FanArt_28

Revamping the old 27 piece. Completely re-inked it digitally, even.

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Fun_ToxicityToo

I wanted to try an experimental quick-painting over some old lines.

Again, I love the Oakland A's color scheme, so I am always happy to incorporate green and yellow (and white) into costumes.

This was just an exercise, but I'd say I came away with some more understanding, so...worth?

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Fun_DidididididiDo

Short on time lately, particularly since I wanted to go play Magic for the first time in seemingly forever for a change, so thought I'd digitally ink, then color an old Didi piece.

But for this one, I wanted to color as fast as I could, so I tried flatting then stickering the colors, intensely saturating that sticker, and then masking out non-highlighted areas.

In this way, my chosen colors, which were preemptively darker than local, would contrast with the "highlights," which would serve as lighting for the piece.

This is what just the highlighted areas looked like, so this layer atop the flats is what gave the colors definition.

I tried using a smoother brush for the inks, rather than my usual, chunkier Steve Ahn's Ultimate Brush, and I have to say the crispness this smooth brush gives is quite pleasant in its own way.

The background was a photo from a roadtrip, I believe, back in the old country. The old country...

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Fun_CCHopHop

A drawing inspired by Grace Hopper College, previously known as Calhoun College. Back when I was an undergraduate, it was called "Calhoun College," and we liked it. Famous 'Hounies include...uh...Demetri Martin '95, who's apparently currently voicing a supreme "white bear," as they're called in Japan. And uh...I'll think of others, give me a minute.

As for Grace Hopper, I was blown away with how accomplished she was after reading up on her. She is quite an inspiration and definitely someone worth having pride and tradition in. Calhoun's current mascot is officially "the fire," if I recall, so I sincerely hope they ditch the vaguely-defined unofficial firey 'Houn dog mascot for a graceful bunny. It's such a flexible mascot, too, I can see plenty of adaptations to any circumstance from a cute, literal bunny to a more personified one, or even just an ironically intense battle bunny. "Beware the Bunny," and similar chants are a natural fit. So for my take on the mascot, I wanted to have a kinda graceful bunny-girl with that Hopper hairdo and her specs to boot, plus carrotty accents, and big, floppy ears and feet. The sailor outfit and quasi-military jacket are Naval nods to Hopper's career.

Who else was in Calhoun, by the way...(looks up the CC Wikipedia page) wow, Claire Danes (pretty sure she headed off early, though, or was that Jodie Foster? Wow, hey, she's Calhoun, too!), oh--Jonathan Coulton '93! I saw him give a Tea with the Record. Ah, neat he and John Hodgman '94 were both in CC, that makes sense. And what?! Kurt Schneider '10! I had no idea he was Calhoun! I used to watch him play in a band with Jake '09 on the street on Broadway Night and stuff, they did an incredible medley as their closer. Whenever I could, I'd just sit there and sketch as they'd loop through their set. I also got to see him play with the Sandy Gill Affair at the Space. I guess because of that band I always thought he was Morse or Stiles (shudder).

Anyway the racial stuff surrounding Calhoun never really came up in any notable way my entire four years, as far as I was/am aware. Granted, I was in JE (Jonathan Edwards), so my cognizance of CC stuff was limited (plus nobody really cares about Calhoun College, come on). Actually, one of my art heroes transferred from Calhoun into JE, come to think of it, so that kinda seals the deal, doesn't it? Answer: yes.

I'm not black, but I am a minority, so I guess I get to have an opinionish on the name. I myself was actually in favor of them keeping it Calhoun (I only heard of Hopper after they announced the change). I love the idea of that disgusting mark of our university and national history being so prominent as a college name because it disallows us to run or hide from our history, and meanwhile everything we represent and strive for and achieve flies flatly in the face of that racist's ideology. With every victory, we prove how pitifully wrong he and his ilk are and reshape the name into new meaning. Plus it's just an intangible name, which itself is not inherently tied to some vicious meaning, unlike say, a statue or something like that with immutable properties; you can reclaim the name as you will.

