Love

Today is Valentine’s day, a time when lovers express their undying love through giving gifts, flowers, chocolates, going out on dates, and such. I can’t do all that because the love of my life is [quite a number of] miles away, so I decide on making something I can take a picture of and send online to my love. There is also the matter of my daily doodles. For the past few weeks I’ve started drawing random stuff in a notebook I bought for the purpose of getting back in the drawing groove. I do at least one a day so I keep a regular pace. Hopefully by the end of this exercise I become a better artist, or at least back to the height of my skills like in 2006.

To hit two birds with one stone, I made something for the boyfriend and placed it in the doodle notebook!

I’m fond of writing letters and cards to the boyfriend, but I usually end up writing way too much without proper composition. So now I really did some heavy editing and came up with…. two words: SUDDENLY, LOVE.

These two words speak so much about our relationship. It started out unexpectedly–at the wrong time, actually–yet love prevailed and here we are, almost four years together. Though the long distance is a challenge, love does not diminish. In fact, it grows ever stronger. Also, the song “Suddenly” from the movie Xanadu is one of our favorite songs to sing together, with him singing the girl parts while I sing the guy parts.

The how-to is so simple. I sketched the letters onto a piece of scratch paper folded to the size of the notebook page, then with that as a size guide, I drew letters on the back of pieces of art paper. Don’t forget to do it in mirror image so the letters come out right on the colored side.

After that it’s just a matter of cutting out and gluing onto the paper. Of course lay out all the letters before sticking anything on. I replaced the oval red O with a round one, and switched the light and dark greens for visual balance purposes. Be careful with gluing! Especially for a girl like me who easily gets her hands dirty. It’s hard removing dirt and marks from that notebook paper. Although, some imperfection is also good. It lends  a certain handmade charm to the work.

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