Court Cards (rough)

Just some roughs of a project I'm working on at the moment. It is a lot of work, but a lot of fun as well.

Winter is coming

I'm working on my holiday card at the moment. I'm still slowing getting into the schedule of always being a month or two ahead of schedule for holidays and what not to give myself enough time to finish something be the holiday starts. So this is the rough of it and there's a bit more arranging and design work before this is finished. I'm excited to start my other holiday card as I'm trying to do a Nutcracker illustration. It should look pretty amazing when finished.

Happy (belated) Halloween

I've been busy drawing, but been a bit lazy to upload things. I wish I had done more of these, but it's something to save for next year.

Halloween Candies

Ah, October and the fun of Halloween. I remember being super excited as a kid thinking of all the candies I can get. Then when I grew up, I got super excited for November 1st, the day after Halloween where every store would discount their Halloween candy. Just some quick sketches of candies I remember getting as a kid. I'm going to try to do more of these.

Fall 2013 (WiP 2)

I realized that fall is fast approaching. I'm looking forward to all those bright colours.

Fall 2013

I wanted to try something different with this illustration, more designed.

Origami Adventure

I'm having a lot of fun doing this for a friend. This is the second one I've done and I wonder at the end of it if all the illustrations can tell some kind of story. I guess I can only wait and see.

Birds and Flowers

I felt like drawing birds mostly 'cause I really enjoy the shape of the cardinal. The second picture is a birthday card for someone important to me. Hopefully there's not something else I know who has a birthday this week. It turned out pretty good being done all free-hand and me eye-balling it. I just don't like to draw a grid and all that.

Origami Adventures

This seems to be a week of gifts from me to others. I'm really enjoying how this drawing is turn out. I'm using a nice cold press watercolours which has a bit of a bite to it. It's interesting to work on this with a technical as it takes a bit more pressure to get the paper to really absorb the ink. This way, it's easier to do fine line work.

Super Brother sketches

I honestly don't think I've played Super Mario Bros in years. I sort of miss it. Now to find magic leafs.

Salad (finished)

Now to have some lunch.

Dragon and Dragon Ball

I've been in the mood to draw dragons lately though I don't have a project where I'm able to draw dragons all day. A long with that dragon mood, I was in the mood for some Dragon Ball sketching. I grew up watching Cantonese dubs of the show when I as a kid. I honestly miss those dubs. I always thought Future Trucks was super cool, especially since he had a sword even though the sword broke later on.

Sketches - flowers

Just some sketches of flowers. More a technical study than anything else. I think 15 years working with pen and ink, I can start to think that I'm good with the medium.

Salad (WiP 1)

I've had this ink drawing done for awhile and it's just been waiting to be coloured in. It's look good so far and delicious.

RRRRRROAR - finished

I've just been enjoying the wonderful weather lately but I got this finished up.

RRRRRROAR (WiP 3)

I always find it funny when I look at the calendar and so much time has gone by. I've been busy lately and have finally gotten around to finishing this up. I love how it's turning out and can't wait to see it finished.

RRRRRROAR! (WiP2)

The funny thing is that I've never seen a whole Godzilla movie before.

RRRRRROAR! (WiP1)

I think the funny thing is that I've never fully watched a Japanese Godzilla movie. I've seen bits and pieces of the older ones on late night TV back when I use to sleep really late. I like how the little sketch turned out to get this. It's fun to make slight variations to get the final look of the piece.

Space Girl - finished

It's been a busy week, but I found some time tonight to finish this up. I like how it looks especially compared to the original piece I did years ago. There's a lot of changes since then (about 5 years ago) and I'm glad I'm still improving with every piece I work on. Now to get started on my next piece.

Space Girl (WiP3)

I always have this odd feeling when I go back to work on a project that I started a few weeks back. It feels odd and I look at the drawing and I don't have that drive to finish it as much as when I first started. It's funny 'cause I've met a lot of artist who work on multiple pieces at once 'cause they go back and forth when the creativity or something dries up for one piece. I find that I don't work like that as much.

Influences

I grew up watching Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball Z as a kid. It is probably one of my biggest influences and I spent years just re-drawing Dragon Ball pictures. It's one of the ways we learn as we grow into the artist we want to be. We copy and re-draw. But the important thing is to one day find our own language as an artist, but it's nice to remember where we came from. To this day I can still sort of draw a kind of Dragon Ball style.

