Sky Hike? I really don't know at this point. Mixed media sketch.

"Everything I touch turns to shi...!" Exclaims Nathan Drake from Uncharted 1.
Usually I say that on a bad day or mess up something drastically or say it just for comedic effect.
In this case it is the latter.

I want to complete a digital painting...but all the ones I have done recently aren't any good. I'm experimenting with different techniques...but oh well I'm highly motivated to try again and find a technique that works with the direction I want to pursue my work in.

Besides constantly drawing looking and analyzing art besides your own helps improves your skills tremendously.

Practically everyday I look at art, I say Pintrest and Instagram are the blackholes of productivity at times.

Especially Pintrest. Pintrest has stuff you can't find in google image search. Last year I saved over 20,000+ images and art stuff just from my phone.



This improvement was apparent this week. The last time I attended the Portrait Group was around the middle of November and we started back up in January.  Coincidently these last few sessions we had the same model Karen. She always comes in full costume, that is hand made by her. I still have a ways to go to be where I want but its a step forward. 

I'm usually good with names and faces if a person introduces themselves.  Amazingly enough for the first 3 years I remembered all the models I drew....I could look at the drawing and identify who it was...Now I can't unless someone is a regular model at the group.

One thing I did differently was use a limited palette. I used mostly earth tones and 1-2 primary colors. To get a flesh tone with a pale person there is a hint of light blue. My mentor suggested I try to do that a while back to not get distracted with too many colors and such.

For example I did not have white on my palette but an off white of grey and burnt umber. Nor did I have black, one of my favorite color combinations from school is burnt umber and ultramarine blue gives you a colorful strong black color than straight out of the tube.

November and January

Painted in under 2 hours. Usually I come in late and then we take breaks in between.


One on of the breaks I was like hold that natural pose! Can I take a picture for reference.
I think modeling people in their natural gestures is good and tells a lot about a person. Also its cool she is in theater and hand makes her costumes!

Happy New Year! 2019!

Oi! It is still something of getting used to the fact of seeing and writing 2019 on documents! Hope everyone had a good holiday.

Mine was relaxing and chill. I was completely off and snowed in. I made Pinoy food and promptly binge watched Stranger Things Season 2 and played video games.

 

Back from a unplanned hiatus I hope to deliver new and improved content. 

I took a small break and feel my creative juices and batteries recharged. 

Break time is over and look forward to my future projects and endeavors 

with much enthusiasm and focus.

Some traumatic things happened in 2018...but also equally better things  

countered and balanced out those terrible things.

I hate to make New Years resolutions...and mine is not to make any. Momentum and Progress doesn't always need to coordinated in January and given up on the same month. People seem to always give up on their New Years resolutions...and set themselves up for failure for huge life changing tasks. Best way is to start small and then eventually make bigger steps.

Took this the other day. The moon, Jupiter and Venus in view

Thank you for reading and support!

<3

-K

Scully! Scully doesn't know!
But Mulder does.



I'm an avid fan of the X-files. I watch it off and on and am almost done with season 4.

My favorite episode is Jose Chung's it came from Outer Space. Where practically everyone is a unreliable narrator and spoiler the mystery doesn't get solved because of all the contradictory evidence.


My skeleton manikin is named Scully after Dr. Scully.
I lost his bow tie making him more gentleman like.

For this painting I'm in the thumbnail/sketch research phase.  I have a solid idea of what I want to do, even though it just looks like scribbles. Its the extra details like the the host worm the smoking man,

I spend a lot of time in the research and reference part, albeit too much time. Sometimes for a single illustration I can find and take 300+ images to look at. Just to gain a better understanding of the subject matter and more ideas. 




 
All these scribbles mean something. I can see this drawing in my mind but need to fill in the blanks.
Sketching something again and again can also help to pinpoint what you want to achieve. The first few thumbnails I did the characters didn't have the gesture I wanted. With gesture drawing at times it is best to draw it quick and fluid.

Once I get out of this idea/sketch/reference stage. I'll show more of the progress. This may all look like chicken scratch but I can see most of this in my mind already.
I want to make a cool sticker or t-shirt design. 





I generally like phycological thrillers, humor and stylized flashy action.  It's actually weird to say my favorite show is a romance called Fated to Love You. Its in Taiwanese and all the characters are good. Even the side characters are hilarious and the show makes you laugh and cry.


The larger portraits were just an excuse to draw on paper while watching t.v.
It won't be part of the final illustration. An example of sketching to better understand the subjects. 
If I have paper and a drawing instrument in front of me I can't help but draw.

Drawn with water soluble graphite & water brush.

After the second time someone came in to print this poster and explained what the event was I was fascinated.  And will go! One of the last times I went for dinner also got dragged into dancing...that same morning I went to Physical Therapy for my legs and such! I was sore and not very flexible. The best I could do was wave my arms around like I actually cared!

I was told the dress code was a joke.

I've been working in the printing business for awhile and surprisingly I don't look or pay attention to people's photos or events unless something catches my eye. It is a common misconception that I'm genuinely interested in what I am seeing. For me its a very small percent.

After seeing numerous: event posters x amount of grandmas I don't know talk about their grandsons or the girl with her bathroom selfies sending it to her six prison boyfriends or the self proclaimed iphone expert photographer who thinks Lightroom is the most powerful photo manipulation software out there...(*Ahem its Photoshop. LR is a toned down version more user friendly addition.) Or the thousandth legal document or vacation photo. I wouldn't get any work done if I snooped at everyone's documents and photos!
















This past week I've been obsessed with the game Persona 5...I've put like 30 hours into the game and I only got it last Thursday. >__> It is that good. Usually I'm disciplined with how long I play games. 12 hour binge and loosing sleep over this is no good. <___<

This is huge because I grew up watching and eventually playing the Final Fantasy series. At some point usually FF and Persona fans get into it with debates with which one is better. As someone on the FF side of things I can definitely say FF is weird. The story is generally up its own douche about being convoluted and complicated it does not make any sense. The FF games I tend to like the un-numbered installments like 4 Heroes of light and Crystal Chronicles.

Everything is flawless: the character design, combat system, story  and the music is good but I don't understand the lyrics 97% of the time. Apparently it is a 100hr+ game. Haven't played something that long in a long time.

Its like 3 degrees outside.

Work in Progress

This probably is 80 percent done. Hopefully I'll get this one done this week.
Theres some other stuff in the queue as well. Seriously updating my portfolio.
It is all over the place and not streamlined.

The last bit is always rough because when do you call a painting finished?
More than once I got carried away with the snow effect it was a total blizzard.
You couldn't see anything.


I kind of want to go for a creepy feeling.
Ghosty chilly thing.


Based off and my interpretation of the song Silent Spring by Massive Attack.
It's interesting Elizabeth Fraser sings in a different method
that doesn't make any sense but she is singing in english.
And with my bad hearing I hear something way out there.

 


Screenshots here and there.



Now I have a cool trick I started to do with my reference photos which I'll share later.

Crazy now I have a computer that can handle what I throw at it. I have 70+ ps layers and layer effects.  >__>; The way I work digitally is different from my traditional work.