Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Try-hard-atops




Scrying/Pareidolia.

Yesterday night while laying in bed with the night light on, I see this guy casually glancing over in my direction in the hallway. It's actually coming from a pile of cloth folded up and stacked on top of a little table neatly tucked away into the corner. It'll make sense to you if you consider how blind as a bat I am without my glasses so the pile of clothes blur into something else with the way the night light was shining on it. I wanted to get up and draw him down right away, but since I just got into bed, I was in no mood to get up. I was way too tired so I just forced myself to memorise what I can by breaking it down the shapes into colours, the shape of the creature and by using image associations (looks like this, looks like that..) to help me remember. I paid more emphasis on the colours and the lighting than the actual creature.

I'd say it came out kinda close.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Sketch Dump



Some more randomness.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Slugclops



I think it's missing a monocle and a moustache.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Warm ups





Julia Cameron "The creative process is a process of surrender, not control. "

It looks like my inner demons are trying to come out. I think I'm going to start doing dark to lights on Photoshop first to warm up before drawing with pen on paper instead of the other way around. It seems to be less frustrating this way.

Friday, December 9, 2011

WIP Update

Been working on a WIP from before. It can be found HERE.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Monster of the Day


I feel so much better. This totally made up for my painting yesterday which left me quite frustrated.

Parts of the skeleton looks pretty mangled up but you get the idea.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

And yet another Snailien

Blah, just blah... Feels like I have a long ways to go before this guy is actually finished. But I'm so sick of it at this point that I'm calling it done. So there!

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Dump'em-ber (december dump) Sketches


Drawing is soooo much more enjoyable if you're not fixated on the outcome!

Heck, I didn't even like these drawings too much, but I felt better when I digitally fixed up one of them. It's forcing me to keep pushing through instead of saying "Ah, good enough." I can keep going but I caved in to the path of least resistance already. Tsk tsk...

Looking at it again, I can see every sketch above as a potential digital fixer upper. I tend to think of every sketch as "final" without touching it up any further.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

December Dumpage




And some more dRAWRings...

Friday, December 2, 2011

December Sketch Dump




Scrap collection of various doodles drawn on envelopes with some minor alterations on Pshop.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Digi-doodle


This took way too long to do something 'simple and quick'. Someone take an oar and smack me across the head with it, please!

Besides, I needed a pic for my deviantart profile to replace the dreadful blank space taunting me everytime I log in. Now, it will leave me alone in peace.

Old drawing plucked from here.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Random dumm dum


Dumm dumm dum duummmmm...dumm dumm dumm duuummmm....da da da dee da da da dum da da dee duumm....da da da dee da da dum ...

Messed around on Photoshop for an hour or two to clear away the cobwebs inside my brain.

No plan, no story, no characters in mind, no intention other than just drawing for the sake of drawing.


Thursday, September 29, 2011

Dream

I had a dream where I was looking through all of my artworks lately. By lately I mean, the ones I haven't drawn at all and yet they existed (perhaps on a quantum level?) as already drawn in the dream. I haven't drawn anything in months really. All kinds of wonderful stuff that I don't even recognise nor remember ever doing and yet, there was that feeling that they were all drawn by me. I had this quizzical thought "I drew these?" and then after noticing the volume of works laying before me, I thought to myself "Hey! Why don't I post these up on my blog?" Then I bolted up awake, all super-excited, as if I'm getting ready to go scan these artworks in and when I got up from bed, that's when I realised "Oh right... that was just a dream..."

Now, that, was a bit too weird for me.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Monster of the Day


A monster a day keeps the shrink away.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Flash from the Past



I was looking through my older sketchbooks today and found some things that had taken me back to those nostalgic days. I feel somewhat overwhelmed at the thought of revisiting the past, and also, about scanning everything in from old sketchbooks, so I decided to pick these two vampire thingies out of them all. According to the sketchbook cover, it was dated way back in 1997. I'm not sure if this is right because we were doing sheridan college back in those days, so I'm thinking maybe around 2000 instead.

