Nylons and Peonies...

 Hello there! I'm afraid I've not been at all productive this first month. This won't do at all! I have been busy indeed with moving into my new home. It's very pretty, but my room is bare still, and I plan to take some photos after I've done a bit more decorating ;).

Anyway, Chinese New Year is around the corner! I have shopped for new clothes, and today I decided to try my hand at tattoo stockings to glam up an outfit or two. I decided to do a design that is oriental and festive, so I drew a cluster of peonies based on Peranakan porcelain ware:

I basically drew out the design the same size as the cardboard backing my stockings came in. I bought a pair at Daiso for RM5, a steal, really, because it's not too bad quality and very comfy. Also I wouldn't feel too bad a heartache if I messed up ;).

After I had my design, I just marked where I wanted it to be on the stocking, then slipped the cardboard into the stocking! I didn't have fabric markers or the right coloured Sharpies, as many DIY tutorials suggested to use. But surprise, surprise, Joanne just happened to have a box of rainbow-coloured Copics at her disposal and that was what she used! Of course, I don't intend to wash the pair out, and even if I did I don't believe the colour would run too bad as they are not washable (I've stained a shirt or two in my over-enthusiastic past, yes.). The myriad of shades I have meant that I could add some shadows and details, and not just settle for flat colours. Which was exactly what I did!

After a good long while dabbing, completion! I was very happy with how it turned out; it was exactly how I wanted it to be. I am glad of the Copic markers, particularly the brush nib. It made fine lines so much easier compared to the normal small nibs. The black outline was put on last, and I found that dabbing tiny dots with the brush nib is a lot easier compared to drawing long lines. 

I can tell this is not a very good show of my photography $k!lLz, but this will have to do for now. I was just too excited with how the design came out XD. It matches the flamingos swimmingly well! I was planning to make a matching phoenix on the left leg, but I'll need a bit more time to figure out how to simplify and position it. Try your hand out at tattoo stockings soon! It's really easy and fun! :)

By the way, have you voted 5 times for Limkokwing University today? Only 3 more days to vote! Thank you everyone for your support! Tune in to the next post when I unveil my next crafty project! ;D

Today's Special: Heal The World

It's here!!!

This is my final assignment for Illustration. We had to do an A3 marker rendering on the theme 

'Heal The World'. I chose to focus more on the result of the actions of global warming, such as melting polar ice caps and habitat destruction. The melting caps was useful to lead into my concept, which was a melting sundae. The ice cream scoops was juxtaposed with endangered animals to symbolize the creatures suffering from the destruction, and the sundae glass was built out of cramped houses and narrow streets, a nuclear plant and a train spewing black smoke. 

I was greatly inspired by Mattias Adolfsson, a fantastic fantastic artist I've been following on deviantart for many years. You know the kind of artwork that just pulls at your heartstrings and makes you want to cry? Mattias' works gets to me that way. His incredible detailed imaginative drawings are explosive. You'd wish for extra hours in the day just so you can sit and pore over his works and drink down every last detail. Do pay his site or dA page a visit, I assure you it is very much worth it :) .

I used coffee to paint the sundae glass! Started with a weak one, then added more coffee to get stronger, darker shades. The even darker shades I added with markers. Oh, the best wake up smell ever is an orgasmic cocktail of coffee and Copic ink! :D. One could get high on it, not like I did, but, yeah. Haha.

To update, I have aced the final presentation of the semester! Now there is a final group compilation project that will headache me for the next few days, and the semester will be utterly, completely completed! I can't say I didn't enjoy the semester, though I thought it dragged on for a tad too long. I'm glad I did all that I did, and I'm just as glad that it's soon to be over so I may concentrate on some personal work and self-reflection :).

TGIF everybody! And have a great great weekend! 

Sneak Preview!

Today (or yesterday...since it's been today for half an hour already), I made a new friend:

He is a useful friend, but probably a very formidable enemy. I'm surprised I never got one of these precision knives earlier in my 'artsy-designy' life. It isn't very cheap, though. But it's nice and heavy, and it feels reliable. And being new, the blade is gloriously sharp, so that I actually cut what needed cutting quickly and effortlessly. 

