My New Website / Blog

I have moved to a new website / blog - hybridj.net!

Feel free to drop by.  I'd love to see you there! THANK YOU! :)

Creative Life & Peony Rose Papercut

The fun part of being a self-employed creative is that I got to be my own boss! I could choose to work in the morning, late at night or not at all!  Sounds great!  Hmmm .... yes and no.

Yes - I have all the freedom and free time to do anything.

No - I have to be freaking good at self-motivation or I won't get anything done.

Right now, I have managed to maintain a daily schedule to work on my papercuts. But a lot of the time, I feel like I'm only going through the motion!

And I also thought my life would be filled with all sorts of interesting creative activities, like beach combing to get inspiration etc.  Nope! I spent most of my time at home in front of the cutting table or the TV. (God bless * Game of Thrones *!) Honestly, I go out because I need food or have to visit the doctors!  And I live only a stone throw away to the beach!!!

This is getting on my nerve big time!

Well I think I need to stop here otherwise this will turn into a self-obssessed rant.  But then it might not be a bad idea! ;)

Anyway, here is something that I've been working on in the last few weeks.

Peony Rose (30cm H x 21cm W of the image) (11 3/4" H x 8 1/4" W of the image)

CU - Peony Rose

CU - Peony Rose

Hope you enjoy the cut!

P.S. Apologize of the greyish tone of the photos.  I'm yet to get used to the day of the time to take good photos

P.P.S. If you're interested to see my daily progress with my work, please visit my instagram (@hybridj).  I post almost daily.  Thank You! :)

New Life

Somewhere in Queensland

This is where I call home since last September.  I'm still trying hard to follow my new life direction.

My Beach

What new direction?  From being a full time worker to become a self-employed creative.  Very scary and I'm not sure if this is right for me.  But if I don't do it while I still can, should I wait til I retired.

Somewhere there's an old saying:  The best time to start is 20 years ago.  Next best time is NOW!  So here I am.

To Emerge or Not

As I'm more settled in The Change,  I have been thinking about blogging.

For months, I hesitate to enter blogland, because:

Where - (The gut feeling is to start afresh) ... so do I continue with blogger or migrate to other hosting source?

When - Blog now while I'm still in the mist of The Change or wait til when I'm more of MYSELF?

Why - Why do I want to blog?

How - How to blog so it matches up to where I am now?

What - What do I want to blog about?

Change

To all my lovely fellow creatives and fellow bloggers,

Sorry that I've been missing for some time ...

I'm in the process of creating major CHANGE in my life.  It will be quite a while before I could come back to blogland.  But rest be assured that during this period, I'll continue to visit you lovely people.

I hope to see you all when I come back.

Cheers and stay creative,

HJ

Merry X'mas

Wishing you all a Very Merry X'mas and A Happy 2013!

Also THANK YOU for all the wonderful comments you left through out the year.  You all made this venture possible & wonderful!  THANK YOU again!

Stay joyful and creative! xxxooo

The Cutting Board

The MOs (short for Microscopic Organisms) continues their grab on my mind.  I imagine them slowly coming together to become something.  Perhaps a new kind of evolution ...

MOs 2 (Microscopic Organism) (52cm/19" x 30cm/12")

Hope all these MOs are not boring your viewing (yet) as more are coming .... :)

On the side:

After 6 months' of intense cutting work every night and most weekends, my natural heavy handed cutting style finally caught up on me.  My right wrist aches all the time.  I'm now wearing a wrist guard whenever I work on my cuts.  And I'll taking some days off from cutting to give my wrist some TLC.

My (wounded?) Cutting Hand

Hence a word of warning to all Cutters:  Protect Your Working Hand before you are forced to stop!

Cheers and Stay Creative!

The Cutting Board

It's always a great joy when one creative idea leading to another!

My last cut re-ignited my interest in Microscopic Organisms (i'll simply call it MOs).

The Microscopic Organisms (MOs) (28cm x 37cm / 11" x 14.5")

Though they are invisible to our eyes, the MOs are everywhere.  With my very limited reading on the topic, I think of the MOs as the true aborigines which live in this world.  Without them being the basic life form to support our ecosystem, none of the living things (be it plants, animals and humans) are able to exist.

