A conversation

This project was to illustrate a conversation according to the little slips of randomized paper you got in a hat in class. I got dinner at a restaurant.

Honestly, I can't really say how or where my mind jumped to such topics, but I suddenly had an urge to do something Godfather/gang war related from the 1930s or something in a dinner. I wanted to attempt a calm, tired setting where differences were set aside to indulge in some not-so-likely activities. Soooo, I somehow ended up with two opposite factions (Northside with Chicago Outfit back in the day, haha) just chatting over a book in a late night diner. 

There's not much process stuff here this time since I was literally doing this in one night and had done all the sketching on the computer. I'm not sure if I achieved the effect I wanted, but nevertheless, I think I did manage to get the tranquil, lonely night atmosphere going on. It was fun to do despite the panic of finishing this.

On other news, I kept thinking the darker haired dude was putting moves on the ginger while I was drawing this. I don’t deny I kept giggling like a creeper. 

Another project

Wow, this one was painful to do. Mostly because I wasn't used to drawing animals and I more or less missed out on what I wanted to do in the end. This project also lasted forever to do and it was one of those things where you just did not want to touch.

But yeah, the project for this was to create a fake poster for any zoo and I decided to do the Singapore Zoo just for the (rather cliché, now that I think about it) idea to do something chinese ink painting based:

I thought of making this seem more friendly for the kids, but I decided to go for something more majestic. I mean, Chinese paintings do have that graceful majesty…right? Ah….

Wellll, I found a lot of problems with this while learning on the way. One was that I had no idea how I was going to create a cohesive color scheme with so many colored animals. I struggled with that like being dumped in a pit of pythons and being both terrified in dealing with my reptilian foes while also wrangling with them to control them from biting me in the butt:

Two was that I figured out that wow, photoshop brushes for Chinese inking are kinda terrible. So I used Painter for more or less the first time and though it worked fine, my tablet kind of didn't like me too much since I couldn't get the brush sensitivity as much as I wanted. Woe is me.

The third, and major problem, was that I figured out that traditional ink painting was never intended to be in color. If anything, ink painting was supposed to convey well enough in black, white, and grays since the ink work would describe the scene. Color was sparse and just a sort of meh-addition to the work. Agggh. But I had to have color so I ended up using decidedly un-Chinese ink painting colors.

(The bottom is the last illustration.)

In the end, the illustration, I think, kind of ended up something distinctly not Chinese ink drawing-like, but somewhere in the afterthought of "oh, so that's where you got the idea from." Basically, wow, what a weird style, but okay. Haha.

The good parts is that I did get to learn how to draw animals somewhat and I experimented with gradients again. Gradients saved my life. Hahaha. I was able to create that color reflection to make it attempt to have that Chinese ink color faded technique. Another good part was that I got to learn a bit with Painter and found pleasantly that it wasn't such a temperamental program as I initially thought, though relearning commands was a bit klonky. Also, I love drawing lines. I got to have fun all over the place with the different lineart I got to do. It felt cathartic to do something mindless.

All in all, I wanted to flip a table with this annoying business and I was just relieved I finished it in time for the crit. Looking at the bright side be damned.

Factoids

This assignment was to find one factoid and create an illustration out of it. I chose that some lipstick (the shimmery kinds) were made of fish scales. Haha, I'm not sure how my mind decided to go down the route of creepy dead mermaids, buuuuut there you go. 

Finding the color scheme of this wasn't that difficult this time around. I knew it had to have a sort of underwater tone, but I also wanted to create a mood that was pretty, but creepy. So I experimented with color. I find it kind of funny how the further I went with the color designs, the more detailed they got. I guess that makes sense when I got more cohesive ideas of where I wanted the go the more I worked on these thumbnails. 

Anddd, the final piece:

As expected, this took a beast of a time to finish and all at the last moment, too, haha. Thank goodness it came out alright, though the dead mermaid makes me feel a bit awkward. I keep thinking the head's too small. Uggggggh. At least painting the hair was a blast. Hahahahaha.

Whew

Well, the semester is almost done. Wow. What a whirlwind of exhaustion as usual. Haha. Hard to think that it's going to be like this for the rest of my life? Ehhh....

BRING IT.

But besides that, I suppose I should start posting my work from the past couple of months a bit at a time.