Here's a sneak preview of what I was cutting, more of it very very soon!

Two more blog posts till I celebrate the 400th post on this 'ere blog! Come around for the party, everybody! I shall unveil something pretty awesome then :D. It's the 25th right now, which marks exactly one month to Christmas and my birthday! So many things to do, so little time ><. 

Hope I'll be feeling better than I do now this time next month. Till then, have a happy happy Sunday!

G05 With Envy

Ohai everybody. Another week of busyness, followed by another and another and another. I'm looking forward to kicking my feet up and chilling, but for now I shall plump up my pillows and....put them behind my back as I work hard :D.

Anyway, I was just reading Marianne Walker's new Copic blog post and I think it's such a wonderful idea to use Copic codes in colour-related idioms. Awesome way to show off your Copic pride.

I Like Markers

I've read some really witty comments with all sorts of different idioms being Copic-fied. What do you think you can come up with?

Mooncake, Coffee, or Festivities?

I just found out that today is the Mid Autumn Festival! Hope everyone celebrating is dancing themselves silly, matchmaking and stuffing themselves silly with mooncakes. Wait, I don't think you do the first two anymore. Not in this dynasty and this part of the world anyway, I think.

It is also Coffee Day again folks! The day we celebrate the aromatic beverage that keeps us awake when we least want to be. Go grab a cup of ol' joe to celebrate! I know I will :D.

Here's a quick marker-digital sketch I made for the occassion! Since the two celebrations coincide, this is a little bit of both worlds :).

So how's about sitting down to a cup of coffee and a mooncake today? A special coffee break for a very special day :). Happy Mid Autumn Festival and Coffee Day everybody! 

Candy Twitters

I'm going to save up my monies to expand my collection of markers. And no, too much is never enough. Besides, how can anyone resist such pretty names? ^O^. I'm imagining a seaside fair and little girls with pink ribbons in their hair, cheeks sticky with cotton candy wisps.

Because I was too bored, and because I can't seem to stop thinking about the pretty colours, I grabbed the colours off the Copic site, and played about with them. And this came out!

 I made it into my desktop wallpaper, and since I'm at it, hey, why not you fellas have a share of them birdies :D. I also put a paper texture as an experiment and I got a pretty nice hipster effect. Which do you like?

 Feel free to use it however you like, though re-blog/tweet/etc+credits would be most appreciated ;). Throw it onto your desktop! Update your cover photo! Or even print little squares of it and stick them all over your room! :D

Copic is always coming up with gorgeous colours, and maybe they wouldn't be so attractive if it weren't for the names that come with each new shade! I'd be so much happier if I didn't have to cry every time I take a marker or two to the check-out XD.

Anyway, it's the weekend everybody! I should be doing lots of other things, and I will. All in good time. Haha. Cheerio~!

Nodin

Good morning my fellow brethren! Only two more days left of April. Another month just passed us all by yet again.

It feels to me that this semester is all about Native Americans, lol. First it was the dreamcatchers, then the presentation for Design Heritage, and now my marker illustration assignment. Even the comic one had feathers and sacred talking trees. Guess the tribal-native in me is coming to life =P. It came alive enough for me to work on this anyway!

Nodin

Nodin is the Ojibwe/Chippewa word for wind. And that was what I was trying to get at in this picture. Basically it's a non-too-conservative girl having a race with her spirit deer in a forest. I tried hard, lol. Yes I did. I wanted to do something a bit different, hence the oval frame. And I tried as hell to do something different with the markers. I realized I never really mastered the technique of gradients, particularly with two completely different colours. That's why I tried it out in this piece, blending lots of colours that are usually not so compatible with one another. I think I still need to work on my colour palette $k!lLz, lol. 

I love the feathers of the headdress tho ^^. And the bikini. And her skin though you can't fully appreciate the soft shadings I did. For some blardy reason the no-good scanner in Miso sucked the colours out of this and now it looks a tad bit unflattering. In the real thing the oval frame is almost glowing, but here it's a bit hard to see because it's kinda dark. Nevermind, stare harder and sink into its magical beauty :D.