Anyways, I figure I wanted to show these because in a way, it would be like exorcising my personal demons by releasing them so I can let go of it (blockages and all) and move on. I didn't get around to doing anything worthwhile with this project for whatever reason(s) and so, it almost feels like a missed window of opportunity that presented itself at the time. If we don't do them, then someone else surely will! So then, it feels like I have lifted a Non-Disclosure Agreement in allowing it to be shown for the first (or second time with the following link at the end of this page).

Speaking of Non-Disclosure Agreements, how many of our personal projects have NDA-like policy written all over them? I know I have a couple of others that I want to keep secret for now but in time they will be shown. There are some already shown in public anyways, just not shown in all its entireity. Hopefully I don't let it fester long enough. How many have slipped by unnoticed over the years without showing them to the world, with only a select few privy to look at them? Maybe It's just another one of those fears that if we release these ideas out too soon, then someone's bound to steal them or do them quicker than we can and cash in on them. Or maybe keeping them secret really does give it some sort of motive power and releasing them to the world prematurely kills that drive to have it created in the first place. At any rate, they are fears that motivate us afterall, and even if they do get imitated or stolen or in whatever way you imagined them manifesting itself, then why should that matter anyways? We do what we do because we love to do them, otherwise we wouldn't be doing them.

Ah well, it's nothing new under the sun, adding a new twist to an old idea that became so overly cliche. So I don't really feel bad about it. At the same time I don't really want to judge it.

The way I look at it, all of these ideas are up there like floating around freely for anyone to pick up. It's probably part of the collective unconsiousness and they do get individually channelled from time to time.

About the drawings.

These drawings were based off a strange dream that I had. Vampires were a common occurrence in dreams as well as harpies and ninjas during that time. Sometimes they still are but they're not so common nowadays compared to back then. These were interesting dreams because it had nothing to do with me. It was like I took a backseat, grabbed some popcorn and watched a movie being played out in dream-time, and in this case, it was about a character who had shapeshifting powers, mostly of a jelly-like octupus of sorts so that he could ooze his way through crevices, ducts and tight spots that are otherwise impossible for humans to go through. He was an infiltrator by trade, dressed up like a ninja with a wet-suit of sorts stealing state-side secrets and things of that nature.

The setting takes place in an alternate dimension in a world war 2 era with vampires as the nazis. It then takes me to an area just outside a mansion owned by the villain of the dream, inside a forest near a cliff, with greenhouses nearby orderly lined up, (more like props to mislead surveillance) which leads to hangars underground with military jets with wings that curl up/folded up in tow. The hangars had loading docks that were more like the insides of a gun barrel that shoot out these jets that were fastened onto roller-coaster like tracks and levies. Their exit point is at the end of the cliff.

The object that the infiltrator planned on stealing in this dream is a living bio-book, paper and living material fused together to create some kind of sentient thinking machine. Inside it had all the secrets to the dark arts. The cover had a disturbing visage. As the infiltrator was stealing the book and putting it inside his backpack, it seemed to animate in a writhing-like way about its skin, sorta lip-syncing the words. It was saying something but I cannot hear what it was saying, as it was emitting a low frequency noise that only the main villain of the dream could hear, who is a vampire but more bat-like than man. It was his personal sounding alarm. I guess bat-like vampires could hear this sort of frequency, a form of echolation perhaps. He notices it and summons his vampire guards to go to his room to have it checked out. The infiltrator's backpack is also, for some reason, a living sentient thing which resembled a baby-fetus with its elastic-like skin able to accomodate objects inside it, or absorb it completely on some quantum level and convert it somehow, and for it to stretch out to wrap its arms around the host. It talks to the host, perhaps guiding him with the layout of the place as if its some personal GPS device..

Eventually amidst all the chaos and the action, the infiltrator makes his way through to one of the greenhouses and steals a jet to escape. The escape infuriates the villian so he summons his team of succubuses who are like trackers of some sort, and orders them to go after his book. They smile and their eyes light up, and the dream fades to black.