As I google the images of the MOs, I was mesmerized by the beauty and the alien look of them. It is difficult to believe that they are from this world.

I'm so in awe of these tiny beings that I think it's going to be awhile before I move on to my next object of interest!  ;)

Well, I hope you enjoy my latest cut!

Have a nice weekend and stay creative!

The Cutting Board

While I was flipping through one of my favourite natural history book, a name caught my eyes and my imagination.

Have you heard of the Venus's Flower Basket?  It is a hexactinellid sponge.  The grow below 150m (500ft) below ocean and the Victorians used to collect them for display. From this I started to googled more images of the sponges and realized that I have to make some cuts for them.

Glass Sponges (28.5cm x 50.5cm / 11" x 19")

My cut is based on the general form of the glass sponges and Venus's Flower Basket.  The cut is not an exact replica of the sponges but my version of it.

Venus's Flower Basket

And while working on the drawing of the sponges, I keep having these images of microscopic creatures swimming in the vast ocean. So what can you do when such fun creatures latch onto your creative mind.  You bring them to the world!

Microscopic Creatures

Hope you enjoy this cut!

Have a nice weekend and stay creative!

The Cutting Board

Have you ever imagined what it would look like when:

- A Leafy Seadragon hid in a hollowed sea plant

- Got stuck at the Barnacles colony with a few Sea Urchin as neighbour

I think it would look like this .... :)

Seadragon (45cm x 32cm / 18" x 12.5")

This cut took me close to 4-weeks to finish. Not sure if it was because of me being a very cautious cutter who cuts at snail pace!?!.  Or because workplace had suck up most of my energy that there were nights which I could only concentrate to cut for an hour before sleep overcame me.

How I dream of some days in the future when I could spend all my time on cuttings!  (sigh) While I have the faintest idea of how to make such dream comes true, I'm to continue to work on my cuts.  Maybe in time, it will become so good that some one will come along and say something like this:

- We love your cuts and want you to join a group show!

- Are your cuts for sale?  We'd like to pay $$$ for it?

Alright I'm definitely dreaming now. It's time to come back to reality and here I come ... my next cut!

Cheers and stay creative! :) 

The Cutting Board

All the aches and pains I got from cutting these jellyfishes are worth it!

I love every bits of it!

These "sea bubbles" are a real killer. :)

Have I done with the Jellyfish ... maybe ... maybe not ... ;) 

Cheers and have a wonderful day!  Stay creative!

Spring is Coming

Usually I would be working on the cuts on Sunday but not today!

I worked too hard on a cut last night that my neck, shoulders and fingers are still in ache. I'm putting my feet up and have a cuppa at my wild backyard.

Lo and behold, when did all these little daisies came out?  I think Spring is on the way!

Hope you all have a wonderful Sunday! :)

The Cutting Board

Finished this cut at 2:00 am last night (or very early this morning) ...

My fingers and arms were aching.  My back was hurting like hell!  But it's worth all the pains and the hours I put in.

The board is created from my fascination of marine animals and plants.  I reckon they have the most amazing looks and structure.

It takes hours to go through the tentacles (??) of the jellyfishes, I mean both in drawing and cutting, but I love every bits of it.

I hope you all enjoy this cut.

On the side, after years of lusting and looking at pictures of professional artist storage place for papers and artwork, I finally got these beautiful drawing cabinets!  They made me feel so (ahem) "professional", hahaha!

Have a wonderful week and stay creative!  :)

Bones (on colored background)

As promised, a different version of the bones cutting board on colored background.

I also like this positive cut of the skull with hanging plants.  Just on its own, it has the power to draw the viewer in and have the viewer imagining what the skull looks like.  Or in my case, I have a different reaction to the cut.  I feel like the animal is staring right at me ... as if it's asking me for something.

That's about it for now.  Have a nice weekend!  xxoo

The Cutting Board

Making this board is fun as there is no rules.  The assemble is done at the spur of the moment.

All the skull work turned out better than I thought.  I'm quite pleased with myself ! :)

Another board of the same cuts on colored background will be posted tomorrow. Stay tune! :)

Cheers and stay creative!  xxoo