Yet again, I realized that in comparison with the other submissions I saw, mine did not look like the others. Not that I can tell if it's in a good way or not. Oh well. What do you have to say about this? Comments and critiques will be greatly appreciated :D. Better yet if you could amble over to my deviantart account and hit the fav button, lol.

I shall wander away for the night, as I will be going for the Avenged Sevenfold concert...wait what you didn't know? .___. Oh well. Now you do. Here's hoping I'll get some pwetty shots this time, haha. Whee! Happy Sunday everybody!

O^O

I feel this great longing to work with markers now. To do something light and airy-fairy with the smell of Copics up my nostrils. I may be addicted to that nostalgic scent, lol.

Sordid | 2010

Looking back at my artwork, I am very much drawn to Sordid for reasons I can't quite fathom. I actually like the composition and the soft colours, though the background could've been a tad less cluttered. I'd like to try something similar again! A soft central focus with accompanying random and repeated elements. Only maybe this time I'd like a to have some sort of colour palette, lol.

Today I shall work hard at completing my assignments, then I shall attempt to work on something 

marker-y! ^O^. Go Joanne go!!

Hope it'll be a productive weekend for everybody~! Cheereeooo!

Markers, Glorious Markers~!

So I went out and bought myself these two new babies:

And ohmaigoodness I began to wonder why I stopped expanding my collection of markers.

Then I went to the counter and the guy totted up the bill and I was gently reminded the very reason why, lol.

And, yeah, with the whole digital era coming down on us, markers and every other traditional media is more of a hobby than a means of generating revenue. Of course I can still rattle off a string of artists that still work off traditional media, but they and almost everyone else also use digital besides. 

 But with Illustration class this semester, everyone will be needing markers, right? I'm just lucky to have a working set beforehand, the same way some people go to Photoshop/Illustrator class with knowledge on the tools and whatnot already. Still, I will never consider myself to be a master at markers. Never. I just enjoy using markers, and I am a very enthusiastic collector of them. That be all. 

There is still some good in all those years of me using markers though. I've tried quite a few, enough to know them quite a bit. And I think, safe to say, that Copic markers are still by far the best of the lot. Of course, you'll probably need to starve yourself a bit (or sell a some of your soul) to get the cash to buy a decent set, but yeah. If you have the money, you get the best. I'm not saying that other markers are bad, though. But I'll get down to that later.

...Yes, I bet you didn't know that I was going to start lecturing on markers XD. But once I get started I can't seem to stop, lol.

Here we go: Copic markers! I actually did a presentation on them for Communication Studies back in foundation, don't know how many of you remembered that, lol. Anyway, Copic markers come in three different kinds: a square bodied one (top), an oval bodied known as Sketch (middle), and a smaller, round bodied Ciao (bottom). Price differs, it's around 13/14 bucks (yeah, I know) for the regular/Sketch, and the Ciao is cheaper, I think maybe 10 bucks or so. Simply because it's smaller.

The nibs on them are different as well. With the regular Copic you'll have a Broad nib on one end for large surface areas, and a Fine nib for precise corners and whatnot. The fine nib is firm, but it can flatten if you press too hard down on it. I actually have a G05 (Emerald Green) marker that has a flattened fine nib. Still usable but, well, it's just weird, lol. The Sketch and Ciao markers both have Medium Broad nibs on one end and a Brush nib on the other. The Brush nib is firm yet flexible and you can get very good feathering effects with them, besides covering moderately large areas and tiny areas with the tip of the brush.

There are a few reasons why I say Copic markers are best. One, they come in a good variety of nibs, and all nibs are replaceable. So if you do press a bit too hard and flatten a nib, you can get a pack and pop a new one on. And there's the amount of colours they come in; last time I checked Copic Sketch markers came in 358 different colours, and I'm not sure if that's with the new 2011/2012 colours included ._____. . Not only that, all Copic markers are refillable, unlike Prismacolors. They don't smell bad, unlike Prismas. The colours, I find, are more translucent compared to other markers like Kurecolour or Letraset. Event the more vibrant colours are a bit...lacking? In body. Not sure how to express it, sorry.

