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?