Round #1 : Speed Up!

I felt that I was taking way too much time on every single piece, and Edwin (a friend of mine) felt like he's too impatient and always rushing his pieces done. And so we came up with this crazy challenge thingy to push each other out of our comfort zones, and we'll probably be doing this for the whole of April.

Round 1: Speed Up - Finish 3 pieces in 5 days
Round 2: Slow Down - Spend 5 days on 1 piece
Round 3: Speed Up - Finish 3 pieces in 5 days
Round 4: Slow Down - Spend 5 days on 1 piece

But being the awesome procrastinator that I am, I think I did all three in a little over one day. OTL Brace your eyes.

Pink Marbles:




Coffee:

(I know. It looks like a bowl more than a cup. And so I phail.)



Mute Drownage:




Tools:
All 3 were done entirely in Photoshop.

Argh, flaws all over the place! If anything, it was a pretty satisfying experimentation with styles, but I feel kinda guilty for not putting much thought behind these. Which also explains the 'failful' titles. Feel free to suggest cooler ones.

Blue colored wishes in the rain

[beginning of rant] Photoshop CS4 loves me. Really, I never had a single program crash on me so many times in my life, all in the span of one painting. It made me go crazy paranoid and save really often. Save, Save, Save, Save, Save As,Save, Save, Save, Save, Save As... etc. Which is fine. And so I ended up with about 26 WIP files, 27 including the final. All 26 WIPs were saved successfully, but Photoshop had to fuck up on my final edit and leave me a corrupted file. Thank heavens CGHUB required that we hand in a hi-res file for the competition, so I had a full-sized JPEG saved. Still. That's my lossless hi-res PSD file right there, gone. Anyhow, all hail CGHUB. You are my savior. [end of rant]

Here's my entry for CGHUB's Natives of the Lifeless Forest Challenge. You can view the other entries as they come in here: [link], and the WIP threads here: [link]


Blue colored wishes in the rain
Anyway. If this image transports you, my work is done.

Link to deviation:
[link]

Thoughts on the painting:
I'm very used to fully fleshing out an idea in my head before starting to paint, but for this one I jumped right in with only a very loose idea. The painting started to turn in its own direction and slowly, the story became a mystery even to me. This new way of working is very refreshing. I hope it sucks you in like it sucked me in.

Tools:
Photoshop CS4, Wacom Graphire4

WIPs:

Because I carelessly wished

Because I carelessly wished
When I was a little girl, I often wished that I would turn into a mermaid. I only realized what a foolish idea that was after I watched a Cantonese movie called "人魚傳說." People wanted to capture the mermaid. =\

Did this mostly for myself, but also for Corel Digital Art Competition 2009. You can vote for your favorite entries there. Vote for me ONLY if you really like my painting, ok? Don't do it for charity!
[All Submissions] [My Entry]

Link to deviation:
[link]

Tools:
Painter IX, Wacom Graphire4, Photoshop CS4

WIPs:



Close-ups:


click me! click me! CLICKKKK.
I've been working on a zomg top secret painting for a short 3-minute film called 'Entropy' by Rhubarb Zoo. My friend, Jeremy Hay is a part of this independent two-man team and I love their stuff. 'Entropy' will be released as a pay-for digital download package very soon. Anyway, here's a silly little video they made for their friend's birthday 2 years back. Their friend, Frances, who loves her cat called James. It's nothing like Entropy, which is emotional and dreamlike, but it's AWESOME. 8D Everything, including the song and singing, were done by them crazy freaks.


Someone posted this wonderful quote on InspirePlease and it really struck a chord with me. It's pretty long, but definitely quote-worthy.

"Great paintings shouldn’t be in museums. Have you ever been in a museum? Museums are cemeteries. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in men’s rooms. Great paintings should be where people hang out. The only thing where it’s happening is on radio and records, that’s where people hang out. You can’t see great paintings. You pay half a million and hang one in your house and one guest sees it. That’s not art. That’s a shame, a crime. Music is the only thing that’s in tune with what’s happening. It’s not in book form, it’s not on the stage. All this art they’ve been talking about is nonexistent. It just remains on the shelf. It doesn’t make anyone happier. Just think how many people would really feel great if they could see a Picasso in their daily diner. It’s not the bomb that has to go, man, it’s the museums." - Bob Dylan

Wow.

I've been on Twitter lately. If you want to know what I'm doing every second of the day (ok maybe not every second), follow me on Twitter! [Ciaee on Twitter] Or you could just look under my shoutbox for my Twitter widget.

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]