The downside of Copics is of course its price. God are they expensive, lol. And they're also hard to come by. Before Art Friend opened in The Gardens I only saw them in Kinokuniya, but now even Kino doesn't have Copics anymore so it's just Art Friend. And only the Sketch markers come in each and every colour. Regular Copics come in 214 colours and Ciao 180. 

If one is planning on using markers to complete an assignment and be over and done with, I wouldn't really recommend Copics. Because you'd be spending a fortune and then said fortune would be mouldering in the corner after you're done. Also, if you are on a tight budget I can assure you your heart would crack in more than one place if you're going to cover a huge area of colour with your Copics, even if you have re-fills =P. Which is why, I'd recommend some other markers to satisfy your alcohol-pigment needs:

The one on top is Kurecolour. Fat, round body with two nibs: a flat broad and a fine nib. Both nibs are harder than Copics but if you're doing precise work it's an incredible advantage.  They are also refillable, though they don't come in as many colours as Copics. Very nice to use, though. I like them for their vibrancy, especially when I'm working on one of my drowned in colours drawings =P. 

Prismacolours (second from top) is probably the next best to Copics. Although not so many in colour as Copics, I think they put quite a lot of thought into which colours to produce, so that there is really just about every colour you'd need, be it for human portraits or architectural rendering. I really like the Deco   series; very pastel and dreamy! I have not tried the skin tones, but I've seen many works out there and the results are pretty good, though it looked just a bit more artificial or 'plastic' than how natural skin would look. 

One of the downsides of Prismas, I realized, is that they tend to turn yellow after time. I was flipping through my swatch book and I realized that some of the Prismas have a yellow halo around them.

Only the oranges and the yellows have them, though. The reds, blues and greens seem to have no effect. 

I can't remember where I got the Letraset markers from. They are pretty much like the Kurecolours, except that they are slimmer. Letraset also produces Tria markers that correspond to the Pantone colour system, though I have yet to try those out. Yoken markers are nice and cheap, and the art shop in Limkokwing sells them along with the Prismas. I got two whole sets from someone, and they are pretty nice. They have a very light scent. And the greys are pretty good. 

What I usually like to do is use cheaper markers for large areas of colours when I can, and use Copics for medium/small areas. Most of the markers blend well with one another despite not being of the same make. So it boils down to the nature of your work. Whether you want something to grab-and-go or something longer lasting and permanent. 

So...there you have it. My long long ramble on markers. Hope it was a bit informative, if not entertaining at the very least. I need to practice my marker $k!lLZ, will you believe that I have not touched markers for almost 4 months now.

Happy markering~!

Happy Marker News!!!

I just found out that Copic now has an online community named Copic Color! Yayness! It feels awesome to be able to be part of a marker-enthusiastic community and to be able to share the Copic goodness =).


In the website you can share your Copic creations with other Copic enthusiasts. One of the awesome things about the site is that you can actually set down the Copic colours you used as your artwork palette. Besides getting a whole load of news updates and promotions of the Copic world, you can also get tips and techniques in improving your Copic $k!lLz =D.

It's odd to think that despite being manufactured and created by Japan, Copic markers are more popular and engaging to the public in the US. Unfortunately it's harder to find a community here in S.E Asia, what more to say Malaysia. It's that or I'm not bothered to search hard enough.

Anyways, it's things like these that make me hype up to keep using Copic markers =D. Better start brewing up some fresh ideas (and actually execute them!) before my markers dry up, lol.

MANGGA

Still busy as hell, but managed to come up with another odd drawing.

Hope to see you bunches at GACC!! If fate will allow things to go as planned, I'll be selling prints and doing commissions!

D'ERLANGER's Masquerade song is

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!

