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Hi and welcome to artfreaks.com! You can get acrylic paints for artists in most of the big National Book Store outlets. There are also a few good specialist art shops in the "University Belt" Try Diovir Art Supplies on Recto Avenue, Santa Cruz. They are near the big Isetan store - right above that underpass. (Is that Espana Ave? I'm not sure...) When I get back to the Philippines, I will find out their full contact details and post them here for you. 'Hope that helps!

Several years ago, when I was learning to read and write in Japanese, I came across a really excellent book called Remembering the Kanji Vol. 1: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters by James W. Heisig (Paperback - May 2007) Apart from the really innovative way that the book teaches a couple of thousand Chinese characters; I was greatly impressed with a very simply, efficient and highly effective memorizing technique that was introduced... This was called the "learning box" Basically, the learning box is just a highly efficient way of spending your time going through traditional flash cards. Flash cards have been used by students around the world for ages now. (You know... bits of card or whatever with, say, a foreign language word on one side and its translation on the other. You look at one side of the card and see if you know the answer, before turning it over to confirm whether you were right or wrong. Mathematical formulas, historical facts and figures. The possibilities are endless.) But just having a stack of the things in your pocket or top drawer and going through the whole lot from time-to-time is not the most efficient way of utilizing your precious study hours. So what "Remembering the Kanji" taught was a learning box... The traditional learning box is a physical box with about five separate compartments. You can make your learning box as elaborate as you want, or just knock one up from any old but suitably-sized box. All your new flash cards go into the first compartment. When you test yourself on a card; if you get it right, it moves into the next compartment. Each successive compartment is bigger than the one before it and the last one, (number five, if your are using a five compartment system,) needs to be about the same size as compartments one to four put together. No matter what compartment a flash card has reached, if you get the answer wrong when you test yourself on the card it MUST go right back to box one. This way, stuff that you know and can retain OK will move steadily through the system. But anything that you are a bit "shaky on" will keep coming back to the start until you have finally got it firmly implanted into your brain! So you automatically spend more time on what you need to review - and less on what you already know. Simple but very efficient. I'd say so! Anyway, since I am a seaman and I generally have to board a plane every time I go to work, carrying boxes of cards around with me just adds to my already overloaded baggage. I had often thought about downloading an electronic version of the learning box to the laptop computer that I always bring with me on board ship... Now... This took a fair bit of research on Google... So, to save a bit of time for anyone else who might be interested in downloading digital (electronic) learning box software to their computer, here is what I found: You can download one type of electronic learning box software, called MemoAccelerator at: http://www.plainsystem.com/ The download is free. You get a couple weeks-or-so to play around and explore the software, then if you want to keep using it, you have to pay about US$25 or something. When I first installed the software on my laptop, my immediate impression was; "What the Hell is this... I am glad I didn't send them any money!!" I was very close to just deleting the whole thing - but I persevered with it and after quite some time reading the help manual and generally playing around with the different settings and things; I finally did manage to get my head around how to use and customize MemoAccelerator. Suffice it to say that now I have done my homework, I am extremely impressed with the software and its highly customizable possibilities. This is, without a doubt, a very powerful learning tool and I will be more than happy in paying-up my $25 dollars for a full license to continue using the software! If anyone needs a bit of guidance on how to set-up or use MemoAccelerator, I'll be happy to oblige. Just post a reply to this topic - or, if you are a member of the artfreaks.com Forums, you can send me a PM

