Elephant in the rotunda

Here's a sketch I did at the National Museum of Natural History during my trip to Washington, DC over the summer. I finally started using my new hand-book sketchbook and I am loving the super long double page spreads. :)

Summer paint doodles

I hope everyone is having a great summer! The weather has been pretty intense this year, but we finally have a milder day today here in Toronto. (And of all days I am staying indoors to catch up on my digital stuff) :)

I painted these during a weekend at an adorable, quaint cottage in Owen Sound:

Found a small frog basking in the sun by the eddys in Niagara Falls:

Bumming around a playground:

Candy crushin' mom

Happy Mother's Day! My mom is pretty obsessed with Candy Crush nowadays. I personally don't play the game but my mom keeps trying to talk to me about it anyway. :'D

Candy Crusher

water media

Sorry for the inactivity (as always). I'll be posting some process shots in the next post!

flora

I have been art blocking like crazy lately, so I've been mostly focusing on practicing anatomy and technical things. I might post some of them eventually, but they tend to be incredibly messy and undecipherable. :'D

So for now, here are some watercolour studies of plants I did during a weekend getaway. :)

water media + Pilot frixion pen on paper

I'm pleasantly surprised by how well my sketchbook holds up with water media. It's a really cheap Canson sketchbook, but the paper doesn't pill or wrinkle that much (provided you control the amount of water and how many times you go over an area). Canson has really improved the paper quality of this line. Since I'm the type who gets nervous when drawing in a nice sketchbook (e.g. moleskin that is still collecting dust on my shelf), these suit me well. I'm on my fourth one now!

Happy Mother's Day!

This year's card features my mom with a group of dogs. Although we don't have a pet, my mom loves dogs and pet-sitting for friends!

Hope all the moms out there had a wonderful day. :)

the doggie treats are coming
watercolour, watercolour pencils, and col-erase pencil on paper

My drawing process below :) 

one fish, two fish...

Another birthday card! This one's for my dad. :)

a fishy birthday

brown Sharpie + watercolours on paper

I used a different watercolour paper this time (Strathmore CP 600 series) and the surface seemed to be repelling water. Very strange behaviour... I still swear by Windsor & Newton HP 150 lb watercolour paper! I was just too lazy to cut the large sheet I have...

EDIT: whoa! Blogger finally updated their picture viewer? Looks a bit like Tumblr/Facebook now, but I like it. :)

Crabby

Here's a quick birthday card I drew for my mom! She really likes eating snow crab legs, so I decided to draw her a crab (snow crabs were a bit difficult to draw in a cute way so chose another species...).

This was originally the back, but I decided it was a tad morbid and didn't include it in the final card. :'D

untitled

Sakura brush marker + watercolours + watercolour pencils on paper

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. :(

paint sketches!

My aunt and uncle bought me a 5x7" Robert Batement sketchbook for Christmas, and they're expecting it to be filled by next Christmas! I decided to get cracking before the start of school. I've taken a real liking to the pen and watercolour combination (or more accurately, water-soluble pencils). I expanded my water-soluble pencil set recently so hopefully I'll have time to do more of these later on!

page 2 (doodled while brewing teas in Professor Layton and Pandora's Box 8D;;)

page 5

sakura microns + steadtler water-soluble pencils

I'm not sure what I'll fill this sketchbook with yet (only 2.5 pages/50 so far!) but I might go with a cute OD theme for the whole thing. :)

More holiday fare!

Here is a simple card I drew as part of a secret santa gift exchange. :)

From your Secret Santa

watercolour + water-soluble pencils + sakura microns

Paper texture is digital! lol!

I realized how much I missed traditional media after doing this painting! One day... one day I'll have time to get back into painting...

Jamaica doodlings

i just got back from Montego Bay, Jamaica for my sister's destination wedding and had an awesome time! It was incredibly hot and humid there, but it appears that Toronto is just as hot right now!

Anyway, here are some of the drawings i did there while enjoying some Red Stripe! First up, a dead fish (of course!). My dad, who was apparently the first man to go fishing at this resort, caught this fish along the shore (whoever can tell me what species this is gets a cookie! i actually forgot to draw its whiskers - likely a detail important to its identification...). i thought of Bidloo as i added in the flies...

unidentified dead fish

watercolour on paper

i had a number of ballpoint pen sketches of other striped fish, mussels, and sea urchins along the coast, but i accidentally got sunblock on them...