Another one of these drawings can be found HERE.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Dragon on Duty


For some reason I was still thinking about the vancouver riots. The media is still nudging us about it, especially in light of the latest kissing couple. And while I was thinking that, this dragon here has been extra diligent in protecting his/her gold while the looters are still looting/rioting around (in mind).

How did the dragon guarding the gold thing ever got started anyways?

Why would it even care about monetary things? Perhaps dragons know about the weaknesses in humanity's heart so it puts gold there as bait since people will greedily gravitate towards it. It sure is a lazy way of catching your own food by having them go towards you.

Or maybe it's just another one of those metaphorical type of things. About blockages that we need to break down in order to get at something. About a huge resevoir of latent potential hidden deep within us with some powerful force guarding it, to prevent us from accessing that potential.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Speed Paint -- sorta


All Photoshop CS-whatever.

I normally hate drawing on wacoms but painting dark to lights is a totally easier approach than drawing. For me anyways.

Well it did started off as a quick speed paint. Zooming in to refine some of the details took longer than anticipated. So, I don't know, maybe this process took an hour 30 minutes total. Sloppy slow paint is more like it.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Harpies ... again?





Trying for a silhouette style.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Vulture Grim Reaper cont'd

Well blogger's "add image" function seems to be not working for me, or the service is slow/down at the moment. So I'll just re-link yesterday's post here for reference.

Edit: Added text due to CapnG's comment about the vulture + grim reaper combo.

About the vulture grim reaper creature. Now that I think about it, it reminds me of a few combination of all things Grim Reaper and a dash of Froud's Dark Crystal. But mostly early childhood/early adult memories of a certain Gundam character with a sickle, a certain Eldar Exarch of Warhammer 40k, and the Grim Reaper(s) of the earliest Castlevania games that terrified us in the dark with their 8/16 bit pixelated goodness on the NES/Super NES. Then mix their essences together with bird-like creature in a bird creature world and voila~, a vulture grim reaper is born.

Maybe that's all what ideas are. A recombination of ideas already seen and done before, made anew to give a fresh new perspective on it. Go here if you want to read about the Words of Wisdom, which is an art history type of blog that sometimes include essays, transcripts of lectures, excerpts, and quotes of other famous or not-so-famous artists. That link above talks about ideas in that kind of way.

Anyways, as for vulture/grim reaper character, it reminded me of the infamous photo of a vulture on the ground waiting for a crying baby to die. Was probably one of Time's all-time famous photos or perhaps from National Geographic. It was about the (on-going?) starvation crisis that a country in Africa was going through. I don't remember the source but I'm hoping that most of you know of it. Google Image search "vulture looking at child".

It makes me wonder what a vulture goes through while watching something die before eating it.

Does it know from first hand experience of the most graceful ways of dying? I mean, sitting there watching its food dying takes a while, repeated each time per meal, over the course of a vulture's life, so it logs up a lot of time watching things die. One experience might have the vulture thinking "oh, how embarrassing. I wouldn't want to die like that." And maybe it has witnessed some amazing displays of grace and is so moved by that, so that it also knows how to act in a similar way when it comes to their turn to die. This line of thought also brings up a certain passage of a certain religious book that a friend brought up to me about how angels would violently rip the wicked soul's body out of the carcass with the feeling akin to that of being thrown through a bush full of thorns, while tenderly helping the good souls out of theirs. So I imagine sometimes maybe vultures do the same to their meals. That it eats the most graceful ones' flesh so tenderly while violently ripping another animal's flesh up if it had died embarrassingly.

Or does its stomach grumble as it sits there impatiently for it to die, while anticipating the wondrous taste of rotting flesh without the slightest sense of empathy?

After all vultures do wait awhile after something is dead before eating it. Is it out of respect for the dead, or to make sure that it's finally dead? Does it terrify them to eat something that's still alive when the vulture thought it was already dead? so is that why they wait, to be doubly sure?

