good bye 2008

2008 gone by real quick. Alot happen in the studio! There is the new sewing class in the summer, it was really fun, and all the girl love it. The birthday party was sometime new we try too, its the first time we do this and let just say I have to think about if i will do this again or not. There is the Monster contest, it was really fun and for sure we will be doing more contest in the year to come. An then there is the construction outside of the studio, it took forever! It create a big headache for me and the studio is so messy and dusty. Its pretty much done now, hopefully that's all for construction.
Well, this is the end of 2008 and lets roll the credits! I can not do all this on my own.
Thanks alot for all the people who help me out. Picture under: Dawn, Amy, April, Janice, Candy and Elizabeth. and not in the picture, Lyndon. Also thanks you for Vivian and Jessica, they are no longer with the studio, but they were a big part of the studio.

Special thanks to Candy as she will be leaving us for a while. She will be doing some study in the State. She will be miss and hopefully she find what she want there.

Monster Monday

Button Set 4

Button Set 3

Button Set 2

Button Set 1

Every year, I will give out button to the students. This year I went crazy and design 12 new buttons, they are all different and they all have blue tadpole in it. So here they are, this is set 1.

Merry Christmas

Off to New Zealand!!!

Finally I have a break! This is the only time I am off. I will be on the plane to New Zealand today afternoon. Going to spend 10 days there and will be back on the 2nd of January. Getting there will already take me a day... its going to be a long flight and i am going to spend Christmas in the air. Of course I Will post photo of my tripe when i came back, but for the time i am off, you will still see new posts! My cats will be posting for me here :)

Christmas ornament

Its was a fun project. We use metallic paint to paint the ornament on black contraction paper. They all turn out very good. But cleaning up metallic paint is not fun at all....

Monster Monday

Just a really quick sketch I did. Lets hope he dont stuff your stocking!

Monster Monday

The "blue tadpole monster"!

crazy week

I have been busy for the last couple of days, in fact I am still overload with work now. I am printing calender and making all 12 new button design for the studio. So a lot of drawing, printing , punching and scanning. I cannot wait for this week to be over, so I will be going far far away for vocation. I am going to need that. :)

10 Dinners in 10 days (10)

10 Dinners in 10 days (09)

10 Dinners in 10 days (08)

10 Dinners in 10 days (07)

10 Dinners in 10 days (06)

10 Dinners in 10 days (05)

10 Dinners in 10 days (04)

10 Dinners in 10 days (03)

10 Dinners in 10 days (02)

10 Dinners in 10 days (01)

The "10 drawings in 10 days" is back. This time we are drawing 10 dinners! They are all drawn by teachers and assistants of the studio. Look like this time I will be drawing a lot more of them. Since some people had a hard time keeping deadline.. o well, hope you are not tired of looking at my drawing...

Font in the sky

Here is a font created by Lisa Rienermann while studying at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the alphabet is formed of the shapes of buildings against the sky when photographed.

octopus!

An octopus drawing from one of the students.

Colour pencil on black paper.

Monster Monday!

Monster contest photo

Trapped !!

Right now, they are doing some construction work outside of the studio, due to it, the passage leading to the studio is closed to traffic. It suck, it look like i am trapped inside and i am close for business. Well, i am not! I am still OPEN! They put a door on both side for people to come in and out. But it does created ALOT confusion for all people already. They said it will take them about 2 week, let's hope it does take longer than that. :(

Why are they closing the passthru? well, they have to do some construction around the studio and it get too cold for them to work outside. So they close it off and heat it up by putting heater on both side of the passthru. This also worry me, the heater is power by propane (as you can see on the last photo...) With them heating that thing indoor, will the carbon monoxide kill you? or at least do some brain damage to you. Hopefully by the end of the week, everyone wont just drop dead in the studio....

Studio is still OPEN!!!

Due to construction work going on outside the studio, the passage leading from the mall to the parking lot at the back is temporarily closed to traffic. It is estimated that the construction work will take about 2 weeks. During this period our studio remains open as usual. Please be caution when entering and exiting the studio. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Everything is just a big mess outside of the studio now... hopefully they get ti over with quick.

Monster Monday!

Frame

I am doing some framing for the canvas lately. All the canvas look so much better with the frame. I wish i can do it to all the canvas with a lower cost.

Math Problem

Run into a little math problem lately, who would thought math will be part of my life. lol
Anyways, I just got a new laser printer and I need to print something on thicker paper. The max my printer can take is 46 lbs paper.

