Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog. Hopefully you are doing fine. I know it's already the new year and I have missed so many months of my monthly favourite edition but oh, it's better late than never right? Also, I would rather document this while I still remember it rather than trying to store it in my brain and forget about it in the future.

These July and August might be the most exciting months for me in terms of my art journey.

1. Draw This in Your Style challenge - by now you are most probably tired of me talking about this challenge. But the reason why it end up at the top of my list these months because I feel like I finally found my art style while doing this challenge and trying not to copy the original character (which I unconsciously tend to do because of my skill at drawing realistic portrait). It also pushed me to go out of my comfort zone and learn character design. 

2. New Project - if you followed me on Instagram, you might have seen some random drawing of bird, crab or lake in my IG stories. I have made it a secret until now. I was actually working on my first professional work - a children book! How exciting! I was never one to have the confident on my art but this month I decided to take the plunge when I was offered this project. Right now I am almost done with the illustration and I cannot wait for it to be printed!

3. Canson Mix-Media spiral sketchbook - I ran out of sketchbook at the end of 2017 and I haven't bought a new one since then until I found this sketchbook. I was never a fan of spiral (am still not!) but I decided to give this a go because it's A5 size and I have heard many good reviews about Canson brand. I would say that I love the unique texture of this sketchbook and how I can just tear the paper into pieces easily if I wanted to. If you are interested to know more, I plan to review this sketchbook in my next Youtube video.

4. Faber Castell Polychromos in Deep Scarlet Red - I was curious of how good this pencil is and decided to bought the red colour one when it was on sale at Stickerrific! I sketched this art journal with this red colour pencil and I would say that I really love how smooth and soft it felt when I draw with it.

5. Holbein Artist Watercolour in Burnt Umber - My first artist grade watercolour. Bought it in burnt umber colour because apparently I love to use earthy brown colour in my illustration and the one I had with Sakura Koi is finishing soon.

6. Arto hot pressed watercolour paper - This is my first time trying hot press watercolour paper. I love how smooth it feel and I think it will work great with gouache. I may do some time lapse video illustration with this paper in the future, we shall see!

7. Doodle Value (Friendship) - Doodle Your Future is a non-profit organisation that helps orphaned and children. I was very honoured when they reached out to me to join in their doodle value draw this in your style challenge. The idea is to choose a doodle drawn by the children and redraw it in our style. All of the children's doodle are so lovely and I was having a hard time choosing it but I decided to go with the Friendship value. They chose my illustration as one of the winner and it will be published in their Little Doodlers Value colouring book. Although I may never see the book, however just the thought of those children colouring my illustration is enough to make me feel all happy. It is during this time that I know I have made the right decision to keep pursuing my dream and I hope I will have more opportunity in the future to impact people's lives in a good way.

8. Cream Custard Bun - I went to Malacca with my boyfriend and cousins this month. We had a "food trip" and from all the food that we ate, I will say that the Cream Custard Bun is my ultimate favourite.

Art Supplies I used for this month art bullet journal: