[ One Nice Day ]

Due to the need to rush all my school work during this period of time (another 4 weeks more to go), I’ve a lot less time for studies. I guess I probably can only spend 1 full day per week doing studies instead of the usual daily studies. In a way, that is actually a good thing!

Just as humans tend to get immuned to things that they do daily, I get immune to the mistakes I made during my daily studies. Doing studies only once per week allows me to look at my drawings with fresh eyes and a lot of mistakes become apparent.

One of these issues is line sensitivity, something which I’m currently thinking of ways to fix and improve; the other is a little bit too much over-construction when drawing from life.

Drawings from the past 6+ weeks, from oldest to newest:

Head is way off in above drawing, so I re-draw the thing again, which is below:

Head in right drawing below is too close to clavicle and too pudgy:

Below are a series of work I did for my final year project. Did mostly illustrations last semester so I thought I wanna balance things out with some character designs. These are done in cel-shading style, something I always wanted to try. Should have paid more attention to the line sensitivity instead of using all-consistent lines, but well….

The story is about a retired general who rides on dinosaurs around the cities and other places, using all kinds of weapons to bomb the buildings and loot the money. While he’s at it, he faces similar rivals who also ride dinos, and also has to fend off the military who is sent in to stop him from carrying out his crimes. The dinosaurs are genetically modified dinos, and I deliberately stylize their proportions quite a bit. I tried to design the whole thing around a military theme and make the characters look goofy and wacky.

This is the main character, Nutcase (yes, that’s his name). Has deformed lower body due to excessive alcohol drinking and his legs spread out at 45 degree angle from pelvis. His default weapon is throwing molotov cocktails.

The pink fireworks that’s splurting out from the bottle is a “mechanized” version of the molotov cocktail. More powerful, of course. The words say “Violent Janet” (since some cocktail names are named after ladies, like Bloody Mary and Shady Lady etc).

The first dinosaur. Lots of changes were made before arriving at this shit. This is the Giraffatitan (not Brachiosaurus), the same species of dinosaur that is on display at the Humboldt Museum in Berlin (Museum für Naturkunde). Each dinosaur is designed and inspired based on military vehicles. In this case, this guy functions as a mobile missile launcher.

Originally, I wanted to do several more species of dinos, but there just wasn’t enough time. However, I’ll be working on those after graduation. In fact, Dromiceiomimus (military scout) and Spinosaurus (heavy artillery) are currently in the works.

Below is Madame X, the wife of the main character. Still thinking of how to fix the background:

And below is the modified jeep with tank treads that Madame X rides on during her robberies with Nutcase. Still need to work on this one a bit more and re-design the 4 panes at the back:

Another 4 more weeks to go, and I have one last final illustration (“The River to Paradise”) to do before this chapter of my life closes. Will post that when school finishes, which is 16 May 2012, and hopefully, I can finish that shit!

And beyond that fateful day, I will be bravely going back to a 9-6 office job, staring at countless spreadsheets everyday, all day, but the spirit of art lives on!

Good day!
Xeon

I’m back! Officially.

Some updates:

1) There’s only like 4+ months left before graduation day. Will I become an art legend on graduation day? No way. Will I be in complete shit on graduation day? Absolutely.

2) Cough is much better now and all small ailments are gone. Tinnitus has gotten much better and now comes on an on-off basis. I suspect it’s the pile of medication I’ve been taking the last couple of months and medicine has been known to cause tinnitus.

3) The pain in the mouth was due to 2 wisdom teeth! Never knew I had wisdom teeth. Fortunately, the daylight robbery costs were mostly subsidized by the government.

4) The 3D Compositing module at school sucks big time. 3D modeling with Maya was already worse than hell for me, and I can foresee this composting module will destroy me. And no, this semester, there’s no figure drawing, so we have to attend it on our own initiative by joining other classes. Does knowing 3D compositing gives one an advantage in getting a job, since the assumption is that art students who knows 3D stuff have an advantage over those who don’t? But the question begs: If I want someone who knows 3D stuff, why don’t I hire a full-fledged 3D guy who knows how to draw instead? This is one thing that angers me to no end.

