Jewel

Finally I'm coming back to normal posts instead of random snippets of absolute boredom XP.

Jewel~

Anyways, yes, this is the lil' something I made for my sister's 21st birthday last December (her birthday's on the 26th, a day after mine and a day before my mother's =D). She's a big Ayu fan, hence the all-white sparkly theme. And its name being Jewel, after the song by Ayu-chan of the same name.

I completed this whole thingy in a day. Couple of hours. Of course the actual idea for it and the buying of the many materials to make it took around two months here and there. Originally I wanted to construct a bird cage out of wire, then spray paint it white...but then I decided to use what little logical thinking I had and came to the conclusion that it'd be too heavy and will warp the canvas eventually. So..yeah. This came out. Inspired by Ayu-chan's Jewel MV, particularly the closeup shot of her very well manicured hand holding a jewelled...thingy. Lol.

Made this thing at my aunt's apartment. The lift wasn't working, so I had to lug the canvas, my Nike shoebox (Just Do It! XD) filled with the bits and bobs, sketchbooks, and hot glue gun up six flights of stairs =_=. And it was at the final stage of completion when I realized I forgot to bring my bottle of PVA glue. Good thing my uncle unearthed a little bottle of it in his toolbox. Haha.

It's also suppose to have a key pendant hanging over the outstretched palm (sister found the pendant in DP so I got it for her Christmas present. Christmas and birthday presents are two different things in our household, yes). After the pendant was removed to be worn, it looked pretty bare although I designed it to still look good even without the pendant. Then I came across the super-duper awesome bird from a shop somewhere in town and that became the substitute. It's pretty fancy, the bird. Haha.

So today I finally decided to go round with taking a couple of shots of it to be uploaded on my dA account, but not before putting it through Photoshop to restore its original colours and adding some fancy sparkles like the ones in the Jewel video (XD). Then I decided that while I was at it, I might as well try some technique for faking aperture in Photoshop that I'd read in one of my magazines (no, sorry, I don't read seventeen or any of those gossip mags. The magazine I'm talking about here is technically The Ultimate Guide to Digital Photography. Hahaha.). Pretty simple, really. Making use of the pre-loaded Gaussian Blur in Photoshop, and layer masks. So you have something like this:


Then you put it through its paces, and you get something like...

This!!!

It's a simple way of getting swanky effects =D. Though of course mastering the aperture in your camera still achieves the best blurred-background effect. For those Photoshop fanatics eager to try this one out, a little hint: set the pixel count of your Gaussian Blur to 8~10 (in this case I went for 8.5). It makes your brain go woozy if the shot is too blurred XD.

So, yeah. That's all for now folks. Stay tuned to my next post- think I'll come up with some peacock-feathery tutorial. Or maybe I'll put up pictures of my Christmas tree if I can find the folder. Haha. Goodbye nao~

僕の大切な宝物 ...

The Turquoise Emperor- in the making

Hello, folks! Back again, this time dragging my latest drawing along! I actually wrote a story to go along with it, so the process of it was draw-write-draw-write-draw-write, until I completed both, but the story later because I wanted to add in lots of descriptive bits here and there. Didn't turn out quite so bad, I suppose, though it is a bit long.
The only reason why it took me a couple of days to complete the drawing is that colouring peacock feathers is effing hard. No, seriously. It's actually quite a challenge trying to come up with a plausible colour palette for the iridescent feathers, and yet I still think I haven't quite got it spot on. But, oh well, for a first shot I think I did okay.

Here are some pictures that I took while colouring! A tutorial-ish step-by-step process, if you will ^^.

Back feathers-base coat.


Train eyelets base coat- outer ring is Letraset ProMarker in Grass Green, teardrop centre is Copic Y19(Napoli Yellow), and circle centre is Copic BG15(Aqua).
The top-left feathers (the completed ones), are made up of: YG03(Yellow Green), G05(Emerald Green), Prismacolor Light Olive Green and a green Pilot gel pen for the outer streaks, Y23(Yellow Ochre) for teardrop centre streaks, and B06(Peacock Blue), B29(Ultramarine Blue), B02(Robin's Egg Blue), and E49(Dark Bark) for the circle centre.


Completed peacock headshot.

Completed peacock with train.
The whole picture is slightly larger than A3-size, so...yeah. You can imagine the amount of feathers I had to colour. But it was really fun and absolutely satisfying =D.

