Happy Birthday, Nanako

Nana-chan turns four this weekend and so for one of her gift I decided to draw her as a cartoony characters.

Beside the drawing, I also pick up quilling so I made Nana a little flower and placed it in the shadow box along with her drawing. (I was watching a show on the computer so sorry for the reflection, High five if you can guess the show XP)

Aoi Dai 2

I recently visited a cousin of mine and in her room I came across a wooden frame of a silhouette what's seem to be a Vietnamese lady in a traditional "Ao Dai" (long dress) holding on to a straw hat. I was fascinated with silhouette so I took a photo of it. When I got home, I decided to fill in the silhouette with my own design. I can't take full credit for the drawing style because I was inspired by Danni Shinya Luo. This is a sketch, I will work on the lineart in near future.

Rascal Shaman

About a month ago I saw this sketch by Ryan and I just has a moment of "ohhhh pretty me want to color." It took me awhile to think how I want to ink and color it. 

Original sketch by Ryan 

Inking by Thanh (me)

Color by me as well.

Happy Belated Halloween!

I am a couple hours late! I wanted to drawing something for Halloween this year like I did last year.

Adventure Time Style

I watch a couple of Adventure time ep from time to time. I thought it was always random and fun which most of the time are true, but I am really like the Simon/Ice King storyline. Yes, "I remember you" got me too. So I wanted to draw an avi of myself if I was in AT's world.

Paranorman

One of my favorite movie I saw this year!

I got a job!

Yes, I have a job now. So I am spending a lot less time on my own artwork or projects. I don't know how these artist I follow or listen in podcast; they talk about how they would go to work and then go home and draw more...like drawing at work was not enough...I don't know...I want to learn how to do that. It's just discipline, right? I got this! I....got...this MWAHAHAHAHAH. Since I started working...I have not draw anything for myself yet..so this is just an old drawing or project I did. I would hope I can finish at least one more cafe store before the end of this month. We'll see...I'm sorry I am still trying to get used to work and when I got home I am super tired and on weekend...I want my chillaxing time lol.

Working on my weakness!

For the past couple of days I been drawing things I usually don't draw which are buildings and expressions.

A few days ago I discover Aurore Damant I was really draw to her style. So I wanted to imitate her styles. I first started by drawing an avatar of myself and now that I am done with it. I will start working on expression. I had some down...I just need to polish it.

Beside this project I am so working on buldings for my first "assignment" to draw Cafe. I have the basic outline down, I just have to color it in and add texture. Here is my outline/sketch. I have design four so far.

This kitty has blade!

Saw "Dark Knight Rises" last weekend and I really like Anne Hathaway portrayed of Catwoman.

Side note: With what happened in Aurora, Colorado last week. I can't bare to draw the character holding a gun eventho, in the original picture that I used as a reference for this drawing, she's holding a gun. I changed her holding a pearl necklace and thought it was more well fitted prop if you saw the movie.

I like to draw girls

Four posts in one month O_O, that is a record for me on blogspot! So due to some self injuries (I am a hazard to myself) I haven't be able to move around alot...so I been sitting in front of the computer...drawing...not a bad thing. It's good practice to get a job. So here are two of the drawing I finish. It's not a fanart! O_O

Kiki's Delivery Service

Doing more fanart! This time it's Kiki!

More spiderman fanart!

I forget I did a drawing of chibi pin-up of Blackcat awhile back and she was from the Spiderman comic series universe and here I am back 7 months later with a new and improve if I don't say so myself with another fanart of Spiderman characters. This time it's Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy!

Based of this movie poster of "The Amazing Spiderman" starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone!

MNN: Reimagine Jackie

"My Nocturnal Neighborhood" was a story that my friend Quin came up ages ago lol. Between us we came out with over 50 characters...or so. We talked about them, but never really develop them beside the more main characters. Jackie is not one of the main characters, but she shows up once in awhile. She hang up with Dean and his pals because she's dating one of the guy. There really hasn't been much development for her character beside her looks. Years ago, Quin designs Jackie from the description I imagine she would looks like. I like the design, but we always try to develop the character more and redesign the clothes to be more moderns or whatever. Now four years later, it's my turn to reimagine the character. This is not a set design...it's just "well how about Jackie not wearing a dress, but a corset, skinny jeans, boots."

Nausicaa

I had so much fun working on Arrietty that I decided to work on another Studio Ghibli's character. Someone I know suggested that I should draw Nausicaa from the series Nausicaa Valley of the Wind. Never seen the film or read the manga myself, I hesitate if I will do the character justices. I enjoy looking at her design and I didn't know that Ghibli Studio like to recycle the helmet design from Nausicaa on their other films like Arrietty's dad also has a really similar helmet design.

