Rambutan and Marang

Two more fruit paintings I did a few weeks ago. I tried both of these for the first time on my trip to the Philippines and they were so good! I don't think marang are widely exported to the U.S. and they were my mother-in-law's favorite food while we were visiting. They are about the size of a durian and have a similar pudding-like texture but aren't as stinky. Rambutan tasted kind of like lychee but look even more like a spiky alien fruit.

Mangosteen and Lanzones

I've been working on some little watercolors of the delicious tropical fruit we ate while in the Philippines. Here are the first two!

Philippines watercolor sketches

Oh blog, sorry to ignore you for so long! Short update: I finished illustrating two books earlier this summer that will be out this November. More on that in a later post. Then my husband and I moved to a new place in late July (still in Queens) and we just got back from 3 weeks in the Philippines!

Here are a few little watercolor and ink sketches I did on location while there. The first three are from The Pearl Farm Resort on the Island Garden City of Samal in Davao. The last one is of the Manila Film Center that I painted from our hotel balcony.

I did some travel comics and took a bunch of notes for the days I didn't draw, so I may get those up here at some point when they're finished.

My online sales this month to aid Philippines

Everyone does holiday sales. But this year instead of offering free shipping, I've decided to donate the proceeds from my online sales from Nov 16th- Dec 16th to the Red Cross to help aid the Philippines recover from Typhoon Haiyan.

My husband's parents are from the Philippines and luckily their family and friends are all safe after the typhoon hit. But I want to help out the thousands of people who were affected even if it is a relatively small gesture.

Thanks for reading this and for considering giving the gift of self-published comics to your loved ones and benefiting those in need at the same time.