Out with the Old

Those who have been following me on Deviant Art knows that I've deleted a good 70% of my gallery. I got rid of the really really bad art that I started out with. However, I am aware that each person's tastes are certainly their own. So here is a megaupload link to my old work.

OLD STUFF

There are a couple of duplicates, but not many. Now, if you look at this crap and don't see improvement, then I can't say much about your reasoning faculties. (Long hand for "yer a tard")

My opinion about art is this. "You may never be a master, but you can always improve. Improvement is about self awareness and intelligent practice. It is not about critiques, or anatomy measuring. Focusing on these things will only hinder you. Try your hardest and please yourself first and foremost"

Kukaku Shiba

Kukaku is my favorite Bleach lady. Not only is she the most well endowed, but I genuinely like her character. She's confident, knowledgable, relaxed and definitely tsundere. On top of being one of the more unique bleach girls, she's also one of the most underused. I'm not sure if she even appears in the series anymore. As such, there isn't much fan art of her and I felt obliged to correct that.

I'll be updating with a little tutorial on how I did this in a couple of days.

Kuta for Cheeks

Kuta is a character created by Cheeks-74 on DA. He's holding an art contest for the statue he made of the character. Now, here's my track record with contests and competition. Failure failure failure. Maybe a little recognition, but mostly failure. I enter contests as often as I can cuz you never know when you're going to succeed.

Much like pavlov's dog, I've been conditioned to expect failure. So what do I do? I make images that I like. I never try to out do anyone I just make something that looks right to me. Is this good or bad? I don't truthfully know.

Samus Painting

Samus is more often than not portrayed as a pin up girl. She's a generic blonde with a nice ass, and nerds have been fawning over that for a while. I've always thought that her sex was irrelevant, but nowadays it seems to be the major selling point on the character.

That bugs me. Now, I'm the first to sexualize something. The toph images are perfect evidence of that. However, Samus has become too far sexualized. I think its important to remind ourselves why she's so beloved, and no it's not for her spectacular ass.

Toph Crawling

Once again, I make an attempt at drawing and painting a sexy adult Toph. Once again, I feel really creepy doing so. Just so you guys know, she is covered up down there by a material similar to what makes up her "boulder holders." I didn't render it because everytime I did it looked either like a piece of poo... literally, or a penis. I'd rather some people think that she's totally exposed down there, than think she's shitting herself or that she has a penis.

Unfortunately, I can't claim that this was a speed painting. I worked most of the night on it and it still feels like it is below par. However, the reason why I took so long, and why it didn't turn out great was because I practicing things I'm weak in.

First, the pose. I've come to realize that alot of my skill in regards to poses always involves the figure standing upright in some basic way and I never deal with perspective in any way. There are two reasons for this. Most of the books I study, in terms of anatomy, have just plain standing poses. The other reason is that most of the poses that I get in life drawing are either standing or sitting, and I rarely put myself in a position and the model rarely poses in a way that allows me to practice foreshortening in a really detailed way. I mean, it's understandable, the model needs to find a pose that's comfortable to hold for 30 minutes at a time. But still, I need to practice it. So I challenged myself with the perspective and the pose.

Second, the painting style. Once again I'm trying really really hard to be clean. I mean, I loved the Ken - Shoryuken piece because the general style of that game, well the opening, is very messy and sketchy. That's right up my ally. But clean is what people respond to

Third, color practice. I made it a point to only use colors I could use while painting in real life. I avoided using levels, brightness/contrast, and adjustments. This was so I could remain as honest as possible. I often get the feeling that I use those adjustment abilities of photoshop as a crutch and I need to get out of the habit of doing that.

Finally, I was trying to create a connection between Older Toph's Boulder Holders


I posted this earlier. I went back and redid some things and that's now at the top. If I make any more significant changes that will end up at the bottom as well.

Indestructible

God damn, that Street Fighter IV opening is catchy. As I mentioned before. Ken is one of my fav characters. He's an american version of Ryu, who has a way more awesome shoryuken. The shoryuken is one of my favorite moves because you always get these motherfuckers who are like, "yea, I'm going to jump at you." and the Shoryuken puts a stop to it but quick.

I finished this mostly because I had the opening to SFIV stuck in my head. Here let me spread the love.

To Boldly Go

This was a 45 minute speed painting. I'm gettin better at speed painting, now if I could only get better at slow painting. Getting detail in there is tough, a good first impression I can do.

