Painting my mind...

Spring

2011-05-23T02:09:00.000-07:00

I was inspired by a photograph that I saw in Ian Plant's website. The green tones were really nice and gave me an feeling of Spring time- though I've never really experienced how spring is like. I live in Singapore where we don't have 4 seasons. It just hot and humid here.

Stain Glass Hall

2011-04-26T02:55:00.001-07:00

Two years ago, my wife and I went to Italy for a backpacking trip. We visited 3 main cities - Rome, Florence and Venice. A lot of the buildings there were very old but beautiful, and historical. I was especially amazed at the churches where they had huge stained-glass windows that created fantastic ambience inside the hall.
So, here's an attempt to paint out what I felt visually, though in a completely fictional building.

A lazy day Under the tree

2011-04-14T03:48:00.000-07:00

On a surprisingly hot afternoon, Gimeor finds himself sitting under a tree, looking at a Diplodocus lumbering his way. Just great - now he has to move away to find another shade.

I couldn't help but be inspired by a scene in Disney's "Tangled"; where there were thousands of floating lanterns by the lake. So here I painted a somewhat similar idea, toying around glowing things in a cave - fireflies perhaps...

Gimeor goes for a walk beside a pair of Brachiosaurus. It's late in the evening and having a pair of behemoths at your side helps to keep predators away. And his long necked friends don't seem to mind anyway...

Looking back

2011-04-11T00:22:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a super long time since I've posted any art on my blog, so here's a new one. I guess I was busy with my work and my new house and didn't had time to paint any personal stuff - until now! Muahaha...
It's called "Looking back", just a Styracosaurus mom and her young walking towards a lake, and got their reflection caught on the water. Spent some time playing around the colors and lighting, and didn't get it right until I surfed the internet for some photos. The score of Photograph vs My brain... Photograph=1 My brain=0

Here's a weird idea about a huge tree which floats up, pulling up it's roots, soil and debris falling all around. Would be quite a spectacle...

Afternoon Cut - Yummy!

2010-11-15T02:28:00.001-08:00

Gimeor has hit the jackpot - caught a juvenile Tyranosaurus which would nicely last him a few weeks of food.

2010-08-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

Baguio City again!

2010-05-19T05:23:00.000-07:00

I went back and searched through my old photos of the Philippines trip, and found a few photos of Baguio city that i took. I compared it with the art I painted yesterday, and found a big difference! It wasn't as bright and there were more interesting cloud formations behind the mountains. There were also some trees at the foreground in the photos.
So, to do justice the the art, I decided to refer to the photo and add in all the elements that were missing.
It's a whole lot better , and I wonder why is my imagination poorer than the photo I took in the first place? Lousy art skills, I guess. Here's the new art:

Here's the photo btw:

Super Baguio City

2010-05-18T00:44:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, I visited the Philippines, and went to a city called Baguio. It's located high up in the mountains, and it's a really big city! It has a bus terminal and is a start point to explore other smaller towns around the mountains like Batad and Sagada. On my way back from Baguio in the evening, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the numerous houses/squatters all over the mountains, and it was an amazing view with the fog slowly coming in and obscuring some of the houses. It looked absolutely magical! Below is an attempt to recapture what I felt and saw that day:

Probably there are not actually so many houses but at the time, it really seemed as if the whole mountain was covered with them :)

Mammoth Sacred Tree

2010-05-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

Annie (my fiancee) and I went to Taiwan recently. It was a wonderful trip as I managed to see the famous Alishan Forest and Taroko Gorge. I was awe-struck when I saw those giant Red-cypress trees, especially the huge Sacred Tree and the tall towering cliffs of Taroko with it's clear turquoise colored waters. It's one of those moments when I wonder how beautiful our earth is and thank God for creating it for us to live in.
It inspired me to paint out the two color sketches below:

The Giant fish below is not inspired by anything in Taiwan but just my fixation in drawing things gigantic and out of size. Arrgghh - giant fish eats up seagulls! hehehe...I like it ;)

I also saw some very old Chinese watercolor paintings in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, it's a really cool place to hang out if you're into Chinese culture. I decided to get in touch with my chinese roots and came up with my own digital watercolor painting below. Peonies for good luck, what can I say? :)

By the way, the mandarin words are just gibberish placeholders - until i get my fiancee to pen up a few profound words. I don't know how to write or read mandarin, such a sorry excuse for a Chinese.

