Freedom Perched Upon my Finger

Spent the whole night reworking this one and finally achieved something that I'm quite satisfied with. Click on the image for some full view goodness.


Freedom,
For a little while that day...
It perched upon my finger.
Not going to elaborate on my thoughts behind the painting this time. I hope the image speaks for itself.

Tools:
Photoshop CS3, Watercolor, Painter IX, Wacom Graphire4

WIPs and Close-ups:


Link to deviation:
[link]

I hate this.

"Finished" this yesterday noon. Very unhappy with the results. Will rework.


I hate how dead, lifeless and uninteresting this feels. I hate the (lack of) background. I hate how it's completely different from what I originally envisioned. I hate that it doesn't say what I wanted to say.


Looks better close-up and cropped. If there's anything at all that I like about this painting, it's the hair. I had multiple orgasms painting the hair.

Oh, and LEOMGWTFBBQPANDA, Mayang is alive again. Go grab your maximum of 20 free textures a day. It'll only take 190 days to get 'em all.

The Loneliness of the King

This is a painting of 孫悟空 (Sun Wu Kong) from 西遊記 (Journey to the West).


click for larger view
Title:
齊天大聖的孤獨 (Qi Tian Da Sheng de Gu Du)
Translation:
The Loneliness of the Great Sage Equaling Heaven (literal)
The Loneliness of the King

Thoughts behind the painting:
I dug up the novel to read and spent many days thinking of what to paint for this one. I was reminded of many interesting events of the story but I really didn't want to do a straight narrative. I discussed this with my parents during meal times (being Chinese we were all familiar with the story) and just out of the blue one day, a thought came to me and I said to my dad, "Hey... Sun Wu Kong didn't actually have any real friends."

I suddenly realized what a lonely creature he was. I went back to read Chapter 27-28 - this was when Tang San Zang expelled him and he went back to Hua Guo Shan (Mountain of Flower and Fruit), which was mostly burnt down by the great war caused by his mischief 500 years ago. My heart literally ached for him when he cried for his master, which I feel did not deserve his loyalty and respect at all.

Tang San Zang, the historical figure, might have been a great man, but the fictional monk in the story was a hypocritical, cowardly and selfish bastard of a man. He's the character that I loath most in the story, much more so than any demon the group came across.

To see if anyone shared my thoughts on Sun Wu Kong's loneliness and to make sure that I wasn't being overly sentimental about this (xD), I googled around and actually found quite a few things... some blog entries and the lyrics to a song by Mayday. My painting isn't based on that but I thought I'd mention that here. [link] [link]

Here's the complete English version of the novel in PDF format, if anyone's interested: [link] A very entertaining read.

Tools:
Photoshop CS3, Painter IX, & Gesso (textures)

Link to deviation:
[link]

I hope my next painting will be a happy one.

Fairies are as cruel as children.

Participated in ConceptArt.Org's Character of the Week (CHOW #146) challenge. The competition for this round is like... woah, intense. Be sure to cast your votes for your favorite entry at: [link]. (You need to be registered and logged in to vote.)

This week's topic:
'Queen Titania'
Titania is a very proud creature and as much of a force to contend with as her husband Oberon. Due to an enchantment cast by her husband's henchman Puck, Titania magically falls in love with a rude mechanical (a lower class laborman), Nick Bottom the Weaver, who has been given the head of an donkey by Puck, who feels it is better suited to his character. Full story: [link] (Source: Wikipedia)

On my entry:
I wanted to portray as closely as possible what I felt fairies were like, so here's Queen Titania and Nick Bottom('s head).


Fairies are as cruel as children.

In my imagination, fairies are innocent and whimsical as well as selfish, remorseless and vengeful. They're very much like children. In this painting, I took some liberties with the original story and character from Shakespeare's play, and wanted to create a "fairytale gone wrong" image. I tried to keep her quite childlike and innocent-looking, and I hope I succeeded in making the painting feel little disturbing. (I've always found innocent children in horror movies/ghost stories extremely creepy and scary, and I want to put a bit of that in here.)

I recently acquired the book "FABLES: Covers by James Jean" (present from sister - best art book ever), and his work was on my mind the whole time when I was trying to create this image.

Disclaimer:
Um, I do not promote animal-cruelty.