Or do they wait and see souls leaving first, giving them a go-ahead signal to eat it on some mystical level?

Or because they savour the 'smell' long enough, or when it's fermented enough like distilled wine almost as if it's just right before eating?

Well, you get the gist of it. This is probably one of the good sides to over-analysing things to death. There's all kinds of ways of seeing into a character by asking questions like these. Then it's just a matter of choosing which one you like the best and going with it.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Another Sketch Dump






Here's a bundle of sketches from over the last few days.

Some More Snailians



Col-erase blue pencil, bic pen on paper. Slight touchups on Photoshop.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Jogeetv Scrying




I took a screenshot over at Dax + bro's show when it was just starting out tonight. I keep seeing a bunch of different images every time he randomly darkens/lightens the piece so I decided then and there that a screenshot snapshot would be one way of recording what I see. That way, I can draw whatever that I saw at that moment in time before his image changes completely.

This is just one such image that I saw. It's a crab looking creature with a really stiffed arm claw on the far right. I didnt want to change it too much because I liked the texture it had. I didn't add too much of what was already on there anyways. Just a few lines here to suggest the shape, darken some bits to shade it and then added a few white to highlight other parts. Pretty simple and fast.

Also, the way he was texturing the piece up so fast with his brushes like that would simply kill my computer. It's an old computer in dire need of upgrades. =S

Screenshot is also 72 dpi so I didn't want to spend too much time dabbling in it and getting carried away.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Feather Brained Cont'd

I was staring at this piece for a long time and then it occurred to me to add another bird creature to the mix in an attempt to tell a story of some sort. I'm not sure if it really helps here at all but the idea of another creature of its kind itched my brain. Had to scratch it before I could even go to bed yesterday night. I also dabbled with the colouring as well but that's not turning out too well. So, I'll just show the black and white version for now.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Feather Brained






And yet another bird creature.

Bic pen on paper.
DigiColoured on Photoshop.

Monday, June 13, 2011

EnvElope




Drawn on the back of a bank envelope. DigiColoured on Photoshop.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Warm Ups




Well I decided to warm up by referencing from people photos and then adding feathers to them in the end to make harpies. I fleshed out the pose that I wanted and found a matching photo to reference from, mostly for the torso/head/face. Realism is pretty damn challenging.

Edited:

Updated with an attempt at drawing a background for this character. Perhaps they have launching pads throughout their world and a place to bird-feed/check their mail. =P

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Howdy


He (or she, I really can't tell) is trying to reach out to everybody. Give him/her a chance.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Sketch Dump






The top 3 drawings are from 2006, the bottom 2 are recent.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Friday Fright Night!


Was drawing this gross thing up while watching bro and Dax draw their DC characters on livestream. I totally recommend it. They got me fired up to draw when I wasn't feeling up to it. 'Twas fun! And that is what it's all about.

If I can remember to do this, I might do up a 1 hour monster thing every friday night while they do their livestreams.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Harping about Harpies





Everytime I see beautiful women painted in art, harpies and sirens always alights upon my mind.

The top one is just my attempt at drawing an old woman as a harpy. The bug eye and the gnarled hands kinda reminds me of the witch in Snow White. Or maybe that's Cinderella?

A little tidbit about the old woman harpy.. Back in her day, she had a voice that was to die for. She was a rising songstress in the Harping Harpist Full of Harpies Orchestra until an unfortunate incident one day left her vocal box strained/shattered. Who knows how? They won't say. Now she just screeches incoherently and snatches the villager's pets/kids out of spite (or for food).

Friday, May 27, 2011

Another W.I.P



Edit: Dec 8, 2011. Wow, it's been months since I last worked on this WIP haha. And, it's still not done. Still gotta get the feet in there, the rest of the wings and the hand. Maybe add a weapon too, I don't know. Then touch up the rest of the background as well. Hopefully it will get done soon.