on, he quickly unhooked the fishes and just throw them in cooler and his rig's already down in the water again in minute. How efficient! 


Top left was first Jacksmelt I caught, and top right was second one I caught.... I was counting at the beginning but I lost count after many because we got busy with all the tasks and taming the strong Jacksmelt to unhook took a while. Bottom left is all Jacksmelt and Surfperches we caught, and bottom right is Jacksmelt on grill as soon as we returned home! Chong and Raul also caught 2 Bullhead fishes (Pacific Staghorn Sculpin), but people at the pier told us not to eat those, so we put them back in the ocean, however, Raul found some people favor Bullhead fish on the internet! So maybe next time we catch it again, we'll try it!

SF Stories Goes To Philadelphia Asian-American Film Festival

Alright! SF Stories is going to Philadelphia Asian-American Film Festival (PAAFF) from October 21 - 24th! So the director wanted the poster to have a bit more visual impact compared to the first version that we used at LA Asian Pacific Film Festival (you can see them on my 1st blog post 'SF Stories Movie Posters'). 


And I looked at PAAFF's website, and I decided to use PAAFF's yellow on this new poster design to go with the festival. So this will be the new SF Stories Movie Poster. And this time we got to have some Film Festival Laurel Leaves!


(click on image to view details of Brad and the flies...or laurel leaves)

Childhood Act 3

Here are the rest two of my Childhood series! 'I Am Brave' on the left and 'Once Upon A Time' on the right. 'I Am Brave' idea came from me remembering seeing kids like to be encouraged, you give them positive compliment and you tell them they can make it, and they usually do. And once they succeed like the little blondie in the duck inner tube learning not to be scared of water, they gain confidence and start taking over control and overdoing it with their very big proud face and keep asking you to look after look after look, they are so ready to teach other kids. This character reminds me of the cute band manager Summer in movie School of Rock. I love that movie.

'Once Upon A Time' describes the redhead girl like to read stories to others and tell people what she knows before anybody even ask. She's also very particular about what she wears, the colors and coordination from head to toe, and she will tell you she picks them herself. It's funny how these characters are so alive to me, I feel I can hear their voices and how they talk, and each one of them has her own attitude and personality.

Now my OCD is over with this series, but I find another OCD coming up and that's I feel like drawing something non-cutesy nor nice to balance out this series... I don't know why I sound like a Libra but I'm not. 

Childhood Act 2

After three girly girls, I thought I had enough because I never draw cutesy babydolls just being cute, but I guess I have this Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder on colors and themes... I felt I need to draw something green and blue to balance out previous three lovely passionate hearty cozy fuzzy sweetie warm colors like that cherry 'Call Me Princess', peachy 'Let's Play In The Park' and creamy 'I Am Beautiful'. 


Here is the lime one named 'I Heal'. 


I once wish my hair is that big so that I can get dreadlock hairdo. By the way, these Childhood Act illustrations are ACEO size, which is 2.5 x 3.5 inches, ACEO stands for Art Cards, Editions and Originals. I learned about ACEO from Etsy when I opened the dogbatcat shop. I thought it's a great idea and a great way for people to collect art they don't necessary want to hang on the wall, so I followed.

Childhood Act

After some oil paintings, I felt like playing with color pencil! And 'Childhood' naturally came to me when I looked at my color pencil while thinking about what to draw. I think because color pencil reminds me of my childhood drawing time, that's one of the most common art medium in an art set given to children. I like how it has the pastel look but it's finer than pastel, and you can do more detail with it.


The top left I named it 'Call Me Princess', I believe many girls had done that... trying on mom's high heels walking around feeling they are princess. The top right I named it 'Let's Play In The Park', little girls like to act like grown ups taking their babydolls everywhere. The one on the left is called 'I Am Beautiful', putting on mom's lipstick showing off to everybody in the house how they can be as beautiful as mom.


Funny thing is that I didn't do any of the above... I watched my younger cousins did all that. I was a tomboy girl all my youth, and I remember seeing evidence (pictures) of myself wearing heavy makeup like a show girl when I was little, I was told it was my aunts' artwork from being bored.