Random sketches

2010-01-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

Tree canopy

2010-01-05T01:35:00.000-08:00

Yay! My color sketch of a tree canopy turn out pretty nice, I think. I used some of my texture brushes to create the tiny dots that I hope will look like small leaves. While painting this I was telling myself not to paint the individual leaves themselves, but rather the clusters of leaves that created the overall mass and silhouette effect. In a way, I was actually painting the shapes of the sky behind the leaves. It was something I learned reading this art book called "The Painterly Approach" by Bob Rohm. It's a very nice book.

Licking wounds

2009-12-08T03:24:00.000-08:00

Here's a color sketch of a dragon licking it's arm in a small cave, which might be wounded? I wanted to imply a membrane-like wing like a bat, so I put a translucent effect on it. The super simple sketch is below:

Dome hall

2009-12-07T03:25:00.000-08:00

...my never-ending quest to learn to paint good lighting...

Mommy's Home II

2009-12-06T23:55:00.000-08:00

Here I tried to paint a Giganotosaurus feeding it's young hatchling. The young one is jumping up excitedly as if to say "mommy's home...yummy!"

Timutamus

2009-11-30T04:40:00.000-08:00

Here's my imaginary animal Timutamus, a distant prehistoric cousin of the hipopotamus. This guy's pretty ugly to look at. I started from a tiny sketch I made a while back, created from some doodling while waiting for the train to come. I wanted a sort of underwater swampy look, but still clear enough to permit some caustic effect to appear on the body of the creature. While finishing this art, it reminded me of a dinosaur sticker book I collected when I was still a kid, and it featured some really nice paintings from Charles R. Knight. I used to look at those stickers everyday and imagine the dinosaur world inside. Come to think of it, it is probably his art that inspired me to become an artist. Anyway, the original Timutamus sketch is here:

Don's first flight

2009-11-19T03:35:00.000-08:00

I've done a color sketch of a juvenile Pteranodon standing on a cliff, about to have it's first flight. I wanted to portray a somewhat cloudy day, where the view of the cliff overlooks the blue sea below. Happy!

Gotcha

2009-11-05T02:06:00.000-08:00

Mountains Again! and UFOs and Deers...

2009-09-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

Glowing cave and Mountain bridge

2009-09-10T02:10:00.000-07:00

This small color sketch is special for me because I did not use the color picker at all when painting it in Photoshop. I think I'm getting lazy when I always sample the color from the art, and not create my colors manually, as in painting traditionally. I wanted to paint in a strong sunlight shining into the cave and reflecting a strong bounce light onto the ceiling of the cave.

This is another color sketch, this time it's outside of a cave. Lots of pine trees outside the cave. In painting this, it's fun and tricky at the same time for me because I did not use any references but just kinda imagined how it would be. Its not so realistic, but what the heck...lots of room for improvement.

An early morning drink

2009-09-03T01:51:00.000-07:00

Today I am quite happy to have painted a small painting of a Spinosaurus taking a drink from a lake, in the morning. The idea came from a quick sketch below, drawn while wating for the MRT. Done using photoshop, of course.

In my mind, I wanted an early morning look with a cool atmosphere without the sun shining too harshly. So I laid down some colors beneath the sketch layer (which was in Multiply mode). I immediately felt that the perspective in the sketch was a little off, because the horizon would be too high to be seen in that angle which I've drawn the dino drinking in the lake. So, I decided to omit the horizon and background landscape, and replace them with some water plants to maintain some visual interest at the top area of the painting.

After awhile, I was not satisfied with the colors because the water looked too green, and it didn't imply sunlight coming in at all. As if the whole scene was on a cloudy day. However, I liked the colors on the dino as it has a nice contrast of Blue and yellow, like a crocodile.