Now, this is the problem, i got some paper, but i don't know how thick they are. I need to know if they are ok to be print on. (No, it doesn't say on the package) So I took another pack of paper (lets call this pack "A") and measure it, its 6cm high, 500 sheets and its 24 lbs. The new thick paper (let call this "B") measure 1 cm and its only 50 sheets. And yes both paper is the same size.

So you still with me?

A: 6 cm / 500 sheets / 24 lbs
B: 1 cm / 50 sheets / X lbs

Now if all this information, can I calculate how much the thick paper "B" weight?

A bit inform about the paper weight. 20 lbs paper doesn't mean it weight 20 lbs. 20 pound bond paper is always lighter and thinner than 32 pound bond, no matter what its cut size. And 20 pound bond letter size and 20 pound bond legal size papers are the same weight paper having different cut size.
Confuse enough? here abit more reading about paper density : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_density

So yeah, can I even figure out the weight of the thick paper? I did some calculating, got 40 lbs, but not sure if it right. See kids, math will always come back and haunt you!

Monster Monday!

drawing exercises

A drawing exercise I did. I need to draw more. Draw is like playing a piano, (which I don't even know how to play at all..) the more you practice, the better you get. This drawing is not even a good drawing... There are so much thing i hate about this drawing, its a quick sketch I did in photoshop, just a study of light and shadow.

Students bar graph

This is basicly the bar graph of all my students in a week. They are just drawn canvas waiting to be painted. Each student left their canvas behind and I stack them in order of days.
You can see my saturday class is at least five time more crazier than my monday class.... Saturday just tower over all other days!

Chinese Painting in 3D

Monster Monday!

As if there are not enough monster here...
Sick of monster yet? Of course not. lol
So here it is, another monster monday, and yes, you seen this one before. I post character rotation of this guy before, you can check it out in the older post under Monster Monday. I did this a looonnng time ago. probably 5 years ago. This guy is build and render in a 3D program Maya. It was just a test shoot of the low-ploy character, its not the final product. The final product, I have him animated and doing some talking. I miss animating character....

Winning and losing

Seeing the students finding out they won the contest was a big joy for me. They see all their hard works pay off and being display for everyone to see it. Thats probably more priceless than the prize they won.
On the other hand, sometime is hard to see the kids being disappoint at not winning. I can just see it in their eye. I really hate it, but that's the way it is. They just need to lean how to deal with it.

Winning is "good", but, losing is "good for you", if you let it. Just like practice makes you a better artist, losing trains your mind to set new goals and will make you realize, there is always going to be someone better than you. To become better, you must learn from the mistakes you make and correct them for future confrontations. It's not who you beat in competition, it's how much better you performed than the last time. For the most improvement, you must compete against yourself.

Monster contest 2008 winners!

Below is all the winners for the monster contest.

Contestant are put into 3 groups :

• group A / age 4-7,
• group B / age 8-12
• group C / age 13-16

There are alot of enteries, over 150 of them! They are all very creative and nice. It was really tough to judge.....

Thanks for all the judges : Candy, Amy, Janice and Dawn. Good thing we didnt break out in fight, it was really close at one point. lol

So enjoy all the monster and you can find 30 more monsters that didnt make it into the top three here:
http://www.bluetadpolestudio.com/MonsterWinners.html

Monster Contest Winners: Group C

1st / Shirley Li / age : 15

2nd / Elizabeth Estee / age : 16

3rd / Michelle Chaung / age : 13

To see more monster from this group, please go to : http://www.bluetadpolestudio.com/Monster_contest_C.html

Monster Contest Winners: Group B

1st / Kianna Foster / age: 8

2nd / Katharine Pacoli / age : 11

3rd / Angela Poon / age : 11

To see more monster from this groupe, please go to : http://www.bluetadpolestudio.com/Monster_contest_B.html

Monster Contest Winners: Group A

1st / Alexander / age:6

2nd / Nathan Tse / age: 6

3rd / Jeanette Wang / age 7

To see more monster of this group, please go to : http://www.bluetadpolestudio.com/Monster_contest_A.html

Monster contest finish

Thanks for everyone who draw for the monster contest, there were ALOT of nice and interesting monsters! It was fun, and I am sure we will be doing this again next year. All the winners is selected and I will be posting them tomorrow here, also on the main homepage, Facebook group and later in the studio. So watch out for all the monsters!

Monster Monday!

Fall painting

One of my students painting, its acrylic on paper