Star Trek was really well done and Ryan Church's distinctive visual aesthetic certainly brought a lot to the film visually. I know a little bit about how Ryan Church does his images, so I took some queues from him.

I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of Nero's ship design. I understand wanting to visually connect it with a space monster and all of the connotations that is, but still, it bugged me. The ship didn't strike me as romulan.

Even in the kobeyashi maru the Klingon vessels looked the same and I could tell that they were klingons. But Nero's ship design just came out of fucking left field, didn't it?

Thumbnails of May 10th

So, I have my final final tomorrow for this semester. Well, it's at 4:30pm today technically. I should probably get some sleep but I can't. I'm excited and nervous all at once and I'm celebrating my freedom by starting (and hopefully finishing) a whole bunch of new arts. I came up with all of these thumbnails tonight. Thumbnails aren't even sketches, and I draw them at like 20% in painter just to get basic stuff in there. They sort of chronicle what's been going on, so lets get to em.



Good luck deciphering this thumbnail. I'm so bad at drawing technical stuff. Anyway, it's supposed to be the enterprise standing off against that vulcan ship. This is a really quick 30 second sketch to start off a speed painting I'm going to do tomorrow for my Star Trek Art Jam.

Star Trek was fucking amazing, but it implies so many changes in the series that followed. I find myself wondering about Tuvok, and about how Spock dies and is ressurected. I hope the TNG crew's history wasn't fucked with too much, because Picard > Kirk as far as I'm concerned.


The main game I've been playing this weekend is Street Fighter IV. It is fucking amazing. I took a little more time with this thumbnail because the pose was key in this. Hopefully it's obvious that it's Ken doing the shoryuken. Ken and Chun Li are my fav Street Fighter characters.
I was watching this thing on meteors on the history channel. One of the scientists on it were like "movies have given us this false hope of being able to divert a meteor. The truth of the matter is, if it's going to hit us, it's going to hit us, and there's nothing we can do about it." So I had this idea of a character I created using his powers to stop a meteor that couldn't be stopped.

Yes, more Older Toph. However, I'm trying to actually hold back a little bit, at least in comparison to other Toph sketches I've done. I also recently did this piece of art that had Soranik Natu crawling on all fours, and I wasn't satisfied with it. I'm trying to get the perspective of that pose right, and this is half the reason why I made this. Finally, I found my old Older Toph's Boulder Holders sketch. It's interesting to compare how it started with where it wound up.

N. E. WAY... I need to sleep

Final Self Portrait Sculpture

We started by modeling the head. I didn't take many pictures when I first started out. This is the oldest picture I have of the modeling process taken just before spring break.

After about two weeks of work, I wound up here.

From there I made a mold, and put paper mache in the mold.


I used the same process to create the fire, and attach it.

And this brings us to the present. These last 13 something posts was everything I did this semester. As you can see, you didn't miss out on much. From now on, I plan to update this blog regularly. I'll rant often, but I'll have some art to go along with it.

Soranik Natu Art Jam

So, after the 14-bis art jam, I decided to start doing my own. I don't expect many to participate. I can't offer any kind of exposure to people at all and I pick farely obscure character that the denizens of dA aren't inclined to want to draw.

Raven Art Jam

Raven was the subject of an art jam hosted by 14-Bis. Now I'm not a fan of 14-bis. I think his work misses when it comes to the basics, but exceeds in terms of polish. It irritates me that I see all of these formal errors in his drawings, and yet he has people fawning over him for three reasons. He sexualizes cartoons in a generally competent way and does it in a cosistent manner. He knows how to polish up his work and make it very neat. He know what his audience wants. It has nothing to do with actually being a good artist.

I mean, I've seen people with almost no popularity get totally ignored or treated like dirt who can draw and paint 10,000 times better than 14-bis and it pisses me off. If you're going to treat someone differently because they are popular, you are a sicophant.

I entered this Jam to expose my work to more people. I used his popularity to get my work out there, and I really don't feel bad about it in the slightest. The fact of the matter is, that's why most people entered it and I would totally ignore anyone that says otherwise. Having your work on 14-bis' journal guaranteed more favs than normal.

If I had posted these on their own, they would've gone totally ignored.

Panda Carmen Maria Delgado

The new Body Bags was surprisingly good and got me to make my first. I've been wanting to draw some Panda art since... forever. What's not to love about her? Honestly. This is probably one of the very few girls that I've probably under-endowed in comparison to their creator's rendition.

But this is the closest I've come to good Panda art.