So, I decided to scrap the whole painting and start anew, while googling at some reference images along the way. My new colors are much less colorful, and retains a large white-ish area for the water, which works pretty well to allow me to paint some reflection of the blue sky and imaginary foliage somewhere nearby. I detailed out some areas near the dino with some rocks and pebbles that can be seen through the water beneath the dino's shadow. Happy!

Temiri Deer (Temirious Areardeus)

2009-04-06T03:53:00.000-07:00

Just had a discussion with Dr. Loonie, and he suggested me to flesh out this creature (from my many sketches). I think he is now busy at his lab trying to create this creature into real life. He also named it Temiri Deer (Temirious Areardeus). What a crazy biologist. I'm glad I met him :)

Imaginary Animals and my Studio

2009-03-30T17:24:00.001-07:00

What can I say?
There's a lot of sketches, some done a few months back, and some, just yesterday.
My recent interest is to draw imaginary animal species, kind of like combining part of different animals in my mind. I think some animal creations look better and more believable when their anatomy makes sense, such as having a head long enough for it to graze, or say, a leg with thick enough muscles to support a large and heavy body. It's logical art. FUN!

I've got to introduce an interesting bird that I always see in the small man-made pond near my company studio.
It's a Little Heron (Butorides striatus), and this little fella is ever hungry, always hunting for fish, sneakily standing on a rock, hoping to snap some unfortunate fish swimming by. It was this fine morning that I saw it caught a rather big tilapia. It certainly looks too big to swallow, but I guessed wrong, because the Heron slowly swallowed it head-first into it's throat. I didn't imagine that little fella had such a wide and expandable throat! Way to go!

This one is the usual sort of thumbnails explorations. In the immediate piece below, if you really notice, the small vertical drawing on the lower right corner was the sketch that sparked my idea for my Chinese Rooster painting, which was the present that I gave my dad. Great things starts small huh!

Here's my y usual sneaky sketches of people in the MRT(train),
when they don't notice me observing them :)

This is a small sketch of where I work, showing the huge hi-tech office building, in which my company studio is on the 5th floor. I'm glad that my boss asked me to sketch it, or else i would have never done it on my own. I'm not exactly the landscape-person as my interest is not in painting or drawing actual landscapes. Now that I've done it, I kinda like it and I'm proud of it ;)

Parasaurolophus in the evening

2009-03-11T04:30:00.000-07:00

Just did another quick color sketch of a pair of Parasaurolophus, basking in the late evening light. I followed the lighting effect in this image below (copyrighted to its owner). I'm really having lots of fun in making these quick sketches, in trying to follow the lighting, I also analyze how the light creates and influences the scene. It's my quick glimpse into a bygone world of dinosaurs...

(copyrighted to its owner)

Sunset Allosaurs

2009-02-16T02:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I last painted any dinosaurs, and so this is my painting of a pair of Allosaurs basking in the sunset and looking of into the distance, probably at some commotion created by a herd of Diplodocus nearby. It's still a work in progress but I think I got off to a good start. However, I somewhat "cheated" because the colors and lighting of the evening setting is based on an image that I saw from the net.

The sketch below was the initial idea.

Here's the image that I referred to; my lighting and colors are heavily influenced by it. I got that image from the net, so it is copyrighted to whoever owns it.

Moogie!

2009-02-06T04:59:00.000-08:00

A long thought to be extinct Moogie has been spotted and photographed in the deep jungles of Sarawak, Malaysia. This cute-but-huge mammal was last sighted in January, 1980, and was commonly believed to be extinct due to massive habitat loss and extensively hunted for its beautiful fluffy fur which fetches high prices in the fur trade. Biologists are now actively studying the remaining population level of Moogies in that area, and keeping fingers crossed to find a sustainable breeding population there.

How My Mind Works

2009-01-20T16:02:00.000-08:00

Earlier last year in November, my company held a Stick-fighting martial arts demonstration, in which the arts originated from Philippines. The demonstration was primarily meant for animators to study and get real references to the complex and fast movements happening in martial arts. It was an eye opener for me as I had not seen in-person any stick fighting before. This art uses a rather short bamboo stick and has very fast movements. As I am not an animator, all I could do was to crazily sketch down gestures of the movements that was demonstrated. Very fun!

