Slow Dancing in the Burning Room

The few things that happened in the past few days:-

My White Queen painting became a Daily Deviation.
Uh, wow. That was totally unexpected because honestly, I don't think it's that good. Anyhow, getting a DD is still a pleasant surprise and it's kinda nice to have 24 hours of attention from strangers. Sort of, anyway. Another part of me wants to just delete that deviation. I was staring at the artwork just now and thinking, "The head's too big. The white queen isn't white. The colors are boring. And now it has 8000 views. NOOOOooooo."

My sister shared a video with me.
This one moved me to tears. Beautiful dance, incredible connection between the dancers, wonderful music and just heartbreaking lyrics. I thought I wasn't going to cry when I watched it the 2nd time, but I did. Same thing happened the 3rd time. And 4th. Have I mentioned before that I love crying? It's the best kind of emotional release.


Perhaps the reason why this dance/song affects me so deeply is because I've been in a painful on-off relationship before. It's one of those relationships where you feel like you're always hurting each other, you know deep down that it's never going to work out and you don't quite know why you don't want to call it quits. Love? You'll have to pay attention to the lyrics to understand.

It's not a silly little moment
It's not the storm before the calm
This is the deep and dying breath of
This love we've been working on

Can't seem to hold you like I want to
So I can feel you in my arms
Nobody's gonna come and save you
We pulled too many false alarms

We're going down
And you can see it too
We're going down
And you know that we're doomed
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room

I was the one you always dreamed of
You were the one I tried to draw
How dare you say it's nothing to me
Baby, you're the only light I ever saw

I'll make the most of all the sadness
You'll be a bitch because you can
You try to hit me just to hurt me
So you leave me feeling dirty
Because you can't understand

We're going down
And you can see it too
We're going down
And you know that we're doomed
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room

Go cry about it, why don't you?
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room

Don't you think we oughta know by now?
Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?

Song: Slow Dancing in the Burning Room by John Mayer
Choreography: Wade Robson
Dancers: Ben Susak and Pam Chu

I didn't win the Draw-a-Robot contest.
I saw the winning entry and I love it. Was kinda bummed when I saw the 2nd and 3rd though. Those were pretty good too but were completed wayyy before the competition even existed. So technically, they didn't actually do anything for the competition. Oh well. At least Sonny sent me a note telling me that one of the judges, Charlene Chua, really liked mine. That meant something to me. I'm also happy that I had something to push me to paint something I've never tried painting before.

Completed Schoolism Assignment 5 + Extra painting.

Assignment 5: Painting using the smudge tool.


Androgynous

I'm very very pleased with how this one turned out. A friend commented, "What a beautiful woman." Another person on deviantART said, "Hrmm...just looks like a guy to me." Well, yay!

I wanted to put up a gif animation to show my painting process but the file size turned out too huge. I tested it out and it took forever for all those frames to load. Sorry about that, guys!

I'm teaching.
I'm teaching a small group of beginners (friends) to paint digitally. This is a free, private class and I'm very excited to see what they'll come up with. I was never interested in teaching until recently. It all started when I tried helping a classmate from Schoolism with his assignments. I provided critique and sometimes paintovers whenever he was stuck. I then discovered that I really like helping people learn how to paint. That feeling you get when you see someone you've helped improve is amazing. So, thank you Slow and Silly Very Old Frogapillay Jon-Troy Nickel! *sucks in air* That's one long name.

Click me why don't you.

My drive to learn.

I was never a hardworking student when I was in art school. Out of 10 assignments, I probably did 7 - just enough to pass that course. Well actually, I failed twice and had to retake the subjects. I only put my heart into my work if I found that particular assignment interesting. Most of the time, it didn't matter so much if the art looks good or not; I was satisfied as long as my work was in the range of "above average" within the limits of my class.

I had a classmate who was excessively hardworking and always did more than required for his assignments. I never understood it. I had a lot of respect for him though (I still do), because he was always very focused and his passion for learning was obvious. At the time, I thought... "Well, that's him. I simply don't have that kind of self-control and I don't see the point."

My instructors never really liked me, naturally. From what I know, art teachers have high regard for students who took learning seriously regardless of their skill level. They find students that are already able to draw better than most of their peers but lack the desire to aim for more frustrating. I've had a couple of instructors at art school that sat me down and told me, "Ciaee, you have potential. All we need is your hard work." At that moment it might have made me feel a little bad for letting them down, but I never realized that I was being stupid for not making full use of my opportunity at art school to learn. I never asked myself the important question, "What am I doing here in art school?" I love art. Why was I in art school? To learn, to improve, to really get some solid art foundation. If I had laid this out so clearly back then, I would have taken my classes a lot more seriously.

