filipino artist

Happy Holidays 2022

Published on December 24, 2022March 10, 2023 by RioLeave a comment

Hey there! I know I’ve been slacking on posts lately. My new job has taken over most of my time lately. But since, it’s the holiday season, things are getting a bit more slow-paced at work starting this weekend. So I’ve taken the opportunity to post a watercolor painting demo, finally!

In this video, I was inspired by the Christmas lanterns that I found in Ikea here in France. They remind me so much of the Christmas lanterns that we have back in the Philippines (Parol), I just had to make a watercolor version of them in a Christmas greeting card.

Since I’m always missing the tropics, especially, the beach, I’ve created this tropical themed greeting card. If you guys are interested, I sell some greeting cards, and other gift items with my original watercolor prints on them on zazzle.com. Mostly, Filipino themed. This year, I am so happy to have sold quite a lot! I’m finally going to be able to cash out my earnings! 🙂 What a treat. Thanks to those who patronized my humble artworks.

Hope you have a great holiday. Cheers!

Drawing Contest (Concours de dessin) by Art Tea Shop Toulouse

Published on February 18, 2022February 18, 2022 by RioLeave a comment

I was surprised and very flattered to be contacted by Art Tea Shop Toulouse for their Drawing Contest. They asked if they could use the photo I took of my watercolor artwork for their Drawing Contest’s flyers.

J’ai été surprise et très flattée d’être contactée par Art Tea Shop Toulouse pour leur concours de dessin. Ils m’ont demandé s’ils pouvaient utiliser pour les flyers de leur concours de dessin la photo de mon aquarelle que j’ai prise.

If you are interested to join, do visit their instagram page for details.

Si vous êtes interessés, consultez leur instagram pour plus de détails.

This artwork was totally not my best but I guess I captured the mood really well. My composition was not bad at all. And overall, everything in the photo looks quite nice! 🙂

Cette peinture n’est pas du tout ma meilleure, mais je crois que j’ai bien saisi l’ambiance. Ma composition n’était pas mauvaise du tout. Et dans l’ensemble, tout ce qui est sur la photo est très joli 🙂

By the way, they also have a nice restaurant / tea shop, where we had one of our monthly watercolor sessions two years ago.

À propos, ils ont aussi un joli restaurant/salon de thé, où on a fait l’une de nos sessions mensuelles de l’aquarelle l y a deux ans.

If you live around Toulouse, do drop by the Art Tea Shop. It’s a really nice brasserie and tea shop with warm, welcoming staff. The place is very cozy and quite original, they have good food and drinks, and they sell artworks from local artists, too. We totally had a good time there. I should go back one of these days. 🙂

Si vous habitez dans la région de Toulouse, ne manquez pas de vous rendre à l’Art Tea Shop. Il s’agit d’une brasserie et d’un salon de thé très sympathiques avec un personnel chaleureux et accueillant. L’endroit est très confortable et assez original, ils ont de la bonne nourriture et des boissons, et ils vendent des œuvres d’art d’artistes locaux, aussi. On a passé un très bon moment là-bas. Je devrais y retourner un de ces jours. 🙂

Mont Saint-Michel Watercolor Painting Demo

Published on January 30, 2022July 27, 2022 by RioLeave a comment

Hello everyone! How have you been? I hope you’re one of the chosen few who managed to escape the ire of Omicron. It seems to be very much omnipresent and omnipotent these past few months. Only the hashtag blessed (according to some instagram people) have managed to slip through unnoticed.

I, myself, have been under the weather for the last few days now. It’s not COVID, though. Just the common flu. The symptoms might be even worse than Omicron’s, though. I have been feeling like somebody slapped me around the whole night, every morning I wake up. My whole head hurts, especially my eye sockets, my scalp and even my teeth! I got nasty joint pains the first night. I hardly slept. From time to time, I get sharp nasty pains in my ear. Maybe I should redo the auto-test to check if I really don’t have COVID.

Today, I feel much better, though. I now only have a bit of cough and colds, and I sound a bit like Marge Simpson (or a bit like the sexy French Lola voice you usually hear on French TV doing the voice-over on magazine shows (think Edith Piaf!)… only in France! 😀 ) when I talk. That, and despite the fact that I’ve unwittingly wiped out clean my entire local project folder with all my Python Labs Machine Learning codes in it yesterday morning. Who does that?!!! I wanted to slap myself, but my sickness was already making me feel as if I have been slapped around enough already.

