Keelung Fishing Harbor, Taiwan - rough digital watercolor

The painting is based off a photo I took when I went to Keelung. I didn't spend much time on it since I was planning on focusing on the shapes rather than a clean drawing. In the end, it was more of a rough than a painting I suppose. 

Self portrait - 5.28.14 - painting

sketch (cleaned up)

 Values

 Base colors with layer filters (overlays)

Day 6 - no sketches today but plenty of mosquito bites...on my feet

10:10 pm GMT +8 (Taiwan)

Yea.... mosquito bites are bad enough but on my feet!? And one of my knees. It's that mosquito that's been loose in the apartment since Day 2 and I haven't been able to get rid of it yet.
The rooms got sprayed with some product similar to RAID to kill it while we went out for a large family dinner. Unfortunately, I managed to get bite again in at least 2 other places while out for dinner. There was a mosquito loose in the restaurant as well. I've got a warm body temperature, as opposed to my brother who's got a cool body temp., so I think that's one of the reasons why these mosquitoes target me.  It sucks, the one night I didn't cover my legs/feet with a blanket, I get bit all along my feet. I spent most of my morning and afternoon trying to resist scratching. Though I suppose the reason why I found out I got bit, was because I was scratching...

Day 5 sketches - Keelung, Taiwan

4:30 pm GMT +8 (Taiwan)

One of my Aunt and Uncle took me to Keelung, Taiwan. The way I'd describe it would be a fishing harbor town/city.

I did these sketches at a Starbucks cafe overlooking part of the harbor so I was able to sketch in the comfort of air conditioning away from the humidity. 

Below are panoramas I made from photos I took of the fishing harbor. 

Teens of Valor - Teleportation Bay concept WIP 3

I've added in value and blending a bit. I definitely want the pathway to remain white since the idea is for them to remain lit at all times in case of an emergency. 

 - - - - - 

I want to fix it a bit more so it's not as graphical for parts such as the wires. 

Next week is the next page! 

Day 3 and 4 sketches while in Taiwan

3:49 pm Taiwan time (GMT +8)

Whoa, that's grainy... Guess I should have turned the lights on!

Sketches from yesterday and today. Today's sketches were while waiting a salon to get my hair trimmed and thinned out. I swear, my hair thickens too quickly. 

/edit 10pm GMT +8

Had dinner with my Great Aunt, on Mom's side, and her  daughter and 2 children. I wonder what's my relation to them. I know my grandpa's sister is my Great Aunt, but what about her daughter and her kids? Is she my cousin or aunt?

According to results found on google, she's my second cousin, once added? and I'm her first cousin, once removed? She's my mom's cousin, which I should have realized that relation. 

Her children are my second cousins? Actually, she's my first cousin, and her children are my second....then what about my cousins of my mom's siblings?

Ugh, this is getting confusing. 

Day 2 ramblings.

6:24 am Taiwan time (GMT +8)

Not even 24 hours after I've arrived in Taiwan and I've already got my first mosquito bite. Awkward location though; somehow the mosquito managed to bite me on my butt despite me wearing long jeans!

My brother's college friend is visiting until he goes back to his grandparents' house later today so the other guest room will be open. That room has a bed whereas the room my mom and I slept in for the night had a tatami mat over a large bed sized box....roughly described. It definitely is not comfortable without some sort of cushion. Unfortunately it was too warm for a blanket cushion, so both my mom  and I woke up with aching bones (hip and back). 

I'm glad I was able to wake up before my scheduled meeting time for my friend's webcomic. I was worried jet lag would cause me to oversleep. 

Wifi's more of a tether from grandparents' iPad so connection isn't great for online gaming. I could probably still play non - online games...maybe. If not, I can still watch shows via streaming. 

Day1 sketch while in Taiwan

Most of the sketches are things around my grandparents' living room. There's plenty of things so it'll last me a few days, possibly a week or two. 

Sketches at SFO airport and on flight back home

5.15.14

Sketch of ceiling from where I had dinner, shop stores across bar&grill. 

Quick sketches of people and things from inflight tv previews. 

