Dreamworks Fine Art Gallery: Tigress

so i was fortunate enough take part in a Dreamworks-sponsored gallery program a while back~  made this print of "Tigress among plum blossoms" (inspired by traditional chinese watercolor) for the gallery opening, hope you like it!  more prints are on the way for the second launch, so stay tuned! :)

sketch studies in pencil & ink:

Conté on Canson

... is my new favorite drawing medium! :p started drawing w/ Parisian conté in late '09, thanks to a tip from an artist at life drawing. it's a very challenging medium, because unlike vine/compressed charcoal, conté is wax-based and nigh unerasable. definitely makes you slow down and think harder!

finally got back on track w/ life drawing after being out of it for so many months... now i'm really close to having a full sketchbook, woo! will try to photograph it soon, digitizing artwork is just so tedious to me :/

also, here are some corel painter brushwork studies... gotta keep up with this stuff or else i'll forget how it works. now if only i could figure out how to get corel brushes to work in high-res...

one more because i'm forgetful

ack, forgot about this one! finished this when i got back home to the States... added some vague shading this time, although it's still meant to be a contour line study.

i started doing these observational contour studies thanks to a tip from an artist i admire, and it really does help train your eyes!! plus i think my lines feel a bit more fluid now...

from Beijing to Yueyang: train sketches

greetings all!! just got home a few days ago from my 3-month sojourn to China, visiting my entire extended family over Christmas, New Years', and Chinese New Year (Feb 14)! it was a pretty sweet trip overall, although the internet censorship thing got kind of infuriating by the end... Blogger, Youtube, Livejournal, and pretty much every website i use regularly were ALL blocked - which is why i've been MIA for so long! @_@

that being said, i think i set off a lifetime's worth of fireworks with my cousins over the last few weeks, heh~ ;D gotta admit, it was pretty incredible to see the entire city skyline lit up with fireworks!! i hope everyone is having an AWESOME Year of the Tiger; may all your hopes and goals for 2010 come true!

i've got plenty of backlogged art, so i'll start by posting this batch of contour sketches i did during a 19-hour train ride from Beijing (mom's hometown) to Yueyang (dad's hometown) ... been doing observational studies for many months now, so it's about time to post a few!


first sketch i made when i got off the train, this is my pretty cousin BeiBei~

i got these kids to sit still long enough to draw them... their mother was very impressed, haha ;p

man, you have no idea how happy i am to be able to browse art blogs again!! :) more stuff is on the way...

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

here's a simple b&w commission i did of chinese goddess casting a spell. used painter's pastel brushes as usual, 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 from 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

edit '10: touched these up and re-uploaded them :)
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!