marzipan paper.

The Second

2010-08-03T03:36:00.001-07:00

"The Second" - 8x8 acrylic on canvas.

Unicorn vs. Dragon Spirits

2010-03-03T19:07:00.000-08:00

This depicts my unicorn animal spirit and his dragon spirit. Hmm. Which one would win? ;3 Xmas present for my boyfriend Rob. 9x12 acrylic on canvas.

JEN MILLER MUSIC WUT

2010-02-24T13:44:00.000-08:00

Hey doods!
Check out my friend Jen's website. She's a sweet guitarist, and her and I will hopefully be doing some art/music collaborations together in the future. Her music is rad so take a listen. CHYEAH

http://www.jenmiller.ca/

2010-02-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

A mockup of a fake cover of the Georgia Straight for my digital illustration class, making fun of the olympics. haha.

2010-01-31T21:42:00.000-08:00

for teh skewl newspapier. IMPROV SYNESTHETIC JAM SESSION

SHIRT PRINT!

2010-01-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

Hey! Remember how I submitted this design to DesignByHumans? Well, they finally printed it! It's only $15 and currently in women's sizes. But if enough people buy them I'm pretty sure they'll open it up to both. Please check it out and buy one if you're interested!

http://www.designbyhumans.com/shop/detail/6112

MELEEE

2009-12-24T01:53:00.000-08:00

A commission done for a Christmas present. Fox vs. Link from Smash Bros Melee. Photoshop CS3.

photos and anti-poop.

2009-11-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

Some photos I took from on top of a mountain. I'm going to make oil paintings out of them. I did them up to look like vintage photos in photoshop using this tutorial: http://veerle.duoh.com/blog/comments/photoshop_vintage_effect/

Here's an anti-dog-poop poster. I stepped in dog poop on the sidewalk the other day and it inspired me to make this. It was for a school public service announcement project.

Recent stuff.

2009-10-23T22:38:00.001-07:00

here's a painting I did for myself. "The First" - 8x8 acrylic on canvas.

This was a project for school. we had to design a band poster using only 2 colours plus a paper colour. I think I'm gonna redo it in illustrator or photoshop and send it to Anamanaguchi. They might wanna use it.. and possibly trade it for $$s. :D:D:D

zombie girl vector graphic

2009-09-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

This is my first adobe illustrator vector graphic EVER. considering i've never used the pen tool before, I don't think it's that bad. I'm slowly getting used to it even though it's not the normal method i'd use for making illustrations.

weird underwater monster thing.

2009-09-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

This was done for my app class as a practice digital illustration to get used to Adobe and our tablets. I kind of already knew what I was doing a bit :P

dinosaur shirt

2009-08-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

Hey, so I did this random drawing of a cute girl and a dinosaur, and my boyfriend convinced me to put it up on designbyhumans. I doubt it will get enough votes to win or anything, but I'm hoping it'll at least show some indication of how many people like the image or whatever. I am gonna try and finish a series of about 5 drawings and then maybe sell them on Etsy. What do you guys think?

Vote here if you feel so inclined. :D

apostolove

2009-07-27T00:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a digital painting commissioned by my boyfriend as a wedding gift for his sister. It's of their two World of Warcraft characters, Apostolov and Apostolova. hahah. Done in photoshop cs3.

Trip sketches

2009-06-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

Some sketches I did in my sketchbook while on my Scotland-Italy trip during May. The first two have a lot of hours put in them, because I got really fussy, being trapped with a mechanical pencil on a tiny piece of paper. I was also bored, haha, so I just rendered the shit out of everything. Not having a computer + tablet drove me crazy after a month D:

Some mermaids, because they are cool and sea creatures rule.

Le boy et moi. I missed him a lot during that trip :{ drawing this helped keep me a bit more sane.

Gift art - Howl's Moving Castle

2009-04-30T13:44:00.000-07:00

Howl and Calcifer from Howl's Moving Castle. (Best Miyazaki film imo) This was done as a gift for steen182.

Done in marker, pencil crayon and gouache with colour touch ups in Photoshop.

Playing cards!

