red tree

close-up of the last image in the previous post. I fixed it up and turned it into a print, now just gotta figure out how to sell things...

life update + chinese mountains

These days I do my art blogging through Tumblr, so follow me there if you want regular updates:
http://blog.wendichen.com

It's been a year of many life changing events for me... last summer, I moved cross-country from Detroit to Seattle for a game artist job. All in all, life's been pretty good. Sam and I have definitely appreciated Seattle for its mountains and views, though the last 4 months of rainy season made me brood more than I would like! But it is a good excuse to stay in and paint all day...

Sequence Steam Promo + BGs

here's an artwork I made to promote the PC version of Sequence, which has been out on Steam for just over a week now.  Prior to this, I had not realized just how incredible Steam is as a platform for indie games.  It was pretty cool seeing this banner on the front page for a week!

 

and here are some more backgrounds from the game... it was quite fun coming up with all the tech-y ones, got me out of my comfort zone!

lone traveler

environment layout for a story, also a style/mood test.  here's a close-up~ 

environments

haven't posted environments for a while, so here are some loose color/lighting studies for a personal project

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~

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! -_-

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~