Check out Luis Miguel’s other designs on his studios portfolio site!

Don’t live on the shore line

The biggest mistake we did – we decided to stay in a very small “village” called Lonely Beach. We’ve been living in a small bungalow with sea in front of our windows. It was so cosy, peaceful and relaxing we could literally don’t do anything all day long. Fortunately we were sane enough to force ourselves into some actions other than swimming, laying on a beach and going to various parties. Anyway it was a daily struggle.

Don’t live in a bungalow

Ever felt enlightened while visiting a Buddhist temple? Or maybe excited in a circus even when there was no particular reason? The same thing will happen to you if you live in a bungalow: so many people did only 2 things there – having a sleep and sex. I suggest you better rent a house or an apartment so it would be easier for you to focus on creative process.

Don’t drink alcohol

It’s so cool to have a cold beer on a hot day while sitting in the warm sea. But this usually means you are going to have another can after you finish this one. Thinking logically this leads us to going to sleep when it’s 2 or 3 pm, then you’ll wake up and probably have dinner… hold on, where were we? doing art? oh… definitely not today. Maybe tomorrow? or the day after tomorrow, ’cause today we are going to party all night!

Do sports

Swimming is absolutely free if you live on an island. Do it every day for 1-2 hours. You don’t have to do anything about cooking, cleaning the house, washing clothes, etc, so there is no such excuse as “I don’t have time for this”. The other thing you can do is jogging, but this might be too hard and boring on a hot sunny day. I liked the best kayaking. You can rent a kayak for only $10 for 4 hours. Speaking of Koh Chang you can paddle along it or reach some of the other islands that are relatively close. Don’t forget to use sunblock ’cause you are going to be open to the sun and UV reflected from water.

Wake up early

The most quiet and peaceful time on an island is 6-10 AM. Nothing can disturb you during this time. Most of people sleep and the temperature is not that high. After doing stuff for 3-4 hours you can take a break and relax on a beach, have lunch, go somewhere and continue your business later when it is dark.

Take energy drinks

If you are somewhere in South East Asia, you can try Thai energy drinks. Red Bull was invented there and you can find tones of other brands. Small 200ml bottle costs only $0.3 and it will keep you stimulated for several hours. Still the stimulation is not rough – just enough to be in a good shape and a productive mood.

Finally

I really doubt anyone should go to a tropical island to do art. It’s more challenging rather than inspiring experience.

All photos above

Except the one with sunrise and energy drink were taken by my girlfriend Marina Nozyer. Check out her Flickr for more of her art!

If you liked this post

Check through my other travel-related posts:

• Going on a trip to Vietnam part 1
• Going on a trip to Vietnam part 2
• Preparing for a trip. Part I
• Preparing for a trip. Part II
• Preparing for a trip. Part III
• Advantages and disadvantages of living in Thailand as a freelance graphic designer

Here is the vector I started with and which is free to download. Feel free to use it in any type of artwork – personal or commercial (as long as it is legal).

And here is the wallpaper. I just used the heart I did and added some details between the hearts and I’ve put fir trees on the background.

You can download the wallpaper in different resolutions: 320×480 (iPhone), 1024×1024 (iPad), 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1600 or you can download the hole pack.

Finally I decided to add the vector file of the wallpaper to my Psychedelic Art Stash – my extended psychedelic art resources. If you are subscribed to my newsletter you can just put your details to the form below to get to Psychedelic Art Stash. If you are not subscribed – simply fill the form and you’ll get instant access to my high quality psychedelic art stock.

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Hey guys! Some time ago I spotted Robert Steven Connett and now it’s time to share his awesome surreal and psychedelic art with you. Enjoy all the lovely details and creatures coming out of great artists mind!

You can find much more paintings in Robert’s gallery on DA. Check out Mr. Connett’s web-site. He has lots of stuff to see there too. What I like the best are descriptions he provides to the artworks.

See you next week!

Hey Simon, could you please introduce yourself?

My name is Simon Haiduk.  I’m an artist from Kimberley, British Columbia, Canada.  I primarily work with visual mediums like painting, and other digital media.  I also play music, and love to bring the idea of art and creativity into every aspect of life. 