Most of the time, I like to fill up my sketchbook with small, really rough drawings similar to thumbnails. I often start by doodling some shapes and lines and playing around with composition until I see some sort of idea emerging from the doodles, or if the doodles resemble some creature or environment.
Sometimes, the composition is dictated by the available space I have on the paper, for example I usually end up with a long vertical images when I get squeezed to the edges of my paper. Anything goes!Inevitably, there will be some images that stands out from all the small rectangle doodles, and I'll select those to color them up eventually.
Below are some of the sketches:

Chinese Rooster

2008-12-17T03:08:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas time again, and this year as a present for my parents, I'm attempting to paint an art depicting a rooster and his family. Basically, it represents my parents, my brother and I. My Papa has been asking me to paint something like that for sometime already (2 years back, I think), and I kept procrastinating on painting it - until now. Me lazy bum.
But on a deeper level, it's not just laziness but rather my lack of interest in spending lots of time and effort on painting a subject matter that I'm not particularly interested in. To counter this problem, I thought of using a Chinese painting style because I can paint it fast and loose, do not need to spend too much time and perhaps it may just turn out nicely. However, since I don't own any chinese ink, watercolour paper or really good brushes for that matter, I'll rely back on my old trusty pal Mr. Photoshop to supply me the digital materials.

I spent some fun time experimenting on the brush settings to paint the calligraphic watercolor effect, and the results above seems quite OK. I'm definitely going to further explore this style of painting in my quest to mimic Chinese style paintings. Woohoo!
(btw, I'm a banana, so my mandarin skills are zero, hence the lack of mandarin words on the painting)

Ogre and Gimeor

2008-12-09T19:17:00.000-08:00

Colour! It seems that my little blog is missing some jazz, so I've got here two images that hopefully does justice to the color wheel.
The painting below was actually done a couple of weeks back, and the idea was sketched much longer back, I think 2 years ago. Just wasn't interested to flesh it out until now.
Story: "After a hard long battle, Mr. Ogre relaxes down at the local watering hole. While waiting for his roasted pheasant dinner to come, he spots a rat scurrying along the table...his free appetizer has arrived "

Here's Gimeor again; always getting himself in trouble, and this time running away from a gigantic centipede-like creature. Run..Gimy..run!

Compilation of my sketches

2008-10-30T17:47:00.000-07:00

Here's 3 images that are cut-n-paste compilations of my previous works.

The first one below are a bunch of hands doodles I usually doodle on my notepad when attending night classes at a church. It's an automatic reaction to doodle sometimes when I listen to the speakers. it's not that I'm not listening, because I do pay attention to what's being said. Multi-tasking might explain what's happening here.

The 2nd one is a bunch of characters. Not something that I'm very proud of, so it means back to the drawing board for me.

The third one below is my favourite; a bunch of gesture sketches of my anonymous models at the MRT, and animals from the Zoo and dinosaurs from Youtube.

After a short hiatus...

2008-10-30T16:53:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty busy lately for the past 2 months working on a short game project, and so have not been able to scan and post my accumulating sketches. That short project is over now (I hope) :)

Here's some sketches; among those usual people-at-the-MRT sketches, I particularly like the drawing of some clown faces with different expressions.

Last week, I went jungle hiking with Annie (my girlfriend) at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. It was raining half way through our hike when we came across this particular Uncle who started to put a plastic bag onto his head to avoid the rain. We laughed so much because he looked really funny and comical. Annie said he even looked like SpongeBob. I had to agree :P (he's at the bottom left, right below)

Annie contributed some sketch of Pennywise the Clown. Can you spot him below?

Moving on...
Here's some sketch of Gimeor and some dinosaurs. I tried to shade some values in, so that they won't be so flat. I think I can develop a few in there into color sketches.
I especially liked the one titled "Food's Here" in which Gimeor looks up at a flying creature which casts a shadow on him. So who's the food? Gimeor or the creature?

Lastly, I'd like to introduce you to my latest cute character. His name is Sharkee... (predictable name isn't it?)

