I have a confession that will surely wound the delicate Christian Filipino feelings of my family: I don't enjoy Christmas. It's been years since I last looked forward to it, perhaps even a decade since I last actually liked it. This realization came to me only relatively recently and I didn't have the courage to admit it until much later because I grew up in a culture that prides on its Christmas traditions. I might as well confess to committing a murder than not liking Christmas.

We're almost at the end of 2015 so 'tis the season for looking back to see how far you've come. Like every year since the day I was born I have not accomplished anything of significance this year either, but I figured I'd have nothing else interesting to write about otherwise so I thought it'd be fun to take a leaf out of those end-of-year art summary things. Even if I'll end up regretting this blog entry, that is. It's always rather embarrassing to look at old works, after all!

Okay, so we didn't really do much in Dahilayan Forest Park. Everything was too expensive and I, for one, am too cheap to shell out that much for like a five minute slide down a slope. Anyway, I've experienced their zip line and luge before. That should be enough, right?

Parting is such sweet sorrow, especially since our stay in Osaka was a very pleasant one, not without thanks to our very gracious host. She took very good care of us during our stay, and we also had fun playing with her dogs. All good things end, however, so we had to say goodbye eventually.

Unfortunately, it was raining on the day we came back to Fushimi Inari. We didn't let the weather defeat us, though! And this time we got to drag our mom with us. She was probably not too happy about all the walking we did.

Day 2 was easily the best day in our Tokyo stay. Of course, it's not without a few misses, but the good stuff outweighed the not-so-bad by tons!

We arrived in Tokyo in the afternoon. After checking into our hotel in Akihabara, we ate late lunch at a restaurant nearby.

My brothers and I went to Kyoto by ourselves with goals that were probably a little too big considering how we only had one day. The adults visited two places in Western Kyoto the day before, neither of which we got to visit ourselves, but we did get to see four places, so it wasn't a complete loss in my opinion!

Excuse the pun. I felt like I had to do it! Anyway, you have to admit that Namba, home to Dotonbori and Den-Den Town, is an awesome place for shopaholics and specially the nerds. Maybe not the number one, but it's pretty close, right?

If you've been following my Instagram, you might be aware that I've very recently been to Japan. And you know what that means: I'll be posting a series of travel diary entries in the next few days! As usual, there are a lot of photos to go through, so for now here's a taste of what's to come... Or, more accurately, some photos that don't fit anywhere else.

Perhaps for a normal unknown civilian like me, a "What's in My Bag" feels like I'm just showing off to the void. After all, nobody really wants to know, right? But I've enjoyed looking at people's posts about the stuff in their bags ever since I discovered that it was a thing, because everyone's bag is different and that makes every single post very interesting! Making a post myself seems like a fun thing to do, and anyway I hope someone out there will find my bag interesting too.

Chelsea Kitchen's location is rather strange. It's an open area at SM Megamall's Fashion Hall, with their most "secluded" corner being surrounded by windows that let the people outside the mall look in on the diners.

InkTober is a drawing challenge for artists all over the world that involves creating one ink drawing every day for the entire month of October. Since my inking skills are really lacking, I've decided to take on the challenge this year in an attempt to improve.

In my quest for a very light gray marker for shading and a black marker for filling big areas, I discovered that Scribe Writing Essentials actually sells similar products as Stickerrific. They seem to have a bigger selection of calligraphy inks, though, and a few other things I didn't see at Stickerrific. Since they have a branch that's more easily accessible to me, I felt my wallet tremble in fear.

I was planning on getting gray Letraset Tria Promarkers, which has brush tips, but the Fully Booked at Eastwood didn't have the Trias, just the regular Promarkers. Kuretake's Brushables and Clean Color are around the same price range as the Promarkers so I decided on trying them out.

The Brushables has two tips, one in Pure Black and the other in a slightly lighter shade. The ink is waterproof and apparently lightfast, and so the pen itself is more expensive than the Clean Color, which is waterbased. Clean Color in Mid Gray turned out a lot darker than its bottom cap would suggest and much darker than what I wanted (the pen was wrapped in plastic so I couldn't test it before buying). Unfortunately, I don't know if either are blendable. I now use the Brushables for filling large areas, while I have yet to use the Clean Color for something more extensive than Kaworu's shirt.

Baby, the stars shine bright☆ #inktober #inktober2015

A photo posted by nozaku (@galacticlycoris) on Oct 5, 2015 at 5:50pm PDT

Would I buy them again? I want to! But I can't justify doing so because markers are a whole new medium to spend more money on, which I cannot afford. For now I'd like to focus my efforts on watercolors and just make use of drawing challenges like InkTober for inking practice.