The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Author: Betty Edwards Publishers: UK: Harper Collins. Published in the USA by Jeremy P. Teacher / Putnam, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright: Betty Edwards 1979, 1989, 1992, 1999 ISBN number: 0 00 711645 4 Other details: 291 pages, mostly in black and white but with one chapter in color. The version reviewed below was a soft-back, approximately 230mm x 191mm x 20mm (9" x 7.5" x 0.7") Available from: In the UK, the book is available from all good book shops. It can also be purchased from amazon.com Book review: In a few words: The perfect book to get you started! Artfreaks.com ratings: Usefulness and practicability: 5 stars Interest and information: 5 stars Attractiveness: 4 stars This book was a real eye-opener for me... Before I picked up a copy of The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I couldn't draw to save my life. The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is quite heavy on the psychology of drawing (as you might expect from the title!!) But with words of wisdom and encouragement like: "If you have learned how to drive a car, you can learn how to draw!" - and a pretty awful example of one of Van Gogh's early attempts at drawing, you soon get the courage you need to have a go yourself! After many years of procrastination - wanting desperately to have a go at producing my own art but never quite having the courage to take the plunge - this is the book that finally gave me the encouragement that I needed to get started. The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain breaks down the barriers that can prevent adults and people in later life from taking up drawing or painting. I particularly like the way that Betty Edwards likens the ability of learning how to draw to the acquired skill of driving a car! She does a very convincing job of proving to the reader that the only real barriers to learning drawing are in the mind - NOT in the hands! One of the first exercises that you will do, if you follow the book, is to copy a drawing upside down... You will be surprised at the results! This is (as you would expect from the title,) more of a book on the psychology of learning to draw - rather than a whole lot of technique. Different techniques and tricks of the trade will get you nowhere if every time you pick up a pencil and paper, you end up with such unsatisfactory results that you just want to give up trying. That is not to say that the author ignores technique altogether... The one I particularly liked and found very useful was "toning" the paper with graphite, before you start and then using an eraser to get the brightest highlights. The proof!: This is a picture of the self-portrait that I done, as instructed by the author, at the start of the couse: I didn't actually get around to doing the "after" portrait, as, now that I have got started, I prefer to copy from photographs. Here's one that I copied from a magazine, shortly after completing "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: Now I know that I am an ugly bugger - and Faye looks MUCH more attractive than I have drawn her - but, in terms of the drawings themselves, I don't think that there can be much argument about my improvement, after having read the book and worked through some of the exercises. If you work through all of the exercises, and follow the book to the letter, you should be able to make even greater strides in your drawing!

Creative Pastel Techniques Forward by: Ian Sidaway Publishers: David & Charles Publishers (August 2001) Copyright: David & Charles Publishers ISBN number: 0715311492 Other details: 128 pages. Hard-back. Full color. Available from: In the UK, the book is available from all good book shops. I bought my copy at the National Bookstore branch in Robinsons, Ermita, Manila. The book can also be purchased online from Amazon.com My attempt at one of the "creative pastel projects" from the book. You can see some more of my early stuff at Members Gallery - My Early Attempts at Pastel Painting Book review: In a few words: A nice book to get you started in pastel painting. I found it very useful, interesting and informative. Artfreaks.com ratings: Usefulness and practicability: 5 stars Interest and information: 4 stars Attractiveness: 4 stars Before I started with any of the worked examples, I read Creative Pastel Techniques from cover to cover. It was a surprisingly good read for an instructional manual!! I found the "creative pastel projects," (worked examples - using different styles, materials and techniques,) very useful indeed. In fact, once I got started with a few of them myself, I found that my enthusiasm for the pastel media had taken on a life of it's own! With a limited amount of time available to me for painting, I soon found more subject matter in the form of newspaper and magazine photographs that I wanted to copy coming my way than I had time for. I persevered with most of the creative pastel projects in the book though - even though the subject matter was not always my first choice - and I found the time well spent in getting a basic grounding in the main techniques. I found the book truly inspirational, highly instructive and well worth the rather high price that I paid for my copy at one of the National Bookstore branches in the Philippines.

It's probably a good idea to at least get some confidence in drawing before you try to start painting. The great news is that, as proved by 'Yours Truly', anyone can draw!! I didn't actually realize this until I read The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. If you can get hold of a copy and work through the book, I can virtually guarantee that it will give you the confidence to get you started - and you'll be amazed at your own results! This post has been promoted to an article

I have had countless problems with pastel fixatives and I have totally ruined many a good painting by using too much of the stuff. The first solution here is to use as little as you can get away with - and never fix your final layer. Just be very careful with the painting until you can get it framed behind glass... However, if like me - (and as suggested in another tip by Jennifer Blenkinsopp) - you like to work in layers; you will definitely not be able to completely avoid using pastel fixatives. My advice here is to simply go for the very highest quality product that you can lay your hands on... For one thing, the price of a very high-quality pastel fixative will put you off using too much of it!! And you will stand much less chance of getting any very undesirable "frosting" effects if you do accidentally use too much. My fixative of choice is the one made for pastels by Senellier. (Senellier also do a very similar fixative which has been formulated especially for charcoal drawings. I find that it also works very well with pastels but it does seem to be a bit lighter - and so you really need to use more of it when working with pastels...) I can not get hold of Senellier fixative in the Philippines but I find that the museum grade varnish, satin, produced by "Golden" suites my purposes quite well. The only real problem that I have with the Golden varnish is that it takes quite a while to dry. But then again, that usually gives me a good excuse to go out for a beer! I buy my Golden varnish at Diovir's in Santa Cruz, Manila I wouldn't touch any of the other so-called fixatives that you can buy in National Bookstore, with a bargepole!!