The Zoo!

2008-08-31T18:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Nicholas (my colleague) and his wife, and my girlfriend and I went to the Zoo. My girlfriend managed to get some cheap tickets and so it was a great opportunity for me to try and sketch as many animals that I can in the zoo. You see, ever since a few months back, I've been training myself to capture gestures of people and animals. I have only tried sketching animals from internet videos, so to be able to do it live is wonderful! And I'm lucky to have a colleague that was similarly enthusiastic about drawing animals in the zoo as well.
I managed to fill up just 10 pages of my A4 sketchbook, as I initially hoped to draw more animals. I guess it's because we entered the zoo quite late-it was already afternoon, so next time I'll go earlier.

A bunch of Sketches

2008-08-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a bunch of sketches after being absent from my blog for quite a while. Close to a month to be exact.

The first sketch one below was done while I was sitting in a small park, and I saw this toddler running about. He has a funny way of running which he puts up his arms as if trying to balance himself. What a funny little fella.

Some sketches of people in the MRT station. Yup, I see aliens and giant rat characters there too.

These sketches below are an attempt to draw some Disney-sytle characters. A few weeks back, I saw an advertisement looking for a freelance character designer who can draw realistic cartoon characters in Disney styles, so I decided to try to apply for it. Guess I wasn't that good because it didn't hear from them at all :p
But anyhow, it's been a nice attempt and I now know that I need to concentrate more on getting expressions out of my characters.

Some new sketches

2008-07-28T22:22:00.000-07:00

Here are two new sketches in which I managed to capture the subjects' gesture before they moved away. I'm by no means satisfied, but i think I'm improving slightly.

ehFive sketchbook

2008-07-14T02:34:00.000-07:00

Some sketches from my ehFive book again:

I just had to draw a quick sketch of my girlfriend Annie sleeping; her palm's posture was very interesting in the way they bend inwards below her face.

A bunch of people in the MRT station:

An aimless doodle led to a Panda sketch which kinda resembles "Po" from the movie Kung-Fu panda. So, I dedicate this sketch to Po...

Breaking News: Monstrous Sea Creature discovered

2008-07-11T06:57:00.001-07:00

Breaking News: A monstrous sea creature was discovered yesterday and captured on photographs by Malaysian scientists who were conducting research on the Sperm whales in the Pacific ocean. It was apparently a carnivore hunting a group of Sperm whales, and succeeded in killing two of the whales.

This creature does not resemble any currently known prehistoric sea reptiles, and might be be a completely new species of sea reptile altogether! It is impossible to estimate the size of this creature but it is very likely to be the largest sea dwelling creature ever, as can be plainly seen from the photographs that it dwarfs the Sperm whales.

Little Rat, Wong and the Dragon

2008-07-09T06:15:00.000-07:00

An inquisitive little rat stumbles upon a very nice smell in the air, coming from the most unlikely sources! Could it be cheese? bacon? Belacan?...anyway, it's sure gonna be yummy!

"Wong and the Dragon: Who wins? Wong has a magical blue sword while The Dragon has its fiery breath." In this art, I wanted to capture a terrifying mood with lots of darkness and hot-red colors; like Hell.
This is my second attempt:

My first attempt below did not work for me because the lighting was weird; somehow I had unknowingly painted the scene lighted up as if there was an imaginary spotlight behind the Dragon and casted it's shadow on the floor. I knew I wanted the brightest part of the picture to be between the Dragon's face and Wong, but I didn't know how to light it up logically.
First attempt:

Here are some pages from my trusty little ehfive Sketch book. I am beginning to get the hang of drawing cartoon characters. My favorites are the laughing old man and the Tiger who hears something. See if you can spot them out.

John Mahoney's class: Drawing from Film

2008-07-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's class with John Mahoney was "Drawing from Film", in which John asked us to draw out certain shots in the movie Frida, using materials like Pastels and watercolor. We tried to capture the wonderful color composition in the shots and we had a wonderful time! We also tried to draw out frames and treat the shots like a graphic novel. Each shot in the movie seems so artistically thought of, and I definitely learned a lot yesterday.