In other news: Before InkTober caught me by surprise, I had the chance to drop by Deovir at SM North Edsa to grab a few tubes of Holbein watercolors. They sadly didn't have Opera available; however, the tubes I managed to snag are absolutely gorgeous. Horizon Blue has been my crush for a while now and it did not disappoint one bit!

The palette pictured here is from the Daiso in Pavilion at KL.

My mother's college friends are really cute. Sometimes I wonder if my friends and I will be as cute and fun when we get to their age. Just listening to them talk about anything and everything under the sun is enough reason to tag along.

I honestly didn't expect I'd be able to return to Singapore ever again, much less soon, but here I am with a buttload of photos, so strap yourselves in. It's going to be an image-heavy blog entry!

Manila traffic is absolutely insane so we try not to go to Makati if we can't help it. But sometimes we find ourselves there anyway, and when it's dinnertime, the grumbles of the stomach can no longer be ignored.

Decent art supplies stores are hard to find where I live. National Bookstore, while abundant in the Philippines, are never consistent with their stocks. They offer very few choices and almost never what I need.

Here is part two of the food log! I thought of writing about Stickerrific in this post as well, since I only have very few photos of the place. But it's rather out of place in a food log, and there are already too many pictures in one post anyway, so I'll be writing about it on a separate post... eventually!

On our last few days before returning to the Philippines, we attempted to eat at places we haven't tried before. The result of this is a bunch of photos, so here comes the first of my KL Food Logs!

Not a lot of things happened after our return to Kuala Lumpur, but somehow I still found myself with quite a backlog of photos to edit! I'll just have to slowly (surely) get around to them all. Unfortunately, the photos from the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest will have to wait.

This blog entry is image heavy because I got a little too shutter happy as one is bound to be when at a place like Sentosa's S.E.A. Aquarium.

I admit I haven't done anything very interesting in the past few days, but I did do a lot of walking and took some photos while I was at it, so I might as well post them.

Day 3 and 4 are mostly grocery errands, but I also got to walk around a bit further and take some more pictures!

It was already dinnertime when we arrived in Kuala Lumpur so after dropping off our stuff at the place we're staying at, we went to get dinner nearby. Our feet took us to El Cerdo, a place in Bukit Bintang that serves Spanish food.

How is it suddenly September? They say time flies when you're having fun, but I think that's also true even when you're not exactly having a blast. I just happened to have been too preoccupied with other things to sit down and edit pictures so I haven't been able to update right away.

Today's lunch is at Torch Restaurant in UP Town Center. It's an international fusion restaurant, so on their menu are fancy sushi rolls of some sort right along with pasta and burgers.

It's my brother's birthday so we went to check out Hole in the Wall, Century City Mall's fancy version of a food court. I thought it would be a good chance to use my new camera, but I quickly realized that I wasn't ready for it at all. I still have lots more to work on!

Local stores near me seem to have something against watercolorists. They never seem to stock watercolor paints and related materials, much less good quality ones, and when they do, they're gone too fast! The only way to get what you really want is to order them online, but since the postal service system where I live isn't very kind to people with anxiety (meaning: me), I long decided to stay off online shopping for the foreseeable future.

The last time I posted about my return to the world of traditional art, I said I was thinking of picking up watercolors again, so that's exactly what I ended up doing. What was intended to be a light little hobby became a rapid downward spiral to insanity—and I'm having a blast.

Today I met up with a friend I haven't seen in a long time, but in a mix of excitement and anxiety, I forgot to bring my camera's battery. (Oops!) We spent most of the time talking, though, so I doubt I would have taken a lot of pictures if I hadn't forgotten it. While we didn't go anywhere worth reporting on, I feel like writing about today anyway because we don't get to see each other often!

Earlier this month, my friends and I had a little gathering to celebrate a birthday. Birthdays are not a requirement for these little gatherings we call "salaryman party," but it's a pretty good excuse to get together once in a while. Usually we watch terrible movies over some yakiniku that we cook on my friend's electric hot plate, but this time we decided to make some takoyaki!

Chocolate croissants were something I only ever heard of from Nishii Yukito's old blog so when I found out about St. Marc Café in the Philippines, I thought I was one step closer to trying them. However, it wasn't until I noticed their branch in UP Town Center that I actually had any excuse to do so. Commuting is never a pleasant experience but it's always much worse in Manila, so there was no way I'd go through that much just for a croissant that I may or may not like.

The Clean Plate by Twist stands out among the dining places in UP Town Center with its bright interior and homey furniture, like a rustic little diorama encased in glass. It's only fitting, since they boast of an all organic menu—a natural alternative to the not-so-healthy food offerings of the modern world.