*ACEOs*

First set of 25 ACEOs, #2-#26



...Miss Pang's gonna eat my brains if I phail Friday's paper (though that's not very possible as commerce is probably one of my stronger subjects lol)

Anyway, hello everybody! Watermark done after a fiddle here and a muddle there in Photoshop. It was pretty simple after a few helpful tips from a couple of online tutorials I found. Haha. So, yeah, I've decided to hang all the doubt and just put up my happy set of 25 ACEOs up for the world to see and admire XD XD XD.

I'm sure plenty of you are going about wondering "What the hell is this ACEO shit?". Well, it ain't shit. Lol. It all started off as ATC, the acronym for Artist Trading Cards. Like baseball cards (or them Digimon/Pokemon cards that kids love flinging into other people's faces and screaming "I CHOOSE YOU PIKACHUUU" and expecting the real yellow puffball to poke its head outta the card...I'm digressing. Haha.), ATCs were created by artists, then traded and collected. When non-artists came to know about this, they were interested to begin their own collection of ATCs, but haven't their own cards to start with. So a couple of artists got round to making ACEOs (short for Art Cards, Editions, and Originals) to be sold to the non-artists. Yeap. It's a really fun way to explore your creative imagination and at the same time, collect inspirational cards from other artists and make new friends.

Each card measures 2.5"x3.5". That's about all the rules there is to this. The medium, material of card, anything else is entirely up to the artist. I've seen cards made out of glass, wood, and felt to name a few out of the ordinary materials, besides the popular paper/cardstock ones. The difference between ATCs and ACEOs is that ATCs are meant to be traded, whereelse ACEOs are meant to be sold.

So...about my very own set of ACEOs! Haha. I made the first five back in January, then busied myself with all sorts of other shit and forgot all about it. Then, during trials, inspiration came to me and I started making cards close-to-daily, sometimes 2 or 3 cards a day during study breaks XD. It's a fun and addictive process once you get into it, seriously. I wanted to make 25 to display on an empty canvas I had, but I have yet to stick them on with blutack. Haha.

Most of my ACEOs are made with markers as the primary medium, but there are also a lot of collage involved, like #17, #19, #21, #23-#27. Used my secret stash of pretty wrapping paper for most, as well as other random materials like gel pens, paper flowers, lace, ribbons, plastic gems and spangles. Oh, oh, and let's not forget #24!!! I used glass paper for the background. I remember playing with lots of that colourful translucent paper when I was a kid XD. I don't really see many people using it anymore...it's like...the forgotten paper. Lol. Whatever it is, you can achieve some pretty vivid effects with it, and I'm glad I had the chance to be re-acquainted with it =3.

I do intend to sell these off, but that'll be somewhere in the future (probably after the gawd-forsaken SPaM), when I've made a PayPal account or something. And got to grips with shipping prices. And further develop my artistic $k!lLz. So, for now, you may look at them pretty cards and smile at 'em XD.

Oh, and now for a brief update on today's Art paper. Haha. It was pretty enjoyable, I must say. I'm glad to announce that I managed to complete my artwork within the given 3 hours =D =D =D. I had to paint a seaside scene with kids making a sandcastle, giving attention to the children and the design of the sandcastle. For starters, the sandcastle could most definitely not be made by children (unless they were Japanese kid-inventors...or something XD), but it's pretty okay, I suppose. I painted most of it with happy old watercolours, then minor details I used my magical **COPICs**. It's probably...80% watercolours 20% Copics? Yeah, around there. Heck, they said 'media bebas' so I should not have marks deducted from it. I should only have marks deducted from shitty drawing/neatness (probably)/ dll. But I had fun, so yeah. Lol. Theory was okay as well. Finished it in...15 minutes? Round there. The questions were pretty straightforward- and thank Akito-sama what I actually bothered to read came out. I did tembak a couple of questions that I seriously had no idea about. Haha. Yeah XD. Overall...uhm, I don't know about getting A1, because now that I think about it my drawing was quite simple, so maybe...a B? XD. Let's just wait and see, yeah? X)

That's all for now. Peace out =D