5) Got myself some new toys recently : Cretacolor oil pencils.

They’re only available in 2 shades of Sepia, Sanguine and the usual black and white, but they function exactly like the Polychromos. Only thing is the color choice is too little but that doesn’t bug me, since I love browns.

The pencils got used up fast, so I made another trip to the store to stock up more toys.
Blue thing on the left is a water brush. The stuff in the 2nd picture above are a brush pen and a bottle of chinese ink. It looks like some bottled chinese medicine, though.

Below, some drawings for the past 6 weeks. The rest aren’t posted here as they are repetitive in nature:

I was sure the distance between her brow line and base of nose is longer greater than the distance between the hair line and brow line, but it ends up looking weird. I will have another try soon:

Dinosaur studies for this semester’s project, which is also my final year project. This is a video-game based concept project instead of the illustration-based ones I did earlier, as I wanted more variety in my portfolio. I deliberately set up the story such that I can draw human characters, dinosaurs, environments, props and vehicles to make it more well-rounded.

My 3rd piece of illustration done last semester. I guess I’ve pushed the concept further than the 1st piece, the Nyonya shit, but looking at it now, I wished I’ve pushed it even further and make the scene more dramatic.


The story is about 2 captains from 2 teams competing in the semi-finals, set in a fantasy world. The game is not true basketball; it’s Bastardball, where there are no rules, just balls. In the scene, the little guy is attempting a last minute Slam-Dunk while the big guy is about to crush him with both hands.

The colorful trail of thing was inspired by Marvel Vs. Capcom’s “stroboscopic effect”, whereby whenever the character unleashes their signature move, there’ll be a series of “phantom images” that follow after him.

The lecturer for this semester’s module commented that it looks rather flat, and there’s no field of depth. I think it’s probably because of the background. At the end of this semester, I’ll find some ways to fix it, probably by throwing in more smoke and making it darker.

Below painting was supposed to be the “One Night in Paris” piece mentioned in a previous post months ago, but due to having only 3 weeks to do this and a heavy shortage of time, I realized there was no way I could pull off anything like drawing French / Parisian buildings in a stylized manner, since one would need to be familiar with Parisian architecture and grasp the essence to stylize it, otherwise the result would look nothing like Parisian architecture.

And thus….I changed the story completely and did a fantasy town environment and based the design of the houses very mildly on old French cottages.

Same comments by the lecturer for this piece. Too flat. Again, I’ll try to throw in some fog in the distance and blur out / de-saturate the far buildings.

Resolution for the next 3 weeks:
i) continue the usual construction practice

ii) try to be proficient at drawing the muscles of the forearm and visualize the turning of the forearm. This forearm thing is confusing me to no end, and is probably the most confusing and hardest thing I’ve come across so far. About the only thing that could be as difficult as this forearm shit is the learning curve needed to understand Vilppu’s gesture drawings previously.

Next update: 21 Jan 2012

And not to forget……..Happy New Year 2012! May all dreams come true!
The fight….has only just begun!

Good day!
Xeon

No, I’m still alive and have been drawing as usual!

The site will be updated on 31 Dec 2011, the last day of this year. I promise.

The reason for the lack of updates is due to an overwhelming surge of ailments that hit my body during this period, starting with dizzy spells, then runny nose and flu and sore throat, followed by cough (still ongoing) and tinnitus (still ongoing non-stop). Worse yet, at the time of this writing, my tooth is aching, resulting in a headache near the temporal region. Maybe this could be the cause of the tinnitus.

Will need to see the dentist tomorrow. Hope all goes well. Aye.

Good day!
Xeon

Will be spending the next 2 weeks hacking at the usual drawing practice, so I might as well as update the site one shot when the time comes.

And it will be a huge long update, I guess!
The font above looks gay, but whatever goes!

