study buddies

ack, i've been so busy drawing but i still can't show anything yet... @_@ so here's something quick and sweet for now... drawn with corel's calligraphy tools, which i love to pieces~ i really like how deliberate you have to make your lines, i find it takes a bit more thought than just regular pencil!

goddess commission

it's been a while, got a backlog of commissions & Sequence stuff to post so i'll do that soon... for now, here's a simple b&w commission i did of chinese goddess casting a spell. used painter's pastel brushes as usual, but lately i've been trying to make the strokes and textures look more noticeable~ also, that red "signature" is from a traditional artist's seal that i got while i was in China! :)

these are the sketches i sent the commissioner... spent too long on that first one before i realized that i didn't like it!

Sequence character art

here are some of the first character sprites i did for Sequence... it took quite a while to figure out all the technical stuff - they had to be transparent so they could be placed right over the BGs from the previous entry, and that created all sorts of perspective/composition issues that hurt my head. D: but thankfully it's figured out now!

clean lines + quick color test for Ky, the protaganist

some pencil concepts

and here is the finished sprite with a few subtle expression variants:

this mexican matador is one of the first bosses... i had sooo much fun drawing him!

seqeunce artwork

hooray, i finally have time to post again! been working on a bunch of freelance commissions lately, the toughest one being a bulk order for an independent video game called Sequence. i'm drawing all of the character sprites and bgs; it's lots of work but i have a good deal of creative freedom, so i'm having fun with it!

a duller, darker pic for the title screen illustration~

figuring out the perspective on those arches nearly killed me, but it's high time i learned this stuff >_>

the most "abstract" bg, was aiming for dreamy colors/lighting

also, someone asked me what painter brushes i use, so here's a screenshot that has the entire list in the "tracker" window... although i really only use the soft/oil pastel tools ever. XD that's a wip of the main character by the way, i'll post some character sprites later!

Painter practice

here are some older head/color studies from when i was learning corel painter~ i really love working with this kind of simple brushwork! most of these are from capcom's ace attorney, the top one is from disney's mulan.

this last one was made in oekaki shipainter, not painter... but i like the colors enough to post it :)

Gestures

here are some silhouette gestures i do to loosen up, before i draw a figure... actually life drawing is best for that, but i haven't gone in over a month now. i miss it so much, i think i may be experiencing withdrawal symptoms :( ... been super busy, but in a few more days i'll have all the time in the world to draw to my heart's content! just gotta hold out a little longer~

haha, wtf is that pink warrior carrying... some kind of misshapen can opener or something XD

Landscapes

wahhh, so many months without an update... is this really my first post of 2009?! crazy. @_@

so for the last few months, I was in the midst of an art "posting slump" ... that is to say, i was drawing a lot and trying new things, but i thought my stuff just wasn't worth posting anymore. ): i often get embarrassed of my own art when it doesn't turn out how i want (which is 99% of the time), but i'm finally over that now... i think that posting regularly can be a great way to chronicle your progress, so i'll stick to it this time because improvement is REALLY important to me!

anyway, here are some environments... i like drawing mountains/trees and organic things cuz it's so easy to just make it up as you go along XD
this one's an oldie, the first landscape i posted here... i fixed up the drawing & deepened the colors, now it looks way better. always nice to revisit old, nostalgic pieces :)

a speedpaint you may remember from a few months ago, finally decided to finish it!

and these next two pieces are WIPs that I'm working on right now:
that's all for now, more to come later~

Life Drawings (pt.1)

okay, so... my Uni hosts a free "open studio" life drawing session every weekend at the art school, and I've made it a point to attend every single time for past few weeks.

at the time, I purchased a Cretacolor charcoal set and a 18" x 24" sketchbook for the purpose of life drawing, but I was too embarrassed to post my drawings because they were REALLY bad the first few times. D: I had to relearn charcoal all over again, and also it was awkward drawing b/c the sketchbook was so BIG - much bigger than I'm use to drawing, especially since I sketch solely on the computer these days.

the reason why I got such a big sketchbook was cuz I heard that it's better for practicing your contour lines & strokes. I think that this is probably true... I find that I'm forced to make large, sweeping arm and wrist movements, plus I can't retrace my lines well. so as a result my contour line drawing skills have improved A LOT! Now my figure drawings no longer suck so much that I'm ashamed to post them online, yayyy~

All of these are 20 min poses:
The proportions were HARD so this is all I could do in 20 minutes. normally my drawings look a little more complete.

This is the first time I've ever drawn a pregnant woman - and I swear, she was positively glowing. So I tried to capture her likeness in the last 10 minutes instead of working on the rest of the figure.

I really liked this guy's dreads, they were fun to draw. :p I worked on this for a few minutes after time was up b/c it wasn't dark enough.

Anyway, it always feels great to make big strides in just a few weeks, so I'll keep attending these sessions. =) Hopefully I'll have some real art to post soon, though...

Warmups + Character Design

So I've been taking quite a few commissions lately, just for single character concepts/illustrations. I should probably figure out a price table for this soon so I can start doing it on a larger scale...

Anyway, here's the piece that I'm working on right now. The initial sketch phase went super smoothly, and I like how it looks overall, but now the details are gonna be a HUGE pain to finish. I always have so much trouble with finishing artwork (I despise detailing), and now I'm even fretting over how I'm gonna color it! -_- I really want to finish it tonight though~

also, here are a few 15 minute doodles that I do to "warm-up" before I start drawing. (I got the idea from going to regular figure drawing sessions at my Uni - they really help me get into the "drawing" mindset! :D ) I'll start posting these here since they're too crappy to post anywhere else, haha~
heh, I just needed to draw something to get me into that "fantasy swordfighting" mindset :D

Samurai Champloo fanart

oops, it's been too long once again since my last post... I've got some commission art in the works that I'm not quite ready to show yet, but for now here's a fanart for one of my favorite shows ever:i have a lot of awe for extremely well-animated action sequences, so this show really hit the spot the first time i watched it. then once I got into it, there was the amazing characters, story, music--the whole shebang! Took a lot longer than usual (usually fanarts are pretty quick for me), but I learned a neat coloring trick while making this, so... things balance out. :)

Character Illustration: mafia wife

trying my hand at a semi-realistic, illustrative style. this is one of my better attempts.
she's an original character for a furturistic mafia story... i drew her first because all the other ones will be a total pain in the butt to draw. -_- (I suck at drawing guns...)
here's a couple of progress pics for this piece:
i like how in the beginning the block-in was so skewed and off balance that I had to rotate the whole canvas... thank god for digital tools like "lasso" & "free transform" to counteract my utter lack of planning =P