Raven in Lowcut Jeans Redux

Occasionally I get the urge to go back and redo an old piece of work.

Kamina the Ultimate Blue Lantern

SPIRAL POWER SHINING BRIGHT,
ANTI SPIRALS FLEE FROM SIGHT,
PIERCING HEAVENS NEAR AND FAR
GURREN LANTERN
WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE?

(Gurren Lantern oath devised by an Anonymous on /co/)


OK, as I was reading through Green Lantern not only did I develop an affinity for Natu, but I also thought "Simon would be the ultimate Green Lantern and Kamina would be the ultimate Blue Lantern."

I blame /co/ ...

This is just a fun (read: quick and dirty) sketch of Kamina, the ultimate Blue Lantern. The anatomy is shit, it's not very detailed, and I really don't have the will to make it as good as the Natu piece. It was just a funny idea.

This took a grand total of about 2 hours spread over two days of working on it sporadically for like 10 minutes at a time, the Natu piece took about 6 hours spread over two weeks.

Soranik Natu

I'm a recent convert to the Green Lantern comics because I wanted to find out about all of the red, blue, green, yellow, violet, etc. so I read as much Green Lantern as I could. I haven't decided on my favorite Lantern yet, I'm bouncing back and forth between Guy and Kyle.

However, Soranik Natu. For my money, is the sexiest Green Lantern ever. (I loved Guy's reaction to her. I was like, "Yes, this man speaks for me.") Though I'm pretty sure that she's Sinestro's Daughter and now that she and Kyle are an item, she's so going to die. So while she's still around, I decided to do some fan work of her.

I felt like doing some statuesqe female anatomy and practicing with space, and she was perfect for my experimentations. Sure, I could have used Power Girl or Wonder Woman, or even Starfire, but those bitches perfectly respectable ladies are over exposed. I ALSO wanted to experiment with anatomical drawing techniques and a new way of painting derived from comic coloring techniques. (ALL of which I will explain in depth in a youtube video.)

YOu see, as a painter, I realize my biggest flaw is that my stuff is way too... sketchy and messy. I'm puttin forth a lot of effort to learn to control that. My efforts seem to either look mushy, or too hard edged, so it's a tough thing to perfect.






My very first attempt at a tutorial using youtube. It sucked.

The Mother Tree Sings

Yet another Ender related piece

The Hive Queen

"You wanted to see her."

This is based on a scene from.... Xenocide...I think. Xenocide is the third Ender's Game novel. In it, practically the first thing that Valentine does when she reunites with Ender is to go meet the ressurrected Bugger Queen. When they first see her, she's killing her own workers to feed new larva queens. It's an awesome scene but I'm not going to spoil why. This is pretty much what I saw in my head when I read the book. (Maybe a little redder.)

The novels never really went in to too much detail, but a couple of things forced me to totally rethink my interpretation of the buggers.

The toughest thing was the rainbow reflection on the slime covering the wings, and to give her the disgusting majesty described in the book.

Puppetmaster's Regret

BUY A PRINT

Just a random painting that I started recording for you tube. After about halfway through, the damn recorder stopped working so I stopped working on it.

I may add stuff to this, I'm not sure.

Not really that invested in it to be honest. Just wanted to do something original and expressive.

Grahf

made during valentines day... a lonely lonely valentines day

Round 2 Toph vs Katara

Every super bowl, I spend the day making a speed painting. It's my tradition. This was what I made.


Here is a video of its creation.

Warhammer 40k Meme

Made for fun on dA

Bugger

So, for the first time since high school I read through Ender's Game during spring break. It was my treat to myself this christmas break and while it is fresh in my head, I decided to make some images. Mainly because I don't see much Ender's Game art here on dA, or at least Ender's Game art that I like.

I love that book, and don't read it as often as I should. I remember when I first read the book in like the mid to late 90s I was all like "FUCK YEA!" at one point, and then by the end that moment is retrospectively depressing and every subsequent read through I've always "baaaaaw'd" at that moment.

Poor buggers. This image is an approximation of what I imagine the average bugger looks like. I'm tempted to draw a queen. Only in making it do I realize I make them look alot like shadows from babylon 5.

CC Week 4

I made these for a CC week sometime in January. CC is a character from Altermeta. CC is just fun to draw, I don't know why. She is my favorite character, and certainly prime choice for cheesecake. Plenty of it has been made by the author, but it's damn near impossible to find.

New Years Kim Possible

I made these on new years day. They suck