The One About the Update...

HELLLLOOOO!

Hey Everyone! How's it going? Sorry about the lack of updates for the past couple of weeks, I'm still trying to tweak the schedule of post and see what is best for my schedule. It looks like once a month instead of twice a month, which before was, once a week might work the best for me. It's allow me to collect the work and maybe give a bigger update. We'll see how this goes! I'll try for twice a month, but for sure, once a month. 

Small update with me, I've been working on a couple of jobs in the past couple of months which has been keeping me busy. I try to sketch as much as I can when I'm home or out and about, but sometimes I just dive right into work (which is what has been happening) or the study doesn't work out (the gouache painting horrors!). But the work is wrapping up and hopefully I can pick up some jobs, but if not, i'll have some time to work on some personal paintings, which is something I've been hoping to do.

On the other side of the art life, I have registered for a class at Brainstorm school over in Burbank !!!! I'll be starting in about a month, if things go well, maybe I can update more often with the class projects and what I'm working on during the class, if anyone is interested. 

Other than that here is the stuff that i've been working on! 

Here are some sketches I've done over the pass month or so just when I'm out and about.

 

I was bored at work and found this awesome Japanese building (insert correct term) off of a magazine and wanted to do a sketch of it. 

This was done while I was waiting for my family to arrive at the restaurant (they were an hour late)

This was actually done yesterday, while I was waiting for Suicide Squad movie to start. I actually enjoyed the movie, I enjoyed it more than Batman V. Superman. The problems were clear with the movie, but overall, I had fun.

After watching Stranger Things, I knew I had to do some fan art for the show, because it was such a fantastic show, if you haven't seen it yet, its definitely a show you have to watch and binge!

Like the Lady Olena warm up practice, I did this over a course of a couple of days as a warm up before I start my client work for the day. 

and to end the update, here is an illustration that I worked on a couple of months back. It's part of the token collection that i've been working on A Hidden Fortress. This time, I got to work on the Zombie token for them. I had a lot of fun working on it, trying to link pervious token cards that i've worked on and creating a story out of it. 

I hope everyone has been great! I'll try to have an update soon, but if not, I will see you all in a month! Thanks for reading!

Cheers!

The One about Game of Thrones...

Hey everyone!

Slow couple past weeks so far. Work is wrapping up so i'll have more to post in the next couple of weeks and i'll be doing some movie studies! Other than that, this past week was the season finale of Game of Thrones and it was fantastic! What a way to end the season, bravo everyone that worked on the show! But ever since Lady Ollena Tyrell was introduced, she has been just a baddass and in the one scene she was in during the season finale, she showed what a true baddass she was. She's the one that I want to see sit on the Iron throne when the show ends. So as a tribute, I did a study of her during the week. Worked about an hour sessions throughout the week before getting into client work. I wished I saved more steps, but there wasn't anything new with my process. Hope you enjoy!

Have a great and safe Independence weekend!

Cheers!

The One about the Warmups...

Hey everyone! How is everyone doing? I hope well!

Anyways, i've been doing some work over the past weeks and before I get started for the day, I try to warm up before work. I've been warming up with some figure drawing! Something I really miss doing back in college (and something I need to do more often...) Instead of looking for poses online, I found out about a youtube channel that have timed poses. If you're interested you can check them out here. 

On Air Videos

So far the videos have 1 min, 2 min and 5 min poses. I'm starting from the beginning and working my way up. Here are the warms ups I did, they're nothing special. 

And to break the routine, I wanted to do a painting of a husky, because huskies are baddass! but since I was to lazy to bust out the oil paints, I decided to do it digitally. 

I used all of Kyle T. Webster's fantastic brushes! If you love the feeling and look of natural media and you want to replicate it digitally, you have to get his brushes!

and to end the update, I had a dream a couple of nights ago, about me trying to purchase a bow and I ended up purchasing a super fantasy based bow at the local Sport Authority.... My friend was part of the dream so I told her about it and ended up concepting out the bow for her to look at, and here it is!

So a small update before I leave you all, I think posting every 2 weeks will be better. I think once a week would sometimes lead to having nothing to post about other then warm ups, and having 2 weeks to build up will have a meatier post. Let me know what you all think! Until then, I hope everyone has a great weekend! 

Cheers!

Oops! Heres an extra! a little study I did when I went camping with my family a couple of weeks back. 

The one about the post before a weekend vacation...

Hey everyone! This one is going to be a small update! I've been working on some client work for the past couple of weeks and i'll show a tease for one of them (I'm super happy with the direction the illustration is going). 

I did a couple of warm up's this week before I got started with work and here there are!

This is a gouache painting of the view through my studio window. I stole this idea from Nathan Fowkes , he did a study of outside of his studio window and I thought it was a great practice to do. This is the first one that I thought looked "good" so thats why I posted it, but I'll be posting all of them in a single sheet when I have enough of them. 