For simplicity, let's think of "talent" as an ability to pick up a certain something/skill and excel at it faster than most people. Everyone is "talented" at different levels, at different things. Some people might think of "talent" as a gift from God. That may be true, but to me "talent" is probably something that came from being unconsciously trained at something in a certain environment a person was brought up in. I'm not ultra-talented or anything like that but I seem to be able learn new drawing/painting techniques a little faster than most of my peers.

"Talent" is as much a blessing as it is a curse. There are two types of "talented" people. Few realize their potential and know that they can achieve great things. Highly ambitious, they sought after their goals without any regard for the limits and boundaries society creates. Others, notice that they perform better than others without trying very hard at all and get used to that. Why work hard when it's all so easy? Pretty soon, they will start falling behind their peers deluded by feelings of superiority and not working hard. Because "talent" can only take one so far in the immensely competitive world of today, hard work, ambition, vision, and passion matter so much more. That extra hour, that extra research, that extra initiative to learn from critiques, ...etc. Those add up to a lot more than mere "talent."

On my graduation day (from art school), I felt like I didn't achieve anything at all. That piece of paper meant absolutely nothing to me. Well, I did learn a couple of things along the way, but I didn't get that, "I did it! I worked hard and I've come this far" feeling. When I started to take freelance jobs, there was this constant battle going on in my head. I could do these jobs, but they were pretty unsatisfying. I didn't like what I was doing, really. Since I didn't like them, I tried to think of these jobs as "assignments I'm learning from". Learning in a very unsystematic way too. I had no focus on what to improve on, didn't know which part of my skills I really needed work on, and so on. I was just following the art director's instructions. And most of the time, these aren't really critiques. These are just the art director's preferences or his vision for the artwork. And the pay was... pretty bad. I have a very supportive and encouraging agent/project manager though. (Stephen, if you ever read this... thanks for being awesome! *mega-glomp*)

After a while, I put my freelance stuff aside and started to take online classes. Ever since I've been really really driven to improve. Scarily, crazily, obsessively driven. Maybe it's because I'm looking at the entire industry as my "classmates" now. When I looked back at my art schooling days, I feel a little silly. I had too many excuses for not working hard. The art school that I went to did not have a good learning environment, some teachers there were below par in terms of artistic skills and (especially) teaching skills, and we had a lot of assignments that were impractical, in a sense that they would've been useful maybe 8 years ago, but not for the industry today. Obsolete syllabus. But also, there were a handful of teachers who were really dedicated, and I could see a few (very rare though) students improving quite dramatically. If I had taken learning seriously back then, how good or bad the school is wouldn't have mattered so much because I would've made it a point to somehow learn from every assignment I did.

Now I give my all for each and every one of my online class assignments, and on top of that hand in an extra piece using the techniques learned from the lessons if I have time to spare. I'm working hard to improve to a level that's good enough to have my artwork included in EXPOSÉ 7. This my current goal.

It took me a bit of courage to reveal all that. Daddy and Mummy, if you're reading this... your daughter is working hard now! Um, I'll get back some of the money's worth you dumped into my art education. ><

To wrap up this entry, here's my latest artwork. It's also an entry for the Liquid City Giveaway Draw-A-Robot Contest. [List of entries]


Emotion No.26: CURIOSITY [CLICKMEWHYDONTYOU]


Fish-cyborg painting progress.
(A grossly simplified portrayal of my grueling 20+ hours on the fish)

Schoolism Week 4

This is going to be a real quick update as I've got lots of work to do.

I'm now in the 4th week of Bobby Chiu's 9-week course at Schoolism. That means we're almost halfway into the class already and I don't want it to end so quickly! I'm having a lot of fun. About a week ago, I sent a personal e-mail to Bobby telling him that I wished that there was some place where the members of our class could interact, give each other feedback on the assignments and stuff. Imagine how happy I was when he told me he'll create a blog for us and he did! Bobby's just awesome. You can visit our class blog here if you want: Schoolism: Digital Painting Class Blog

I've been talking to some of my classmates on MSN and things have been really exciting. Before the blog came into existence, we almost had no way to get to know one another. Met Troy, a real hyper-energetic 3D modeler from Australia (if you're reading this, hey there Old Frogapillar!), Herman, an awesome (and also real serious O.o) concept artist from Hong Kong, Ariel, a children's book illustrator from Taiwan, Althea, a 2D animator from Australia, and Mariann from Norway. The others aren't actively participating in the blog yet but I'm hoping that'd change. Man, I don't want this class to end. ><


Assignment 3: Painting Bobby's sketch digitally, using traditional textures. Troy calls this little monster Frogapillar. I call Troy Old Frogapillar.