City folks would find Dumoy too far and it's definitely not where I would expect to find a restaurant. Jack's Ridge obviously has a different opinion on this because they opened their offshoot Lumad Native Restaurant at D'Garden in January of this year.

Mom & Tina's Bakery & Café is not home and their food is not what you would likely find in our house, but it's a cozy place to dine in.

As I've said in the previous post, I collected a good number of colored pencils during my high school days. I have Faber Castell watercolor pencils that I unfortunately never figured out how to properly use and some cheaper Li'l Hands colored pencils that, to the inexperienced and talent-less 13-year old me, wasn't much different from more expensive brands.

Colored pencils may not be for me. It's probably the texture? The amount of control I have when using them is something I miss, but it just doesn't have the look that I want. I don't know if there's a proper artsy fartsy term for that.

The little spray bottle is for wetting the cotton swabs that I use to color with.

Someday I might go back to them. For now I decided to experiment with something else: colored markers! Copics are too expensive (and much like Pokemon—gotta catch 'em all!) and I will never be able to justify buying even just one so I'm fine with a box of Crayola, which is surprisingly fun and satisfying to work with.

Because I belatedly realized that I should have invested on a waterproof pen like a Sakura Pigma Micron or a Uni Pin Fine Line, I picked up these pens with the intention to use them for lineart. They're mostly fine as long as I make sure to use them after everything is properly dry.

These were cheaper than the Stabilo Point 88. They bleed if I'm not careful.

I asked for a silver marker but the lady gave me this Dong-A pen and I didn't read the label. This gray marker turned out useful anyway.

I did eventually pick up a Uni Pin Fine Line (0.1mm), which I'm happy with, though I remember owning one (a 0.5mm) a long time ago and the tip eventually bent in a weird way.


The white thing is actually a battery-powered eraser that I got from Saizen. It was fairly useful for little areas that eraser blocks can't reach, but it's not gentle on the paper at all, so I picked up a cheap dust-free rubber.

For a while I was determined to make the Liquid Paper correction pen work as an alternative to a white gel pen. Don't do it, kids. It clumps and it's not at all easy to control. Now I'm looking forward to picking up a white gel pen the next time I have the chance.

The Faber Castell mechanical pencil has been with me for a long time. So far I've only found 0.5mm and 0.7mm mechanical pencils at National Bookstore, though I'm hoping to try a thinner lead.

My pencil case (not pictured) was also from Saizen, though it's in dire need of replacement because it's falling apart and I've recently acquired more pens than would fit in it.


The gold pen I've had for a while now, while the silver one I picked up because I couldn't find a white gel pen at that time. I found it most useful when I drew this fanart of JKT48's Priscillia.

She wore this outfit at an event and I liked it enough to try to draw it.

I actually don't follow idol groups anymore and I know nothing about JKT48, but I have friends who are fans, so sometimes there are a lot of Ghaida and a little bit of Sisil on my Twitter feed. If they're wearing something nice, I get the urge to draw them. Unfortunately they're apparently back to plaid uniforms for their new single. That's one thing I'm not going to attempt to draw again any time soon!

I accidentally colored her hair black so I had to scramble to replace it with brown, resulting to a ruined paper.

A friend gave me this sketchpad for Christmas around five years ago and I didn't open it until recently when I decided to draw traditionally again. It already has signs of old age, with some yellowing at the edges of the pages, though nothing that's a big issue. The paper is thick even if it's not the watercolor kind, though it's yellowish so it might turn off those who prefer white paper. When water is involved, it wrinkles a little and, depending on the amount of water, it fuzzes terribly, but it's fine if little water is used.

They also have a watercolor pad, which I hope to try someday.


I'm thinking of picking up watercolors again. I've always loved the watercolor effect in digital art so it only makes sense to want to learn it traditionally, right? Watercolors are intimidating, but the more I play with my markers, the more I feel the urge to experiment with watercolors and the different textures and layering I can do with it. Now that I've looked into it a little more, I've discovered so many styles and techniques I want to try. Hopefully the old watercolors I have (from elementary school art class!) can still be salvaged.

My Instragram account has some pictures of the beginnings of my return to traditional art and future works and works-in-progress will be posted there as well. You can also check out the accounts I follow, since I've recently added some very talented artists (or if you like dogs and cats, I follow some cute accounts too!).


Art is a constant learning process. I've only used around ten or so pages of my sketchbook but there's already a noticeable difference in the coloring style because I've been experimenting and constantly discovering better ways to do things. Rediscovering my love for paper, for art tools, and for drawing itself is a wonderful journey and it's been a while since I've had this much fun doing anything I used to enjoy.

That's the end of the other half of Make Art With Love, I suppose, unless there other art-related things you think I should write about to turn this into a series. Write a comment below or on my Instagram, or tweet me for any suggestions!