During my years, the master of Calhoun was even black, one of the coolest most popular professors on campus, and now he's the Dean of Yale itself! Justice doesn't get sweeter than that. Side story: one heavy winter as we were all preparing to leave for break, Master Holloway helped a Hounie make her shuttle bus by personally dropshipping her and her luggage to the pickup site via his car so she wouldn't miss her flight. He didn't need to drive or trudge around in the snow to help an outta-luck student, but he did. I was floored seeing such kindness. That's my greatest CC memory.

But I understand the desire to move past the Calhoun name, much like Pierson College (appropriately shorthanded as "PC") long retired its former college mascot with such precision and thorough eradication that you would be hard-pressed to find a student who could identify the character that Pierson people rallied behind in the early days of Yale College life. Look through the archives carefully enough (the JE library has a neat Yale history volume) and you'll learn that Piersonites in the mid 1930s gussied up for their annual plantation-themed formal and assuredly at some point in the evening, conversation would drift to boasting about one recent intramural meet or another and how well the Pierson Slaves did that week.

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Fun_Shinagawa

My gosh. What an ordeal it's been the past few days. Exhausted.

Just got back from that most magical of Christmaslands in Japan, Shinagawa.

The place looks horrifying.

I always think it's funny how similar "Shinagawa" sounds to "Shinegawa," which is the difference between the rough translations, "goods/merchandise river" and "die/kill-yourself river." I suppose for some it's one, for others, the other...

Anyway, we managed to get everything in order, just in the St. Nick of time.

So we've at least got some breathing room. Everything's ok, for now. Ho ho hum.

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Fun_BlackAndWhite

And that's game.

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Fun_PizzaPlaneteer

This is really a random sketch, I believe the only motivation was to draw a black girl with wacky hair, but then I was craving some pizza, so I threw that in there, too, as well as a shirt with my favorite randoword to slap on costuming.

I also wanted to draw something other than my normal trap of just a regular old person standing straight-up for a portrait, so a weird pose was also necessary. For the background, I used a photo from a new-to-me Family Mart that opened near the place I used to play FNM at.

All this real-world garbage my home country is doing...I'm just running on fumes lately, in terms of motivation, so I was desperately trying to finish a sketch to make myself feel like I'm accomplishing something while working on a larger piece. Also awaiting for a certain deadline that I only presume will change my life in a sad way. At least it's raining today...at least there's that. I love the rain.

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Fun_ReddyToGo

Preparing for Coverage Draft with a sketch of Vicky. This is digitally adjusted to more closely reflect her actual skin tone, since the "final" felt a little too misleadingly light, despite the originating parameters.

I wanted to draw Vicky using only black and white and red all over, leaving the skin completely colorless, but what started as a nose mask with my darkest red colored pencil ended up extending over everything.

I went to move my paper to get a better angle while coloring her ID when I accidentally lifted the paper up to my open Copic, hence the stray mark on the nose. I contemplated leaving it vs. digitally removing it, but decided to try to muscle through, first with a failed white pen coverup, and then a colored pencil mask.

Originally it was just going to be strictly limited to BWR to reflect the newspaper/journalism theme, but I can never just keep it simple...I'm trying, but I always want to add more and end up overdoing it.

Anyway, I think we've got her down design-wise, at least...the photo in the background is from when I went to go see Motion City, by the way, outside Toho Cinemas, one of the very first places we visited during my Yale summer in JP.

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Fun_OrangeRain

I love the rain, and it's finally getting cold out to match.

I love the rain, but it's all about staying out of it, so you can enjoy it in comfort.

I love the rain, especially when you draw with it tum-tum storming off in the background.

I love the rain, perhaps chiefly because it represents the entirety of romance.

I love the rain, and fell in love in childhood while reading to it in the distance.

I love the rain, and am saddened by those who despise it.

I love the rain because it doesn't care what you think.

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Fun_Boolama

Anyway, I wanted to draw something reminiscent of Bulma from DBZ, somewhat stemming from that "in the spirit of" movement Eric Canete did for a while, where he'd draw fan art-ish original pieces, thus I present Boolama.

