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.

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.

Wacom-asia Contest Entry: Submitted just in time! :D

Our Song

My entry for Wacom-Asia's Anime/Manga Contest.

Drawing my high school uniform brings back lots of forgotten feelings and memories. I hope I managed to capture the simple feeling of being in love for the first time, without a care in the world.

Painter IX, Photoshop CS2, Graphire4.
Musical Score: Berceuse - Felix Blumenfeld.

Thank you for looking. :3