Valentine's

So Valentine's Day was yesterday (i.e. a little more than two hours ago). My dad told me there was a poor selection of cards this year sooooo he asked yours truly to make one for mumsie dearest instead. Being the day of, I didn't have a lot of time (like I ever do) but today especially since I had to submit my paper to my online class at something o'clock. Fortunately the card didn't take as long as usual and I'm relatively satisfied with how it came out. My mom is too =)
(and pardon the poor quality, I don't have my scanner here)



Hm the inside looks like it needs another heart or two... nugh oh well I'll let it go. hah

So the list of recipients for "The Annies" has been put up:
http://annieawards.org/foryourconsideration.html

(Wow. Major congrats to the Kung Fu Panda crew)

Self Portraits

To be quite honest, I generally dislike doing self portraits. I'll still do them if the only willing available face is just that of my reflection's.
The first one I did here started out representational but towards the end of it I got bored so I decided to reek havoc- cue the pen scribble a.k.a. (semi)blind contour. I kind of liked the product and wanted to play around even more. The following four pieces were born as I alternated between blind and semi-blind contour. I hope it's obvious but I really had a lot of fun doing these.

They're all kind of fine artsy looking don't cha think?

the last of winter break

I can't believe I only have a few days of winter break left... Ah well I can't complain; it's been a pretty productive month. I painted/ sketched everyday, saw the Totoro Forest Project exhibit, went to the figure drawing marathon, did a little bit of reading, and recently started watching more movies. (Had it my way, I would have gone through the entire AFI top 100 films of all time from bottom to top, BUT eventually...)

So of course, I didn't get to do everything I wanted but I guess that's just to be expected (re: rest).

Figure Painting II

Figure painting in water soluble oils with a limited palette- roughly 4 hours.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased at how this came out.

A Good Day at last

Figure drawing went well (finally). It took me 4 disappointing drawing days to get back into the swing of things since I was so very rusty. So I spent all day today brushing up on anatomy and thankfully it paid off. My drawings seem to be getting larger and larger still, scanner's been a bit funky lately and the drawings probably need 2-3 scans for the whole image. So yeah, um I used my camera...

Cemetery

^CLICK to enlarge please (the thumbnail does no justice)

With the others in CS ho-down crew, I went to Calvary Catholic Cemetery in San Jose to sketch/ paint. I must admit it was kind of weird at first but after a while I eased into the place and eventually it felt more like a park... with tombstones.

I wanted a juxtaposition with the dead with living, hence Miss Kanako and Christine. ^___^





Ugh. My scanner keeps desaturating my pictures! Even with Photoshop I can't get the colors to the original. *sadness*

Miscellaneous Summer Stuff

"Hamlet"- located in Marie Antoinette's Garden in the Palace of Versailles. If you know, the garden is HUGE (ie lots of walking under the sweltering Parisian sun.) Nonetheless Hamlet was well worth it. The dreamy little cottage-like buildings looked like something out of a storybook.
Unlike my other watercolors, I didn't pencil it out first and instead went straight ahead.
This is the Bay Bridge linking San Francisco to Treasure Island (for those who are not familiar, yes that's the actual name). Pen sketched from the Ferry Building located in the Embarcadero district of San Fran.
This was the first page in my then-new sketch book (now 2 sketchbooks ago). I like the experimental color on this.

Stooopid Collage

Strange collage I did last year. I was laughing the whole time, seeing how much more crazy and weird I could make it.
The result is this lovely monstrosity. You're welcome.







I saved this on Microsoft Word originally so opening it on Photoshop significantly reduced the quality. Oh well

Experimented with a weird palette, but I like the result.

The news has been rather upsetting lately, more so than usual.

Bretens Praying (Detail)

This took much more time than it should have.

It's a copy of this artist I just discovered: Pascal-Adolphe-JeanDagnan-Bouveret. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of him before. Really good stuff.

So I translated his oil painting into watercolor, but the paper buckled and apparently didn't like wet media very much, so I had to cheat and use pen for the black. I wanted to paint her whole body but with the way the paper reacted... it wouldn't have gone well. This thing is teeny tiny and will remain indefinitely unfinished.





and my left shift key is broken. nooooo =(

Figure Drawing

I used to only go to two figure drawing sessions a week, but now I'm going to all of the three sessions offered in the week. I think all in all I only missed like 4-5 times out of the whole semester. Here are some the better ones from this Fall '08.

Figure Painting

My first attempt at figure painting in watercolor. Not too horrible for someone who wasn't quite sure of what she was doing. Gestures were 5 min and the long pose was an hour. (By the way, that's a stuffed bird as the prop.)

This was the only session during Gale's class for the figure; I wish we had more.