How come you became a psychedelic artist?

In 2004 I had a peak mystical experience that lead me into world of exploring a new way of creating from connection to what I might call “spirit”.  I feel a passion to align with a living grace that weaves through all things and use that as a source for which to live life and create from.

I wouldn’t define myself with the label of a “psychedelic artist”, although I do see how my art could be called psychedelic.  Labels are labels, and they can mean this or that.

Music and visual art have been in my life since I was very young, and they seem to help me in the process of harmonizing with divine grace so that it may resonate into other areas of my life and the people around me.

What is psychedelic art for you?

When you break it down, the multidimensional layers of all things are so magnificent, that everything is psychedelic.  
I paint with an intention of allowing life to enter the painting, and this could be seen as psychedelic. Not all my works include the full rainbow of colors often associated with psychedelic art.
I also paint with a resonant memory of mystical experiences that I’ve had which come out in the art as recognizable archetypes of those realms to other people.  This is often what is referred to as psychedelic, if one has used those as a gateway to an experience which influences the art.  Since I see all life as psychedelic, that is what my art is.

You are traveling a lot, aren’t you? What is the most inspiring place you’ve visited?

I don’t actually travel to far and wide, as I find more good art shows to take part in somewhat locally.  This is compared to a global level.  Though I have been to Central and South America and they were very amazing places to visit. However I love many places on Earth, and my home nestled in the Purcell mountains looking over to the Rockies is high up on my list of most inspiring places.   I’m very fond of the California Coastal Redwood forests as well.

Nature seems to be a great source of inspiration for you. Do you do art at home or go into the woods?

I sometimes sketch in nature, but generally create final works in my studio.

What is your favorite medium?

I don’t have one.  They’re all great, and all offer amazing things to explore. Digital mediums are typically more versatile and is my current main medium.

Are you involved in any psychedelic community events?

I curate a large art gallery at Shambhala Music festival, and sometimes show art at other events that are connected to a psychedelic scene.

What do you think of future of psychedelic art? Can it become a main stream?

In this case I’ll refer to psychedelic art as the dictionary states as: having the vivid colours and complex patterns popularly associated with the visual effects of psychedelic states. (similar to what in an earlier answer).

My guess is that as long as people are alive in a similar physical manner as now, they will continue to take psychedelics and there will continue to be psychedelic art.
Of course it could become mainstream, but who knows really?  It’s certainly not now, and is often frowned upon by mainstream art societies which I think is a shame.  With that said, I see more and more of it, and I think that it’s fulfilling it’s purpose in the way it needs to for now.

Thanks Simon, it was a pleasure to talk with you a bit!

Those of you who’d like to see more interviews I’ve posted check within interviews category.

First here is some general information about the town. Da Lat is situated in Central Highlands of Vietnam. The climate is very mild there (in December and January the temperature was +20-25 in day time and +12-16 in the night). Not too many people live in the town and there are almost no foreign tourists in Da Lat. I prefer to call it town – not the city – ’cause it’s not big at all. Living in a center of Da Lat me and my girlfriend could walk out of the town in 1-2 hours depending on a direction.

Now lets talk on something specific. Below is a list of things that inspired me and made an impact on my vision of reality. I’ll be illustrating the list with pictures my girlfriend took.

Buddhist temples

Vietnam was under Chinese influence for a very long time. This is why Vietnam’s Buddhist temples are like the ones you can see in China. Sometimes these buildings are so highly detailed you can feel all the statues and creatures moving and talking to you. The ambient of Buddhist temples is very relaxing and enthusiastic at the same time. You can easily get lots of inspiration there. Unfortunately most of the monks don’t speak English but you can always try to communicate with gestures.

There are 2 temples in Da Lat and 2 temples in the suburbs I definitely recommend you to go from time to time. First one – Chùa Linh Sơn is located close to the center of the town. It is not very big but when you get there you are in a sort of sanctuary away from the noise of so called social life.