Soooo, I had to create a beer label illustration for the assignment and I decided to do one aimed towards women and not the usual male target. Thus, I drew up thumbnails of mythical women representing strength by their own actions and personalities. I thought this was a fairly good example to put on a beer label aimed towards the female gender.

The two women I chose in the end was Maid Marian and Morgan le Fay (or Morrigan in this case--whoops). Maid Marian (who is most known for being a love interest of Robin Hood) was noted in some legends to disguising herself as a man and even besting Robin Hood in archery. Morrigan, or Morgan le Fay of the Arthurian legends, was so knowledgable in the healing arts that she was seen often as a sorceress:

Then came the color compositions, which was a bit difficult. I had originally planned Maid Marian to be a warm color set, while Morrigan was to be a cooler set. Surprise, surprise, color didn't really care about what I wanted and decided to go purple instead. Ah, well. At least I got the more sinister feeling right for Morrigan:

And then the final set:

It was a pretty fun assignment overall. I got to do research on how beer labels were created (since I had virtually no idea how they were done) and got to go a little crazy on my favorite things--hair, decorative designs, texture...  I just wish I got to create an actual full-out label that you could print out and put on a beer bottle, buuuut...time constraints. Always the bane of my life.

Of course, I apologize to all those graphic designers out there who are prolly wincing at my terrible pasting of the text on the header. It does look a bit awkward, doesn't it?

How does this even happen.

On other news in the adventures of procrastination land from projects (which I will post soon):

I had fun with color schemes.

SCHOOL

It has begun.

And now here's more updates.

Welp, so, this was a project assigned to make a character out of a randomized face that each person in the class was given. I got Patrick Stewart and, haha, it was really fun stretching his features to make him look insane.

Also, since it's senior year, all the students are more or less given free reign over what media they want to use and I used digital to experiment with different colored skin tone techniques I saw some other artists used. It was really fun to do, but, as my teacher had mentioned, I should really fix that window. It looks like a home base in baseball and the windows don't look exactly cracked. Damn.

But here's to improving and having fun regardless.

Busy Busy Busy

...By, you know, myself.

30 DAY CHALLENGES

Day 10: Favorite candy

I adore hi-chews. I haven't gotten to eat a good variety, but the ones I have are like chewy, sweet rave parties in my mouth.

Making this gif was also a huge pain in the buttocks. I couldn't figure out at first what I was doing wrong and was really close to head-desking the keyboard. Eventually, it all worked out, but wow, my stress levels....

Day 11: Turning point in your life

I..tried to do a loose style with several colors so that I could make some kind of cohesive kaleidoscope effect, but this ended up a lot messier than I had expected. In the end, I got really tired trying to figure out how to do what I was trying to do, forgot in the end, and just let my eyes flip out on the rainbow. Hahaha. I have mixed feelings on how it came out, buuuuut for now eh.

The turning point in my life was when I was in elementary school (maybe 2nd grade?) and my school district had its once-every-four-years Circle of the Arts where all the public schools would showcase music and art. I remember wandering a bit away from my 2nd grade art section and I found my way to the senior high school student art section all the way at the end. I don't even remember what I saw, but I just felt incredibly awed seeing all the work of the students that were done seriously and honestly. I could see even at that age all the hard work (and quality, of course) that was levels higher than mine. Haha. At that time, I think I made my first long-term goal that I wanted to be up there, too. 

I was lucky to fall into the four-year mark for the event when I did become a senior and it's the strangest feeling of seeing a half-thought promise actually come to fruition. It was even stranger when I saw little kids staring at my stuff like I had done. It felt a little bittersweet then.

Day 12: Most recent accomplishment

Exercising every morning so far for thirty minutes. I am so not fit, it's actually a little scary...? 

Also, I am getting the hang of this gif business. 

Haha, as you probably noticed, I made a new BG since I had scrapped the old on and had been meaning to make a new one. I thought I'd be funny again and designed this little thing. It's based off this:

I was sick of a lot of people yesterday and just drew this to steam in the only way I really knew how besides procrastination. I'm sorry I have a low EQ, world.

Kicking myself in the butt to keep drawing

I love you, vacation, but you're making it very hard to be productive.