Teens of Valor - Chapter 1 page 15

Story so far: Members of HCOP (Heroes of CoOperation) test the girl's abilities to figure out what she can do. Her name is finally revealed.

-- - - -

I wanted to reveal her name in a more natural manner, unfortunately it's cliched. 

 - - -- - 

I imaged a different panel layout for this page to show a bit more with less... in a way. 

Next week is an concept update! 

Eerie Forest

A digital painting I started and attempted to finish within my last Digital Media 1 class today. I estimate around 3 hours of the class was actually spent on trying to refine this.

It started out with me drawing random lines to form something, which turned into a mini tidal wave being cast from the background into the foreground..which was a tree. I scrapped that doodle and kept the tree and built it around that. 

After those lines, I started blocking in values.

Then refined it.

Toggled back the gradient layer I had toggled off earlier during the value block in phase.

And finally adjusted color balance, hue and saturation and finally, exposure to create the final image. 

Final class of clothed figure 1

For the final class, we treate it as a workshop and could use sketchbooks and which median we preferred or wanted to try out, as opposed to charcoal and newsprint pad. 

10 minute, pencil

I took a but of artistic license and had more hair show from under/out her hand. 

10 minute; pencil

I decided to try a different approach and only focused/ drew certain parts of the pose. 

20 minute; ball point pen

Since it was a longer pose and I haven't drawn in pen since...most likely late middle school, early high school, I used pen for this pose. 

As an option, being the last class and all, anyone who wanted/ needed to leave after lunch break, could. I opted to stay, for at least an hour since leaving class at the mid break time didn't feel right to me after weeks of our usual class schedule, 5-6 hours, depending on if you count lunch and breaks. 

Rather stressful last day of class (Figure Modeling)

I will never understand Blogger's photo placement...

Regardless, my sculpture was completed with an addition of a base!

 I, as well as most of the class, wanted to keep my sculpture but that meant hollowing it out. Though it did shave off a good amount of weight...supposedly, putting it back together for me was rather difficult since my sculpture weighed so much already. The weight of the head and base was literally breaking the neck. In hindsight, I wish I broke this up into 4 pieces rather than 3; top of head, sides of head + neck and then the base. Ah... but then the pipe in the middle would have been difficult to work around. 

The patched up version is sadly, different from the original. The base, because of the neck and its many difficulties, isn't a straight line in front anymore.  The head shape probably changed as well since due to the weight, the back portion of the head kept fanning open, and tearing. 

Another hindsight, my sculpture wasn't dry just enough... I wish I had known that before I started hollowing out. But by the time I found out about it, I had already hollowed it out , struggled but did it, and was trying to put the pieces back together again (neck with base). Additionally, when I did find that information out, I had already spent 7-8 hours hollowing and re-piecing it together again. 

And to add more stress to the situation, I had to figure out if I really had to fill up a 5th storage box or if I could fit everything, with the addition of the sculpture, into the original 4 boxes. After about an hour of reorganizing and swapping items between the boxes (and a suitcase), I did it. But now I need to finish dinner within the hour so I can go to sleep and wake up for class tomorrow. 

Teens of Valor - Teleportation Bay - WIP2

This week's comic post is a more detailed drawing of the Teleportation Bay. 

Next week's will be the next page of the comic. 

 - - - - -

I think I need to fix that larger teleportation stand since I believe it's too far back and would be digging into the wall corner.

It's that time of the semester...

..where it's finals and end of the semester packing.

Past two weeks I've been worrying about if I'd have time to work on two of my finals but so far I think most of my worries have subsided. My final for Figure Modeling was my biggest concern; I think I posted something previous to this post about how we ended up not making our characters from scratch.
Beginning of class today stirred up my worries again; it didn't help that I somehow slept through all of my alarms to allow for breakfast time and woke up exactly in time to hurry off to the shuttle. I didn't get to eat any breakfast yet my stomach didn't grumble before our lunch break!

Teens of Valor - Chapter 1 page 14

Story so far: 

A search team is made to search for the "brother" but the sister isn't allowed to join due to various reasons, or concerns I should say. 

 - - - - 

Next week is an update on the Teleportation Bay concept!