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. 

Visit to Japan

I was only  able to visit Shizouka, Chiba and parts of Tokyo during the trip due to time constraints but even within the 4 days, I feel like I was able to collect lots of references for my visual library as well as see some sights. Unfortunately, it was rainy weather during the time I was in Shizouka, which meant, Mt. Fuji was covered by clouds.

Within Tokyo, the group was only there for 1 day, well a little more if we opted to wake up early the day of our flight and travel by train to places. It's a shame we didn't have more time; I was only able to really visit Ueno Park's museums (Tokyo Bunka Kaikan and Museum of Western Art). I technically did stop and walk around in Shibuya, but my feet were exhausted from walking around in the Museum of Western Art's galleries so we stopped to sit in a mall, while two other people visited Ginza, Shibuya.

Within the galleries at the Museum of Western Art, I found 3 artists, out of the many that were there, that I'd plan on visiting their works; Monet, Collier and Derain.

I never knew Monet's paintings were in that style before the visit but I'm glad I finally got to see some Monet paintings!


It's a shame I didn't get to visit Sky Tower in Shinjuku, Akihabara, or Tokyo Tower. Future trip locations to visit then!

Taiwan fine arts museum visit

One of the two exhibits at the museum was Lee Mingwei's work. The other exhibit was called " Formosa in Formation", with works throughout the years as far back as 1930 or maybe earlier.

Lee Mingwei's work, from what I gathered was human interaction, communication and mending relationships.

The other exhibit, I found a few works I felt I learned a bit from ranging from ink on paper and silk, oil on canvas, gouache on silk ( which I was surprised at the quality of) , gouache on paper, watercolor and more. 

There were a few artists I discovered and plan on researching their work in the future.

 

"Beigang Mazu Temple, 1997"  by CHIANG Ming-Shyan

His brush work amazed me and prompted me to search up his other works

Another artist that caught my interest was LEE Hui-fang for his/her realistic oil paintings.

 "Red Shawl and Silver Lock 1990" by LEE Hui-fang

All of his/her paintings are super defined!

 

Pasta Dinner still life - post critique changes

As the title says, these are post-critique edits! I can't recall if I made a post for pre-critique (50% and before turn-in), but I think for this painting , I completely forgot to take photos after the step, or before I began working on the next. I tend to do that for my digital work too...

Final edit was to include the shadow of the fork under, in the bowl. (That was some confusing wording.) I missed it originally since I was too overwhelmed by the pasta, and thought critique meant there was a shadow over the pasta from the fork, which, with this lighting, wasn't possible. It didn't help that my photo reference nearly lost that shadow! (Or perhaps the shadow was so close in value to the value of the bowl in shadow, that it got lost.)

Bit inspired to do daily thumbs

 I think I got inspired to do daily sketches from Claire Wendling's presentation, and decided to try to paint out quick environment thumbs and play with color combinations at the same time.

 

Some colors turned out better than others but I got some interesting shapes with today's approach. 

Guest Speaker Claire Wendling and illustrations since last big post

I'll be honest, I didn't know much about Claire Wendling's work until recently but I must say her animals (or half human animals) anatomy are amazing! I got a couple of takeaways from her presentation as well, which is always a bonus from guest speakers' presentation in my book.

I'm paraphrasing a bit but 'Add water to everything, see what happens' and her method of using references. Instead of the way I've been using my references, by having them side by side, something I've made a habit of since making reference sheets for drawings, Claire Wendling looks at the references first, gets whatever she can into her visual library , with graphic notes if need be, and then draw from what she recalls from the visual library. Then she goes back to those reference images if things look off in her drawing. I feel like her method really does sound like something I should try out, though as she mentioned, figure drawing would need live models it seems like.

High Key painting! And next week's is low key, which I personally want to see how I do with low key.

Short Film project - "Second Chances"

 I still don't know how we're going to finish this short film before summer break, given so far we've only gotten to the story (with turning points), script, logline, character design, environment ideas and opening credits. The animatic has yet to be drawn out!

 The main character, anti -hero 

This week, bird's eye view, blog questions and guest speaker Pascal Champion

 

Truth be told, that's not the actual color of the plate. I was feeling sleepy in the beginning of the class, and I completely forgot about using orange to mix with the cerulean blue to create the gray blue I was trying to accomplish, for realism sake. In the  end it worked out though, as the green-blue of the plate popped the red of the apple. 

In other news, aside from my work, I was told to treat my blog less like a diary (or art diary in this sense) and more of sharing other people's work and/or blog post. To other artists using blogger, is this true? From the  people I follow, most, if not all, the blog look to be their work or related to their work, rather than 30% their work, 70% other people I was told to follow. But the person brought a point, with a blog dating from 2012, why haven't there been comments?

I'm at a loss of how much to take of this person's advice. I suppose it varies for person to person but still, what is an art blog then? How much of your blog is suppose to be your stuff? I know for other social media, like Facebook pages, it's a good idea to share other pages' posts to share audience. And I believe this holds true to Tumblr as well, though sharing is, as far as I know, pretty common in the Tumblr community. But Blogger? 

#whatisblogging 

In a weird connection to this, Pascal Champion came as a guest speaker at my university tonight, and for him, he just shares his work and companies/work comes to him. Most professionals I follow seem to just share their work, without the sharing of other peoples' posts, which I believe sounds to be a method of networking on social media. On another note, I was able to takeaway a few things from his presentation, such as you don't necessarily need to be good at every foundation (possibly) such as color, but if for example your lighting or values is good, you've got a chance. 

