Fly Balloon, Fly High

This is my website home page now. I made the drawing last summer and left the sketch in my folder for  8 months. I didn't know what to do with it...I didn't know how to color this before.

Color Studies

As I am stressing out with my school works and my deadlines. I managed to do some color studies using googled images as reference. Each takes about half hour. I'm trying to get myself familiarizing with different color palettes. I tend to use the same coloes,so this exercise is a good way to mix up my palettes and make new colors.

Week Goes By So Quickly

March 10th already! I have to organize my portfolio soon. I'm planning to apply summer internship at Disney and Pixar animation studio and the deadlines are fast approaching. 

I usually work on multiple drawings at the same time because I get bored drawing and painting the same image, fixing it without progress. The first two are the most recent ones. I think I lost the sense of color last week but this week I'm improving again. Those are my in progress works.  

I haven't done oil paint for a while, I think I should get my hands dirty again sometime this month.  

giraffe have BG color now

I never draw a fire scene. Let's do that in the next drawing. Industrial environment also sounds fun to explore.

More

I might have found a brush I like.

Digital Painting: Beware, Colors on Screens

I started doing digital painting last summer and I have improved a lot. I love doing it, but even till now I still do not feel comfortable drawing on tablet or Cintiq. I become extremely fussy about the texture, the look of the brushstrokes and so many more. Sometimes, I could not even put a single stroke down. This is very very frustrating. I feel freer when I'm using pastel or pencil on paper.
I try to find brushes that have simular texture to real world medium.

(Study of filme still from City of Ember ) This one looks better on Cintiq screen

Digital painting has another characteristic that is both a disadvantage and an advantage.
Right now I'm looking at the this painting on two different screens.  This is what I see: The image on the left screen looks greener compared to the image on the right. So with different computer screens, the colors are going to look different. I never thought about it until couple hours ago I moved my painting to another screen. (Wow)

This one looks good on a mac but looks over saturated on Cintiq 

However this can be fix in less than a minute by adjusting color balance, contrast or levels (This is the trick for digital painting. I often have to increase the contrast of my painting because I am too timid to put down bold colors)

Update:
Back to my own computer, now I feel like the second image is a little over saturated...

Hills Trees and Stars

I still like to draw simple and I love green. Green used to be my least favorite color, and now it has become my favorite color palette. I just never get tired of drawing trees and hills, so here's trees and hills.

There's a man standing on the hills

I'm also addicted to paint with 30° angle afternoon sunlight and 30° angle dawn light


And, I just couldn't resist making another sky painting, so I made another night sky painting. I'm not satisfy with the sky yet. There's too little stars. I want it to look like supernova explosion with lots of star clouds.

Piano Guy

He doesn't look as exciting as the lady I painted in pervious post, still looking a little flat, but I'm going to leave him like this for now.  I'm recycling my Project 365 sketches. I'm so happy I can paint colors now! (not just with a character sticking on a white background, but with character interacting with the environment) ACCOMPLISHMENT! PROGRESS!

I have been working on my short this week, keying out key drawings and finding reference for the backgrounds. Ah, back in the good old days of getting tanned from fluorescent light bulb.

Color Temperature

Yesterday I did a study of lights and color temperature using photograph and Photoshop's eye dropper tool to figure out the relation of the colors. 

 Today spend the whole day practicing. I can feel my eye balls twitching already.

COLOR COLOR COLOR

I thought I knew color really well. It turns out I don't really understand color...

I spend the whole day trying to figure out the color for THIS! 

And it still looks monotone. I have spend at least 6 hours on this. 

Then I spend an hour on this

And it turns out pretty good. 

WHY?????

Is it because I spend too much time on the first one!? or is it that the second drawing happen to be kind of monotone so I can do it with ease!? I think the issue I have with the first drawing is that I didn't start it with vibrant colors so the colors just gets muddier and muddier and muddier. This just reminds me of my oil painting lesson: always always always start with vibrant pigments!  I can only make my paintings muddier as I put on the next layer. The other big problem is that I have no idea the direction of the sunlight. 

I didn't know what I ate today but my stomach hurts

First Post in 2013

January is such a good month. I took a break and did not make any animation at all or update my works. Opps.
I did do something drawings during my break.

I just have to put the giraffe on XX large size to get the feel of their long neck. It looks good on my screen. I don't know if it will look good on other people's screen though. I think the neck could be even longer.

I don't remember what the name of the bird.

I got distracted by all the good food while I was back in Taiwan so I didn't brother finishing them. I also got distracted by watching anime and reading manga (I call this "researching" I discover a lot of good techniques for composing shots by watching anime.)

February is also going to be a good month. I finally have the storyboard thumbnail of my walking box film.

328 Sketches: Horizontal Tree

The semester is starting and things are starting to get busy, so I think it make much more sense for me to do weekly posting instead of daily posting (I haven't post any new drawings for days...). At this time there is really no point to post every day because I would just be stressing myself making crappy works that I don't even care.
Instead, I will be making at least one "finished" drawing every week.

In progress screenshot

I will probably group my older drawings together in to weekly too

329 Sketches

I always wanted to draw with ink pen. Look at the lines! I should have got one earlier.

329 Sketches

Trying out Tiffany's suggestion: scribble on a page and find stuff. I'm not finding enough stuff. Need to FREE my mind more

330 Sketches: Honey Jar

honey honey honey

331 Sketches: Concept Background Eerie Forest

My friends are designing a small game with the main character as Mr. Death. This is one background my drew for the game (I was very unproductive...feeling guilty.) I will draw more background, starting from today, if time allows me.

332 Sketches: Honey Jar Pencil Rough

333 Sketche: Mouse

334 Sketches

After a long break...

still trying to master the clouds

I need to do more landscape. Yesterday I borrowed a book from the library: LA/SF: A Sketchbook from California by Christian Schellewald. Now I'm motivated to do more landscape painting!

335 Sketches

I saw something simular to this scenery yesterday night, right when I was about to fall a sleep, but I forgot what it looks like. I only remember the geometric shapes and the distorted prospective.

I will be away for 3 weeks to a place where I must fight against other hundred? (less or more? not sure) students for limited internet speed. If I manage to upload anything then it mean I have temporary won the battle

336 Sketches

This is Jiufen in Taiwan. I have been there a couple times but that was a long time ago. I remember the stairs and little toy shops and snack shops beside the path. (or I could be just dreaming. You know when you get to certain age your memories become less reliable. That's what happened, you start to combine different things into one thing, very confusing.)

The shop owner would place the toys in front of the opening, and me as a six years old child would grab one of the toys and start playing with it for who knows how long.
This place is also where the street scene in Spirite Away is based on. Next time when I go back to I'm going to visit it again to refresh my memories.

recognize any of those toys?