The second temple is in the Northern part of Da Lat (Looks like Google did not update its Da Lat maps for a while. You can see the white statue on the map – that’s the place.). There you can find a huge golden Buddha statue. It shines even on a cloudy day. You can also see Da Lat’s panorama while being there. Here is me standing beneath it:

To get to one of the suburban temples – Chua Linh Phuoc – you can take a taxi or take an old school train (9-10$ both ways). The railroad is only 8 km long ’cause it was destroyed during the war in late sixties. I can not say the railroad is very picturesque but it fun to try it. The train takes you to a village. It’s only 3-5 minutes walk to the temples. This set of temples looked like a Disneyland to me – there were so many details! Some of statues where painted, some were decorated with mosaic, we could even see a guy working on new huge wooden statues.

The last but not least place is Tuyền Lâm Pagoda. You should go South from Da Lat to get there. You can take a taxi or ride a cable car (7$ round trip). Cable car trip is really cool – it’ll take you about 5-7 minutes to get to the destination. You’ll be riding above the pines and there will be a nice panoramic view of Da Lat. The set of temples you will see is among some sort of a botanical garden. If you continue descending you’ll get to the lake where you can go on a boat trip.

Valley of love

This is a park with a nice landscape of mountains and lakes. It is quite a popular place locals (maybe ’cause the price is only 1$) and tourists go to but this should not scare you. Some parts of this place are to remote for most visitors to get there. There are no regular attractions, but you can feel yourself lost in time in space – half an hour ago you were in a Asian city and now there is no one around – just mountains and pines. It is really refreshing!

Golden Valley

This place is 10-15 minutes taxi ride from Da Lat – about 10$ one way and entrance fee is 3$. It is similar to Valley of love but its design is focused on plants. You can find different bonsai trees (I would better say tones of ‘em) and lots of flowers there.

The most exciting thing for me there were fish. First when you get to a relatively small pond you can see several fish swimming here and there. But after you buy fish food (0.25$ a pack) and start feeding ‘em there is a quiet and bubbling mess of fish trying to get the food. I could never expect so many of them.

Flowers

Da Lat is also called city of flowers. They are almost everywhere. Many people grow them and they are extremely cheap. You can buy a 10-15 bunch of chrysanthemums for only 1$. This means you can practice floristic experiments with a high quality and cheap stock. You can find the flowers in Da Lat central market.

There are more things too see in Da Lat

But the list above contains the stuff I liked the best I can recommend you without feeling guilty.

Finally

When we came to Da Lat we’ve met a local guy – Anki. He is a student and luckily agreed to help us find the house. After we’d moved to our new home he has helped us numerous times providing useful information. Once again I want to say: thanks man! By the way he did not mind me sharing his contacts so if you are thinking of going to Da Lat, just email me and I’ll connect you with Anki.

Below are two crazy sculptures:

This is definitely my favorite one!

Can you imagine Ph.D. anthropologist make such art? Well Mr. Levin is that guy! Don’t forget to take a look at Joshua’s gallery on Deviant Art and check out his website!

Stock you will need

I did not use much photo stock below are the only two images (you can click on a image to grab it):

I’ve been also using a very cool brush set called “Good brush”. Even if you are not a digital painter I definitely recommend you to download these brushes.

Step 0 – concept

The name of the party is Blissful Dreams, so I came up with a mystic character dreaming of a world of waterfalls, mountains and trees.

Step 1

This might surprise you but yes, I made a simple z-sphere model in Zbrush. You can find some tutorials on this subject on Youtube. Sure I could draw this character in Photoshop, but I always wanted to try 3D art and this was a chance I could not miss. Frankly I’m a novice in 3D but I hope this will change some day.

Step 2

Here is the detailed model. I was using very primitive sculpturing techniques – mostly regular, move and soften brushes in Zbrush. After I make the model I export it to .OBJ file.

Step 3

Here you can see the model imported in Photoshop and positioned the way I needed.

Step 4

This was the first time I was using Photoshop’s CS5 3D features. So I’ve added the snake skin to the character.