2009-04-20T10:11:00.001-07:00

These are a couple playing cards I designed for school. The first one was done in watercolour and then textures added from cgtextures.com, second one was photoshop with textures. I don't know why I had to do argyle socks. I just did. Hahah.

right/wrong

2009-04-15T00:35:00.000-07:00

Two images for a school project with the theme Right and Wrong. I'll let you decide as to how I interpreted that. (I'll give you a hint, there's not much thought behind it at all. :P)

I just like to draw cute things.

2009-04-09T17:40:00.000-07:00

This is going to be used as the title graphic for my website once I'm not lazy and get it up and running, which will hopefully be over the summer sometime. This was done as a "personal banner" for english class.

This is a CD cover I made for english again for a fictional band (named after a Buckethead song, lululululz) and it's not finished. I am going to finish it eventually, but for now you get the half finished version. I actually put effort into it because I wanted to get some sort of personal development out of it, whereas the second image, the back, was made in 5 minutes with an image I yanked off google. Ironically my teacher liked the back a lot more than the front. :P

Anddd a fake bubble tea restaurant menu. I had limited space to put stuff on the menu, so I know it's missing a lot of awesome flavours, but that's all I got. XD

Ka'rist and Ma'tu

2009-03-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

Molly/Jak's characters Ka'rist and Ma'tu from her comic Signum Fas. Random gift. :D Done in marker and gouache on parchment paper.

Sakhr sketchbook doodle

2009-03-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

A doodle of Sakhr done in my moleskine with pastel pencils. YEEEAW.

Peter et le loup

2009-03-12T12:43:00.001-07:00

CD cover for Peter and the Wolf for school. Outlined with micron pens and coloured/textured hastily in Photoshop. Textures from cgtextures.com.

Something old. ish.

2009-03-11T19:17:00.000-07:00

This is something I did for last term for Illustration. It is in "le style Mucha" with some Celtic elements. I realize the designs around the edges suck, and the type sucks, but I hadn't taken typography at that point, hahah. It's done in watercolour/gouache, and I halfassed it the weekend before it was due because I lanned world of warcraft the entire time AND was sick ontop of that, and I went to bed at 2am and got up at 4am to finish it before school. IT WAS A GRAND TIME.

Also I had a FUCK of a time trying to get the segments to line up in photoshop (the actual size is like 20x16 or something) from when I scanned it in pieces. I don't know why but some areas were warped which meant I had to free transform it, and I eventually got sick of things never lining up because once I lined one thing up, another thing would disalign. So this is as good as the scan's gonna get, I'm afraid. Haha.

Blargh;;; the route to Egyptian mythology.

2009-03-10T15:16:00.001-07:00

Umm.
So I was really happy with this before I coloured it.

It's a "route to" something project we had in school (in my case I did the route to Egyptian mythology) and we had to find something to emulate or inspire us. I decided to use Josh Cochran because he is rad. It took me a long time to do the linework and I was really happy with it, but I didn't think to scan it or anything before I started on it with the markers, and I was... less than satisfied with the result, so I fiddled in Photoshop a bit and think I may have managed to salvage it a bit by massively tweaking the colours and blending in the smudgy lineart with a papyrus texture.

What do you guys think? I think the only part I like is the Anubis. Because he has dimension, and I like the way I stylized his face. Too bad it got mauled by dark purple marker.

SUMFING NEW?

2009-01-26T18:12:00.000-08:00

So... I am FAR too lazy to post any of the other recent stuff I've done, or mostly just too lazy to scan it. I feel like I'm busy but I'm not... THAT busy I guess. It's just that some of the stuff is humungo. :[ and I probably don't like it as much as I should. BUT. you at least get this one. XD Done with marker and white gouache, it was my final illustration for my illustration class last term.

LJ sketch meme

2008-12-20T15:58:00.001-08:00

I posted a meme on LJ about a week ago. First 5 people to post got drawings of their characters/people or whatever. :D So here they are:

Virage's character Zephyr,

Vicky herself :D haha,

Domino for Phil,

Molly's character Mistius,

Allison's character Hotaru.

Gouache Illustrations

2008-11-28T22:33:00.000-08:00

#1: The reference for this was some freaky, cool looking old woman from a third world country... it ended up turning into some sort of native elder or something, haha. Gouache is fun.