Last week's class was to draw from an old black/white movie named Othello. We used charcoal to draw out the interesting values in the shots.

Here's also some very old life-drawing art of a female model done 2 months ago.

And finally, some personal art from my trusty little sketchbook. Right now I am trying to flex my cartooning muscles, and taking inspiration from artist like Carter Goodrich. There's also a nice little color sketch which I named "I come in peace"

John Mahoney's class

2008-07-01T18:21:00.000-07:00

For the past 2 days, I have been attending a class by John Mahoney, an artist whose point-of-view really inspired me to re-think on how I approach art. On yesterday's life-drawing class, he asked us to combine traditional life drawing with a few references of concept art and graphic art. We were free to experiment with the process, and the results that came out were very fresh and different. I did a crouching guy who's tied up with three vicious dogs and a Death-dealer guy who's arm is being swallowed by a massive dog. We are also free to use whichever material we want; be it watercolor, charcoal or pastels. I had so much fun and free from worry as there was no right or wrong in our creations. So this is what art is about: Personal creative expression.

My background history is a fairly typical one; I am trained in Industrial design, and I am used to drawing realistic items and be able to communicate through representational art. I have always thought that a good art is one that can mimic reality as best as possible so that it can communicate well. But since having exposed to John's ideas, I now view the world with a more open mind.

Btw, here's some other stuff:
Grim reaper crosses to the other side.

A sketch on birds, especially on a Little Bittern I saw at a nearby mini-lake.

Dead Fish

2008-06-19T03:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a dead fish. This nice surprise should be enough for 2 weeks of food, if Gimeor preserves the meat. By the way, Gimeor has been sporting a nice deep tan ever since stumbling upon this beach.

Butthead and HammerEyes Alien

2008-06-18T04:06:00.000-07:00

Microbot

2008-06-10T03:52:00.000-07:00

Getting busy back at work, so I won't be painting so many personal stuff from now on. Here's a sketch, in which I'm particularly intrigued by a girl who slept in the MRT train.

Look what landed on my fingers! Miniature Alien robots from outer space.

Prawnsusochus Crabilis

2008-06-05T22:51:00.000-07:00

A tribute to The Iron Giant (a great movie by Brad Bird). In the case, his big bad metal evil cousin.

Off the coast of the Malacca Straits, researchers have recently captured amazing photographs of the long thought to be extinct gigantic crustacean Prawnsusochus Crabilis. Here's one of the amazing images. This gentle giant feeds on small organisms in the sea such as krill and plankton.

"Big Structure floating in the clouds". I wanted to capture a "heavenly" atmosphere, where the sun is shining brightly above the clouds. This attempt is by no means satisfactory, so I hope to re-visit this concept soon.

Lots of stuff

2008-06-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

This was supposed to be an easy color exercise but slowly turned out to be a hard-but-learned-much exercise. I just wanted to paint a scary scene which has a door that this guy would think twice before entering. I found out that it's definitely not that easy to create a scary mood; the door's lighting keeps on becoming somewhat like "a light at the end of the tunnel" which brings up a positive mood. In the end, I realized that it's better to have dimmer lighting behind the door. Phew!
5th attempt (Final):

"Here's one featuring Dr. Loonie's wacky pet creations. He takes his pet for a walk in the park just to take in a little sunshine." This is my second attempt; the first attempt (at the right) didn't look like it's getting enough afternoon sun and the pet's gray horns were too dull. Didn't work for me.

Silver-Red giant falls to the ground. KO and you're out !

Gimeor's point of view before before being pecked by a big bird.

Just some mysterious looking steps that lead to a candlelight party. :)

This sketch below was done some months back while trying to create a Photoshop Brush that hopefully looks like pencil. It's a guy with horns as chins, long ears. You know, the typical Narnia meets LOTR types of characters.

Gimeor, The Legged One and the Parrot Fish

2008-05-30T03:59:00.001-07:00

Gimeor sits on top of a high rocky cliff and contemplates on his lonely life. The birds look yummy though.