Snazzy closeup of completed flowers. Main colours used are Copic Y21(Buttercup Yellow), Copic Y11(Pale Yellow), Copic RV21(Light Pink), and YR09(Chinese Orange).
....Holy cow I just realized I typed all that out from memory. Have I actually memorized all the colours I have in my marker inventory?!

Close-up of completed train feathers and flowers.

Completed drawing! With a simple background using my birthday pressie from my sister- Blasta airbrush! It's technically a kid's version of an airbrush, really (you attach a water-based marker form the set into a air-squeezer thingy and blow the marker particles onto the paper). It's pretty good for a kid's plaything, and if airbrushing is this much fun, I'm SO saving up for the Copic Airbrush System =D =D =D.

Throw the completed picture into Photoshop CS, add a spiffy texture, sparkles, and...

Tadaaa!!!! =D.

I realise that this is quite an insubstantial step-by-step. I'll attempt to make a tutorial soon for those who'd like to try colouring peacock feathers for themselves! You don't neccessarily have to have a swanky collection of markers (though those certainly help ;D), but you can try it out with colour pencils or watercolours; it'll turn out swell nontheless. Afterall, it's not the materials that make the art good- it's the skill, right? ^^.

Off I go now. Farewell!

Hey

Today's probably a pretty special day to most of us who care to remember.

It's a day where we stop and think and spare a few minutes of our precious time and thoughts for that special someone that slipped through the fingers of time, into the dimension of eternity.

Can you believe it? Practically a year has gone by. Just like that, a whole buncha days went past, our planet just made one more circuit around its orbit, and there we go. We're back to the starting point again. Only there's been a couple of changes here and there. There always had been. So...yeah.

This is a birthday story I wrote in tribute.
Please read it, and correct me where I may be wrong.

The tone of it is pretty...conversational. A bit careless, if you will. Something like an inner monologue, a reflection to that day in a way that most of us young people might try to adopt to in hopes of easing the pain a little.

...Why would I be writing about death on a day of birth?
Have a good day, everybody~

What I Think About Adam Lambert

...He was born into the wrong country.

...Wait, don't get me wrong, I didn't mean to make it sound as if America's the craphole of the universe (which it sure as hell isn't).

I just think that Adam Lambert should've been a Japanese. Grown up right smack in the middle of Roppongi or Harajuku. Yeah.

In the heart of the Visual-Kei scene. He'd totally fit in. The over-the-top costumes, the great voice, the glam-pop-rock genre, everything. He'd thrash the whole place in and out. Bring the house down. Know what I mean?

........uhm, yeah. This is kinda pointless. I'm sorry for having come up with absolutely craptastic blog posts these days. I'm quite bored (I say quite because I've engaged myself in some sorts of activities- totally legal, I assure you), I haven't met any friends since the 1st, the computer lags like *beep*...yeap.


Bet everyone's wringing their hands screaming 'Bring the Gackt back!' now. Haha.

....

....

I want a PS3/XBox 360.


I wanna play Bayonetta.

....

My posts have been remarkably short these days.

Sqweee~

Watch the DMC vid!!! *points to sidebar*

Thought it was pretty cool. Lol. It's modeled off a CM by Jpop band NewS with their song weeek. Whoever who made the DMC remake needs to be clapped a few times on the back XD.

First guy is Dante (DMC1/2), followed by Nero (DMC4), then Dante (DMC4), then Dante (DMC3), then Dante again (DMC1/2) and lastly Vergil (DMC3).

Hahaha. Yeah. I'm bored.

IF GACKT DIED....

Adam Lambert might just be my next god.

=D

Okay, don't even ask me how I got around to liking this guy, even though I never did watch American Idol.

...I watched MTV at the wrongest of times, let's put it that way.

But, dudes, seriously speaking, you've gotta admit he's pretty hawt. Pretty smoking hawt. With a super-sexy voice to match XD. I fell head-over-heels in love with that horny-raised-eyebrow-c'mon-gesture from the For Your Entertainment video (told you I watched MTV at the wrong time), then I buzzed off in search of the album when I realized I couldn't get the song outta my head. And, haha. I think there's a lot of mixed reviews going round the net about the album, but for most of my part, I'm loving it. You can't help getting all horny listening to his songs. LOL. Kidding, kidding. But he's absolutely talented, so he deserves the attention I'm giving him. Despite the fact that most of his poses in front of the camera simply scream "I'm ghey and lovin' it ;D".

...Good thing Gackt's a vampy; he won't be dying anytime soon. Haha.