The background is a photo from a nearby station in Tokyo. I noticed they all kinda seem to look alike...if you look closely enough.

This was the initial concept, with that caption, こんな感じか？, meaning like, well, "like this?" which captures my feelings lately, or at least when I made this, which was a while ago...

I should be in Kyoto at the moment, but ever since we've started pre-loading posts, there shouldn't be a noticeable difference in the update schedule. Hashtag meaninglessness.

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Fun_ChiksUp

Another artifact from the recent Werewolf visit, where we sat around drawing at a bread shop.

I tried out his markers, which blended really quite well, even on this tough watercolor paper, but unfortunately I didn't finish coloring before we had to head out.

Here's the image minus the blurs and whistles, but retaining the color correction on the background. I've been sitting on this photo for a while, seen undoctored in the background above, and I knew I wanted to use it for a PhotoJam with a pikachu, though I originally thought it would be a digital draw.

The photo was from a sort of street-side garden, or more accurately a collection of different trees, each numbered and with an accompanying placard bearing details on the tree. I saw one with pikachu's original pokedex number, 25, and knew I wanted a super-instragrammy pokesafari type gag.

I finished coloring at home with Copics to fill in the remaining bits, but new to this process, I used some of my ballpoint Signos and Mitsubishi colored pencils to touch up and texturize some of the character. I'm pretty happy with the little details you can work in using these in combination.

This is how it looked before I thought to add the pen and pencil layers.

And here are our lines, drawn on surprisingly forgiving watercolor paper.

If all is going according to plan, I'm actually on the road, Kyoto-bound for the GP, to meet the sensei. I'll be back on Monday.

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Fun_Imagination

I saw a really neat photo of Gene Wilder and wanted to give it a try after receiving a prompt to draw him from the Tokyo Werewolf.

Alternate version with a nod to the black and white film Young Frankenstein. Obviously the black and white contrasting with color has other meanings given the recent news.
Even in digital, I typically start in monochromatic, as we'll see later, so the above effect is pretty easily done by placing a black color-mode layer over everything and then knocking out in a mask what you want to remain in color, which lets the underlying color peek through the black. I gave the mask some blur to make it a little more ephemeral.

This is what it looks like without all the final blurs, bells, and whistles. Still has that dreamy kind of effect from the fading colors and detail, another technique I wanted to try out here.

Here's a more cleaned-up background, which is another smalltown Tokyo photo of mine.

Speaking of background, I have to admit, I'm not terribly familiar with Gene Wilder's work...I only foggily remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but was quite endeared by listening to this Conan interview and was just put over the top at this part of Larry King's interview. I was painting Zero at the time, and was first of all delighted to learn that someone is called "Zero" in real life, and secondly that he also calls him "Z!" That's what I call Zero in my head!

After getting the lines where we want, there's a round of color balancing and stuff that goes on, so this is before all that.
Anyway, so while I may not be super up on Gene Wilder's films, I do really enjoy the way he speaks. It's quite soothing to listen to him. I do remember being a bit alarmed at his mannerisms in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he seemed mean--I remember him whipping his cane to stop people from walking further when walking down some stairs. And I will always remember, and use--if only to myself--his "you lose" diatribe.

This is a newer technique I used for this piece, which I call "stacking" the colors.

I usually color all my monochromatic lines if I color them at all, but in this case since I knew I wanted only limited coloring for speediness, I kept the lines' colors much more systematically separated, like stacked layers of a cake of decreasing radii. Color balancing evens this out a bit, but this was the starting point, and probably not something I'd want to use all the time.

Here's everything pretty straight up. I did put in a backing softened copy of the lines, and the same for the orange undertone, and I liked how these made everything read a little cleaner.

And here's just the monochromatic lines. I used KNKL's chalk brush, with his classic brush-and-erase technique.

I guess I should pick up some chocolate tonight. They do sell Willy Wonka chocolate here in Japan, but not anywhere near me, unfortunately. Meiji's pretty good.

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