Tools:
Photoshop CS3, Wacom Graphire4

WIPs & Close-up:

Painting this was an exciting, fun, stressful, excruciating and rewarding experience. On the side note of things, I cut my hair! I've discovered my love for short hair and I can't see myself growing it out anywhere in the near future. Sooo much less hassle and it feels amazing- all nice and breezy. C:



So what else did I do in year 2009? Pretty much nothing. Asdfsfsdfsfsda. I can't believe it's February already. Oh, I updated the look of my website. [link]

Twilight = Trash

Has the world gone absolutely insane? Everyone's crazy about Twilight. A close friend of mine even wrote about how it "doesn't have cliches" and she was so sure that I would adore Edward Cullen. No offense to her, but Twilight (book and movie) is trash. Utter trash. My sister was curious about the whole Twilight craze, so she borrowed her friend's book. When she was done, she told me, "Ciaee!! OMG THE BOOK IS SOOOO BAD IT'S GOOD."

I'm not even gonna try and write a review on the story because it'll probably come out sounding quite hateful, and it's not exactly the author's fault that people are crazy over her work. But here are two funny reviews I found. I cracked up so many times.

I want to beat Edward Cullen with a stick.

This is why I stay away from romance books.

If Twilight was written 100 years ago, I can understand. Because back then, a story like this might've been breaking new grounds. But today, hasn't a teenage-drama-vampire-love-story like this one been a million times over? And her writing style is really nothing impressive.

I'm definitely getting the DVD of the movie. I can't wait to watch it together with my sis when she comes back from the US. It's going to be soooo. much. fun. 8D

I've been wanting to get that out of my system for a while.

Book Titles and Love Handles.

I've got some peekchures from LiVon's birthday outing! (I just realized that I've never posted a single photograph on this blog.) Thanks to my cam-whore gal-pals, we took a couple of nice ones that day. :D


LiVon: I shall kiss teh ball.
Ciaee: Any ball I see, I grab.
Weng Yee: Aaaahhhn...


We landed on Borders somehow. I suggested that each one of us go around hunting for books (titles) that reflect our personalities. And so we did.


Weng Yee looks utterly ridiculous, as usual.


Ciaee: I are taller den j00.
Livon: And my b00bs are bigger.


The book title is pretty self-explanatory. Weng Yee, on the other hand... has been in the Tourism and Hospitality business for a little too long.
It was a fun, fun day. We bought a skimpy dress for LiVon and they gave me a can of sweet condensed milk (susu krimer pekat) as my belated birthday gift. Yar. I love my crazy girlfriends. And here's a recent artwork:-


Love Handles.
(I've got to get rid of my love handles.)
Love Handles (definition from Wikipedia):
Love handles, in colloquial or slang speech, are a layer of fat that is deposited around a person's midsection. They are called "love handles" because they can serve as places to hold on while copulating. Love handles are also colloquially called a spare tire.

So many people want to be thinner and thinner and thinner these days; it's insane.


As always, a gif to show you my painting process.

Anyone going to Comic Fiesta? I'm going! :D

Teaching and Learning.

Life has been very kind to me lately. Every time I feel like I'm in a rut, something comes along to motivate me. Or perhaps life's always been kind to me; it's just that I'm beginning to notice it more. I haven't got much to update really. Nothing's really changed, at least on the surface. Still studying at Schoolism and as mentioned in my last update, I'm teaching!

Teaching has really given me a whole new perspective on the learning process. A part of me now respects teachers a lot more, and another part of me now greatly disrespects teachers who do not take what they do seriously. In a way, you could say that I also feel a little sorry for them because it's totally their loss. Now I feel like I have this great responsibility for the learning experience of others bestowed upon me. I'm doing revisions of what I already know in order to be sure that I have all my facts right, and I want to be able to give unbiased constructive criticism as well as be encouraging, so that I don't mess up a person's first experience at something. I also feel like wanting to be a good role model for others and this is already making me work at being a better person.

One of my students asked me if I'm planning to teach as a job and charge people for it in the future. Probably not. Our small group is already taking up quite a huge chunk of my time and I don't want to start doing a half-assed job if it gets too much for me to handle. Also, doing it for money (even if just partially) might change things between me and the students. Right now, I actually feel like I'm almost gaining more out of this than my students, so it's been pretty amazing. A little stressful, but amazing.

Other than the whole teaching business, I've been thinking of the arrangement of elements and the design for my room in the new house! Mum's been doing some reading on Feng Shui and we're all banging our heads together trying to figure out something that works. ^^;

Recent Schoolism assignments:


Assignment 6: Painting hair using custom brushes. (A painting of a bald woman was provided by our instructor, Bobby.)


Painting process. (might take a while to load)
This is really my second go at this assignment. I closed the first one without saving it and didn't even realize what I've done until the next day. Gaahhhh. However, I decided to think of it as a chance to make the second one look better than the first and thankfully, I think it does! So... yay for accidents? :D


Assignment 7: Vector and layer styles. Hehe, doesn't he look ridiculous? XD
That's it for now!