Frozen

I’m not dead (not yet, at least), but feeling rather frozen when it comes to my art.

I need a reboot of inspiration, or a good kick in the pants, whichever comes first.

Happy Halloween!

Romance is not dead, even for ghosts.

For this little doodle, I broke out a set of unopened colored pencils I can’t even remember buying.

I actually don’t really do much for Halloween besides eat kitkat bars all day.  Someday I’ll go out and have fun.

Pink Sweater

I’m not sure about the colors, but those are fairly easy to change, as fond as I am of pink. The hard part is knowing what to change it to, though.  Colored this sooner than I thought (even with only my touchpad to use in Photoshop), but you can see the blue-ish sketch over at my tumblr.

Inspired a bit by Araki’s style (I was trying to do some color and figure stuff like he does), though nothing near his excellent detail and beautiful line work.

Still, this turned out nicer than I thought it would.

Pencil sketch all prettied up in Photoshop CS3 and colored.

Winged

Acrylic on illustration board.

This is a gift I made for a friend of mine recently. Oddly enough, it fits in a series idea I’ve been planning for a while. I didn’t quite plan that when I painted it, but it sort of worked out that way.

 

 

Nagoya, Japan Art Trip, 2013

A “torii” or a gate to a shrine. This massive one stands as a entry to the historical temples and shrines of Kyoto.

At long last, I finally have some time to post about my trip to Japan this past June. (warning: lots of photos in this post)

When I go traveling, I don’t really think about blogging my adventures later, thus this will pretty disjointed and contain probably only the memorable moments and summaries of what we all did.

At this point, it should be noted that I actually went on this same trip last year as well, but as a formal student. This year I served more as an assistant to the head professor of the trip, which I found much more interesting. But I still got to participate in the exhibition, so I was satisfied all around.

Unlike the well known hot spots in Japan like Tokyo (congrats on 2020 Olympics!) or even Kyoto, Nagoya is still a massive and very industrial city in Japan. Yet, it has some super cool and awesome things about it. Historically, Nagoya was where Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu where based (being warlords and all, not everyone liked these guys, but it seems like most people from Nagoya regard them as local heroes who helped unify Japan back in the 1500-1600s). The production of pottery, tie dying, etc. is also well known in small towns in the Nagoya area. I’m thinking this was one of the big reasons this town was chosen for the art program I went on.

Part of a wall in the pottery town of Seto. An interesting charm to this small town is that the walls, houses, and even streets contain pieces of incomplete or “mistakes” in pottery, making a beautiful mosaic throughout the town like this.

A kimono that was hand tie-dyed in the town of Arimatsu. This is one of the more simple patterns they can create.

Some pine trees from the appropriately named “Arimatsu” (lit. “where pine trees exist.”). A lot of the older buildings remain as well.

Plus, there’s a brilliant art school called Nagoya Zokei University, who was in partnership with us while on our trip, that brought us there!

The shopping was also great in Nagoya. It has various shopping “malls” of sorts both above ground and underground, but a famous shopping district we went to is called Osu. It’s open air, but is a series of streets covered by a transparent roof to keep the rain out.

These demon/oni heads point to Osu’s entrance. The biggest face is saying, “Over here!”

Overall, the trip was packed with something to do almost every day, from going to art demos at a painting class (gold leaf and momigami paper dying techniques!) at Nagoya Zokei to visiting art museums all around the Nagoya area.

A far from perfect example of momigami in it’s finished state, mounted on a wooden frame. For language purposes, momi = massage and gami/kami = paper.

We also were able to spend 2 days in Kyoto to run (quite literally) to as many temples and shrines as we could including Kiyomizu Temple (one of the most popular places to visit in Kyoto, especially by high school students on field trips), Kinkakuji Temple (surreal to see a gold covered building in real life), Ryoanji Temple (known for its large and beautiful rock garden), and Nijo Castle (that has one of my favorite architectural feature, “nightingale floors”).

Only a small glimpse of Kiyomizu Temple. It sits on a small cliff overlooking a vast forest in the mountains.

Kinkaku-ji. This one is a pretty famous one for post cards as well as tourist photos. It’s brilliant to behold, but unfortunately you can’t go inside (for obvious reasons).

Only part of the rock garden in Ryoanji. While it’s hard to tell simply from pictures, it’s very serene and peaceful sitting on the steps overlooking this garden.

Nijo Castle. One picture cannot hope to grasp how massive this building is.

But back to Nagoya, oddly enough my most memorable moment in art was not with the rest of my group of American students on the trip, but rather when my host father took me to the Tokugawa Museum. Sadly, like most museums, I couldn’t take pictures inside, but this is what the gardens outside looked like.

Part of the garden outside the Tokugawa Museum. You can hardly tell it’s in the midst of the urbanized areas of Nagoya.

But better yet, they had actual prints from Genji Monogatari/The Tale of Genji in the museum! I’ve been recently inspired by ukiyo-e (Japanese woodcut prints) so seeing parts of one so famous made me quite pleased.

