The Queen Cantabile

This is a new ChoW piece.... number 200! The topic is Monarch of Music. My direction I was to make it appear somehow a bit related to the courtier I painted for ChoW199 and try to emphasis the royal look about this character. The idea behind this piece is that she is a conductor and with the wave of her baton she can animate and bring to life objects which then forms into her throne and originally some inanimate royal subjects were to be involved (but that got too complicated :P).
I am pleased to have completed this image. At first it was a massive struggle. Sometimes I can have a clear idea of what the painting is going to look like but other times I will be a bit clueless and in this case I was painting as I went. I got the designs for the character in my head but not the illustration... no ideas on the colours, background or lighting and it made this a big battle to paint. At times I was so lost that I considered giving up on this one, the deadline was looming and I was still progressing slowly and spending toooooooo much time and getting no where with this and also got quite ill inbetween! Then with one week left to go I took the plunge and gave this another go and tried a different direction. It meant a lot more work to suddenly change the style but in the end I feel the journey was well worth it! I was doubting myself, thinking Im not consistent enough but I feel triumphant having fought my doubts away!
Other news: Blitz Games has been featured on CGSociety here. For those eagle eyed ones, you might spot me in there somewhere :P Also Annecy is coming very soon and then after that theres another festival Im going to in Bulgaria where my grad film Kung Fu Romance will be screened. So I will be away for quite a while but of course I'll update when Im back!

NOTE: Place holder image. Painting close to completion.
EDIT: Completed. Now off to Annecy!

Courtier

Chow number 199. I really wanted to participate in this one because it marks 100 Chows on from one of my first entries. December 2007 is when I took part in Chow number 99 and Ive been planning to use the latest one as a chance to look back 2.5 years ago and see where Ive gone. Looking back at old work is good for me to find comfort that I a improving. Seeing mistakes and ways to improve old pieces that I used to be the best I could produce shows you are on the right track.
If I was to give some critique to younger me from 2007 on his piece I would point out: The silhouette is not that strong, the pose is stiff, the anatomy should be thought about more rather than just imagining the figure on the surface (imagine him without his clothes and he is quite deformed!), everything is too flat on and there are no variety of depth (like foreshortening), the lighting isnt consistent and is quite generalized (doesnt give you an exact idea of where the light source is and it can be used to enthuse a mood), and the background is carelessly done without thought (what do the crazy patterns and marks have to do with the subject?).
Anyway back to the actual piece. The topic is Courtier. For a long time I wanted to take my designs in a direction that is rooted in fantasy. What I mean by that is trying to come up with designs that might not be so mundane and limited to reality (but is still believable). So the kind of reaction I am trying to encourage from my designs are intrigue and curiosity. Hopefully there is enough recognizable elements to connect the viewers to reality and enough juxtaposition and bizarre things to make it look other worldly.
Coming soon: A tribute to Peter Parr (my tutor)
EDIT: The Parr tribute may have to wait. ChoW #200 is upon us and Im too excited to back down from it XD

Fellowship of Oz

ConcepArt.Org's Character of the Week (Chow) topic: Wizard of Oz.
Got some time to finish this off earlier than I normally do :P Usually at work everyone has to create the artwork in a tight deadline and so we have to work faster and utilize Photoshop trickeries to speed up the process. Its good to churn out the work but for my most of my personal pieces I like to take my time on it to balance the method I use at work. Having said that, I still think I should speed up my whole process and will try doing some quicker stuff and try not to fall into the trap of finishing everything. The beginnings of a piece is where most of the problem solving takes place and after that everything should be straight forward. So the plan is to produce more initial sketches in a bid to learn more from the problem solving stages. Rendering an image takes a lot of time and I dont think I am learning as much from it as I can off sketches atm. Stay tuned to see how it goes :P

Nothing is Junk

Finished the Chow. A junkyard golem and his dog friend! This was a messy piece. The colours are quite muddy. Because the golem is a mix of lots of originally separate unique objects I thought the colours should show they were once separate but bah... it just got cluttered up! Next up.... Im thinking of giving the longer pieces a rest and do some shorter stuff. Been inspired by the Imaginism crew as usual so I want to get some watercolours done and experiment with other medias. Buuuut I dont think I brought my watercolour pad with me! Might have to purchase a new one.
Some inspirations: Feng Guo, Gez Fry, Marcel Vignali Love their drawings. I will put up a bigger list soon.
Final Fantasy XIII comes out in a few days!!!! I am waiting for my collector's edition complete with art book! Drooooooooooool!!!!!

9 Tailed Wrath

There you go... Maybe I could have shown more steps in the earlier stages. I dont really save the early stages and flatten them down a lot so I couldn't show them when compiling the wips. Its a habit but I dont really like saving off too many drafts, I hate looking back at them :P
I nearly missed the deadline for this because my housemate was downloading a huge load of things so my internet was crawling at a snail pace! Erm... Ive been meaning to write out a tutorial but Im tempted into doing more Chows.
I thought I might also blog a list of some of the inspirations I find at the times too. First up is ThienBao, I got quite a kick up the ass looking at his stuff today. Same goes to this guy Zhuzhu. And check out the film Memoirs of a Geisha... I was watching it as research for this Chow and thought the composition and framing in this film is bloody awesome! Also quite a few intense scenes in there. Annnnddddd as always the ChiuStream is a place full of motivating talks! I recommended these podcasts to whoever I can, they helped me push myself and get into a positive mentality.

Champion of the Chariot *Finished*

Finished the chow! Its been a great challenge to get this one done. Mainly it was time management really but im glad to have pushed myself to sit through this even through times when I thought this was rubbish and was worried about the end product.
Today my colleagues taught me a tiny bit of anatomy and it got me very intrigued to study more. It was overwhelming again to think how much I have yet to learn and I felt small lol. But I know that I will become better at it if I put the time to practice that. Ive also been given a book on graphic design that Im gonna get into now that my Chow is done. My team manager thinks it will be beneficial for me to get into graphics not only for my personal development but for the work I do too. So I give that some time. I might be tempted to do more logo stuff then :P
Oh so much to learn!!!!!!!