pilarcat’s

Poster for 2nd Salsa Hacha Annual Dance Showcase 2009  that I did for my friend who is one of the dancers.

I have little knowledge about Salsa dancing and cannot imagine myself dancing too!. I like watching though. It’s beautiful and something of art.

Here’s the info of the event.

2nd Salsa Hacha Annual Dance Showcase 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009 at Nomad Club Sukhumvit Soi 12

Featuring the latest choreographies performed by Salsa Hacha instructors and student performers, 2 hours of free Salsa Workshops and 3 hours of Social Dance with DJ Pom La Rueda and DJ Maya.

Event program:
6.30 pm Door opens
7 pm Intermediate Salsa Workshop
8 pm Beginner Salsa Workshop
9 pm Performances and Stage Activities
10 pm -1 pm Social Dance Party

Ticket @ 350 Baht, incl. 1 drink
(Presale @ 300 Baht until May 31)

Salsa Hacha, Silom Soi 6: 026343383, 0813747320, www.salsahacha.com

La Rueda, Sukhumvit Soi 18: 0847147074

Nomad Club, Sukhmvit Soi 12: 022294448, www.nomadbangkok.com

Cute dolls make me happy!

I took flash class at school years ago and, without practice, I lost the skill. Now coming back to refresh it, I still find it enjoyable. A sample of my little work.

I got these today! Yeah yeah! They are so nice and cute, in good material too!

I talked about this club in my previous post here

Go to see my photos of Nicholas books at my beautiful books if you want!

shiawase na happa by yuko ohnari

I’m building up a collection of my-beautiful-book photos at my other flickr It has only 3 sets right now but I plan to add more. The idea is just to share my passion for book ,design and illustration. Some I have read, some on the waiting list and some in other languages that I can’t read but just want to collect. These books help me a lot whenever I get bored or depressed.

By the way, I already talked about this book here

I’m quite sure that among things that we learned to draw as a kid, besides house, flowers or the sun etc, tree might be one of the easiest thing to draw. People can recognize it no matter how lousy your drawing is. It’s a natural connection. However, I think that tree is the most difficult subject as well. A tree has many branches, many layers and so much in detail. Each leaf even has different line patterns.

I guess that is the charm of drawing a tree.

Bruno Munari teaches us how to draw a tree with his simplest but poetic words along with beautiful illustrations in this book. I can imagine his spending long hours outside in different places, different time observing trees in different forms before he wrote the book. It must have been a precious time for him.

I really like this book. Its beautiful drawings in simple layout really inspire me to draw some more trees…outside.

Here are samples of inside pages.

Last Sunday was my birthday anniversary. I didn’t do anything special. Actually, I had worked all day before I realized that it’s my birthday! Well, it’s just another day anyway.

My beloved sister gave me this birthday gift. A beautiful notebook is wrapped in a sheet of classic dark brown paper. Its cover is made of pressed cotton fabric with the nice gold stamp of its brand name postalco. I especially like the mustard cover and the nice soft touch of paper inside.

Such a beautiful gift!

Another classics redesigned. These ones are from Puffin. This set looks different from those of Sterling with bright colors and playful illustrations. There are 26 books altogether. Some of them have scratchboard look such as this one
although I’m not sure if it’s real scratchboard or digital-making.

These four are my favorite but I think the Oz one look a little bit cruel!

It seems to me that there is a lot of new covers of classic literature released lately, such as Wizard of Oz, Hukkleberry Finn, Little Women and so on. They come from different publishers and are equally beautiful and tempting for collection. One of them is Sterling. Their classic set comes in beautiful hard cover featuring unique illustration by Scott McKowen. The illustrator did his job with scratchboard technique According to the publisher’s web, scratchboard is an illustration board with a specifically prepared surface of hard white chalk. A thin layer of black ink is rolled over the surface, and lines are drawn by hand with a sharp knife by scraping through the ink layer to expose the white surface underneath. The finished drawings are then scanned and the color is added digitally. I myself did the scratchboard once at school. It’s quite enjoyable but time-consuming and requires some patience. I think I just got used to making things digitally too much.

There are more than six covers from Sterling, these 6 covers are my favorites. You can look for them at Asia Books shop (I found at Paragon) I also found a nice web site of a scratchboard illustrator telling you how he does his work step by step here in inkart

I’m currently reading The Other Boleyn Girl, recommended by one of my friends. The book was capturing at first and began to wear me down in the middle as the characters, seemingly well-rounded in the beginning, suddenly became flat and boring . I just hope that the book will lose its boring stuff of selfish characters and focus on political scheme more at the end.

Anyway, reading such historical fiction reminds me of my childhood when every Sunday my father would take me to a bookshop and we would come back home with a couple of picture books in my hands. I can’t remember when I began reading English books but I remember me fascinated with historical tales, especially of Britain’s most famous King, Henry VIII. I think it has something to do with romantic theme of prince and princess. Although there are a lot of adultery and beheading stuff, perhaps these make the tales more dramatic.

I found these two ladybird books in a bookshelf where I keep old books. They are two of The Great Ruler series. They give fun and beautifully illustrated tales of the king and the queen. I am so happy that I still keep these two books and hope to get more of the series as a collection.

I’m totally in the mood of the Tudor history right now. I just bought a vcd of Elizabeth: The Golden Age !. Actually, I intended to have the part 1 Elizabeth but too clumsy to get the part 2 instead -_-’. That’s fine though, I just want to watch the settings and costume design in the movie.