Then they had this whole hall of katana worn by famous Japanese warriors (some may have been replicas, but SWORDS, it was awesome!)

It should also be mentioned that our host families was what most if not all the American students loved about the program. They were all very kind and caring towards us all, plus we all seemed perfectly matched, personality/lifestyle wise with our host families. Naturally, I thought I had the best family (both last year and this year. This year was a bit more fun because I got two super awesome little host brothers who loved watching One Piece and both did karate!)

The only downside of the trip was rushing around all the time. We hardly had time to hang out and enjoy the sights, chill in the culture, etc. But since the trip was mostly for educational purposes, this made some sense. I think I was able to enjoy it a bit more this time around since it was not only my second time going but also because my limited skills in Japanese could keep be afloat enough to get along well with almost anyone.

The ninjas at the Narita Airport bid us farewell.

Bonus photo for those, like me, and enjoy manga and stuff like that. My host family was super awesome and took me to the JUMP shop!

Nagoya, Japan exhibition, 2013

With a group of my fellow university art students, I traveled to the beautiful city of Nagoya, Japan and in partnership with Nagoya Zokei University (NZU), we spent two weeks on an intensive and educational summer trip that included an exhibition at NZU.

I actually did this same program last year, but failed to make an adequate post about it. Thus, you get to hear from me this year; mainly about the exhibition, though. I may make a post later on about more of the art-sy stuff we did (like make paper, visit a pottery town, go to museums, etc).

The exhibition seemed to be a great success. I showed my three Japanese Fairy Tale illustrations.

And the opening! It was awesome, with lots of people showing up and tons of food and drinks to munch on. Granted, my only experience with exhibitions thus far is in Nagoya and my senior show at my own university, which does not compare at all with it’s simple cookies and cheese cubes (though, not bashing the cheese cubes, those are yummy). But, I would like to think this is the way an exhibition should be done, the way NZU does it, with a variety of food for everyone.

We had a variety of artworks in the show, from paintings to ink drawings to ceramics and metal works to photography and digital prints. So good stuff that made the show resonate well with interest. Setting up for the show went pretty smoothly and quickly and the gallery space was lovely.

View towards the window walls with the almost completed exhibition setup. My artwork is on the opposite corner behind me.

 

The biggest compliment on my own works was the great use of color, which is always something I worry about. I still have a long way to go, but I’m happy my pieces did well.

Even now, I’m still recovering from jet lag. x.x But soon I’ll be getting back into the swing of things and creating more stuff. Cheers until then!

Japanese Fairy Tales

I undertook the challenge of creating a series of something for my last semester, because that’s sort of a good thing to do (it’s not always good to be sporadic with everything you do).  I find it hard to stick with creating a series of artwork unless I really love what you’re working on and don’t get easily bored (like me).

Unlike my lackluster attempts at young Batman villains (which was more my novice use of watercolor than getting bored with the project), I enjoyed this new one of story illustrations for some select Japanese Fairy Tales.

The stories are “The Spider Weaver”, “The White Rabbit and the Crocodile” and “Issun-Boshi (One Inch Boy)” respectively.

Pencil and Photoshop. They are around 8.5″ x 10.5″.

My portfolio is available on Behance.com: http://www.behance.net/drawyoudrawme

Sketchbook doodles part 2 of ???

This did oddly well last time, so let’s see how it rolls a second time around.

More doodles/sketches from this semester.  It all really started out with me drawing a box and went from there.

Stay Classy

In my illustration class this semester, a student asked our professor, “When do you know when a work is finished?”

Admittedly, I can say that this is a question a lot if not all artists will ask themselves about their work. In fact, one of my drawing professors once said that you can keep working on one piece for 10+ years if you wanted to. Though, will a piece ever be done, or will it just reach a point of rest? A place where it can sit and show itself to the world…is that finished or is it just one step of the journey?

Who knows, it’s all too deep for me, even as an almost college graduate.

I used to define “finished” as something smooth and flashy, which it may very well be. Whether it be from laziness or perhaps I’m not bold enough and too hesitant in my creating still, but I began liking an “unfinished” and textured look.

But it’s not finished. I can always do more. Always. But sometimes that’s not always the best.

Bow ties are cool.

Acrylic on illustration board. Around 8″x11″.

You’re never alone.

I find it pretty cute that my blog is mostly visited by spam/adbots, if it’s visited at all. You guys are my only friends. ❤

In truth, they have inspired me to pursue my life long dream of becoming a professional doodler. Because let’s be honest, more people can relate to doodlers more than to a high class illustrator like I’m striving to become.

Sentimental thoughts aside, I’m two weeks out from finishing up this semester and hopefully my BFA.

Feeling like my work in progress currently:

I plan to give him a bow tie if I don’t chicken out/forget in the end.

Cheers to you all and see you on the other side.