Noodles on My Mind

2012-01-28T00:05:00.000-08:00

Some friends and I started a group daily sketch/doodle blog. Here are a few of the things I've posted there so far. These are on the messy side, but at least I'm back to drawing something every day.

2012-01-25T01:24:00.000-08:00

Dreamt this...thing up in a rather horrifyingly uncomfortable dream, though I must say that there was some pretty interesting cinematography going on in that dream. Good job, brain.

Just had to get her down on paper. Not quite what I saw, but close enough. Her voice was creepy...it sounded low, gravelly, and Japanese and she talked really slowly. I wish I could find an example somewhere, it's hard to describe without hearing it. My brain also named her Candice. I do know a Candice...this isn't her.

2011-12-29T15:08:00.000-08:00

Dabbling in screenprinting. :) This is a print on paper of a design I created to be printed onto a tote bag as a xmas gift, like so:

2011-12-16T15:10:00.000-08:00

Hey hey, it's a recipe comic! My mom's lemon chiffon cake was a big part of my childhood and I thought I should share it with you guys. This is what I've been working on for most of the semester, just figuring out brush inking and page layout...it was fun! I'm planning to do more recipe comics next semester.

2011-12-13T21:41:00.000-08:00

So it's finals week! While I make a mad dash to finish up my projects, have some stuff from my figure drawing for animators 1 class. It's been a really fun class, especially having done primarily figure drawing with a "fine art" approach in the past. I like the idea of using a live model not as absolute truth, but rather as reference to exaggerate from and building a character out of that. Exercising not only core skills, but also the imagination!

Also, you totally get way more interesting and fun poses out of an animation-oriented life drawing class.

I'm particularly fond of this one. Trace does the best poses.

Toward the end of the semester, we started drawing each other and doing more caricature. A couple of my classmates....

More later. Now, back to painting.

2011-12-04T23:50:00.000-08:00

I'm in the process of making a recipe coming for part of my senior port and I've been inking it with a brush. Not a brush pen but an actual sable round brush. It's really ridiculously fun, easily my favorite part of the entire project.

But brush inking is one of those skills that needs some warming up before you get going, just to loosen up, get used to how to hold the brush just right, and make sure the ink is flowing well. So I’ve been inking existing sketches (and occasionally sketching something new and inking that) in my sketchbook to help me get warmed up before diving into the actual comic pages.

I've been wanting to do one of those "What I wore today" sort of drawings for a while. Unfortunately I tend to just wear jeans and a t-shirt/hoodie most of the time, which isn't particularly fun to draw. But my outfit was just interesting enough to commit to paper today. I think I may add color to it sometime.

2011-11-20T23:48:00.001-08:00

My Digital Drawing from Observation class is one of my favorite classes. Not so much for the fact of what we do in the class (though I do enjoy the still lifes and figure painting), but for the atmosphere.

It's so quiet.

Usually my studio classes are filled with some combination of the chatter of conversation, the sound of lecture, and music filling the empty spaces. It's a lively symphony of noise, and as nice as that can be...

....there's a beautiful sense of tranquility in the relative silence of my Fridays in Digital Drawing. No music, very little conversation. Just the quiet hum of computers and the soft scratching of pens on tablets. Sometimes there will be the muffled sounds of someone else's music on their headphones. Not that we're not allowed to play music, I think people just become so focused on their work that they don't really notice the lack of music.

That's what's so great about this class. The concentrated focus, the zen-like state of being in the zone. I know I've said this before, but it's really quite relaxing to turn off the boiling, churning forces of imagination once in a while and simply observe and analyze. And keep those basic foundational skills of drawing and painting sharp in the process.

I got a chance to refine one of the speedpainted skulls from a previous session.

The great thing about painting digitally is that you don't have to paint over any silly stuff you find yourself doing when you get bored with what you're working on. :)

2011-10-24T00:49:00.000-07:00

I realize I haven't posted in a while....school's been busy this semester! Here's some stuff I've been working on...

For senior portfolio, my theme is "Slices of Life"; basically slice-of-life style narratives revolving around food. This is the first piece I've completed for it. Untitled for now, I haven't been able to think of a good title for it. Mostly just been referring to it as the 5 panel piece. Gouache on illustration board.

The full size piece is fairly big (full size of painted area, not including the border, is about 25 in x 8.5 in) makes it hard to get good pictures of it since there's so much small detail.

Detail shot of the middle panel.

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I'm also taking book illustration this semester. Our first project was to create a few pages from an alphabet book. My theme was travel, so each page is designed like a travel poster. Gouache on bristol board, ink for the letters.

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Also taking a digital drawing from observation class, working entirely in Corel Painter. It's been a while since I've painted from observation, and even longer since I've painted still lifes, so it's been kind of relaxing in a way to spend a few hours just painting what I see. There's thought and analysis involved, but not as much as when I'm trying to make up stuff, so the painting seems to go faster.