Story: The Giant Parrot fish seeks some advice from the Legged One. In this art, I wanted to capture a dreamy fantasy mood, with a hint of mystery by having the Legged One in dark silhouette. Some underwater caustics effect were added to bring in a bit of life and magic. This was my second attempt.

My first attempt below did not look right; I think I overdid the highlights on the Legged One, so much so that it is even brighter than the water's bright areas. The results almost reminds me of those glow-in-the-dark puzzle arts.

The Beautiful tree

2008-05-30T01:20:00.000-07:00

There's a really beautiful tree at a small park near where I work. It has millions of tiny leaves and trying to capture that on paper was a real pleasure.

Gimeor the Wildman and Fat Robot

2008-05-29T18:54:00.001-07:00

Gimeor the Wildman takes a walk among the summer grassy fields...

It's after work now; there's someone walking with a Robot (Big Fat types again), his only friend in a future where industrialization has gone overboard. No time for going Green here...

T-Rex, Tarzaness and Mr. Caterpillar

2008-05-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a painting of a T-Rex trying to attack a Ceratopsian dinosaur. I wanted to portray a ominous mood, by setting the scene at dusk and having a deep red orange hues with long dark shadows. I looked at some references for the colors because I couldn't get the colors right with only my imagination. My first attempt didn't quite work out the way I wanted, mostly because I had too bright of a Fill light and too saturated Key light on T-Rex.

My first attempt below:

Yes, it's a Tarzan wannabe...But he is a she here; so, it's Tarzaness! I wanted to portray a mysterious mood in a deep dark jungle setting. And a little bit of translucence in her skirt-wrap. (which I think nobody will notice anyway because it's too subtle)

Mr. Catepillar says "Whatcha Looking at?" Someone's gonna be someone's snack soon. I kinda "cheated" by applying blur on the background, but it's for the good of the art. And also because I'm lazy to paint it out-of-focus manually. I'm not sure if the too realistic outcome is good for the art or not. I just wanted a cheerful mood by having a sunny day setting with strong colorfully saturated colors.

Gimeor the Wildman

2008-05-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

"Gimeor" is a wildman who lives in a prehistoric world. He is now eyeing for a real big egg for his dinner.

For some unknown reason, Big evil bunnies seem to make good subjects to paint. Here Gimeor challenges Evil Bunny to a duel...

A big scary old castle. Hopefully it's scary enough.

I wanted to paint some "sub-surface scattering" lighting on the man's nose, but I guess it could be better.

Mood!

2008-05-23T01:50:00.000-07:00

I've was reading an art book entitled "Disney's Tarzan Special Collector's Edition", and I came across an inspiring sentence: "Staging story ideas and capturing various moods all fall within the visual development artist's realm, helping to inspire and build the storyline and settings for the film". It made me realize suddenly that that's why some of my previous paintings lacked something, and that something was capturing moods! As I looked back at those paintings, those that I did like were those that somehow portrayed a mood. This is a mini-revelation for me, as I will from this day onward try my best to capture a certain mood for all my paintings, so that it will appeal to people at an emotional level.

So, here's a re-paint of "There You Are Nessie" art. It's got a more mysterious and eerie mood to it. The simple story is this guy who tries to find his pet Plesisaur in the middle of night, in the midst of the lake's fog.

And also here is a re-paint of "Mommy's Home" art. It's closer to what I had in mind, which is two baby Therapods at a forest bed being happy and excited when their Mommy comes home after a days hunt.

Junk Wars

2008-05-22T02:48:00.000-07:00

Ah..a new art, which I'm not really satisfied because I couldn't get it out the way I imagined it to be, after spending 1 hour plus on it. I wanted the Junk-contraption in the foreground to have more cheerful colors but in the end I resorted back to dark blackish colors to define some values. Back to the drawing, (or rather painting) board.

People, Birds and Cars

2008-05-21T18:52:00.000-07:00

Here are some sketches I made last week. Some done while at the MRT, some while visiting my favourite hangout - The Library and drawing from books, and some at home.

Here's another feeble attempt at cartooning: One Dog and an Iguana character.