Anyway, my next painting was not so morbid! Here is my mom relaxing on the beach. :)

by the seaside
watercolour + sakura microns on paper

At the Toronto Pearson airport, i started drawing people around me like a real creeper during the long wait at customs...

noob-ish character studies @ airport
ballpoint pen on paper <-- dang, my new RSVP pens are no good, totally leaky!

i also drew some anime stuff during the flight that is pretty much unrelated to Jamaica, so i will post those later! Ah, i miss being spoiled silly at the resort already... D:

cardiac surgery!

These past two weeks, our class has been observing and sketching in the O.R. @ TGH and TWH for our surgical illustration course. Initially, i was worried about things like getting in the surgeon's way, touching something blue (my greatest fear), or feeling queasy. However, this all changed when we got there! My colleague and i observed an incredible cardiovascular surgeon who made us feel welcome. i think his enthusiasm was contagious - i ended up falling in love with cardiac procedures and went back for more! :'D
(i also fell in love with scrubs... they are so comfy...)

We really appreciated his kindness, so i painted this card for him:


cardiac surgery love
watercolour + col-erase pencil on watercolour paper

(Unfortunately, i only had crappy student-grade watercolour paper, so it didn't absorb the colours well. It also got wrinkly and refused to scan properly. So i'm a little disappointed with the results. ;-; )

chillin'

Here is a Secret Santa painting for my dear ex-canmate from university. :)
i meant to paint her something serious, but it didn't turn out - hope she likes this anyway!
Whenever i think of Mauritius, huge turtles always come to mind...


chillin'
watercolour + water-soluble crayons on paper 8x10"

If i don't manage to squeeze in a quick doodle before the end of 2009, Happy New Year!
New year's resolution: make time for non-school art!

ganbatte!

ganbatte!
watercolour + colored pencils on paper, ~6x8"

The process:


Unfortunately, i haven't been drawing at all recently, as i'm in the middle of moving and preparing to start my Masters! So this painting is actually from a few weeks ago. i have a lot of drawings and paintings planned in my head, but there is never enough time i spend too much time playing video games and watching Korean dramas...

On a more positive note, my Deviruchi tee came in the mail! More on that next time. :)

happy father's day!

the green
watercolour, water-soluble crayons + brown Col-Erase pencil on paper, 8.5x11"

This one's for my dad! Golf is one of his many hobbies...
I initially wanted to match the style/colours of my Mother's Day card but decided to give this painting a yellowish tint/aging paper look instead. :)

omfg i'm an aunt!

'tis a boy!
watercolours & water-soluble crayons on paper, ~4x6"

Wow, do I feel old. I went to visit my 3 week-old nephew today, so I guess that officially makes me an aunt! Here's the quick, impromptu card I drew for the visit (I went for the stereotypical baby boy colours ;) ).

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

"BWAAAAAAAH!!!!!"
gouache on cardboard, ~6 x 6"
(dedicated to my sister, for getting me addicted to this game :P)

I pretty much spent my entire long weekend on Rayman: Raving Rabbids. Shooting bunnies with plungers is oddly addictive...

I found it really hard to capture the insanity of the game in a painting (my sketches seem to express it better D: ). I don't think this one was particularly successful, so expect more Rabbids fanart in the future! :)


A shot of my very cramped workspace...

happy mother's day!

Here is a painting I did for my mom. :)


a little bit of TLC
watercolour + water-soluble crayons on paper, 8.5x11"

lovey dovey planet

kataruru
watercolour, water-soluble crayons & brown col-erase pencil on w/c paper, 8.5x11"

I did this watercolour painting for a special someone on Valentine's Day, forgot to post it until now! The idea was based off the game Katamari Damacy on PS2 (which is freakin' awesome, if you haven't played it before). :)

tweet!

I haven't been working on my own art too much lately, but here is a quick watercolour doodle I did. It was fun to let loose again and not care about the outcome. I was trying out the whole fat cutesy bird thing again! :)

tweet~
watercolour on paper, ~11x5.5"

Will post some life drawing/anatomy later? Hard to find ones I'm not too embarassed of. :P