Jazz Casino (CD and CD Design) - Part 2

There is one of the first pass for the colour version of the CD cover as we thought of using black and white with a bit of red to pop it. The design ended up being just a bit too stark with all that white though I did like "see-through" black hair. It just didn't work out so we went with a more full colour though using a limited palette to give it more of a feel of the court cards in a deck of cards. The final layout with the spot illustrations is featured below with the back cover photo courtesy of Kat Rizza of Kat Rizza Creative. It was a lot of work creating the whole CD package, but it was a really fun project. I look forward to having another chance to work with Jen and EAST again.

Dancing Girls

I had the opportunity to help set up and watch the showcase by a program called Roots and Branches. It is a program that teaches Caribbean, African, Hip Hop, classical Indian and Contemporary Dance to kids of various ages. It's more than just a dance program, but a opportunity for kids to learn a part of a culture, the important of communication via dance and to give young people a place to showcase their talents. It's run by a wonderful woman by the name of Tamla Matthews-Morgans, who I can't plug with a website 'cause someone has just been too busy to create one yet, but can be contacted at m_tamla at hotmail dot com. But I was inspired to draw some little dance illustrations. I'm sure my memory has the costumes a bit off so hopefully no one is too offended by this.

Jazz Casino (CD Cover and Design) - part 1

In March or April, I was contacted by Jen Fabico, project manager, of EAST, which is a project divided into three groups that aims to teach youths in the Scarborough area that ins and outs of working in the music world from making music, managing and videographing. It is an excellent program where the youths are guided by professionals to show them how the industry works and gives them the skills to help with their future. I was asked to design the CD cover and the CD design of their upcoming CD (which has launched already and is available through their website: EAST). I was working with the title track of the CD, Jazz Casino. Here are some of the roughs for CD cover, CD Logo as well as spot illustrations on the inside.

Happy Canada Day

So I'm a bit late 'cause I was busy celebrating ... by spending a day relaxing. It's the thought that counts and here's my thought. Okay, I went full cheesy with this. Now to get back to work.

Attic Fight (ink- final)

I don't think I've ever worked a complex scene like this with ink. I find it so much easier to do a scene on the computer as I've got a lot of different tools to help me out and the fact that if I screw up, I can always just "undo". I admire anyone that does ink and watercolour work as there's no real way to really fix any mistakes. It's there, always. The scene turned out pretty cool and a bit different than how I'd imagine the poster would be, which is great.

Gifts

I think everyone other person has a Kickstarter campaign these days to make their own deck of cards into a reality. I have to admit that I've always wanted to design my own deck of playing cards or tarot cards. I thought of combining the two of them together and the Queen of Spade is a rough idea of that. This is also draws inspiration from the Wild Cards book series on the phrase "drawing the black queen". The sketch is an idea of my own that I'm borrowing. I wanted to do a giant poster with the multi-layers of a house overlaid with the fantasy imagination of the children in it being battle scenes. I'll have to get around to that poster one day.

Space Girl

After finishing some work, I've finally gotten back to doing some personal work again. I decided to redo an old illustration and see how far I've come. It's one this blog somewhere way back, but I'm going to repost it side by side with the finished one to see the difference (hopefully) in experience and skills.

Inking Drawings

I think every artist has a medium or two that they are extremely fond of and it was part of their first step towards being an "artist". I use to want be a comic book artist and devoted myself to learning how to ink. Inking isn't just tracing over a pencil image; it's more than that. Inking an image will add an extra level of life to an image that wasn't there before. As much as I work solely digitally for my finish work, I love inking a drawing and doing that well so every now and then I'll create little small drawings just to keep in practise or see how far I've come.

Gift (WiP ii)

So my gift illustration is coming along nicely. I can't wait to take this into Photoshop as I wanted to try a different way of how I normally do my textured process. It'll be interesting to see what effects it'll have and if there is anything different in the visual look of the piece when it's done.

Gift (WiP 1)

So I'm working on a gift for someone and luckily they're probably too busy to have time to see this, but this is the first step of it. There's honestly a lot more to do; it took me awhile to finally figure out an idea and composition that I liked. I find that some pictures work like that, just being drawn over and over again in roughs and thumbnails until something clicks. Often time, there are just small changes that only I really notice.