Assignment 4: Using textures from photographs on a digital painting. Would love to include a Before/After image but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to put up class materials. Anyhow, Bobby's creature designs are made of pure win.
I'm working on a robot design right now; will update in a few days!

Skin tones

Skin tone study..... sort of. Used the technique learned during Week 2 in Digital Painting class at Schoolism. Wasn't aiming for anything realistic, but hopefully I got the skin tones and facial features resembling real life enough for someone to be able to tell their ethnicity. Still haven't thought of a title. Actually, let's just stick to Armless Midgets. It sounds kinda weird and that's perfect. Oh and I showed this to Roden, and he said that only the girl on the left looks cute and that the other two look old. DDDD: Niuuu...


click for full-view

Favorite parts of the painting: the Caucasian girl's hair, the East Asian girl's eyes, and the African girl's skin tone and lips. :D

Here's a gif I made in case anyone wants to see how the painting was made.



[Update on critique for Lesson 1: None! asdafdasfasdf.]

New home

Messed around with the my Blogger settings and decided that I like how it looks enough to import all my Livejournal entries over. No more ugly ads, and I get to display my website's shoutbox.

I'll probably be updating both accounts from now on. It's just copying and pasting anyway.

Me Demands Critique!

Bobby Chiu is killing me!! It's been 9 days since I submitted my first assignment and no critique yet! D: I'm dying here in anticipation, Bobby! And nervousness. And curiosity. GAHHHHHH. *grabs imaginary Bobby by the neck*

These days I'm feeling a lot more motivated to draw. I'm focusing on enjoying the process rather than just the end result. I guess if I keep trying to keep up with the world and all those crazy masters out there, I'm going wear myself out real quick. So... yeah, taking an advice Bobby gave one of his past students. Enjoying the process of learning. Being excited about every new thing learned. And as Android Jones (another crazy artist) once said, "If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong!"

Which means I've been doing it wrong for............... a while now.

It's 6:43 in the morning and I'm wideee awake. Tried going to bed at 3:00AM but failed. Now, this is especially unusual for a person like Ciaee. Ciaee is usually able to fall asleep in a matter of seconds. She can also sleep through an entire day. And this can happen anywhere - at the restaurant, in the car, on the stairs... etc. Yar. So something must be wrong with Ciaee.

Anyway, since I was unable to fall asleep, I drew something.


Not sure what to name these... armless midgets yet. Will be coloring this to try out different skin tones.


Colorized this from Bobby Chiu's black and white painting for Schoolism's Digital Painting class Week 2. Think I did a pretty good job for this one. *Pats self on the back* :D Can't wait to hear what Bobby will have to say. Grrr. *wails, kicks and screams in impatience*
It's 7:09AM now. Still wide awake.

Schoolism!

It's been soooo long since I've updated. There are a few reasons *excuses* for this.

One, I'm beginning to dislike LJ. Forcing Ads on Basic Accounts is quite unacceptable. Or more like totally unacceptable. I moved from Multiply to LJ not long ago because I couldn't stand the Ads on Multiply. I use Adblock Plus on Firefox, so I don't actually see these Ads but I really mind the fact that people who visit my blog see ugly Ads all over the place. Definitely moving to Blogspot real soon. In fact, if I can easily transfer my LJ layout over to Blogspot, I would've done it already.

Two, my main reason actually, I've been feeling a little... less-confident about my skills and I'm not sure if I want to put up my less-than-awesome stuff for anyone to see. I'll have to overcome this if I want to improve.

I enrolled for Digital Painting classes at Schoolism.com and am now in the 2nd week of the course! Bobby Chiu's an great instructor and his video tutorials are very helpful. His patience and passion for teaching just shines through. I haven't received my first video critique just yet, but looking at his previous video critiques (for the students from the last semester) has already taught me a lot. Can't wait to see what he'll say about my assignment submission!

I was a little disappointed to see that there wasn't a place for the students to interact though. Classmates don't even get to comment on each others' submissions. D: A discussion forum would be really nice. I used to take online art classes at the Academy of Art University and mainly, the classes work like online forums. The "online classroom environment" made everything a lot more engaging because we got to discuss topics and ideas, provide critique and suggestions for our classmates, talk about other unrelated stuff, etc.


My Lesson 1 assignment at Schoolism. The drawing is done by Bobby Chiu and our assignment was to visualize the shape and form of the figure through darkness, and turn his pencil drawing into a painting.


Did this one as an extra exercise using the techniques learned in Lesson 1. She's a 狐狸精(húli jīng) or "Fox Spirit". I'm very happy with how her face turned out. It's fox-like. :D
I've been acting weird these days. I wake up at nine, have breakfast, tidy and clean my room, wash my own bathroom, exercise daily, do drawing exercises daily, and get enough sleep. I KNOW. Like, OHMAIGAWD.