#2: This is based on a character of mine, Mijune, who is the reincarnation of a Shinto dragon god in my story Isle of Skye.

School stuff n' things

2008-11-05T15:05:00.000-08:00

One of the graphite portraits I did for illustration. I did two but I don't like the other one as much so I'm only posting this one, lol XD;;

2 crazy self portraits I did for illustration class, done in watercolour with pencil crayon laid on overtop.

ALICEEEE~

2008-11-02T18:51:00.000-08:00

Okay. I am still going to post pictures of schoolwork, I SWEAR. I'm just too lazy to scan stuff right now. But in the meantime here's a flyer I did for our Alice In Wonderland themed Halloween party we threw at school. :D I know the text looks like butt but I don't have the actual good version we printed for school.

HAHA

2008-10-01T01:28:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when Molly and I think of the retarded stuff that would ensue if the Doctor visited Silent Hill. Haha.

Drew this for an LJ buddy of mine who happens to have the same birthday as me, because she's cool and likes Silent Hill and Dr. Who and stuff. XD

Dah'nan and Candy for Mollyface <3

2008-09-26T19:22:00.000-07:00

An acrylic painting done for Molly for her birthday. She likes it. YAY! :D and I think I am getting better at acrylics, woo.

I've been doing other shit for school too, I swear. I'll post some mushrooms when I'm not too lazy to hook up my portable HD.

Play poster.

2008-09-08T19:18:00.001-07:00

HAAAH. whipped this mofo' up in 2 hours on a tight deadline. YEAAAH.

For anyone who cares, it's the art for a play my friend wrote that's going on at UBC Dec 3-6. It's about A Midsummer Night's Dream, except like... a sequel or something. Yeah.

In other news, school has started. Expect to see some weird shit from me soon. :D

Tagger's Tag 2

2008-08-16T00:55:00.000-07:00

The second one in the series, probably took twice as long, too. D: Done mostly in OC3 with some touchups in Adobe. I had to suffer with this being marginally unfinished until I could get some tone textures to finish the stupid dot windows of the buildings in the background, and they still don't look right. ARGH. SHOULD BE SMALLER MORE PLENTIFUL DOTS. But that's all I got. lol. HOpefully school will teach me not to halfass things when they are almost finished. I need to be able to polish stuff without getting lazy. ANYWAYS! ENOUGH RAMBLING, ENJOY :D

Oh yeah, that's Jazz, Rhyth, and Cube from Jet Set Radio Future. I would've put Boogie in there too, because she's also cool, but... time/space constraints. XD;; You'd think Gum would be in there, but NOPE. THE OTHER 4 MAIN GIRLS ARE WAY COOLER IMO.

Let's croak us some toadies!

2008-08-03T00:41:00.001-07:00

This is Bucky O' Hare, my funky fresh childhood hero, and here is my tribute to him.

No event file preuploaded for this one, but if you'd like to see it just let me know. :3

Tagger's Tag

2008-07-29T21:12:00.000-07:00

Yoyo and Beat from Jet Set Radio Future, playing Tagger's Tag. Yoyo is being a little shit, as usual. ("WHO DA MAAAAN?!" omg shut up) I'm replaying the game right now so it inspired me. I wanna do a similar one with Rhyth and Cube.

This was more or less me fiddling with Adobe and experimenting, figuring out how to paint in it. I bet I could get really good at it if, again, I practiced. The thing is, I really need to work on seeing my work from an overall, big picture point of view, because I tend to work zoomed in a lot and things lose their shape and end up wonky, which is why some parts of this look weird.

I also need to learn how to define the lines more and give it more depth using colour, etc. Yeah. Still has a lot of improvement that could be done.

More Disneyland doodles

2008-07-27T22:25:00.003-07:00

Something I drew in Disneyland that I forgot to post. 8D

GANTAMID HEAD INC

2008-07-24T20:03:00.001-07:00

"I bet if Pyramid Head took off his helmet, Gant would be underneath."

MAY OR MAY NOT COLOUR THIS LATER. LULZ.

TEH COUNT. ah ah ah ah ah.

2008-07-23T02:57:00.000-07:00

As the title says: Gankutsuou, the Count of Monte Cristo, one of the best anime series EVER.