Also, I rarely get much opportunity to work in Painter, so getting the extra instruction and time to experiment has been nice. The "dessert snake" piece was done over the course of 2.5 class sessions. The skulls were done in about half a class session each.

2011-08-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

A couple things from my sketchbook.

I've been stressing out over a variety of things lately.

2011-07-27T16:01:00.000-07:00

More hourlies! These are a bit late (okay, so almost a month late), sorry about that. They've been done for a while, just haven't gotten around to scanning them.

2011-07-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

I did hourly comics for the first time! I realize that the official Hourly Comics Day was a while back, but I've been meaning to try it for a while and thankfully July 6th was a sufficiently interesting day for hourly comic-ing.

Note to self: next time, actually grid out panels, hah.

2011-06-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

The lovely and talented Bre gave me a good suggestion on this piece on deviantart, so I tweaked some of the colors. Definitely a different feel.

2011-06-16T00:28:00.000-07:00

Two this time, things done just for fun.

Summertime is when I get to experiment, do whatever. As a result, most of my work looks markedly different from piece to piece. I'd love to figure out a nice, consistent way of working though.

2011-05-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

Some work from my vis dev class this past semester. The concept was Cinderella set in early 19th/late 20th century Venice with some sci-fi elements. I guess you could call it a future with an antiquated aesthetic. Not quite steampunk, but a similar train of thought. I mostly had Treasure Planet in mind.

The Fairy Godmother:

The glass slipper:

Cinderella (the work-in-progress piece at the end of the previous post is a revisiting of this character design):

The "carriage" (yes, it's a flying gondola):

Approaching the palace:

And the Stepmother (inspired by Baron Harkonnen of DUNE and his suspensors, our Stepmother here has anti-gravity rings):

I'm not entirely happy with the end result of the project as a whole, but I'd definitely like to revisit the concept and try again with a different visual style.

2011-05-24T01:55:00.000-07:00

So, after a couple weeks of some much deserved loafing around, I felt it was time to get back into drawing for fun. Unfortunately, having not had a figure drawing class this past semester, I could feel myself not being as comfortable with the human figure as I was before and it was evident even in my doodling. Time to get back into working out those figure drawing (and digital drawing) muscles!

Some 30 sec gestures to warm up with:

Moving on to 60 sec gestures:

A 2 min gesture (I didn't have time to do more than a few of these, and this is really the only one that turned out okay):

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Also decided to try doing some digital painting, sketching directly into photoshop. Still experimenting with different approaches, applications of line vs no line, various brushes, etc.

A work in progress, a slightly more realistic approach, though still figuring out how to approach the hair and make it fit in with the face. I liked how this was going while I was working on it, but now I'm not so sure. I think I feel more comfortable retaining more lines like in the one above, but it's nice to try new things.

Icing on the Cake storyboard stuff + 1 illustration

2011-05-09T16:50:00.000-07:00

The characters:

I'd like to put this into a reel format over the summer and maybe do the rest of the development stuff like layouts and props, just for fun. :)

And, of course, there are noodles on my mind:

2011-04-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

Just one this time. A poster for Stumptown Comics Fest, done for my editorial illustration class.

Stumptown is one of the many smaller comic conventions that I really want to go to, along with MoCCA fest, New England Webcomics Weekend, and TCAF. Ahh, someday!

Fans of Erika Moen may notice a little shout out to her long-running, but sadly now completed webcomic DAR! :) You guys should totally go read her new comic Bucko though!

Now back to slaving over finals. Ahhhhh crunch tiiiiiime....

2011-03-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

Couple things from school. A mock magazine cover and a self portrait in pen and ink. Dip pens are fun!

brown paper galore.

2011-03-13T01:15:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for a brown paper sketchbook for a while. Finally found one at Barnes and Noble, for not nearly as much as I thought it would be for a nice sketchbook from B&N. The asian in me is somewhat pleased.

The cover. Knowing me, I'll probably end up adding to it over time.

Finally got around to coloring this one. I'm relatively happy with it, though I sort of prefer the lineart.

The inked lineart.

Will probably color this sometime. Maybe make it into a header for this blog? Hmm.

2011-02-15T22:20:00.000-08:00

Above, something kinda inspired from Rapunzel/Tangled, more trying to paint like Loish. Below, a Draw this Dress-esque doodle. I can't find the exact dress I drew though.

Quick self portrait for History of Animation. We were supposed to pick a favorite style of animation to draw ourselves in. I tried to draw myself in the style of Mulan, mostly because I'm chinese.....yeah. I do really like the art direction in Mulan though.

2011-01-18T21:07:00.000-08:00

I looked at a lot of Loish's art the other day and felt the urge to draw something cute and kinda girly.

2011-01-14T01:41:00.001-08:00

Just realized that a lot of my recent images link to the overly big high-res versions. Ooops! I'll resize them, I swear.

lots-o-art dump

2011-01-13T17:02:00.000-08:00

Those of you that watch me on deviantart or are friends with me on facebook have probably seen most of this already.

Botanical poster

eye grid

master's parody - the original is Norman Rockwell's Man on the Moon. This would be my Man on Mars.

