well turns out I.ve been neglecting this blog for quite some time now, not that I wanted to. But things got a little overwhelmed .. you know life, family matters, everything outside the online world.
But lucky for me I found a very reliving thought, last week I discover secret to my happier life …

you should love yourself more

so I’m doing things that I would not think I would be doing years ago, I ran every morning ( running is a fun and relaxing sports ), I’m buying new pair of pants and shoes for myself, taking photographs more often, talk to people more polite, smile more, eat healthier food, and exactly anything that I could think to make this life more fulfilling.

I took the pictures in Kuta bali, its located south of my hometown. The rain just pouring hard but I just knew when the rain stop the sky will emits its beauty and I was right.

only here in Indonesia

the prosecutor charge you with death sentence for conspiracy for murder … they say they have proof of threatening short message that you sent from your mobile.
You asked if the short messages be shown in court
the prosecutor never revealed such crucial evidence only saying that such thing was exist
and so forth with the trial
Judge think maybe death sentence is too extreme since there’s no strong evidence
and you’re granted with 18 years of imprisonment

what are the things that Indonesian really needed to learn ?
I must say : kind word
We must learn how to say sorry and thank you properly,
“Sorry” in Indonesian is a rare word , you seldom see it in TV show , sinetrons ( Indonesian telenovela ) , film, and it was extinct years ago in politics .

link picture

I don’t understand anything about this strange case ( i’m not sure I wanted too though )
but a friend of mine actually knew sri mulyani , she was his professor in Economy faculty in prestigious Universitas Indonesia . Even working for her for a couple of years.
I think how cool was that …
I’m not sure how would the case turns out but it’s weird to held her responsible for everything ,
I say just find whoever got the money and there you have , the thief !.

As much as I want to write something right now,  I just seems to be out of the creative worlds lately. But I have to moving on and just got an idea

why don’t I create illustration  from wise quote that I encounter today ?

seems like an awesome idea isn’t ?
I don’t have to think about something wise ( like I could anyway ) , i Just have to think something that would depict that words .
For now I got this quote from a song
” it’s easy to love the rains when you’re not wet “
it really got me thinking how true this one is.
We almost immediately thinking that we’re sorry when something less that fortunate happen to people around us , we were sympathetic when there was a disaster in foreign country. We were sad when somebody die , lose their job, lose their house, failing the exam, not getting a promotion etc .
Anyway it’s probably our darkest secret as human, that we sometime use it as an excuse to be grateful that it doesn’t happen to us ( but sometime it will, God forbid ).

But that’s just my crazy talk , meanwhile Ill start looking for another quote to illustrate and maybe i’ll able to do better illustration than this one.
here’s an example

download the pic ( A4 format )

maybe all of you have already seen movie ” Avatar ”
great movie right ?
But I wouldn’t talk about what’s the noble message in it that some people talk about,
no ,, why ?
because I think I am part of the problems that movie was talking about, I never take part of environment action or donate money to WWF funds ( maybe i should ) . My only so called environmental attitude is to throw my garbage in the garbage bin, falsely believing it wouldn’t ends up in some garbage dump ( what a naive thought… all garbage goes to some place ).

the movie reminds me a lot of Kalimantan ( borneo ), whose forest are being destroyed and sold for commodities. And the Omaticayan ( blue people in avatar ) somehow resemble people of Dayak kayan who were wise and just in treating and preserving the forest. And yet the government ( in new orde era ) always quick to blame them for deforestation.

But in Borneo the human prevail and the spirit of the forest were crushed . The spirit were restless and occasionally sending its wrath through flood and landslide , even so the human hold its stubborn and selfish behavior.

on a totally unrelated event there was an articles here about a discovery of vast amount of lithium in Bolivia .

Is it ours (human ) for taking ? or it should remain intake for something that we didn’t fully understand yet

just another photos from last year vacation in Bali , but the place was just a shopping mall with lots of painting in its parking lot. Maybe this picture is the only picture that I think has good composition.

I found a website run by a young women with so much talent in photography that could blow your mind.
here is the link
it’s fascinating to see young people these day. with endless possibility to convey and learn to create something beautiful. I remember having a friend back in high school with dreams of becoming an photographer,forcing himself studying how to shoot pictures and spending a lot of money in films (no digital cam back then). Now he is one of top photographer in Indonesia.

