Ohh, it's been too long since I posted!

First of all, Happy New Year!

And apologies for the lack of blog posts since apparently June?! (Oops.)

For those of you following me on my Instagram and Twitter, you probably saw my uploads of personal projects I've been working on. (Hint hint, follow either, or both, of them~)

I think part of the reason I haven't posted as much here is due to low audience on Blogger, as well as most of them time I'm just posting WIPs of current projects. In the long run, it'll probably be a good idea for me to maintain the blog for many reasons, such as keeping a log of my work (though I suppose ArtStation is like that) as well as showing I can maintain multiple social media (should I be though?)

While I haven't been posting on my ArtStation either, though, that's because I hadn't liked enough of my work to post them on there, I've definitely been trying to keep my Facebook page up to speed as well.

But that's enough of housekeeping of social media!

Things I've been working on lately have been redesigning and recreating environments and characters of my comic, Teens of Valor  ( sketches and ideas ,  comic - redrawn several times over ).
I've also been considering redrawing the comic , *again*. Mostly because the art will differ so much; I had started the comic (most recent startover) before I went to art school and studied art, learned tips, etc. Another reason I'm considering redrawing the comic is because of the environment and character redesigning I'm doing.

"Hotel Hallway" - WIPs

 

rough line drawing

 Addition of color and textures

 

Painting over, edits, getting rid of the line.

Not anywhere close to done... Dome Bridge (WIP)

I've been running through various amounts of thumbnails to figure out what camera and perspective would be best. Even this work in progress is likely to change, haha. The idea originally was an explorer getting grabbed by spirits lurking around some ruins but it kept changing.

Two projects, busy two (or so) weeks!

 Character design around a family aspect, but anchored in elemental powers (water, fire earth and air (clouds/sky)) and Japanese culture. To be specific, the idea was based on the Godai /Five Elements (Japanese philosophy) but without the void part of the elements.

The temple in the background a real life temple in Okinawa (Gokoku-ji , which means "Protection of the Nation Temple). The reason I chose this temple, aside from the shape, was because of the family's last name, Gushiken, meaning "strong willed", comes from Okinawa origin.

Similarly, the names of the characters are based off their element in Japanese. Some are more direct while others are a bit loosely based.
"Mizu", meaning water, became Mizuki.
"Ka", or "hi meaning fire, and "Kaen", meaning blaze, stayed the same.
"Chi" or "Tsuchi" meaning Earth became Daichi (which could be literally translated as 'big earth' )
"Sora" mean sky, stayed the same. (Cloud in Japanese is 'kumo' but making a female name from that didn't work out.)

The other project I've been working on!

The idea, after various thumb nails , was to either have the vehicle on a racetrack, or in a workshop. I ended up picking the workshop idea for better dramatic lighting. 

 I posted the character and vehicle design parts on the previous post I made. Eventually these will be posted onto my dA and/or website.  for a bigger view of those pieces, but parts have been posted onto my Instagram.

Oh it's been a while and so much to post!

By "so much" I mean weeks (months?) of paintings and drawings I haven't been posting here [on this blog] but I've been mostly posting on my site or Instagram , or queued up on my deviantART. Speaking of my site, I've recently discovered how much better, in my opinion, Wix is to Weebly. While there's still that free url name with the unavoidable extra /<name> , and lack of a file upload widget , excluding third party widgets, Wix has more presentation ("gallery") options for the images than Weebly does and social media links, excluding any third party plugins/widgets.

But I digress.  Basically,  I've been going around my social media and website and updating everywhere, well, ones that I already had. Since I've got too many images to upload here to catch up to the rest of my social medias and my site, I'll just post the more recent works and what I'm working on now project wise.

 

Futuristic vehicle design

 

Futuristic character designs

Both of these designs are working towards an environment piece:

Live drawing along the Embarcadero

A few dorm mates and I made a sketching on location trip along the Embarcadero in San Francisco.
The trip ended up being 3 hours due to the stops we made for sketching and/or reference photo taking and activities around the city; a Farmer's Market event at one of the piers and the Chinese Lunar New Year parade along Market Street.
There were a few pages of sketches but mainly it became a reference gathering trip as we made less pauses during our walk. 

A new year, another step forward

    After my previous post, things got busy with finals and final projects. Most of those projects, I believe, if not all, have been posted to my Behance  but not quite yet on my deviantArt. I have several pieces still in queue in my dA stash but I'm slowly getting there.

   On the other hand, a few classmates/friends and I are doing a drawing/painting challenge on Instagram. Our plan is to draw/paint a character/prop/environment each day and post it on Instagram. Anyone on Instagram should check out #aauinstaeveryday. I personally missed the past 2 days trying to get something in, but I definitely plan on getting myself back on track!

Part of the reason why I missed the past two days was...

Costume Carnival - a sketching event

 Every semester, the Illustration Department holds a Costume Carnival, where models come in with costumes related to the theme that event and pose for everyone (students, staff, alumni). I always get a ton of references and sketches/drawings done during the event so it's always worth making time to go in my opinion.
This time, I tried sketching with markers and brush pens (no color, except for the temperature of the markers). I found with brush pens, I had to stylize a bit more with the drawing but with the marker, perhaps due to the tip shape, I could chisel in the shapes a bit more. I wish I brought in more markers since the one I took with me to the event ended up running out with about 2 hours before the end of the event.

September Update

Apologies for the lack of a creative title but I think I've tired myself out this week haha. (I wonder how this semester will turn out for me with the amount of hours I need to spend per class/painting. )

On the bright side, I'm starting to use more textured brushes in my work this semester 

 I've also been discovering more artists like Sparth , who uses textured brushes in his work, and James Paick, whose thumbs I enjoy studying.

Geisha 1

Geisha 2

Thumbs for Grungy Sci-Fi Cityscape

For those not following my Twitter or Facebook page...

The past 2+ months, give or take a few weeks, I've been keeping up with sketching at least once everyday this summer. I'm not completely sure if I uploaded sketches from June onto my Twitter but a majority of those were life sketches/ studies from travels around areas near my grandparents' place in Taiwan. Well, that and wherever we went to by car.

I even drew trees outside a hair salon one day while waiting to get a haircut, while most of my sketches in June were items in my grandparents' living room. 

Other times, I'm trying out ideas for characters:

 By July, I started posting photos of my drawings/ sketches to my Twitter ( and Facebook page due to linking accounts.)

And now it's August and I'm keeping it varied but working mostly on character design still since I lack in that area.