Step 5

I rasterized the 3D model so the computer can work faster. Next thing I did – changing the HUE (Cmd+U) and adjusted Levels (Cmd+L)

Step 6

Made 2 more layers with light (both are clipping masks)

Step 7

The technique I used for the background is very simple. First fill a new layer with any color, double click on it and add gradient overlay with 4 swatches – black, purple, orange and pink. Right click on the effect name on the layer panel and click Create Layer. Merge the gradient layer onto the original. Select a simple round Brush (B) with opacity set to 20-30 and harness set to 0. Use this brush to create the drapery effect. Use Smudge Tool (L) to blur the background a bit.

Step 8

Then I added some simple cloud-like shapes.

Step 9

Copied and pasted the lotus photo. I usually use Pen Tool (P) to isolate the objects. Then I added some strokes under the flower in a new layer. I’ve used one of the brushes from Good brush set. Next thing I did is duplicated the strokes layer and used Radial Blur filter set to Zoom mode.

Step 10

The image seem a bit too desaturated so I’ve fixed the levels (Cmd+L).

Step 11

I did not like the texture of the creature so I used the Smudge Tool (L) to make it more painted-like. Next thing was adding more light and reflexes to the creature in separate layers.

Step 12

Then I’ve added green color shadow over the flower and some cloudy fog over the creature.

Step 13

With the help of a simple Brush (B) and Smudge Tool (L) I’ve added a simple idea of a landscape on a separate layer.

Step 14

I painted the landscape with a transparent brush. I used the colors from the background so the landscape kind of merges into background.

Step 15

Adding a shade under the landscape makes it to stand out a bit.

Step 16

Here I’ve just added some lightning details to the spheres the creature holds in his hands and some light to the rocks.

Step 17

Within the Good brush set there are some brushes to make the foliage and sparkles. This is how I’ve used ‘em.

Step 18

As you might know I’m a big vector art fan so when it comes to ornaments I prefer using vector art software. These concentric elements will make a nice “magic” feel to the image. Some time ago I wrote a tutorial on creating such mandala-like compositions.

Step 19

I prefer keeping the pasted vector elements as smart objects so if I upsize them they are still high quality. You can easily change the color using layers effects – Color overlay and Opacity.

Step 20

The last step is adding text. This depends on how much information you need to put – what should stand out and what is less important. You can divide your text into logical groups and assign styles (colors, size, font face, letter spacing, etc) to them. I just won’t recommend you using more than two different fonts.

It looks like the end

Thanks for reading all the way down! Hope you’ve found out something new or at least learned about the free resources you can use. Speaking of free psychedelic art stuff – if you subscribe to my newsletter you’ll get instant access to my Psychedelic art stash – premium resources for psychedelic artists found only here.

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Those of you who follow my blog for a while know I love traveling. I try to spend the cold Russian winter in some warm place on our wonderful globe. 2 years ago me and my girlfriend went to Thailand and we spent the winter in Southern California last year. This time we are back to South-East Asia. I’ve started writing this post while sitting in an airport in Ho Chi Min (ex Saigon), Vietnam waiting for plane to Bangkok, Thailand and I’ve finished it few days later on a tropical island Koh Chang.

Let’s start! Below you’ll find few tips on setting up and spending time in Vietnam./

How to find a house for rent in Vietnam?

First things first. You need a place to live. Sure it can be a guesthouse (from 6$ per night) or a hotel (from 20$ per night), but it will only be one room – good if you are out all the time, but bad if you want to do art or work at home. Besides it’s kind of hard to spend a month or two in a hotel. So you need a house or at least an apartment. In Vietnam people hardly speak English and it is really hard to speak Vietnamese. There are no “House for rent” signs on the streets (unlike Thailand). Almost only thing you can do is go to a tour agency and ask them to find a house for you or speak to someone at the hotel’s reception.

How much does it cost to rent a house in Vietnam?

There are few things you should know when renting a house:

• You don’t have to pay the guys from the tour agency, cause their royalty is included in the price of the house.
• The best time to look for a house is October and early November – before the high season starts and all good and cheap houses are rented.
• If you rent a house for 5-6 month you can get a nice discount.

