Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2012 9:28 p.m.

Just sent out today's portion of work at 9pm - which means that I have worked from 10am 9pm today and better than yesterday's 9am to 2am. Haven't experienced the pain of handling large files with illustrator for quite a while. I should have taken the file size into account when I worked on the quotation as work hours could really multiply along with the increase in file size, and considering the extra effort of doing hand drawings I really should have charged more, but that's it - agreement signed already. But this hasn't been too painful so far, the real pain should probably be the 20-page programme booklet which contents will not be given to me until 2 weeks before the concert. I hate InDesign......

If I did this in an office I would have to go home by taxi and prepare to leave home again after a few hours, but with home office/freelancing this pain of travelling can be avoided although you may end up working even longer hours. For a freelancer, London has a pleasant temperature, which is a very important factor to consider when working overnight. Working on a drawing at 2am in the humid heat of Hong Kong is a hugely unpleasant experience. However, Hong Kong beats London in terms of night transport, university buildings which open 24/7 and most importantly, its omnipresent 7-11s and restaurants which offer the best comfort food to help you survive through the night. London is depressing in terms of food if you are not into kebabs pizza fried chicken crisps etc. It is where people drink more than they eat... and when they do eat, they are probably eating things that you don't (especially when stressed out and desperate for some comfort).

I am really not familiar with ink and any painting materials in general, but ink has been kind to me on this project so far, and combining with crayon it is not difficult to create something decent. It is even easier than working with watercolour or acrylics as it is rather forgiving. Crayon is another magical medium. Before this second stay in London I learnt from a book in South Kwai Chung Library that you could enhance the lighting quality of a watercolour landscape drawing by laying pastel on top of the watercolour to create the highlights. So this time I used crayon on top of the ink drawing to amend the colour tone of some parts and also for light and shadow. The effect is lovely especially on the texture of watercolour paper.

Paper is another issue. The first time I tried ink I used a piece of Indian handmade paper which had a lovely heavy texture and torn edges. However, it was so absorbent that the ink was taken up into the paper very quickly and started to spread out of control. It was rather frustrating and I hadn't played with ink for quite a long while.

If you think about why you could never paint decently in secondary school it was not because you were incompetent, but simply because the thin cartridge paper the teacher gave you was never meant to carry wet medium. It was really frustrating to see that piece of cartridge paper forming hills and valleys by itself when overloaded with water, and when you tried hard to solve the problem by evening out the little ponds collected in the valleys with a paintbrush, the paper began to turn wooly under too much rubbing, and eventually holes began to appear... Therefore I was quite amazed when I first came across watercolour paper, and couldn't help cursing those teachers who gave us cartridge paper every lesson, asked us to paint something with poster colour but never told us the truth.

When I finish these four projects I would like start a new comic series featuring little hedgehog. I can't wait to experiment again!