Some correction to be clear: Nausicaa Valley of the Wind was created BEFORE Studio Ghibli was found, but the film it still considered the beginning of the studio.

DA ID of 2012

I'm actually an active member of the site Deviant . One of the thing I like to do on there is draw ID for my DA, perhaps the avatar is my ideal Alter ego. Some of the stuff I like to feature in the drawing are my love for polar bear and my wacom4 tablet.

(DA ID June 2012-January 2012)

Oh the FLAWS in the January 2012 ID drawing, now that I look back at it. My June 2012 drawing has alot of changes like the polar bear is no longer a teddy bear, but some kind of polar bear creature. I recently cut my hairs so I gave my June ID a shorter hairdo. I learn a bit more about shading the characters. My June ID is greatly inspired by Chris Sanders's work.

My Progress for the June ID: 

I been looking at my hits per pageview and it seem like I have alot of hits on my Cowgirl blog. I'm not sure if it's because of the subject of cowgirl or because I also posted my progress so I'm going to try to post another progress post and see. 

Started out with just doodle idea for the drawing. I looked for reference for the pose and the drawing style so there I looked at Chris Sander's work. I like his design on the different creatures, but I don't want to fully copy his style. I still wanted to created something my own.

Flushing out the doodle some more for a more clear idea of the pose. I did a couple changes because I wanted more interaction with the two characters. Instead of the girl holding the tablet, I have the bear chewing on it and her reaction. I'm never really good at expression, so working on her reaction also helped me explore the different expression with her face and hands.

 Once, I got a clear solid idea from my doddle. I would make it into lineart using the pen tool so I can more fine lines.

 Then, it's just the matter of coloring the characters. I had to change the color of the dress a couple of time. The dress color is a combo of some of my favorite colors. The dress was originally going to be solid color, but then I wanted to add some texture to it so it wouldn't look so boring and plain.

Add some shadow work.

Finally add some highlight and change the background color. FIN! 

Arrietty

Fanart of Arrietty from the movie "The Secret World of Arrietty." 

I need post more artworks more than like one or two time a month! I am recovering from dry spell or a drawing block period. So hopeful more artworks to come later on this month.

Project: Notice Me

This project/story came to me YEARS ago...well not too long...just during my first year at AAU; so back in 2009. For a final project for my first storyboard class, I had to create a story and boarded it out. I came out with this idea of two characters a boy and a girl living in two different planets and the girl would do different thing like throwing rock from her planet to his to get his attention. I know really simple and naive idea. During that time I was just learning how to board a story and I had no idea on creating a character. I actually have not thought about this story ever since that class ended because I didn't like the character design and my boarding skills SUCK (not like it got any better). Even so, when I was cleaning up my room a couple weeks ago, the old storyboard of the story show up and I been thinking about it ever since. I redesigns the characters, create new plots...still working out some of the bugs for the story...but I'm going to attempt to storyboard it (I have not try to storyboard anything since I grad from AAU MWAHAHAHA). For now, this is the re-design of the two characters.

SuperGirl

A quick doodle of Supergirl and a different style of rendering the character. Enjoy! 

 

I remember "The X's" cartoon!

I remember when I was younger, I used to watch a cartoon show on Nickelodeon called "The X's." I was fascinated by the design of the characters.

So I decided to re-design the characters for the sake designing. I have nothing against the original characters design.

The characters line-up:

 Mr. X, Mrs. X, Tuesday, and Truman 

Vietnamese Traditional Female Costumes

     These drawings are actually a revisit doodles that I created a while back. A couple months ago, I took on a challenge to draw one girl each day for a whole month. I quitted after one week of drawing lol, but I did have a grand idea of each day drawing girls wearing different traditional costume from different cultures. I started with traditional Vietnamese clothes for the female, there are mainly three different traditional Vietnamese costume for female and I illustrated each one:

Ao Dai/ Long Dress 

Ao Tu Than / Four-part Dress 

Ao Ba Ba

A drawing for two dear friends

I haven't been drawing as much as I should be...for the past week I been sick (first time having a cold since two years ago lol) and I have fallen back to an old habit again, dosing myself with old Hong Kong drama series (THERE IS GOING TO BE FANART SOON!) A couple weeks ago I told my friend My that I would drawing something for her and her boyfriend, Rich since their three years together just passed. Hope you guys like it. It ended looking like Luigi L. 's style alot...XD.