Day 9: Favorite TV show

Mushishi

Haha, I put this project on a hiatus a while ago, so I guess it’s time to continue. I would’ve put Sherlock, but I originally had this show in mind for this prompt a while back and I had the ref for it, so I thought, eh, what the heck, might as well do Mushishi. It was fun drawing without lines....

Besides, I'm not sure if I can even draw Cumberbatch's wonderful face that well.

And ignore that empty space. Eurgh...

This was another experiment, though I kinda lost my train of thought of what I was trying to do somewhere along the way. I got the idea from these two under this.

It will be so awesome if I can figure out who did the above amazing works, but for now I'll just put it up here to show that, haha, no, I am not original. I'm not even sure if what I did is called "copying" since the poses are practically the same, but I guess I can make the excuse it's not 'cause this was a practice...?!?!?! I don't even know. 

But anyway, I was trying to see if I can draw hot guys again (check, uh, right?!) and if I could draw really pretty black and white compositions like the two above. In the end, I found out that I really liked the new brush I was using for making a messy sketch and left it...not as clean as I initially was going to make it. Ah, well. I guess that's my style...? *laughs awkwardly*

Just an update

Well, I've been on an IGPX anime spree and devouring everything that is related to that. I also remembered an old project with a very good friend that we created our own generic team for the IGPX. So I suddenly decided to tackle the challenge of trying to draw the amazing machines from that show with the ideas we had in mind for our own team.

Long story short, it's not easy considering I still can't draw a decent car, nevertheless mechs and holy chicken with tomatoes and lettuce, I despise drawing machines.

Goddamn, IGPX.

So yeah. Still working on that this diligently. Maybe it'll be finished in a few days or so. Maybe. Maaaaybe.

(And maaaaaybe a little bit too proud on how they came out so far.)

A Quick One!

I...wasn't sure what was in my head when I first started out with this. I had wanted to draw a cyborg with silver fingertips for something on DA, but it...ended up something very strange. And a lot of OCD explosion on my part. I can't decide if I like this or not. 

I like the legs, though.

And I just realized that my initials are flipped, too. Bluh.

So, again, here's my friend’s chara again because I got annoyed at myself for cheating on poses on the last one. I MUST MEET MY (low) EXPECTATIONS. I was mostly trying to figure out how to draw anatomy correctly and I'm pretty sure I still got a few things wrong, but it was fun to do transparent pngs again. I guess next I need to experiment with more dynamic action poses?

And a bonus drawing:

Faiell also showed me Babo's really awesome stuff and her delicious clean lines, so I might attempt that later, too.

Here's to constantly learning. *throws champagne glass out the window*

I'M DRAWINGGGG ARRRRGH

So a bit of fan art. Not happy with this that much and I spammed textures a bit too much this time. I knew that once I started to color, this wasn't going to end up how I wanted it. Daw. Hahaha. But well, it's Vriska Serket from Homestuck. It was sad times when this happened in the comic.

And I was trying to challenge myself with this one by doing an pose I normally didn't do. It was actually fun just to sketch out something instead of worrying about the coloring step. Still, what is light source what. Hahahaha. Aaaand still spamming with textures. He's Alistair from the Alice universe.

And the next day...?

More stufffff. Cause I am on a drawing roll all of a sudden.

 Her name is Krishna and she likes to hit things repeatedly with a big, magical spear. She also likes to drown Alice in affectionate hugs.

Her hugs tend to hurt.

Some things drawn in the middle of the night. Oh God.

The above was for this wonderful person's character, Ralph. Blood...is really fun since I like working with reds and splatter effects. Haha.

Her name is Alice. She's a sweet girl with a penchant for shooting arrows really well.

I find it funny how I can draw one really icky thing and the next is some hipster weird thing. I don't even know. And apparently, I find things out best while being half-asleep and drawing. I feel like I should've known that sooner somehow during the school year, but who knew?

NOW TIME TO SLEEP. Wow.

Aaaand a sketch dump

Some of these are from a while ago, but it's gratifying to do something that's just aesthetically pleasing than doing something that has to mean something in every little thing. I also get to use a bunch of scraps I found here and there and just experimenting with different things.

It was so fun to do.

These were done in a series, I guess. I was trying to use random paints in the background of whatever I had left from watercolor class and then challenged myself to make something out of them. The results were pretty interesting and doodling is always fun to do while in gen ed. classes. Hah.

More's under the cut if you wanna check out my babbling!