Lily Onga

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Research term has started. But I am still as passionate as ever and full of desire to create...stuff! For the past week, I’ve been working on the shaped wood panels in the woodworkshop. It started out very pleasant and simpler than I thought with the front panel cutting, but the structure behind it, ah... It was an experience that’s for sure. I got much more familiar with using the panel saw, slider saw, band saw, and belt sander this time and hopefully next time we need a custom canvas/wood panel it won’t take this long. I can’t wait to show you. This week we’re starting the panel surface prepping and finally start the painting process themselves. I have decided to clear out the other room to create space for the bigger paintings to be stored. Sunlight is better in my bedroom, so we’ll be spending more time painting down here. Since the paint is gouache and acrylic, it won’t have ventilation problem the same way oil paints will. Although I am really curious to try (I am a mixer and a blender so oil looks so satisfying to work with), we’ve got not much time until the show opens. So not a good time to try out a completely new medium and finding ways to properly ventilate my workspace. I might as well buy an easel too, since the biggest painting is around 80? cm long.



Last Sunday we went to a thrift shop and I got the prettiest, teeniet pastel pink Sylvanian Family oven set. And there is a mini MADELEINE mould tray!!! On a separate bag!!! Selling for 330 yen. I didn’t get that one but I keep thinking about it before my sleep... Is this... a sign?
(I did not buy the bicycle and the dark and handsome mole)


Today I’m posting the Kindergarten Illustration set. And I think I will make a video about it too? There are many videos I want to make, many new original projects I want to start, and research I have to work on too. So I will have to set a system/timetable, and train myself to follow them whether I feel like it or not, otherwise there is simply not enough time for everything I want to do.

Do you like reading my blog on an oldschool webpage like this? Or should I post them somewhere people can interact like Instagram or I don’t know, Threads? I personally feel very freeing posting on my personal space like this because I DO NOT know how many people are reading it, might be 0. But that’s okay because so are my paper diaries.

I woke up and ride my bike to the ramen shop, eat some rice with onsen-egg, gyoza, and then headed to the campus right away. Near the campus is the wood supply shop. The shaped wood panel is coming along pretty nicely (I don’t know honestly, it’s still in pieces, and we will know the results once we actually start painting of them.) Today’s work is marking and cutting all the structures behind the panel itself. I’m afraid using thick wood block to paint would be too hard on the wall when we hang them, so I listened to wood shop’s granny to use the lauaun veneer + structure behind it instead. I don’t know how to call them in English honestly, my head is full of Thai and Japanese and English and Korean that my vocabulary is very partial in every single language.

Calculating, marking, and cutting the wood sticks (???) is actually not that simple of a task. Because it’s actually shaped like boxes in isometric angles. But again, not like the angles are uniform in 45 or 30 degrees, because I totally freehanded drawing them on cardboard first. In Thailand, no less, because I was visitting home last month. Then I brought them over the airplane to Japan to continue the work. So the plan was to cut all the veneer panels in shape of the cardboard I prepared first, then I would place the wood stick around/over the edge of the shaped panels to mark the angles and length. It went more smoothly then I expected. With the woodworking shop at Musabi having every single kind of saw machine, I managed to get by even with my subpar woodworking knowledge. Well, doing is learning!

(I might or might not know what I am doing)

I also brought a mini-tripod and filmed some of the process for archive/reels later. I also received an E-mail from my professor too. Need to balance my art and study. While I really really love pursuing my art, research is also a joy.

The war is happening everywhere, and I think about all the wonderful artists during all of thousands of wars we’ve learned about. What were they thinking or feeling during those times where art is not needed and life was hard.

An unrelated note: 
I want to post new work on the instagram and this website but not sure how to present it well, other updates and stories about my life/art to tell too. I hope this documentation doesn’t come off as a bore or self inflation. Blah, it’s okay if it does. We should all stop caring about being cringey and do things sometimes. (That’s the spell I’m trying to tell myself these days.)
Ideas
- Posting about NYT Portfolio review
- Framing my past illustrations work as mock-up editorials
- Illustrate my past trip to Atami
- Painting vids (For Boxes)
- Making the panel behind-the-scene vids
- Things my work should work well with!
- Showing off how the ‘Sticker’ game works on mobile?

I planned to go to the workshop today to cut out the panels at last, but the rain wouldn’t stop. It’s still raining now (17.29!). We will have to start conjuring that paper/research structure out right now or we won’t have anything done AT ALL today. I’m thinking the problem is I want things to look beautiful when I’m creating something. I need to read first? I need to compile all the thoughts first? Can I work with the images right away? May be I should I just make some fun and whimsical games or interface out of it so I get the urge to get into work all the time, just like how I unnecessarily update my portfolio website once a year without really announce its renovation. (Hooray, this one is finally done though!)

How to start working on this? I’ll open up the Miro page, finally. And start out with all the post-its for my ideas first, and then brute force writing out the paper structures 1-2-3-4 like a madwoman that I am. I can do this. Also piles of books I bought from Bangkok just for this research that I managed to avoid reading so far.

I have scribbled 2 mania sessions in my trustworthy sketchbooks, and they are chock-full of animation and games I want to make. I also want to play house. I know a sketchbook full of personal thoughts is not that interesting to look at so here you are, a little of my sketchbook scans that is perfectly unrelated to today’s entry.