Testing dollar items

Yesterday I went to a Japanese dollar store called Daiso.

They have amazing stuff there! And I found some brushes, watercolor, and air dry clay.

This is me testing out the clay.

Pretty snazzy.
Can't wait til I get to paint 'em!

I only got the black ink, but they turned out pretty cool!

That page was my last page for my sketchbook. Gotta find a new one.
Until then, I'll be drawing in paper napkins and such. You know, the usual art people paper.

São Tomé - redrawn fashion illustration!

Ha hah! I got it done! Check it out. Woot.

Now two travel books to go....Go!

São Tomé watercolor

Good morning!

I'm working on a new piece for the final watercolor as we speak.
I completed a fashion illustration while I stayed in São Tomé,
but being inspired so much by my fine artist friends there, my work became more realistic.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing, but I am now going to only exhibit that piece for the Summer Study Abroad show,
re-do another painting and show the new one for my Summer Thesis show.

Here's what I did in São Tomé:

Marlin, or the swordfish, will come up often during this travel. In Portuguese they're called "peixe andala" (fish marlin) and they're SUPER delicious!

I wanted to redraw this same image and just stylize it a bit more for the fashion illustration, but I ended being inspired by the pose, but changing the girl entirely. Check out what I have so far:

Excuse the documentation quality: scanning for me is such a hassle because it's smaller than my works and it tends to saturate my pieces more. At some point I'm going on campus to re-scan all my final work for my website.
Anyhow, in the re-do I made the her hold a bucket of fabrics. The background will be the river scene with other women washing their clothes. I'm not sure how well you can see in this image, but there's a little boy holding her hand and also a toy car made of plastic bottle in his other hand.

Critiques are always welcome. :)

Next blogpost I'll show you my travel book. At some point I have to show you the box I carved too! About 2 and a half weeks stay in São Tomé, some of us worked with the professional word-carvers and either commissioned them, or learned to hand carve wood with them. I'm very proud of the box. The top is a mancala board (or "jogo de arrur" in Portuguese. I'm probably butchering the spelling. If anyone knows it, please correct me) and the bottom has a little drawer to put the playing pieces in, in my case, sea-shells I collected on the island.

LA - sketchbook

More scanned!

 

Ladi da.

That's it! I have more but I want to show more of my other stuff.
I'll upload the sketches for my LA pocket book soon. Stay tuned!

Summer Thesis - new and improved!

I decided to tweek my thesis a bit...

So instead of all those mumble jumble, I am going to have 3 sets of 1 fashion illustration, sketchbook, and a little pocket book with few pop-up pages.

The set will be for Los Angeles, São Tomé, and Baltimore.

This is what I have so LA for fashion:

 

I really need to get a good scanner. It has the most difficult time capturing yellow and seems to make my images too bright. :/ 

I'm still in progress of making the book, but I promise to post up sketches this time!

And for the sketchbook...meh, I suppose I can upload some.

This is when my friend Elizabeth tried ordering Chinese food and had to spell out her name.

some view from Santa Monica beach.

 

I clearly have 2 totally different approach on fashion illustration, and I'm struggling right now on how to go about this.
We'll see how it goes.


SPEAKING OF FASHION, GREAT NEWS!
I will be a GTI (graduate teaching instructor) for Daniel Krall's Lifestyle's class!
That means I will be working on fashion illustration while I teach kids! It's going to be great!
I'll do the best I can to keep updating my blog. That way, I can see my progress too.

I'll scan more, but this is it for now. Enjoy!

Summer Thesis - final

I finalized my sketches and I was ready to illustrate the girl, so to celebrate my "yay I finished enough for today," I went to go watch Bridesmaids with my sister.
After spending about 2 hours of quality time with her, I realized the beauty of illustrating "types of figures" is when an artist captures the diversity in people and style. So I decided to draw 4 figures instead, and started the final.

Sketches were never my thing. It's very rare that I stick to my sketches and get the result that I want. In fact, I prefer working directly on the final page and recreating many finals to get the perfect one. It's time consuming, but I'd say I draw pretty fast, so it all works out best for me this way.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm still not done, but this is what I have so far:

I couldn't fit the whole image onto the scanner, so there's that weird gradient/shadow, but whatever. It's not the final. If you have any suggestions for the color for the suit, please feel free to comment!

So, for Concepts....

"Because I Fell and Scraped My Knee"

I FINISHED THE BOOK!

It was a long long process of me drawing and coloring... but alas, I'm done with it!

9 spreads in total. I haven't drawn end pages, but I might not have to with this book just because they're almost appropriate for card-board book. Hmm... Although I don't like that idea because in my mind card-board books are kinda... geared toward younger audience that I intend the book to be for.

I'll show you the first couple of pages, and I am planning on printing them awesome quality and hand bind them for Art Market, so if you like the story, shop-away! Woohoo

Hope you liked them! :)

obviously i'm new to this

i suppose i can delete the other post
and retype it again with new images
but it's kinda funny so i'm going to keep it there

so again
my art works...

the blue one is in watercolor and the cicada is in gouache. they're both from last year so give me a break.