midnight indigestion

here's a picture of The Fruity Vampire Man, who is extremely displeased with the slanderous representation of his people as tormented, sexually ambiguous people constantly at war with werewolves (and somehow always winning the said battle/lovetriangle/hwatever). He says that in reality, vampires are quite happy with the way they are, thank you very much, they are not sexually ambiguous despite their fruity looks, there are no such things as werewolves, and that werewolves are the most ridiculous things he's heard of since large format printers, social networking and that thing where Americans want universal health care .. yet won't pay for it.*




*I'm a socially awkward freak living in a rather social(?) era of networking websites and blogs (the electronic equivalent of a large convention hall packed with people to a psychologically cloying and claustrophobic extent) and my experience with fedex large format printers has been quite positively wonderful, as in the type of wonderful that tries to amaze you with its cumbersome slowness, ill sensitivity and lack of extra stock! And I'm still getting billed for a hospital visit that occured at the beginning of the year! Preposterous.




Speaking of social networking, there is a prevalence of network portals these days (flicker, twitter, facebook, myspace, etc, etc, etc, ..), which makes me think of a rather ghastly possibility:


Will social networks become the equivalent of electronic surveillance?


And pray, dear stranger, think about it, before you go and slam me on the statement.

After all,

A. The psychological? distance between people have gotten smaller, which is a good thing, but..

B. We now have this tendency to constantly update our FB statuses, not to mention those damn Twitters. Therefore letting whoeveritis know what you are currently doing, and perhaps where you're at.

C. There are people who are idiot enough to post their address and phone number on Facebook and other portals.

D. We post our info there, be it our addresses, musical tastes, whatnot.

E. Therefore, we willingly submitting our data to a giant networking website, I mean DATABASE...

F. ... for potential lovers and employers, yes, AND potential assassins, spam adverts, stalkers, pedophiles to take advantage of. And perhaps the soon-to-come One World Government to spy and watch. Sorta like the online version of China's surveillance cameras, only minus the photos I guess. =P


Just my two cents on this extraordinary phenomena. Which I'm unfortunately forced to make use of, thanks to my choice of career (crap).


- (the antisocial acidic agrravant) Azureon

*looks around* sneeze *starts to dust*

my summer so far summarized....




Interesting wall painting near the place i'm at. yet another interesting discovery.



I've been trying my hand on making copies of master copies; supposedly they're supposed to help.
Sargent copies in progress.






And more awkward sketchbook doodles, and this is where I decide that the method by which I measure my skills is this: the ability to capture the essence of the Joker and Batman. I suppose the day I can draw/paing a kick-ass Batman and Joker is the day I'll know I have finally become a master of my craft.

1. Based on the somewhat-steampunk novel The Diamond Age, which I've been dying to read and finally got to. A somewhat psychedelic read (and yet, I say less weirder than The Golden Compass... which just started getting rather. odd. especially in the end.)



2. Awkwardness Epitomized; first time I've drawn the Joker (and used gouache ever since last year), but worry not, as all the subsequent Jokers and Batmans I draw won't ever see the light of day till they shed this awkwardness. -_-;;



3. random doodle.



And as for what I've accomplished this summer ... nothing, except lots of books being consumed, a half finished website, lots of awkward sketching, .... and the crowning achievement: catching 4 mice.
So I guess I could say that instead of working on my portfolio the way I should have, I've slacked off and all I've got are the four carcasses of mice rotting (far far away from me in a trash can that is now in a landfill dump covered with more trash by now) to show.


Um, someone post something please. I feel like I'm talking to a wall. Maybe I am, and in the end I am insane!!! That all of this is just some silly world I've constructed for myself in my demented brain and the next thing I know, I awake from the haze of my frenzied dreams to find myself in a staitjacket in a disarmingly white padded room with no doors, with only a small square shoulder height window (that is padded) to look out on, looking out on a world that is pefectly concealed by trees, so I can't see them and they can't see me ....

- Azureon

daily sketches

My current psychological landscape at the moment. This is how I'll say goodbye to you: with a bang and a flash, leaving a ghostly afterimage in your head that never leaves.

I should have been working on some crap thing they're making me do at the internship, but as surveillance is lax and there are better things i could spend my time with... i spent 5 hours working on this in Photoshop CS3 instead. I think I'm starting to get the hang of painting with Photoshop.
Now time to go procrastinate some more~

-- Azureon

Daily Sketch -- Prinny, d00d!

Seems like I've been using conte, artist oils, and palette knives almost exclusively lately so I thought it would be a good time to remember how to use airbrushes with this li'l chap.

--RWHC

Daily Sketch -- Mercedes WIP

Ok. So I know Daily Sketches aren't supposed to be finished works, but I really liked the way my sketch came out so I just kept on coloring it. Still not finished but here's the sketch:

And here's what I have so far:

Hope to get this done within a day or two!

--RWHC

Daily Sketch -- Cave Bird

Playing around with different layer properties in this one, mainly lineart on Multiply, with a soft light and Overlay layer on top of that. Not exactly the effect that I was looking for (needed it darker) but very useful experiment, nonetheless.

--RWHC

hating on sketchbooks - and yet still trying

*
**
***
****




* eh doodles.
** A bored attempt to draw Mario in Yoji Shinkawa-esque Metal Gear Cover-esque style.
*** kois.
**** lastly and not leastly, Batman. One of the hardest characters to draw, but one I would like to draw again and again (along with him, The Endless in Sandman, Wolverine and Solid Snake ... never drew the latter two, but for whatever reason I'm itching to draw them, despite never having read Xmen or played any of the MGS games).