What’s good about all these is that I managed to get some free time (no classes also last Thurs and Fri) to paint again. I have been postponing for the longest time to paint Mont-Saint Michel. My family and I had the occasion to visit this magical place up in Normandie during the summer.

I painted it in a loose, quick, relaxing and fun way, as usual. I don’t want to take my paintings too seriously. I just want to have fun doing them. That’s the most important thing to me.

Thanks for dropping by. Cheers, and keep safe, everyone! 🙂

Filipino Christmas Theme Greeting Cards for SALE !!!

Published on November 21, 2021January 2, 2022 by RioLeave a comment

UPDATE: I have recently added more designs on the shop:

First of all, thank you, thank you, thank you to all these people who have been buying my Christmas cards, and other gift items on the shop. I wish I could send them a personal thank you letter. I find it very touching that people from across the globe appreciate my artworks.

Thank you all, kind people for supporting my shop!

It has really inspired me to keep painting and keep doing this part-time, small hobby that gives me so much pleasure. And the pleasure is just multiplied a hundred times over when I see people appreciating my humble work. I can’t thank you enough!

And so here I was this weekend, trying to eke out a teensy weensy portion of my free time to do some painting and update my shop. I hope you like my new designs:

Pasko Paksiw Filipino Christmas greeting card

Pasko – Paksiw – Pasko is a tongue twister in the Philippines. Paksiw is a local dish with fish and coconut vinegar in a soup. I really miss it. It’s been more than a decade since I last had one!

Tuyo is dried fish. I’m not sure how to translate it in English but the fish is usually either Tulingan or Tawilis in the Tagalog-speaking regions. In the South, there are other varieties of fishes they use for Tuyo. Tuyo literally translates to “dry” in English. It is another one of my favorite dishes, especially for breakfast, much to the chagrin of my husband and other foreign friends who do not appreciate the smell of it. 😀

I was inspired to paint a Tropical Christmas theme because I have been terribly missing the warm tropical beaches of my home country. It’s been years since I was last in a real warm beach. This artwork was mostly done in Procreate, except for the starfishes, which were all done in watercolor.

— END OF UPDATE —

Seeing some people already starting to buy again my Filipino / Pinoy Christmas theme greeting cards online reminded me that it’s that time of the year to post them again! They are still available on my online shop: https://riosebastian.com/shop/ and on Zazzle (with 20% to 50% discount at the moment).

My Filipino theme Christmas Greeting Cards featuring prints of my original watercolor artworks

Zazzle is available in the following countries: USA, The UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, etc. Just don’t forget to click on the correct country in the options (you can see it on the top-right corner of the page, the globe icon).

Maraming salamat at Maligayang Pasko sa lahat!

Paint-Along-With-Me Filipino Christmas Card

Published on December 6, 2020December 6, 2020 by RioLeave a comment

Hey there!

First of all, some updates… It’s been a while. I have been super busy with my Christmas Greeting Card for a Cause project the past few weeks. I’ve also just recently put up my online shop. Add to that the fact that I’ve started studying French again. The French government has been kind enough to approve my request for full financial support to study one-on-one, customized French course for myself online, so as to improve my conversational skills and to pass the exam to B2 (Advance Intermediate) Level. The last time I took the exam, I was B1 (Lower Intermediate) Level, and that was like 5 years ago, I think. 🙂

Anyway, just want to keep you posted. Been busy with the Christmas shopping, updating my online shop for more items and making videos. Also, preparing documents to submit for a Master’s Degree I’m looking to apply for next year. I might also enroll in the meantime in an online Garden Design class to a prestigious school in the UK. I’m excited about this! I’ll let you know more in the coming weeks.

Anyway, here is a video of me painting one of my Christmas greeting cards. You can follow along, or just watch. Watercolor is so relaxing to watch. Plus, I’ve put some nice and cheerful Christmas songs in the background. It helps to feel more relaxed, more zen and more cheerful, especially during this times of confinement and gloomy winter weather.

Paint-along watercolor painting tutorial of a Filipino themed Christmas card courtesy of yours truly

This Christmas greeting card, along with all my other watercolor artwork prints on Christmas gift items are up on sale, folks!

Also, there is now a new item in my menu (Link Tree) that links to a page containing all my social medial sites, FYI. I first had the idea to do this via linktree (the web site that allows you to create a “link tree” of you social media sites). But then I thought, hey why not just create a link tree of my own in my web site. It’s more practical and I get a nice URL with my own domain name instead of using theirs. Haha! 😉

Maligayang Pasko po! 🙂