Well, we’ve been only in two locations. First was Muine – it’s a coastal village in Southern Vietnam with tones of tourists and wavy sea. The best house we saw there in the late November 2011 was 300$ per month if you stay for at least 3 month. There were 2 huge rooms and kitchen within the house, but the building was few minutes ride away from the shore. Not the best variant, but we came to Vietnam too late this time. There were less expensive houses but much worse in general.

The second location was Da Lat – a beautiful mountain town, very calm and refreshing. We lived in the very center of the town in a 3-floors-tall apartment and we paid 400$ per month. We have also seen a house a bit further from the center and maybe two times smaller for 300$.

Where to eat in Vietnam?

I’m afraid I’ll disappoint you – the food in Vietnam is OK but not great. The most popular dish is a meat soup with rice noodles served with a plate of fresh basil, salad and other plants you add yourself to the soup. It’s called Pho Bo. You can find it everywhere. The price is 1.2-2$.

Most of native dishes are rice or rice noodles + meat, pork, chicken or squid and shrimp. They cost about 1.5-3$ in a street cafe. If you go to a restaurant they can serve you very much the same thing but the price will be 2-5-times higher.

You can also find lots of seafood here. The closer you get to the coast the larger variety is waiting for you. You can see living snails, shells, squids, turtles, sharks and other exotic animals within fishtanks. You just have to pick one and it will be grilled in front of you. Kind of weird, isn’t it?

We’ve seen only one vegetarian restaurant in Da Lat. It was very nice there. Relaxing music, Buddhist monks all around and good food for about 2$ per plate of rice with fried tofu and vegetables.

Another option is to cook yourself. You’ll find everything you need on the market. Unfortunately cooking takes time. Unless your creative field is food, I’d recommend you eat outside as most of the locals do.

What to drink in Vietnam?

Speaking of water you should definitely drink it from the bottles. Some people don’t even drink cocktails with ice, ’cause you can never tell what water was frozen into this ice. What I’d recommend you for sure is Vietnamese coffee. Vietnam was a French colony – this is why you can find baget bread and coffee everywhere. The Vietnamese coffee has a specific smell and it’s always very strong. Below is the image of a device used to make the coffee.

Vietnam is also famous for its cheap beer – about 50 cents a can which is nice to drink on a hot day. Locals drink beer with ice. You can also find cheap brandy (1$ per 300ml) and wine (2$ per 750ml) but its quality is quite average. We used to make glue wine on cold Da Lat winter evenings)

How to connect to Internet in Vietnam?

Finding Internet is not a big problem in Vietnam. Every guesthouse or hotel has its own wi-fi network and if you rent a house you can look for a house with ADLS or set it up yourself – this costs about 20$ to set everything up and about 20$ to pay for the unlimited plan per month. The speed low but not that bad – about 512 kb/s. You can also buy a 3G-modem if you travel a lot across the country. That usb-modem costs about 100$. Sorry I don’t know the monthly plans. The providers name is Vinaphone, so you can try to figure out their pricing yourself.

How to travel across Vietnam?

The most popular transport is a bus. A 6-8 hours ride can cost you 6-10$ depending on a type of a bus. I definitely recommend you going on a sleeper bus – the one with beds. If you go on a day time you’ll be laying in bed and observing the country. If you prefer going on a plane check out Asian low cost airways – AirAsia and Tiger. If you book in advance you can save a lot. Flying with Vietnam airlines will cost you at least 2 times more.

How to make these psychedelic effects on photographs?

I’d like to thank my dear love Marina for letting me to use her photographs she’d made in Vietnam to illustrate this post. You can find pictures of our trip to Vietnam on her Flickr. Frankly this psychedelic effect was made while I experimented with Photoshop filters. You can download the action I made from my Psychedelic Art Stash. All you need is subscribe to my newsletter to get the instant access to the premium psychedelic art resources I make. You’ll get the link after you subscribe. Those of you who are already on the list can just place your email and hit the button to get to the stash.

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Below I’ve posted 3 videos from that blog. Have fun!

If you are looking for more video inspiration on my psychedelic art blog check out video category!