More recent artworks

While my art drive is still running I'm pumping as much artworks as I can. I recently finish a really fun and good book called "The Night Circus." Once I finish the book, I got really sad because I don't know when will the next time I can read something as awesome as that and be inspired. Thank to this book, I developed some circus characters not necessarily based on the characters in the book. However, I was really drawn with the idea of these characters wearing black and white theme clothes (but I been into black and white clothes in awhile lol). So far, I developed two characters for my portfolio. I loved playing with the pattern of the clothes and just go crazy with the black and white theme. I'm going to develop more characters for this circus project so stay tone.

Welcome!!! To start off this circus concept I played around with character ringmaster. From alot of goggle references of ringmaster it's usually a male in the red, white, gold, and black uniform. I love the ringmaster uniform, but I also wanted to challenge myself to create a new concept so I switch it to a female ringmaster. The problem with goggling female ringmaster is that there are quite a few sexy one...and I wasn't really looking to sexified this female ringmaster.

My second character, I wanted it to be a child. I really like chinese acrobat playing with Diabolo so I got my influence for that concept.

To give myself a break from the circus project. I did more lineart practice with the characters of final Fantasy 12 this time it's Vanille...she was fun, but didn't realize her clothes has alot of details.

Some Art Update

I didn't realize is been more than a month since the last time I updated, sorry for that. One of the reason why the lack of update was February was kinda a busy month for me (I been having too much fun lol) and then in the end of February and the beginning of March I kinda hit a rut..reality hit in...out of school...a year older...overwhelming feeling...stress...career...yes... Beside from that, I have been drawing more or less.

So in the middle of February, I did a tester for this illustration job and yes...didn't get it. I still had a very interesting time working on it and I learned quite a few things from it. I don't like inking my own penciling work so this project forced me to work on my lineart so that was a fun challenge.  I also never really work on action pose for characters and so this project also made me go out of my comfort poses and work on action pose. Alot of references. These are the three illustration the client asked to do as a tester.

 

So after that project, I got back to Final-Fantasy 13-2 so I draw this fanart. I wanted to work on my lineart some more. I don't want the lines to be all the same size, I wanted to have weights on the line so I looked at comic pages and just brush stroke on characters from artist I adore so much like Shane Glines to get my influence.

That's what I been up to? I still have some current project I'm working on, but I don't want to show or talk about it too much before I finish it. Knowing myself, I know if i talk about it too much I might end up not working on it. So for now, that's all folk.

Re-imagining Vernon Grant's Illustration!

 

The original piece 

Originally,  I wanted to do more re-creating illustration from different artist for a personal project this month, but it seem like I got some projects and challenges line up that I want to enter so for know I can only finish one!

The Year of the Dragon Pin-up finally color!

Yay, I finally finish coloring it, I hope you guys enjoy it. Special thanks to Quin and Amy for giving me input on the drawing so I can improve on it.

The Year of the Dragon Pin-Up

Pin-Up! Mommy is back!!! It felt like forever since the last time I draw a pin-up character. Well, actually not really, I draw one last month. THE POINT IS I MISS IT!!! The drawing of the pin-up is a bit different from my past pin-up drawing because I was inspired by someone else beside kinkei and it's the man himself J-Scott Campbell. I have the BIGGEST crush on his pin-up drawing or his drawing in general. I have no idea what I was on to decided to draw a pin-up in J-Scott Campbell drawing style...his stuff are crazy (GOOD!). I tried to mimic his style here and there is this doddle, but I also found my own groove. 

 

It's "Year of the Dragon" pin-up. Amy suggested that I should have a theme for my pin-up drawing like the animals zodiac and I thought it was an awesome idea so this is my first animal zodiac drawing. I am going to color it, but I thought I did a good work with the doddle/rough of it so I decided to share it with you guys. Now if I can only color like Nei Ruffino!!!! (MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA in my wildest dream, but practice make prefect!!!)

TinTin Fanart

So couple days ago, I went and saw "The Adventure of TinTin" IN 3D with my friend Simone. For the longest time I didn't want to go see it in theater because I don't like 3D too much and from the trailer...I didn't like the CG...it felt too realistic..uncanny. But I'm glad that I went and saw it in theater. It was such a fun and exciting film. I wasn't even thinking of drawing anything for it until my friend Quin DEMANDED (j/k lol) to draw her something Tintin...so I did. And here it is: (it's kinda an inside joke from the movie)

Holmes boys: The Virigin And The Iceman

Some fanart I did on the side when BBC Sherlock return in 2012....great great GREAT show lol.