I guess perseverance and action could take you anywhere

it’s just so happen I got a list from communication arts of world’s artist of photographers,
see them for inspiration

1. andre kopac
2. peter leverman
3.Cade martin
4. Michael grecco
5. Paolo Marchesi
6.David Schinman
7. Deborah jones
8.Patrick Nichols
9.Claire Bock
10. Nick vedros

I couldn’t sleep and end up doodling with illustrator . And i couldn’t draw anything else beside this …
there’s a saying that

You can’t do the same thing and expecting different results

it’s simple yet hard thing to do as I tend to wake up in the morning and immediately thinking the exact same thing as yesterday.
So today I would started thinking about new thought.

graphics novel

A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using the comics form. The term is employed in a broad manner, encompassing non-fiction works and thematically linked short stories as well as fictional stories across a number of genres .. wikipedia.org

there were some extending trends in fictional books that once written only novels have to had illustrations in it. These day information were flooding like never before. News, stories, facts, figures all racing to our head through newspaper, TV, internet. And our brain digest the information with certain limitations, and science proving that our brain tend to absorb anything graphical faster than something written. Some writer uses moderate amount of this illustrated methods like any good teen lit novels. while another writer or publisher tried different approach using only illustrated story hence graphics novel.

Things that differ it from comics maybe in its level of story . Graphic novel tend to convey heavier theme rather than comics, essentially it was novel rely on part/all graphic. Personally I love the illustration of chicken soup for the soul , though I find one or two thing lost in translation , from Korean artists kim dong hwa .
Or Ozamu Tesuka’s amazing ” Buddha” depicting the life of Siddhartha Gautama which I really recommend for you .

I wish I could make my own graphic novel , maybe the cover was somewhat like my drawing above .

In the opening of Denpasar Festival there was a fashion show and talent contest , and here’s some of the finalist

there were a lot of food stand, the street was clean and when you came at night, this place were filled with lights and people trying various food from local vendors.

My cousin wedding, he wears simple balinese clothes often use in formal ceremony ( not religious one ).

the groom and bride ask for blessing from the father

the guest were served with tea or coffee and cake, in wealthy families they would have had a buffet or food stand for the guest.

this year I want to be happy,
and I want to spread happiness to my friends and most of all to my family .

There is a collection of wonderful winter and christmas wallpaper in here

I remember drawing polar bear and winter scene years ago,
and remembering that december is always about bipolar things.
Joy and regrets, sadness and happiness, hope and despair .. all mixed in one particular month.
I wish all of us could experience this month as a joyous month, fill with satisfaction and accomplishment.

here’s one of my wallpaper design , hope you’ll like it

Do you ever have this feeling?
you wanted to try something new , to look at things and life from completely different angle.
to hear or to smell something fresh and odd
to pour your strength and mind to things that totally unrelated to you right now…
well I do
I really need a change in my life right now…

well I think this year I’m gonna start making a list ,
as a matter a fact I did making list in 2006 …. making another list in 2007..
tired of making list in 2008 …. not even thinking of any list in 2009
but whatever .. just maybe I’ll get my break this year
here goes my ten list ” new thing I would like to try in 2010 ”

1. I will visit many historical place around Indonesia
2. I will call my dads more often
3. I will publish more useful thing in this blog
4. I will not take anything for granted
5. I will make my own wordpress theme
6. I will learn photography more seriously
7. I will get some new education ( language, design, bomb making , anything will do )
8. I will exercise more
9. I will invest more, and list my spending in a book
10. I will definitely think harder about my number ten list

#.. maybe not as drastic as turning into Buddhist monk and having a pilgrimage to Tibet thing

day#4 kemarin harusnya sdh posting , tetapi karena ada acara di luar kota jadi tertunda deh

saya sering melihat design- design karakter , baik cuma figur atau yang sudah menjadi kartun. Mungkin dunia spongebob yang keras dan serba harus kerja keras ( spongebob tentunya ) sudah agak membosankan. kemarin waktu lihat- lihat elektronik di sebuah toko , saya melihat karakter ini “pocoyo ” waw ngelihat tokohnya yang bergerak bebas seakan terbawa ke dunia anak kecil …. dunia pocoyo sendiri adalah dunia minimalist dan didominasi warna putih .

Dibuat oleh animator Spanyol David Cantolla, Luis Gallego and Guillermo García ( dapet dari wiki pedia ), katanya ini dibuat dengan Softimage XSI dari Autodesk ( keterangannya adalah : It’s a high end 3D modeller software with 64 bit rendering capacity ) wow kayaknya harus punya komputer setara mac G5 kalau mau nyobain.

Tetapi karakter pocoyo ini benar-benar menghibur dan cocok banget buat anak kecil usia 1 – 3 tahun , walaupun kadang ngga setuju dengan pocoyo yang sering berjalan dengan kepala xixixi