A Crayon’s Life is featured on CSS Mania last week, June 22.

Now let me tell you a little story on how A Crayon’s Life Version 2 was created.

Coming back to Singapore from my home in the Philippines last January has been one of the most difficult moments of my life. Returning from a one-month hiatus, fresh from your father’s funeral is not a very good way to start the year. They say that mourning has its own cycle and one has to go through the stages of anger, denial, acceptance and healing. I’m still lurking behind the denial stage and I did what I do best whenever I find myself balancing between grief, pain, loneliness and denial: I draw.

I tried to focus all my energy and concentration on getting things done. At the top of my list is my web re-design. On weekends, I shut myself up in my room to work on the illustrations. I have a regular day job and I only have one day per week to work on the drawings. There are also instances when I don’t feel like drawing, so it was only after about two months that I was able to complete the whole series of drawings.

I even have to rework on some of the illustrations because I was not satisfied with the initial results.

Finally, after 3 long months, A Crayon’s Life Version 2 was launched in the last week of May. I wanted to thank my friend and developer, Apple Ilagan for the long hours she had spent working on the back end programming of my site. She’s even the one person responsible for submitting my sites to different CSS gallery sites.

Only a week after A Crayon’s Life was featured in CSS Mania, I have seen “Crayosa” drift from one CSS gallery site to another.

Crayon's Life on Abduzeedo

Crayon's Life on 101bestwebsites.com

Crayon's Life on WeLoveCSS

A Crayon's Life On CSS Showcases

Right now I’m still enjoying the euphoria from my “15 minutes of fame” (Andy Warhol), because I know that people will eventually forget about this site. I’m just plain happy that some people appreciate what we have done.

About my mourning cycle, I’m still lurking behind the stage of denial but the fact that I am now writing about it is a good sign that I’m now bordering on the “acceptance” stage. I know I have to brace myself, for I believe, this stage is the most painful.

For these gallery sites whose people behind them are kind enough to let Crayosa and the crayons drift into their webpages, I am most thankful  :)  CSS Mania, Abduzeedo, 101 Best Websites, CSS Showcases, and We Love CSS.

This site pays homage to the humble crayon. A life shared with many children (and some adults). A small but colorful textured life.

My love affair with crayons started when I first held it in my little hands. Its one of those precious little things you can have as a child. I use them to draw stick figures on pad papers with big red and blue lines and our home’s walls. I imagined that it can change forms through heating and melting by placing them on top of burning candles. I placed them on little plastic cups from Jelly Ace to serve as molds. To my delight, my crayons turned to little cupcakes and a “Curly Tops-ish” chocolate with its round, curly mold.

I discovered watercolor and colored pencils in my pre-teen years, color pastels and charcoal in my high school days. In college, poster color came into my vocabulary. I learned that it’s also possible to create art from found objects and label them as “Dadaism” or “Mixed Media Art”. Casting busts with plaster of paris replaced my crayon cupcakes. I’ve learned to use Adobe Photoshop 4.0 and html codes and used the very first I-Mac on my first job and been introduced to Macromedia Freehand. Macromedia is now the property of Adobe, with CS3 as its latest version.

I’ve been to advertising, graphic design, packaging design and web design studios but I just can’t forget my little friends. Until now, its smell still brings back fond memories from my childhood. The crayon is my true introduction to the crazy, fun and colorful world of visual design. And whatever new medium I might be using, I’ll still be holding my little crayons in my other hand. Like most visual artists, my designing life all points back to the crayon.