New website!

It's been a month in the making, but I'm finally ready to launch my new website for my medical and scientific visualization portfolio! I really wanted to showcase my work based on projects so that I could include my process and any additional images that are related to the final piece. I really love it when artists post their process so I hope you will enjoy looking at mine! :)

Anyway without further ado, click to visit my portfolio !

About the design - I ended up matching it to my current blog layout. I drew a lot of inspiration from squidfinger's simple, but effective website, North Kingdom's archive page, and of course, this blog layout template.

I've been tired of my Flash website for quite some time, but didn't have the time/courage to pick up html/css/php. I finally felt up to the task last month and managed to finish my site by stealing the code off Julie and Bea with the help of some friends. I also learned a lot about why web designers/developers rage about IE all the time. IE really enjoys breaking everything. So much so that I considered turning back to Flash. I've managed to IE7&8-proof my website, but please use IE9, or better yet, Chrome or Firefox to view my site with all its css3 drop-shadow goodness! ;)

Here are some of the earlier iterations I started back in December 2010:

I love textured backgrounds but realized what a pain they were. I also decided to change things up a bit and (reluctantly) went for a lighter palette this time around:

Anyway, feedback is most welcome! Feel free to comment here or send me a message on my contact page. :)

Teddy bear wedding :)

I'm happy I had a bit of time to draw a card for my dear high school friend's wedding! I haven't drawn much - let alone paint - lately. So I made quite a few blunders in the process and the illustration ended up a lot tighter than I would've liked. I've forgotten how unforgiving water media is!

Congrats to Kitty & Danny!

watercolours, watercolour pencils, white gouache & Copic multiliner on W&N hp watercolour paper

(sorry for poor photo quality, didn't have access to a scanner D: )

I always make cards without thinking about the envelope... so I had to make a sketchy one out of a generic brown envelope. I tried to make up for it by adding some decorations. :)

1. I tried out different bear drawings - was trying to find the most charming one. :)
2. I got carried away and ended up drawing everything with watercolour pencils (Steadtler)...
3. ...which was a big mistake lol! The colours got a bit dirty as a result of all the mixing and that brown pencil looked fine when I tested a small patch, but looked horrible in the real deal! I ended up adding a lot of watercolour to balance out the colours.
4. I often add a warm glaze over the painting to unify the colours a bit more.
5. This is the point at which the painting started getting too tight. Is this what medical illustration has trained me to do? :P
6. I often find myself asking the same question at this point in the process (aka I never plan properly beforehand...). Should I line it with markers or leave it as is? Looking back at this shot, I probably should've left it alone and lined it with brown col-erase. I have this bottle of brown ink that would've worked really nicely, but I haven't been able to open it with my weak hands/arms for several months now. :(

surgical tools revamp

This isn't a exactly top priority project but I figured it'd be nice to have a good render of my old surgical tool models for my new website. :)

surgical tools

Autodesk Maya 2011 + Adobe Photoshop CS4

I was messing around with MIA materials in Maya and this is the best I could come up with for a metal texture (I think I used the copper preset blended with some chrome and satined metal). The cloth texture could use some serious work too (more imperfections and variation, etc.) but as always with these procrastination tools side-projects, it's time to move on for now!

I apologize for not updating my blog - I've been working on a new html/css website that will be launched soon (hopefully)! I plan on adding process for most portfolio pieces, but as I can't write as freely (aka ramble) as I do here, I might still retroactively add things here...