Last update of the year

Merry Christmas, everyone! Phew, this semester was a roller-coaster. My body literally refused to function for a week. (Me: Come on! Body: Nope.) So after many days of sleeping, eating really yummy food and catching up with friends, I decided that I should at least update my blog...

some rough character sketches


These are all for a story that I'm writing. I don't wanna give away too much, but it involves a girl with a birthmark, fishes and birds. :D


Definitely still trying to figure out the kind of look that I'm going for...


Book Arts completely knocked the wind out of me this semester. I wasn't expecting such a heavy class! However, I did have a lot of fun and Macy Chadwick is one of the sweetest and kindest teacher I've ever had. Here are some of the stuff I made for that class:

Everyone's gone home! D:

He loves me.

I made a book that's also a daisy. It's not very big, but it contains all of my heart and my love. Hope you'll like! :D




To address the many requests for tutorials, I did not invent the folding technique used for this book. This structure is commonly referred to as the 'star book' and I learned it in my bookbinding class. I came up with the idea of turning it into a daisy and did this by rounding off the corners and using more pages (9) instead of the usual 5 or 6.

There are many tutorials online that you can find if you want to learn how to make your own star book. These are the best ones that I had found:

http://poppytalk.blogspot.com/2011/10/star-book-tutorial-by-roughdraftbooks.html
http://billiescraftroom.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/video-tutorial-star-book/

Last sketch of the summer

Here's a little sketch for y'all. 8D


Summerbreakiscomingtoanendwhyyyyy.

SCBWI conference starts tomorrow!

I hope everybody's enjoying their summer break! I had the opportunity to visit Hokkaido with my family but fell quite sick on the trip and lost my hearing in one ear for two weeks after that. Still it was absolutely wonderful - the people, the air, the water, the flowers, the food, and bathing in the hot springs... it was exactly what I needed. Here are some pictures I took on the trip!


I'm in LA right now with fellow artists Isabella Kung, Arthur Lin and Lois Wang. The SCBWI conference officially starts tomorrow and everyone's excited! For review purposes, I had put together little portfolio of work mostly done in the past year including some silly sketches I did over the summer.




Oh and here's a little something I painted to cheer my dad on for his swimming competition. He had just turned 60, and was born in the year of the Rabbit. He hit me on the head when I gave it to him! Haha, I could tell that it totally made him happy though.


He won. 8D

Koi Dreams

I've been trying to develop a story around a little girl with an imagination. (Vague, I know.) I'm not sure if anything's going to come out of that yet, but here's a painting based on the idea.


Koi Dreams
Tools:
Pencil (Initial sketch), Photoshop CS4

WIPs:

I'm also working on a book dummy of Hans Christian Andersen's Princess and the Pea for class and here are some characters from that project! These are some nice princesses the prince meets early on. In my version of the story though, he likes them! Unfortunately they fail the pea test :( and he marries a chubby, snotty princess at the end. I'll have to thank my friend Pétur for giving me some great ideas in varying them up while I was designing these. They would've looked totally boring otherwise.


Princesses! (work in progress)
Haven't been sketching as much as I'd like to in the past month, but here are some that managed to come out looking quite alright.


Some quick gestures (pen and markers)


Randomly random randomness
And... more school work stuff!


Oil studies


First Venture (digital)


Valentine's Day mailer (reworked)
Children's Book Illustration class is such a joy to be part of! My classmates surprise my every week with their creativity and Angela's such wonderful and dedicated teacher. She has helped me a great deal with some of the pieces here. If you go to the Academy and are interested in children's books at all, I highly (highly, highly x10) recommend her class.

I hope all's well with everyone!

An update! Could it really be?

I promised my friend Andrew that I'll update, so here are some stuff from my humble sketchbook.


Doodles from the past two months
I've always been afraid of sketching. I mean, blank white sheet + traditional media + crazy talented peers around you; it's terrifying! Rarely did I go to drawing workshops and when I did, I'd pretend I was sketching the model. I'd be writing or something... nobody's allowed to look. My circle of friends (mostly artists) knew me as the one who didn't sketch. That's fine, but I hate being afraid of anything. So I've been sketching. It's frustrating at times, but it's becoming less scary and I've found that it can be quite freeing.


A few better composed pages from the sketchbook
Been thinking of going into children's books lately. This could be my new direction from now. Class with Angela at the Academy's been really exciting! Here's what I did for my first assignment. (holiday mailer)


Valentine's Day Mailer
I took some pictures of my room to show to my parents, but I thought I'd post them here as well.


(random sketch, children's books!, my room, my wardrobe)
Sorry I haven't updated in so long! I've been feeling a little lost and all over the place for the past year. Haven't been too productive either. =\ But I've been trying to get myself motivated lately, so that'll probably change. I hope to post again soon!