Each panel emphasizes a different word in the phrase, read top-down left to right.

more figure drawing

2011-01-05T23:45:00.000-08:00

Had some time to kill before class that day, so I went over to the Starbucks at in Barnes and Noble to draw people studying for finals.

Inspired from drawthisdress.tumblr.com. Based on this dress.

2011-01-05T13:37:00.000-08:00

Sketches from CTN-X 2010.

Some character ideas for my storyboard final. I'll post the final boards soonish.

2010-12-19T16:14:00.000-08:00

The rest of my character design stuff from this past semester.

Horus

Nephthys

Set

Anubis

2010-12-06T11:55:00.000-08:00

Brush pen sketches and storyboards.

From my (rather hastily) compiled portfolio for ctnx. I'm not super proud of any of these, but it's what I had on hand at the time. Better work to come, hopefully in the near future.

2010-11-25T17:33:00.000-08:00

A little something I drew for the Wacom artist challenge at ctnx this year. 2nd time using a Cintiq; I wasn't really impressed last year, but after getting to play with the newest version I seriously want one now.

A few more ctnx sketches later when I am reunited with my scanner and newly refreshed from a much needed Thanksgiving break. :)

2010-11-14T00:42:00.000-08:00

Really wish I'd done this one larger.

2010-11-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

More digital figure drawing. Back to homework.

2010-10-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

So...I tried to host a last-minute LCAD sketchgroup meeting, but kinda failed and ended up just going to the Pumpkin Harvest festival with my roommate. Oh well, at least I got some sketching done. x-posted at LCAD Sketches.

There was this guy in kind of an awesome, ghostly, eccentric clown gentleman costume wandering around. :)

2010-10-11T12:10:00.001-07:00

This semester I'm taking figure drawing for animators 3. It's a digital figure drawing class, meaning that we have a live model and everything, but we draw with tablets on the computer instead of on paper. It's been nice getting back into the habit of using my tablet and finally learning how to use Corel Painter. So far the conte and charcoal tools have been my favorites. Still can't figure out how to effectively use the painting tools though.

I'm also taking a character design class this semester. The characters I'm designing are from the myth of Osiris, but set in 1940s New York with some Egyptian influences and inspired by the art of Al Hirschfeld. The original Egyptian myth itself is really quite reminiscent of old mob films, full of betrayal, jealousy, and murder. So far the only character I have done is Isis. Working on her sister Nephthys next!

I've learned that the ink tool in Painter is far superior to the brush tool in Photoshop for inking drawings. Photoshop is still better for flat color though.

More later!

2010-10-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

So...the Animation Club at LCAD has started a sketch group and our inaugural meeting took us to Irvine Spectrum for the 2nd to last evening of OC Style Week...during which they had a series of fashion shows! Trying to capture models on the runway is a serious exercise in speed sketching. If anybody is watching the LCAD sketch group blog, these are up there too.

Unfortunately, I was only able to stay for the Nordstrom fall show and missed out on the really crazy FIDM and conceptual stuff, but the experience was pretty cool. Definitely planning to go again next year.

2010-05-25T20:34:00.000-07:00

Newer doodle.

Somewhat older doodle.

2010-05-25T18:23:00.000-07:00

Some work from Watercolor 1 this past semester.

Master copy of "Dusk" by Alphonse Mucha.

Master copy of "Waterlily" by John La Farge. Mine pales in comparison, but it still came out fairly good.

Plein air painting at the Montage resort. You can't see it in the scan, but there's a little bit of sand stuck in the painting from when the wind blew my easel over and sent my wet painting flying into the sand/gravel. Thankfully it didn't fly over the ledge I was set up on and into the ocean. :|

More plein air, also at the Montage.

Watercolor final. The prompt was "beauty". Kind of pseudo-plein air in the sense that I was sitting in the living room painting the view out the window from life.

2010-05-10T14:04:00.000-07:00

Just one today. I haven't really done...anything in photoshop since the semester started. My workflow in the program seems to have changed though. An odd mix of oil and watercolor and ink approaches. More experimentation is in order.

A small, quick self-portrait of sorts.

2010-04-16T22:42:00.000-07:00

A few things from our Portrait 1 section of Figure Block. I have discovered that I am not so good with drawing portraits life-size. I also have discovered that I have a tendency to make my people look kinda miffed. Need to work on that, heh.

Self portrait from life. This is hanging up in the classroom now; my own portrait kinda glares at me every time I look at it during class. o.o

Burnt sienna underpainting.

This model kept trying to make eye contact...with everyone. As a result, the shapes in her eye kept changing. Augh.

2010-03-09T21:51:00.000-08:00

More rendering for now. Spring break is coming soon, I will try to use the small amount of extra free time to take some good photos of my stuff from figure studies this semester.

2010-01-08T22:58:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-29T21:43:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-27T22:08:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-11-25T11:13:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-11-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-11-22T00:02:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-11-17T18:55:00.000-08:00

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.