BookCon and Books

Today I met up with a friend to go to BookCon at the Javits Convention Center. We didn't really know what to expect but we each had plans to go to specific panels. I wanted to get Cary Elwes' autograph and go to his panel for reasons. One of the reasons is because I've had a crush on him since I was a kid I mean what. Anyway we got there around the time it was opening so we had to wait in line outside. Looking around we noticed that there were a lot of teenagers, we guessed it was mainly because John Green and Cassandra Clare were guests.

We thought we would get to see a lot of great books, get some cool freebies and buy a bunch of stuff. This convention was not what we had in mind AT ALL. BookCon was basically a convention just for YA novels. There were some books for children and a section here and there with art books and other stuff like that (which I would have GLADLY bought but they were pretty expensive). Young adult novels everywhere, they all ended up looking the same. The only thing I bought was an Adventure Time book with 20 art prints, totally worth it. Twenty beautiful prints for less than $20. YES PLEASE. My friend got that and a book of story board art from Star Wars. I bet all the good stuff was at Book Expo.

Tolkien Artist Fridays: Gerwell

Since I'm currently in summer vacation I thought I should do some more blogging and one of the ideas I had was so showcase a different artist every week until my fall semester begins. I make no promise that I will not miss a week or two (or three or five) but I'll try my best to keep up with it! I thought that I'd start this series off with one of my absolute favorite artists, Gerwell. I did get to interview him for Middle-earth News a little over a year ago, and since then he has posted so much beautiful work. I admit that I don't know much about the earlier ages of Middle-earth, most is foreign to me, but Gerwell's work just gives me more desire to try and tackle The Silmarillion again. I see his interpretations for characters like Eönwë, Varda, Sauron, and immediately feel like I need to know more about them. And since these characters haven't been in movies it gives artists more freedom to decide how they want them each to look like. I've seen Silmarillion artwork from a lot of people, and what amazes me is that no work looks the same. Everyone has their own vision, it's amazing!

Gerwell has posted many pieces of Eönwë and not all of them are the same. Look at the amount of detail! I pretty much want one of everything he is wearing.

Ashamed of Being Asian

This post is going to be a little different from everything else I've posted on this blog. It's something that's been on my mind for a while now and I haven't had the chance to fully express it. And as I was trying to go to sleep I kept thinking about this thing that has been troubling me so I figured it was time to write about it. What is this thing that I can't stop thinking about? It's this whole idea that being Asian is something to hide, something to be ashamed of. I didn't realize my feelings until about a year ago, and it came to a surprise to me. I guess I've always been a little ashamed, but it didn't seem obvious to me. This is going to be difficult to write about because I am not even sure how I feel.

Plans for the summer.

Now that it's finally summer vacation, I want to spend more time on my blog so I'm going to be setting some goals for myself.

I want to showcase a Tolkien artist each week. Just show off their work and talk a little about them. And I plan on doing a couple Goodwill runs for books with my dad this summer, so hopefully I'll come across some good stuff that I can show off.

Sound good?

Good.

MAPS - Comic Project

My spring semester ended last week, and now that I finally have some free time I can post my graphic novel final project. I'm not totally satisfied with it, but after working on it for over a week, I lost most of my cares.

Programs used: Paint Tool Sai and Adobe Indesign CC. Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet.

Our Long Expected Party

This past weekend I met up with the other US members from Middle-earth News and we had SO. MUCH. FUN. I'm so upset it's over, I miss them!!

Okay, let's start at the beginning. Rachel and I met up the day before and headed into NYC on Friday early in the morning because our bus to Philadelphia was at noon. Since we were so early, we hung out at Port Authority with our Starbucks and sat around texting everyone else to see how they were all doing. Rachel and I were texting back and forth with Britta, laughing so hard over Spongebob lines. You know, adult stuff. Well, while we were laughing a group of cops walked over and one approached us kneeling down and said "Don't worry, you're not in trouble!" Even though Rachel and I are 21, he thought we may be runaway teens.  Haha, he said we look young and to Rachel, "YOU especially!" I kept looking over at Rachel mouthing "WHAT is happening???" We had to show him our IDs so he could take down our information. This was a very interesting way to start the weekend.

Bookcase Tour

Aside from my bookshelves that I use for my Tolkien collection, I have another book case where I store all of my other books. For a while I kept it in another room but yesterday I decided to move it into my room, so now my space is kind of crowded. But totally worth it.

The top shelf is for my various YA novels that I read, including Harry Potter and The Hunger Games trilogy. As you can tell I only have the dust jackets for those, a cousin of mine is borrowing them.