I was working as an Industrial Designer 2 years back, and I worked for this amazing company called Orcadesign Consultants. Just wanted to stretch my design muscles and came up with a smallish-cute car design.

Four quick paintings

2008-05-21T03:17:00.000-07:00

Today is a very productive day for me, as I managed to paint 4 pictures. They are not very detailed as I just wanted to practice composition, lighting, mood and values. I'm not satisfied with some of them, so I will re-paint them soon. I also timed myself to paint each of them in less than an hour, so that I can psyche myself to stay loose and not be bogged down by the details. Yay!

Elephants!

2008-05-14T03:17:00.000-07:00

Elephants have a remarkably flexible trunk, which can twist and turn in all sorts of direction. I wanted to capture the elephant trunk's flexibility in this sketch. Apart from that, elephant has thick legs but yet they can bend easily, in which the joints inside the legs are kind of similar to dogs.

I was never very good at cartoon characters or comics so, this is my feeble attempt at cartooning.

Monster Attack Team (MAT)

2008-05-12T03:21:00.000-07:00

Just had a fun idea about Ultraman and his sidekicks-MAT (Monster Attack Team). They used to show a lot of Ultraman series on Malaysia's TVs, and that silver-red big guy is very much part of my childhood memories.

Life Drawing

2008-05-11T07:20:00.000-07:00

This time around, I'm sharing some life-drawing sketches that I did one week back in one of the classes I joined after work. It is my second class, and I think I've made some improvements in my sketching skills, especially at capturing the pose of the model. The Model posed positions for 3 minutes each, then 5 minutes, then 8, and finally 15 minutes, which allowed me to capture more details in the sketch. Can't wait for the next class to come!

2008-05-10T01:40:00.000-07:00

Well, here goes a bunch of sketches again, in which I've accumulated over the past 2 weeks. I've found out that looking at Youtube videos of animal or dinosaurs gives me an opportunity to sketch as if I'm looking at them in the wild. I'm making quite rough gesture sketches as I try to capture the essential characteristics of each animal I see. I also try not to click the pause button because that will be counter-productive in my efforts. One day, I'll save some money and head to the zoo to draw animals on the spot.

Some drawings while looking at videos of Cheetahs and crocodiles. The Cheetah is a most remarkable mammal, and the way it runs is so very elegant and powerful, until it's almost impossible to capture the dynamic movements on paper!

Well, I love dinosaurs as well. Watching those "Walking with Dinosaurs" videos allows me to imagine as if I'm looking at real-life dinosaurs, and trying to sketch them on the spot. Below are some drawings of mainly Giganotosaurus, Tarbosaurus and a bit of Argentinosaurus, and Pteranodons.

Some drawings while looking at "Walking with Beasts" videos. Prehistoric mammals, after the dinosaurs...

2008-04-25T03:43:00.000-07:00

I've got another sketch today, it's a mix of some turtle and rat character, plus an alien thrown in there for good measure. I'm starting to realize that the eyes tell a lot about someone's character. So far, I've only been good at drawing angry or sleepy eyes, so I should try to try some other look for my eyes. The rats in the sketch are directly inspired from the 'The Art of Ratatouie' book; in which there's this certain artist named Carter Goodrich who drew really nice character designs for the rats. Rats....hmmm....

2008-04-23T03:24:00.000-07:00

These are a bunch of sketches that I did in pencil, while passing my time at work last week. I had a few days of nothing urgent to do, so I decided to explore some character ideations, but honestly, just sketched without thinking much. As I began to accumulate more sketches, I found out that I had more fun drawing 'realistic' animals and monsters, rather than cartoony characters. Thats too bad, because I wanted to train myself to draw characters that would fit in to animation features, like Pixar's Finding Nemo or Incredibles. Anyway, It's an art journey for me, as I get to learn more about my own preferences.

2008-04-22T04:52:00.000-07:00

Hello! My very first entry is a simple sketch done in Photoshop. I played around with blue tones, making a simple composition and getting enough values to make it look nice. The story kinda evolved by itself, and eventually it became a wizard on his journey to a faraway castle. I was inspired to paint a quick sketch after watching a video in Erik Tiemen's blog.