After watching Captain America: Civil War, I had to do some sort of fan art! Spider-man has always been my favorite super hero of all time and Marvel totally got him right in just two scenes! I can't wait for the Spider-Man movie coming out next year. Captain America: Civil War was loads of fun and you don't have to be a comic book reader/fan to enjoy the film, it's a strong film by itself, but you do need to catch the other movies to really have the best experience!

Here's a study of a little horse statue I have chilling on my desk. 

and here's a tease for the upcoming token illustration that i've been working on for A Hidden Fortress 

I'll be on a mini weekend vacation with my family! I'll be trying to do some plein air painting as much as I can and i'll post them here! 

I hope everyone has a great weekend! 

Cheers!

The one about the Lunar New Year...

Hey everyone! How has everyone been? Sorry about the silence. I've been working on multiple projects this past month and it's been busy! I'm working on something that I would love to talk about but I think I'm going to keep this one close to the chest for now until I think its cool to talk about. Other than that, it was Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) at the beginning of the month and I wanted to continue my series of illustration of the Chinese zodiac animals. This year is the year of the monkey!

(deleted the other post, I wanted to add something to it but didn't...)

Besides on working on other projects, I thought it was time for a new portrait and i've been dabbling with it during my free time. I haven't gotten far, but i'm having a lot of fun with it. I'm really trying to stick to the "Oil painting" technique instead of my usual digital painting method. 

I have some other WIPs saved. I'm hoping to compile them and make a GIF of the process, but I'll have this one be the tease for the finished one. 

I've been having some health problems in the last couple of months and last week was when it got worse. Been going to the doctors to get X-rays and testing done, but it seems like I have recently developed asthma. I won't know for sure until I take my breathing test, but exercising has been miserably because I haven't had a good workout in a while, because I would have to take a break and catch my breath. But while I was waiting to see my doctor, I drew this!

Ron Swanson is the best! 

I hope everyone's week has been great! Have a great weekend!

Cheers!

The one about the New Year

Hey everyone! How is everyone doing so far?! I'm so sorry about not posting for the past month or so, its been a pretty hectic past couple of weeks for me and my family. But I don't want to bore everyone with my life, so we'll jump into the ART stuffs!

During the month of December, I was asked by my friend, Patty Metoki if I would be interested in submitted an art piece for her 2001: A Space Odyssey show, ohHALno and of course I would want too! Since I first saw the movie, I was blown away by the beautiful cinematography! My approach for the piece that I wanted to submit, was a collage of key points that always stuck with me when I watched the film. I watched the movie again to get some inspiration flowing and I finally came up with a composition that I liked. Here is the sketch.

This was the sketch and I knew this wasn't all the ideas that I wanted to include, but it was the bulk of what I wanted. (My sketches are really weird, because I don't include everything and I sometimes to a spontaneous idea to pop up while i'm rendering/designing, but this is only when it's personal work and not professional work). I didn't log all the changes, but the final looks like this. 

The main ideas were still executed and I did know I wanted to add the crazy color spectrum scene. I wanted HAL to be in the original sketch, but I just didn't know where to put him without just throwing everything everywhere. Playing with some ideas, I finally though of the simple idea of adding him in the background and being part of the sun. The fetus was a problem I had from the beginning until towards the end of the piece. Everything felt so linear, especially with HAL being placed in the background. So I came up with the idea of just having the fetus being part of the earth so that it can echo the very last scene of the movie. I overall really enjoyed creating this illustration, theres some things I would totally want to change now that is out for the public to see, but again, I'm all about moving forward now. But I think I would have lesson the color spectrum part of the illustration because I think it kind of muddies up the background.

This an promotional piece that I did for At The Edge a couple of years ago but I was never really satisfied with the finished illustration and the band allowed me to do some changes and update it! So this is a WIP for the illustration. 

and!

This was just a gouache painting that I did on Christmas day while my family and I were waiting to be called in for Dim Sum

Cheers to the New Year!

Thanksgiving

How is everyone doing this week!? It's Thanksgiving week over here in America! 

The week started rocky and it eased itself out towards the end of the week. I did get some time to draw and paint this week, which I'm really happy about and I really hope next week I'm able to sit down and work! 

I was hoping to finish this drawing earlier on the week, but as I said earlier, a family emergency emerged and I had to go help out. But it's getting there. My friend Daniel Wong has been challenging himself to create a daily UI (mainly towards Destiny) and I wanted to contribute to his cause! For one of his first projects, he did an animated logo for the Hunter Class. So for my contribution, I wanted to draw each sub-class and allow him to use it as a background to add to his project (This was thought after he had finished the animated logo). Here is the Work in Progress of the Gunslinger class. 

Im trying to get a Ink brush/dry brush look to the drawing. I probably have a couple of hours left before I can call it "finished" and i'm starting to sketch out compositions for the other sub-classes of the Hunter.  

For Thanksgiving, I wanted to try and do some Alla Prima Painting; I have almost no experience of the technique though. During my time at college, I only really learned how to "oil paint" and it was for once class (a fundamental class). It was one of my regrets that I didn't have more oil painting classes, but my Major was Illustration and I had an emphasis in Animation, so to fit in the Animation portion of the major, I had to sub out the traditional painting classes. During that time I was also practicing and learning Photoshop/Digital Painting for most of my Sophomore and Junior year. Since i've been out of college, I've made sure to take some off time of my professional work and try to paint in oils as much as I can (Oil painting has always been something I wanted to know since I wanted to do art as a career) Here is the painting I did for Thanksgiving. 