I did this for my friend Jackson, because he helped us move and he is nice and I owe him lots and stuff. And yeah. Photoshop poop.

xposted from the monthastray community at LJ.

2008-06-26T01:02:00.001-07:00

A thing I did for a DOGS prompt community on LJ. Lawls, I am lazy artist who cannot write, go me. XD Oh, It would probably help to read the prompt first here.

Haine: What the fuck is this shit?

Badou: Umm. Proof that fortune cookies actually consist of the sandwich meat, bologna?

H: I always knew there was something fucked up about chinese food. And cookies.

B: You didn't believe me when I said I ordered sweet n' sour cat?

H: I more or less just didn't care. Come to think of it, whoever wrote this fortune has the same sense of humor as you.

B: Well, it's not as if I wrote it, you know. I mean, it's not even applicable...

H: I'm going to fucking kill you.

B: But I gave you a cookie!

H: Made of bologna. And I mean it this time. Here, you have the fortune, you would definitely benefit from it more than I.

Sakhr, in a forest.

2008-06-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

This is the first CG I've actually put a lot of effort into in a long time. I'm fairly happy with how it came out. I think if I improve this technique, it could be something really awesome. I need to get more comfortable with colours and contrast, though.

That's Sakhr, by the way, from my comic Isle of Skye.

I also have the event file if anyone's interested: here

Another experiment.

2008-06-16T19:58:00.001-07:00

Another OC3 experiment, this time of some sort of prehistoric fish-man based on a concept from a novel my friend is writing. Or about to write.

I realize the colours are really shitty, but I will get better at it, I swear XD And I have to get the lineart more clean looking too... but I was kinda lazy this time anyway, so eh. It looks kinda half finished the way it is but I got bored D:

Learning to paint

2008-06-15T23:00:00.000-07:00

Anyone remember that program OpenCanvas? ...No? XD Well I forgot I had OC3, and I went to try it out and discovered I'm actually vastly better at painting in this program than anything else. I don't really know how this works, but it does. This was more of an experiment or a test or whatever, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'll probably try and do all my stuff like this from now on. Now if only I could get it more cleaned-up looking.. somehow.. ahah.

Slapped some textures on it since that seems to be the style these days. Textures in the pic by lookslikerain, link on the bottom right hand side of the blog.

Dilophosaur Splat

2008-06-09T01:25:00.001-07:00

Uhhhh. Yeah. Don't ask. XD

BJD Finn Faceup

2008-05-26T16:26:00.001-07:00

OKAY. So don't be scared by the freaky looking doll face with no eyes, please. XD This is a Featherfall "Finn" head, which was designed by my friend Apis and sculpted by an artist and made into an actual doll. My friend Kat won this head from a doll clothing design contest Apis held awhile back, and she generously gave it to me so I could use it to practice faceups.

Doing this kind of art is something I think I'd have fun with, it's basically like being a makeup artist but for cool, expensive, personalized dolls that people own. XD It's a fun hobby and I hope to get my own doll someday. They are, however, around $800 bucks looking at just the basics of a body, head, and maybe a faceup, eyes, and some hair. Custom faceups done by artists generally go for pretty expensive, like around $50 and upwards because they're so detailed, time intensive and supplies consuming.

So I'm thinking if I could possibly get good at this and maybe get some good supplies, like spray, gloss, pastels and what have you (or even an airbrusher in the future) I could make quite a hunk of change doing faceup commissions for people. And to invest in the BJD economy in an even better way, I'll purchase my very own doll one day using the money I make! (Read: Splurge and spend any precious money I may acquire while in school and spend it on a doll instead of necessities such as food.)

So that's why I want to start doing it, aside from the fact that it's fun. Anywho, I just tried doing my first faceup last night at Claire's, so onto the results:

I think for the most part, I did pretty good for my first try. I went for something simplistic so I could learn the basics without diving into anything too complicated right away. There are a lot of obvious screw ups, and I'm gonna be completely honest, after about 4 hours I started to get lazy and I wasn't putting as much effort into steadying my hand as I should have been. Doing the stuff like the eyebrows with a thin brush is actually not that difficult, you just have to know how much paint to have on the brush, and knowing how to paint with acrylic beforehand definitely helps with this.