After the slew of digital I found myself missing the pencil and paint greatly... so henceforth, I will be working with those as I try to spit my muse back out into this plane of existence. After all, whatever skills I obtain with these traditional tools, will carry over to my digital tools.

And this is where I hope that somehow I can get over my sketchbook hate, the way I got over my watercolor hate... not to mention actually make something that I enjoy without killing myself. And that all this effort (and cash) I'm pouring into art will not come back fruitless.





Kids, knowledge kills. So be careful what you let into your head, as once it enters, it sears you for life.


-- Azureon

Catching up with Daily Sketches -- Nausicaa Edition

I had finals last week and I also moved apartments so updating here has been scarce. However, I haven't stopped sketching and here are the sketches inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind". I have other sketches that should soon see the light of day once I touch down in Korea and have time to color them. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far!

--RWHC

Daily Sketch -- Hunter Metroid

Well, when the well of ideas is running dry, Metroids never fail. This here's a hunter metroid from Metroid Prime. Experimented with layering different textures and papers, as well as revisiting an airbrush technique that I haven't used in a while.

--RWHC

Colors DS

Finally got Colors DS!!! Now I am invincible!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!




An apologetically small (thanks to lack of a secure wireless) and rather awkward copy of John White Alexander's Repose.
*

* They say its a good habit (and also a nice way to learn) by copying master paintings and whatnot.. but for whatever reason I've always been skeptical of that. I guess I'll try it at some point to see if I'm actually getting anything out of it.

-- Azureon

Daily Sketch -- Avian Guardian

This here's a bit of concept art for a friend of mine. This giant statue, erected by a tribe of Avians, stands at the desert's edge, watching vigilantly for trouble.

My buddy, Azureon, keeps telling me to stop making shadows using black or gray. So this is a study in colors and boy, was Azureon right! This way of doing it is so much better. No blacks in this one! Just a lot of dark reds, purples, and greens.

--RWHC

daily sketches

stuff i did at the internship, all of which took the entire time i was there thanks to my lack of leet speedpainting skills.
first day:

second day:


Done on Photoshop CS2, using custom brushes by
bluefley's imaginefx tutorial (because i'm too lazy to make my own).

--Azureon

Daily Sketch -- Hand of NOD

Here's another quick sketch experimenting with tools in Painter. This time, the scratchy palette knife. Click on the picture to view the full effect.

--RWHC

daily sketch

"wth is that?"
"MEEP."

Butbutbut ... what the hell is a MEEP?

From June and onwards, I have no excuse. Lestthemawsoflazinessconsumeme.

- Azureon

Uncomfortability.

My oh-so-awkward sketchbook pages. Not as pretty as James Jean's (the SVA Illustration posterboy) or one of the old painting masters, unfortunately. I'm trying to get back into the habit of drawing from life, drawing anything in that damned book, which I used to do alot last last year (and was a whole lot better at, I think).

Unfortunately, because I grew up drawing on stray floating bits of A4 paper (thanks to being underexposed to anything art), I don't sit well with these tightly bound books of doom. They tightly close around me, archiving my every move! (like the camera and the yearbook, other archival daemons I try to duck and hide away from as much as possible). The more enjoyable times I've had drawing were on A4 paper, like the pic below:



Eh, screw the sketchbook. Looks like I'm going to be ditching it altogether and just carry sheafs, no... loafs of A4 paper instead. Even at the cost of me looking like a total idiot. Perhaps someday I can get comfortable with it so that I can actually EFFECTIVELY USE those piles of sketchbooks lying around. Let's hope for that.

-Azureon

Daily Sketch -- Scribbly Spore

Aaaaah.. now that finals are over, I can get back to tending this li'l aquarium that we've built for ourselves in this corner of the intarwebs...

Over at dA, I found this tutorial by one of my favorite artists, Ursula Vernon. I wanted to try it out because the scribbly method looked really interesting and here's what I came up with:

One of the things I really like about these daily sketches is the fact that you can experiment with new techniques quickly and not worry about it being a finished product. I really like the raw energy that this style brings and I want to be able to refine this technique more so that it doesn't look quite as messy as this one ended up being.

--RWHC

daily sketches

Felt like painting koi, so koi you get. Or something akin to it.

*If there is at least ONE thing i must achieve this summer, it is color theory and color management. Damn JPEGS for their data loss.

--Azureon

daily sketches

for now, this is what i am able to spit out for the much delayed daily sketches.

i will try to make it daily.


not feeling very colorful at the moment, but next time, and hereafter, i will stop doing limited color/monochromatic scenes since i'm getting sick of them, not to mention that this became an experiment gone horribly out of proportion;it bleached out this past school year to a grayish darkish shade that is neither color nor uncolor but the gastric discharge of a stubbornly formless beast.

Now time to go sink into that pleasant unconsciousness called Sleep. For some reason, I seem to be getting very little of it, thanks to being nomadic for the last few weeks.

- Azureon

Daily Sketch -- The Hammer Falls

Wow.. after a great performance by the Pittsburgh Penguins tonight against the New York Rangers, they remain the only unbeaten team left in the NHL playoffs! Couldn't resist doing a quick and dirty sketch to show my excitement, of course.

Let's go Pens! Let the hammer fall this Thursday and sweep the Rangers!

--RWHC

Weekend Sketch -- Casey's Birthday

One of the first things I ever did when I was introduced to digital art and got my paws on a tablet was to draw a birthday card for one of my best friends. Having just touched on artistic benchmarks, I wondered what I would do for this weekend's sketch. Coincidentally, her birthday was this weekend and that's the inspiration for this post.

Here's the card I made her two years ago:

Here's this year's edition:

Happy Birthday, Casey!

--RWHC