I suppose for me personally, I know I need to get better at my drawing skills but I'm always improving each semester so this is a start for me. 

Refresher after spring break Still life painting

Yikes, mouthful of a title, but as title says, it's a refresher from coming back from spring break. There's no glass but it recovers reflective metal and patterns. Ah, and of course value and colors. 

Landscape thumbnails

I pretty much just let my mind roam while doing these.

Filth Bird - The Secret World fan art

Portrait - WIP 1

Tea themed still life painting WIP 2

Oil painting still life - Story Theme: Tea. 

with reflective metal and glass. 

 

Slightly farther shot of painting and easel.

I up-ed the saturation on everything from WIP 1, then went back and toned down the saturation on the boxes to push them back a bit. If you look boxes in the glass versus the actual boxes, there's a difference, I hope.

We've started Full Value this week in Heads and Hands class

Two 60 mins ( three 20 mins) and one 20.

We used the pull out/ off with the eraser method. 

I also went ahead and bought a foam brush for smoothing out the charcoal instead of using my fingers. 

 

1 hour study (in 20 min intervals)

His hair highlight could have been done better but I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Done mostly in charcoal pencil, my fingers and kneaded eraser. I used vine to tone the paper.

Still life painting - Patterns

As the title says, this week we painted patterned objects, though most were glass/ porcelain.

Character design for sarcastic trouble maker girl

Costume Carnival Spring 2015 - Saturday Morning Cartoons themed

 

I suppose it'd be more accurate to say 80s-90s Saturday morning cartoons with characters like He-Man, Jem, Speed Racer, Scooby Doo. Other characters from Power Rangers, Powder Puff, etc. It was great getting to sketch and gather photo reference for poses for roughly 5.5 hours. I had to warm up a bit being out of practice from pose drawing for about a year. I had Ecorche the semester after Clothed Figure Drawing and Heads and Hands this semester.

Metal and glass Still Life (WIP)

 

 (This is a partial shot of  the painting since I goofed and forgot to take a photo of it while it was on the easel, and had to take it while it was in the drying rack, after I had already cleaned up.)

Our assignment was to paint a still life with 3-5 objects, 2 of them should be glass and reflective metal.

Still life limited palette #2

This is from 3 weeks ago I believe. 

 

It's not quite as limited as the first  painting but it's still pretty limited. If I recall, we had only titanium white, ivory black, yellow ochre, cad yellow, ultramarine blue ( unless it was another blue, or both temperatures) and terra rosa. 

Still life - Metal reflection

 

I'm improving pretty quickly according to my instructor and I believe him! This week's focus is on metal reflective items. 

Things learned, reflected items are darker than their actual color, and to keep things 3-D, things need to wrap. 

I'll be uploading WIPs for our next homework painting, which will include glass and metal. My original items , while worked composition-wise, lacked a story cohesion. Right now, I think my new items will be glass cup, filled with some water possibly, spoon, unopened tea bag packet and 2 boxes of different tea boxes. 

thumbnails for Lantern Square concept

 

I was thinking about a lantern filled area of a city street, since it was around Chinese Lunar New Year time. Of course, it's past New Year's now but the idea is still around.

I also researched some photos on city squares, though I focused more on European styled squares since I like their designs. 

Still life painting - Learning to paint Glass

So this week's in class painting, we started on how to paint glass objects. My group selected a lightbulb as our glass objects.

Apologies , the top left corner is so blown out , I couldn't get a good lighting even with hitting the light side to keep it balanced. This week 's was almost more contained in terms of time with only 3 hours since our latter half of class was focused on our 1st homework critique. 

Last week's in class painting wasn't posted on my blog so I'm including it in this post rather than making a new one. 

Self portrait - Structural drawing with optional tone

For my Heads and Hands class, we were given two weeks to draw a self portrait using structural lines. Tone was optional but I ended up toning my hair in WIP 2.

The nose and eyes were adjusted from WIP 1 and I still couldn't get my right eye ( left in image) to look right , the pupil and iris were in tangent with my glasses so it was pretty difficult to determine where the pupil stopped and where the frame of my glasses started. 

I gave it my best and worked on toning the hair, shadows and highlights included. It turned out pretty well in my opinion but I'll have to see how the group critique turns out ! 

Self portrait - Structural drawing

As part of the Heads and Hands class I'm in, we're to draw a self portrait. I haven't decided yet if I want to tone anything yet, aside from the eyes that I've done. I could tone the hair to show that it's dark hair , rather than light. 

Rose Water character design brainstorm

 

 A redesign of one of my characters. I believe I've changed her design at least 3-4 times since I first drew my comic (the very first version, the fanfic version).

Currently debating if I should change her name though.

Studies - Metal mug and plastic bottle

 

Done in SAI; my metal mug and  plastic water bottle.

" Dusty Clues" - mock Isometric game project

 

Assets for an isometric game for my Visual Development for Mobile/Web Games class.

Reference material for game assets, buildings and detectives. 

Influence material for the project.

FireLily - character design brainstorm

 

I spent past few days redesigning one of my characters, both in hairstyle and in costume.

(WIPs are on my Behance page )

Ink - Shadows Only

I realized I never uploaded this since the assignment. ( Clothed figure drawing 1 class - spring 2014)

It was pretty fun and easier than I expected getting this done.