Above, a random fantasy landscape-ish thing. Need to rebuild my patience for digital painting work. I rather prefer the little pen sketch thumbnail I did in my sketchbook, I should probably try to get a scan of that.

Also, some doodles of my little gasmask creature character I did for animal drawing. I've taken to calling him curio. Well, more like a "curio", than Curio as a proper name.

This has been a horribly unproductive winter break.

Some random stuff now.

A doodle I did in painter a few months ago after discovering the work of Frank Gonzalez, a painter and alumnus (alumni is plural, right?) of LCAD. He does these awesome acrylic paintings of "glitchy" birds and flowers; a blend of botanical illustration and audobon society guidebook-worthy birds with a graphic design inspired aesthetic.

Tried to imitate his style a little, though rather unsuccessfully. I ended up just messing around in painter. Still need to learn how to control that program and figure out all its customizable intricacies. Still doesn't really mimic the feeling of real paint on real canvas though.

So I have a gallery on deviantart that's been largely neglected, but considering that I have a little time this break, I took it upon myself to finally look at the few hundred deviations I had waiting for me in my inbox and maybe upload some stuff, update my journal, etc. A dA friend of mine had offered to do sketches for people who commented on her journal entry, and figuring it'd be a good idea to get some external input to get my creative juices flowing, I posted a solicitation too.

Someone offered the idea of a dragon father, a goldfish mother, and their child. Sounded pretty cool, so I obliged. I want to play around with this idea more later in the future, maybe come up with some more concepts. I imagine the kid of a majestic dragon and one of those silly-looking fancy goldfish you sometimes see in chinese restaurants would look pretty ridiculous.

In other news, I finally watched Avatar (in 3D, no less), and indeed it is epic. The storyline is kind of cliche and rather predictable and the antagonists are pretty flat character-wise, but it definitely is a lot of eye candy. I really enjoyed the bioluminescent plants and the designs of the wildlife (I guess six legs is the norm for fauna on Pandora? except for the humanoids, of course), as well how all the wildlife appears to have evolved to be able to connect with one another. The 3d aspect of it gave me a headache though. I'd like to be able to enjoy it without the 3d glasses later on.

I've heard many people share this sentiment, so it's good not to be the only one who feels this way; I'd say watch Avatar for the spectacle, not so much for the story. Now I'm interested in looking at the art book for the movie...

illustration and rendering

Good god, I wish I had some personal work to show, but I guess schoolwork will suffice. In this post: a couple renderings and some fundamentals of illustration stuff. I'm having trouble getting good pictures of a few of my other rendering assignments, but those will be up soon.

I am so damn proud of this persimmon, it's not even funny. Watercolor (with a hint of gouache for the highlights) on arches watercolor paper. Hell yeah. I'm taking a more traditional watercolor class next semester, which is probably different than the technique we learned in Rendering, but still way excited for it. Watercolor is fun! :D

Carbon dust on clayboard. Also a really fun technique, but the prep for it is more labor-intensive than the actual process of laying down value. It involves cutting lots of templates of acetate to achieve those nice, crisp edges...okay for a simple thing like this, not so efficient for a full-on piece.

Fund. of illustration final; the assignment was to illustrate a metaphor, idiom, or a play on words. I love illustrating word puns. This is "The City of Lights", aka Paris. But...y'know, more literal. Inkwash on illustration board.

Visual jungle assignment, acrylic wash on illustration board. Might go back into this over the summer and add some more detail.

Body contour assignment, ink on hot press illustration board. Really want to get a better picture of this later.

Next semester I'm taking figure block, so there's gonna be lots of naked people on here in the next few months. (that is, if I remember to take pictures) I miss working from a live figure. Also, miss oil painting and working with opaque media. Figure painting is gonna be awesome.

Some stuff I've been working on for my sequential art class this semester. This is all kind of research and development for my short story comic/storyboard (still kind of flipflopping between the two, but leaning toward comic) for the class.

These two are meant to be seen side to side.

Sheet for the girl. Her name is Swallow, like the bird. The thing with the shawl and the lantern got written out of the story though. I rather liked the design for the lantern, but it didn't really work well within the story.

Character sheets for two forest spirits that the girl meets. They're supposed to be similar enough that if you see them separately, you might think that they're the same character, just perhaps in a different...outfit. I imagine them as two conflicting parts of the same whole.

In the end, the two spirits merge into a singular tree-like monster, kind of personifying a forest fire and trying to consume Swallow. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how it looks, since I can picture parts of it in my head, but it just looks odd when I put the parts together.

Doodles from CTN-X.

The hotel restaurant. Pricey for "meh" food. Nifty-ish decor though.

Doodles while waiting in line for "The Secret of Kells". Gorgeous film. Perhaps not the absolute strongest, most satisfying story, but definitely visually impressive.

There was a dude walking around the con in a sort of...Clint Eastwood-y getup with a bird made out of either paper or tape of some sort attached to his hat so it looked like it was perched there. Pretty sweet.

More old-ish stuff. These are all from my daily sketchpage project over the summer, which didn't turn out so well, but I did get some decently amusing drawings out of it.

Snapshots of my delicious experiences with festival food from the Fremont Art and Wine Festival.

My co-worker and best friend Wanda decided to mark our heights on the doorframe at work one day.

I'm also spending my weekend at the CTN Animation Expo out in Burbank, so some doodles from that should be up in the next few days. Met some really awesome talent, though I was mostly too shy to say much. I also regret not having a portfolio to show, definitely something to put together for next year!

and so it begins.

An oldie, but a goodie. Everyone seems to dig the fish.

I figured it was time I get into this artblog thing, since I don't think I'm going to have time to get cracking on a website. Hell, maybe it'll get me to start sketching again. I need out of this art block.