Literally with the wildlife. This is so random. I saw this duck in the middle of Greenbelt Park while I was looking for a coffee shop after dropping by the corporate HQ of the presscon host. The duck was not perturbed with the presence of humans around it, like it was signalling to me “Ok, carry on hooman. Nothing to look at here,” while I overtook it.

I logged on the presscon remotely while our Manila reporter was on-site for ambush interviews. I was providing support from CBTL so we can upload/break the story ASAP since other news wires are also there. This is how we work when I know we have to break time-sensitive stories. Later Kr joined me at CBTL so we can discuss and correct each other’s contribution to the story.

A little breather after breaking the story.

As I learned from the urban sketching tutorials that I viewed/read, the key is to quickly draw on ink some rough figures to capture that precise moment and not mind whether it was accurate or not. Embrace the mistakes. I could not figure out how to draw the head of that bald guy so that is that…

I did some rough coloring. The problem with this palette is that it didn’t have a true black so I was stuck with greys. I have to fix this later now that I’m home.

UPDATE:

Since I was already at Greenbelt 5, I proceeded to the third level to browse at the The Craft Central and bought the girls some materials for their hobbies.

Acrylic paints and coin purses that Twin A could design/paint and a fluffy ball of yarn for Twin I’s knitting projects. It was expensive but at least it would keep them off the Internet for a couple of hours.

As for me, the Sakura Kois at The Craft Central did not satisfy me because it didn’t have the pop-able watercolor pans and I don’t want to carry extra palettes when I do urban sketching. So I went to Fullybooked at Basement 1 to search for either Royal Talens, Daniel Smith, or Winsor & Newton.

So I resorted to buying individual half-pans of the colors that I didn’t have like deep black and white that cost PHP 125-PHP 169 each tiny pan. Unfortunately these are not the artist-grade type. Van Gogh is Royal Talens’ line that is one step higher than student grade (more pigmented than student grade) but not yet artist grade while the Winsor & Newton Cotman line (different from Winsor & Newton, which is super expensive since it’s artist grade—PHP 500+ a pop) is student grade (i.e. chalky, less pigmented). But I think it would suffice since it’s just black and white (for mixing and highlight) plus gold and umber for nature sketches. Those four already cost me over PHP 500. That’s why I have to be careful in buying these stuff because I may just end up not using them all.

Because of my breaking news and search for watercolors, I missed my appointment with my shrink…😣

Tomorrow we need to be early for the girls’ second dose vax and my passport renewal. How can I work in between?