The lips are a bit lopsided, which is something I sort of knew was happening as I was painting but chose to ignore anyway, lol. There are also a couple of spots on his right cheek where the MSC got dented while drying, and a few paint blobs that I was too lazy to try and clean off. It's easy to get rid of pastel, but not so easy to get rid of acrylic, especially after it's dried and you already have like 8 layers of MSC down and don't wanna ruin the entire thing. I figured that I would just live with the little mistakes in favour of not having to start from square one.

That being said, the mistakes I made were mostly little. I didn't do any huge "OMFG SHIT" paint puddles in his tear duct or anything. I just worked slowly and built up the colours and layers. So that's encouraging. I think if I sit down at a desk where I can rest my hand and take proper breaks every hour or so I could do a really decent job, as opposed to sitting on Claire's couch, holding it with one hand and watching Veronica Mars for like 8 hours straight.

I think the main things that need work are:

- The eyebrow hairs are pretty smooth and balanced in shape for the most part, but I did screw up on a couple strokes. I need to learn how to fix them without taking off any of the MSC if that's even at all possible, or I might remedy this by using watercolour next time instead of acrylic.

- The lips are lopsided, and the crease could be more steady, same with the lip lines. ALSO, they do not have any gloss, which they should. I didn't get a chance to experiment with that, I wanted to see how thinning out the gloss would work, but alas Claire didn't have any as she lent it to her friend.

-The pastel is chunky/blotchy. It doesn't look so bad in these pictures, but you can tell when you look at it in real life. I think I got it pretty smooth for the most part, but I'm still unhappy with the unevenness, and I think I can blame this mostly, again, on the too-many-layers thing. It ended up with uneven distribution and etc. etc. I also thing the blushing is too dark around the sides of the face, chin and nose, especially for a head with such a pale resin colour.

The biggest mistake I would say is that I overworked it. Instead of doing everything in one layer, if I messed something up, instead of trying to go back and fix it I just kept mixing paint and going over it til it looked how I wanted, which gave it a very "painted on" look and not very natural at all. The biggest trick I think is that less is more and you basically have to get it right in one or two layers or it will look too caked. So that's something I'll try for next time-- as little number of layers as possible, and one chance to make it look the way you want (before you erase, haha.)

I also didn't get to try putting on eyelashes, but that's something I'm sure I'll get to try eventually.

So, that leaves us with this: Any suggestions on what I should aim for with my next faceup? Any ideas for a faceup that is unique, challenging, or a new technique so I can vary my style from what I'd normally do?

PS. I did also post a thread over at Den of Angels so for those of you who are also on the forum, if you'd like to provide your feedback there instead, it might help me out a bit more to discuss it sort of within the community. :D

Thread@DoA

Disneyland Doodles.

2008-05-21T23:08:00.001-07:00

I just got back from Disneyland a few days ago, and while I was there, I felt like drawing the whole time from being bombarded with so many cartoons and art. It was pretty cool, kind of inspirational or something, so here's some doodles I did while I was there.

Me and Justine, sitting at a restaurant downstairs in Critter Country. This is actually what we were doing at the time of the drawing, it's an accurate life portrait.

Ahh, Ariel. One of my favourite Disney characters, and my long lost twin or something.

Me and Justine sitting in the hotel lobby, waiting for our shuttle to arrive to take us to the airport. Again with the accurate life portrait. And that face behind Justine's head is Buzz Lightyear, in case you were wondering. Figure out what's sitting in my bag next to me, and you get a present.

And here's an emoman that I drew for Justine, because she loves them so much. I can't take credit for the ingenious quote in the thought bubble though, Justine came up with that one. Sorry if it's offensive. Because, you know, the guitar looks really shitty and some hardcore guitar fans might get pissed that I drew such a shitty one. *ahem*

Artses for peoples. (and tegaki randomness)

2008-05-09T12:23:00.001-07:00

Okay, this first one is a doodle of Oberon's Throne which will be used somewhere in an upcoming play that someone I know is writing. I'll probably also be painting/CGing the main poster for the play when it comes out, so I'll post that when it's done too.

