Venice - like a theme park

I visited Venice with my ex-girlfriend a few years back, and memories of that place stood out because it was so special. I remember when I finally stepped out from the train station, and saw Venice for the very first time. It was like looking at a theme park - blue turquoise water just right beside the historical buildings, with a slight mist enveloping the whole area. Magical, simply magical. Here's an impression of what I saw that day...

Along Kembangan Station

It has been awhile since I posted any drawings, so here's one to kickstart things again. Probably caught the lazy bug again. Anyway, this is an impression of the view I saw out from the train, somewhere passing along Kembangan MRT station. It was a bright sunny morning, and what caught my attention was the very bright buildings in the foreground. It was a fleeting moment, so I couldn't see the buildings in detail, just the overall impression.

Cloudy day

While waiting for the bus on my way to work today, I stood at the usual spot looking at the big field, and saw a lot of grey clouds in the sky, blocking out the sun and creating a gloomy atmosphere. However, the greyish sky somehow makes the greens of field look brighter than the sky (usually the sky is the brightest).
Yeah, it's going to rain heavily soon.

Big tree

Doodled around in my iPhone, and finally settled on a scene of a big tree on a cloudy day. Prior to that, in my doodles, I came across ideas of big epic structures, giant ships, huge canyons, but they didn't entice me carry on.
It's kind of ironic that in my job as a concept artist, I'm suppose to love drawing those big epic scenes, but I'm beginning to like simple compositions more and more.
Simple scenes like the one below allows me to focus on the colors and the lighting, and not having to worry about the design and message. Lazy artist I am.

Clear waters

Here's a scene of a beach with a boat sitting on clear turquoise waters. I've been into these waters every time I went for a trip to the Perhentian and Redang Islands in Malaysia.

Still-life

Yes! I've officially painted a still-life art, albeit an imaginary one. Painting this was lots of fun; getting the fruits to look right, especially the orange, grapes with their translucent skin, the glass vase, and the bright splash of sunlight coming through the window. The only thing I'd like to change is to make the wall at the back a little darker. But it's too much work to do that now. I'll just keep this little cheerful still-life as it is :)

2 minute sketch of a high rise

Spent a frantic moment trying to capture the colors and lighting of a condominium against the morning sky, right before the MRT train arrived. It's fascinating that the sky's blue values seems darker than the light colored walls. Art books always says that the skies are the brightest values, right? However, Nature throws in some exceptions, I think.

Orange Arch

I'm quite happy today; on the way back from work I managed to paint a scene of an arch-like rock structure, kinda like those you see in the US national parks. I like how the orange tones contrast with the blue sky, and especially how the dark shadows made the scene look like it's in the afternoon, (or at least I hope it looks like that).

7am Magic

I came out from my house today around 7am, and saw one of the more beautiful colors in the early morning sky, across the fields. (yes, impossible as it seems, there's a huge field near my HDB flat) The orange and yellows were very saturated, and they backlit the occasional puffy clouds floating in the sky. Below, they contrasted perfectly with the dark green colors of the faraway trees. I should thank God for creating such a beautiful world.

Shadows and arches

On the way to work today, I painted a scene of an interior of a castle; here showing two arches and a large part of the courtyard still in shadows.

Impressions of NY Chinatown

Here's a really rough impression I got from walking along the alleys in New York's Chinatown. I realized a mistake - the size of the alley is a little too wide. Too late to change it now.

HDB Foodcourt

Doodled around in my Iphone, on the way back from work today. I came up with a scene of a Foodcourt - you know, the usual ones below the HDB flats. I think the dappled shadows on the walls made the image more interesting than it really is.

Snow peaks again

I've revisited the snow peaks iPhone art again; this time adding more details to the lake and the mountain peaks, and increasing the overall brightness of the image. The previous image was far too cloudy for my liking.

Snow peaks and pine trees

Yeah, I like painting trees and snow. Hopefully one of these days I can go on a vacation to the wilderness, so to speak. There are two versions; I like the one with less snow on the peaks.

My childhood neighbourhood

When I was young, I used to cycle to my friend's house on the weekends. If I'm not mistaken, the roads outside his house looks something like my iPhone art below. There are always cars parked outside the houses, along the roads. What do you think, Ivan?

Valley at dusk

Few months back, I saw a documentary showing elephants crossing a valley in Africa. The scene was really epic, and with huge cliffs at the sides and a wide open plain in the middle. So today I tried to remember how the scene looked like in this iPhone art.

Still here

Last year I went to New York on a vacation. I remember being overwhelmed by the size of those skyscrapers and how the city has preserved many smaller historical buildings, especially the churches. So here in this iPhone art, I painted a scene of a church existing alongside its huge neighbors.

Rain rain rain

Painted a rainy day scene today (on my iphone), showing a bus stop and a guy with an umbrella at the back. I think I captured the mood that I wanted quite well, and didn't have to labor to get it looking right :)
The "auto-enhance" edit didn't make it look better - it blew up the colors until it didn't look gloomy at all. My original colors win this time!

Auto-enhance wins again

Today I've painted a garden scene, which has a big flower arch.
I kept reworking on the sky to get the colors right. At first I had a bright blue sky with white puffy clouds, but that didn't look right.
In the end, I realized I had to add a gradient white as I get nearer to the horizon. I think the bright blue type of sky only appears when you look up, which has less dust and haze.
Later, I turned on the "auto-enhance" edit in Photos to see how could I improve on the colors and values. It seems I could still add alot more saturated colors to the flowers and greens. I gotta be braver next time to put those stronger colors! (the duller image is the original image, the more vibrant one is the auto-enhanced image).

Painting with my SketchBook MobileX

Well, it's been a long time since my last entry. The past few months has been a life changing experience for me - I'm a new dad now! My baby boy Isaac, is now 4 months old, and he's bringing so much joy into our life. (along with the lack of sleep)

Since I can hardly find enough time to sit down and paint (on my pc), the only long stretch of time I have is when I journey back and forth, to work everyday. So recently I've played around with a painting App on my iPhone - SketchBook MobileX.

It was quite hard at first because I was so used to painting with pressure sensitivity (in my Wacom), and here I didnt have that control. I didn't have a stylus as well and just had to get used to painting with my fat fingers.

However, I thought what the heck, I shouldn't use that as an excuse - instead I can just treat it as painting with thick paints. And painting without level controls or color adjustments (as in Photoshop) helped me to realize that all these years I actually know very little about colors because I had been relying too much on Photoshop's capabilities to help me adjust my wrong colors.

So here below are my little paintings done when I travel to and back from work. Most of them are so more like color sketches, really rough.