Good day!
Xeon

….to just lie in my tender bed once in a while, on a quiet night, snuggling my face against the soft pillow, hugging my bolster tightly, and not think about anything….the worries of the world starts fading away…and time slows down….

I bought several packs of ear plugs for the family to help reduce the sleep-destroying cries of the Koel. They worked! The cries of the Koel gets snuffed out by 80 – 95%.

Apparently, in Australia, people are facing similar issues:
http://external-brain.redwolf.com.au/2003/12/18/annoying-bloody-birds/

“Fucking thing”, “Little bastard”, “Bloody birds” etc., are some of the titles awarded to this bird. According to that site, the other type of sound I also frequently hear, namely an equally sharp but repetitive “Wook-Wook-Wook-Wook-Wook-Wook”, is made by the female Koel, as opposed to the male’s, which goes “woo……Woo….WOO!!! WOOO!!!!!! WOOOOOO!!!!!!).

I’m scanning a lot less drawings this time as re-sizing them takes too much time and since most of them are repetitive studies.

Dozens of drawings done in class over the past 3 weeks.

And below, the usual studies done at home. During the past 3 weeks, I’ve made an attempt to add the Serratus Ant, Lats-Dorsi, Infraspinatus and Teres Major to the construction.

I miss my pen, and so…..

The upper ends of the Lats-Dorsi, the part that twists and then connects to the humerus, is giving me a headache especially when seen from the front, as it’s very difficult to visualize the twist and how it fits into the humerus:

Below are some school work, part of my final year project. Original painting was about 9000+ pixels wide.

The idea was to convey a Nyonya sewing her stuff on a quiet day.
The intention was to convey a sense of calm and tranquility but I didn’t succeed in that. The “mood” is wrong, I guess. Another challenge was that since this was a setting based on reality, I didn’t dare to push stuff too far or it will end up looking totally unrelated to the Peranakan theme.

One of the lecturers has since told me to study the works of Goro Fujita. I never knew what art was truly about until I saw this guy’s shit. His paintings beamed with insane mood and emotions, and I could actually feel it in my bones. What is this power…..???

If Vilppu has shown me what figure drawing was about, then Fujita has shown me what art is about.

I’ve always thought that art was 100% about technical accuracy and nothing else, but that has all changed. Art, it seems, is really more about aesthetics than perfect draftsmanship. Not to say the latter isn’t crucial, but surely the layman on the street will be more interested to look at art that looks visually exciting but technically imperfect, than to look at art that is visually boring but technically perfect. I can’t believe I realize this only now…..what a big fool I am…..aye…..

A lesson learned…..a bit too late…..but better than never.

Some work-in-progress of my next piece, which is about 2 captains of different basketball teams facing off in a match. Small guy vs. punk:

I’ve since realized that they’re too crappy. Heck, the two dumpy duck-like characters at the top look like they’re falling over! I re-did the designs again:

Working out the layout for the scene and changing some stuff in the digital version:

Final designs of the 2 characters. I noticed that the ends of the shoes of the first character actually resembles the glans penis! LOL

His right arm was supposed to be resting on a stand, but I didn’t draw that in. I deliberately made his lower legs super-long. LOL

Partial color studies and logos. I’m not trained in logo design! LOL
The team names are inspired by the names of the muscles, though I changed “Sartorius” to “Sartoras”. Too lazy to think of new names:

Hopefully, I can complete the painting at around the time of next update. Time is running too short.

The days ahead: Based on the resolutions made in my previous post, I was supposed to do a self-portrait + outdoor drawings, but due to lack of time + bad health, I didn’t. OK, next time!

Resolutions for the next 3.5 weeks:
i) Gesture, construction studies as usual
ii) Get better at drawing the Lats-Dorsi
iii) Learn how to wrap the Gluteus Medius and Maximus over the volumes
iv) 1 self-portrait
v) Draw at the 3 Gardens!

Next update: 14 October 2011

Good day!
Qi