This is to make up for the fact that I'll be in Disneyland on the 16th, missing my friend's birthday party which I really wanted to go to. :< THIS IS FOR YOU, VANESSA. haha. I know you guys will have fun without me. XD

edit: K later on in the day I got bored and doodled this on my tegaki. I was inspired by my sister, who decided to do my hair, and it ended up crazy and curly and weird and me with a disgruntled look on my face. My sister's blonde and I have long red hair, so for some reason it immediately reminded me of Nill and Badou from the manga Dogs, and this is what I ended up picturing, to my amusement.

I got really lazy and it's not as finished as I wanted it to be. But I went kind of crazy and experimental with the colours, and I like how it turned out. Badou doesn't really look like himself at all. XD;;

NiGHTS into dreams... by counting sheep

2008-04-29T21:49:00.000-07:00

So, this is what I get when I combine NiGHTS' jester hat with ram horns (which I'm obsessed with incase you couldn't tell already.) and the idea of counting sheep as a method of falling asleep. I love it when things I think about suddenly align into an idea for a picture. :D

This was done with Oekaki ShiPainter Pro, which is a really nifty little applet. I'm impressed with the programming in that one, seems like it must've taken awhile to develop... it works like a pocket-browser version of Adobe. Pretty awesome. :D

In other news: I got an interview with the college I applied to. They want to put me into 2nd year right off the bat. Don't know why, but I assume it's so that they can try and fit as many students into the program as possible, and they think my work is of high enough caliber that I'd be able to fit into 2nd year. Not sure if that's actually the case, but I'm flattered if it is, although I'm not sure I'd want to head straight into 2nd year. I wanted to go to the program for the fine arts studies in 1st year, as I believe it would help me develop my fundamental skills, so missing out on that first year will not only leave me at a disadvantage if I was to enter in 2nd year, not knowing what to expect, and not attending 1st year would also have me miss out on some important learning and development opportunities. If anything I'd want to go just for the experience and practice, so I'll see what they have to say about this when I talk to them in the interview. I just hope they'll at least give me the option of choosing 1st year as well, if I want.

IDEA portfolio.

2008-04-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

So, I recently handed in my portfolio to the IDEA program at Cap College, the program I'll hopefully be going into for this September... I'm not sure if my stuff is good enough to get me in, but I really hope it is. Here's everything I had in there.

This next one is the one that really killed me. It was basically the last one I finished and I had to rush it, sorta. I did end up handing in the portfolio on the first of the three days you could hand it in, so I wasn't doing it REEEALLY last minute, but it was kinda hurried. But I thought I did pretty good considering those circumstances, and also the fact that it's my first real finished gouache painting, so I took some detail shots as well.

Pinecones, lulz. This'll be the 101th picture of a pinecone they'll receive, I'm sure...

This is a portrait of my friend Claire I did for her mom to replace the one that was lost when she moved. I think it's a lot better compared to the original one she had, which didn't show her face and was also done in grade 12. :P Apparently it looks like her too, which is cool.

And here's some life drawings. lol filler.

I reeeeeally hope I get in. Argh. I don't know if those are enough pieces. I hope they are. D:

Aww.

2008-04-10T15:57:00.001-07:00

IT'S MEEE. Wow. For once I'm actually happy with how my colouring in Adobe turned out. Heee widdle fishie. :D

lol o shit

2008-04-01T03:04:00.001-07:00

Yeah, um... Happy April Fool's.

The joke is that I'm making you think I'll actually post art and stuff here often.

Random anime characters.

2008-04-01T01:00:00.001-07:00

This is for my good Californian friend, Jo. I met him over the internet ages ago because we both liked Guilty Gear and we've kind of somehow kept in touch ever since. A few years back we took a lame generic anime character quiz on memegen or sommat, which randomly generated your hair, eye colour, weapon, special features, etc. and I drew us based on that description. I've since lost it the old version, and we were talking about it the other day and I decided to draw a new version. I'm on the left. I actually hate the design I came up with, but whatever, as far as I can remember that's what the quiz said I looked like, haha. As you can probably tell I got bored and didn't completely finish all of it.

'sup blog.

2008-03-31T03:29:00.000-07:00

Hai.