waterfall goddess

The Waterfall Goddess of Jiuzhaigou Valley (九寨沟), carving out mountains with streams and planting the first tree of the Primeval Forest. I doubt I'll ever stop being inspired by that place.

a  younger design for the above character

Landscapes

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

 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 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~

Emperor concept sketches

here's some tonal concept sketches, once again for the chinese fairytale project. i'm trying to plan out my pieces more (and just do more studies in general) to improve my composition and tones.it's IS helping a little, so far... i just need to remind myself of that constantly so i can keep plodding on and not get discouraged!

this blog needs some color

okay, so i just realized that my last few posts have no color in them... D: AHHHH what a travesty! in fact, this bothers me so much that i'm going to post some color doodles/WIPs right now to remedy this grievous error. (nothing against b&w studies, it's just that i've been doing them so much lately and I LOVE color too much to have a monochromatic blog!)

this is for the "chinese fairytale project," it's the goddess with a white dragon swirling around her. i think i made the pose a little TOO sexy.


i really suck at cityscapes. but there's no way around it, i just have to practice... i'm trying to work out all the basic shapes/composition in this picture right now.

i really love painting mountains! gonna add a figure, and a bunch of architecture to this

man, it's gonna suck to finish all these pieces, doing all the detailing is always so hard for me... i love the initial "spark" of inspiration that makes me attack a blank canvas with so much confidence, but it always tapers off once I have to start adding detail! -_-

A Chinese Love Story: character designs

posting the finished b&w concept designs for the Chinese fairytale project that I've been working on. these two designs are for Niulang (cow herder, the mortal) and Zhinu (weaver girl, goddess from the heavens). they're characters from a very ancient and well-known chinese love story.i really want a top with gold embroidered dragons like the one that ZhiNu has...

character sketches (Chinese fairytale)

The bamboo illustration I posted earlier is giving me some trouble... the problem is with the leaves. i absolutely LOVE the way bamboo leaves are painted in traditional Chinese watercolors, but I don't seem to have a good PS brush that can emulate that sharp, tapered look. if anyone has any suggestions or a brush they could give me, i'd be eternally grateful!

i've been working on a few character sketches, once again for the Chinese fairytale project... trying to nail the designs for the Peasant (Lang) and the Goddess (weaver girl) before I tackle Emperor Jade's design. I love doing the "sketch" step the most... it's fun trying to get a good silhouette/pose before the detail rendering. gotta love the spontaneity of it!
this is the goddess/weaver girl... definitely the better of the two designs.

the peasant boy, Lang... no detail yet, just trying to get the pose to look laid-back

Bamboo forest (chinese fairytale)

well shoot, I'm already way behind on posting in this blog! it's kinda funny how motivated I was to set aside time for art back when I was totally swamped with school, cramming for exams and standardized tests. quite frankly, my work ethic since the beginning of summer has been abysmal, and there's just no excuse for it. -__-; so it's time to get off my ass and make some portfolio-worthy pieces!

here are a few WIP illustrations i'm making for my Chinese fairytale adaptation. i'm sooo excited about this project!


more to come soon!

more sketches

got some more art to post, 'cause I really wanna fill up this blog! here's a quick fanart I made when i was taking a break from original art:

my friend jeremy recommended "Kung Fu Panda" as one of those super-cool movies that one needs to check out...  i haven't had a chance to go see it yet unfortunately, but i did watch every clip i could find of it and it looks AMAZING!! very authentic scenery, and the character expressions/designs are top notch!

and there's also this kinda sad excuse for concept art:it's an wip for my adaptation of a famous Chinese fairytale, but I accidentally lost a ton of progress on it (stupid laptop ran out of batteries). it's just as well since it looks like crap anyway... composition/scale is totally off. I wanted the dragons to look HUGE, but the composition just doesn't work for that purpose.  oh well, I'll start anew and see if i can do better~

first art post

so I've decided to start an artblog! i'm gonna try to update this thing as regularly as possible so that I can gauge my progress over the next couple months. I'll start with posting these sketches I made a few weeks ago in ArtRage, this nifty new program I bought 'cause my Painter trial ran out (NOOOO D=). i'm still trying to get the hang of it, but from what i've seen it's a fairly decent program to use until i can shell out the money for Painter~
this one is my take on a famous chinese love story, was trying to go for a "sad" mood because he's waiting for someone who's not showing up. gonna make a whole series of illustrations on this idea that i have, so more to come later!

here's a warm-up piece i did when i was trying to learn ArtRage... i need to do a LOT of anatomy studies before i'm up to speed. the proportions are ok for the most part, but i got really lazy and didn't finish her hands, sorry!