(sorry for the grainy photo)

I really wanted to try to Alla Prima as much as I could, but my knowledge of the method was extremely limited, for I haven't really practiced this method and my previous oil painting has been the traditional, underdrawing - underpainting - dark to light- fat over lean method. I would say this painting would be a draw or tie for me, at least. I thought there were some success and failures all over the painting, but thats the great thing with experimenting and testing things out; you learn for next time! My values are all over the place! I was still trying to capture the details in the photograph instead of capturing the essence of the photo. I still have a lot of learning when it come to mixing colors and getting the correct value out of it. It looked good while I was painting, but after stepping back and getting a photo of it, I see all the failures of the painting. Great learning experience though and I have more plans to play around with Alla Prima painting.  

Thats it for the week! I have other stuff I'm working on that I don't want to show just yet, still letting it cook a bit before I want to starting showing it off, but I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving (for the people that celebrate it)/ week! Until next week. 

Cheers!

-David

Avery and Zoom!

Hey all! Sorry I forgot to post yesterday, I was binge watching Jessica Jones on Netflix. (Great show by the way! It's a slow burn, but a GREAT BURN! I should be able to wrap up the season by the end of the weekend.) 

So from last week, I forgot to mention that I created my nephew invitation for his 3rd birthday. Normally my graphic designer cousin takes care of it, but she was busy with work; so my sister asked me if I could do it. The only thing she wanted was that it was going to be a firefighter theme party and since I've been looking at a lot of Leyendecker's work; I thought it would be a lot of fun to have his invitation look like The Sunday Evening Post!

I wasn't entirely trying to mimic Leyendecker, but tried to get like the essence of what maybe he would have done. It's is nowhere near his mastery, but it was a great exercise!

(I removed some of the text)

From last week's post, I finished the Zoom painting that I shared last week, as a response to the amazing episode of The Flash; I had to do some fan art! I saved some of the steps if any one was interested (though my process isn't anywhere interesting) 

The initial sketch

Value Study

I though the speed force was a little to distracting and caused the focal/contrast to be lost so I darkened it a bit to push it back a bit. 

Final Illustration

I hope everyone had a great week and weekend! Keep on drawing!

Here's a preview of next week's post. 

2 weeks of Inktober!

Hey everyone! Sorry about not posting last week, I got caught up on work and didn't have time to do my inktobers, but since I've gotten a pretty bad cold, I was able to catch up! 

Inktober is warping up tomorrow, I just wanted to reflect about what i've learned so far this past month. I've been staying away from digital painting and just painting in general. Ive been just inking this past month, unless I have to do something for work, but luckily its early phases and i'm just drawing and sketching. What i've learned is how important your mark making is, i've always stuck to drawing with the ink brush instead of almost painting wth the ink brush. Once I kind of established that, I got more comfortable with the ink brush. I would do a rough sketch of just shapes and then allow the brush pen to do its work. I want to carry that over with my painting and just allow the brush to be a brush instead of doing a super tight drawing and then simply paint/render. Now I need to learn to simplify and group up my darks and lights better. I can't wait to start painting again, I really do miss it but I think I needed time away and just go back to a traditional media to help me remember my roots. I have 2 more inktober drawings and I can't wait to start them, I'm planning for 2 larger pieces and i'll see if I can finish them up before the end of October. If not, i'll do some quick ink drawings and do the other 2 just for fun. I'm pumped up for next year's inktober! and I'm going to bring my try hard pants and hit it hard! 

Have a safe Halloween everyone! 

Cheers!

Blog Update/Change and Week 1 of Inktober!

Hey everyone! Just wanted to update everyone that still follows the blog. So I've been working a lot and dealing with some personal matters, which hasn't given me time to do studies and practices but since everything seems to be cooling down, I should be able to update more often (hopefully at least once a week). As for the blog, since most of the work I do is under NDA's, I want to change the blog into more of my practices/studies + a stage to soapbox. I'll occasionally post WIP's of personal illustrations/concepts but majority of the work i'll be posting will be studies, sketches, and Plein Air paintings.

So...SOAPBOX TIME! (my writing isn't stellar, so bare with me) I've been trying to revert back to learning the fundamentals of drawing and painting. Every time I get caught up in work, I always start to feel to lose conciousness of the fundamentals. I always try to make sure during the sketching/drawing phases I make sure the fundamentals are strong, but as I work I seems to lose the finesse of the fundamentals. I don't know if anyone else deals with this, but the only way for me to solve this issue is by literally practicing the fundamentals, which I try to do in my practices and warm ups. Yes, I know... its a broken record by now, the fundamentals are stressed strongly by every artist, but for some reason, I always feel like I have to revert back and relearn everything. Now to brush up and start rereading the Famous Artist Course!

Sorry to bore you all! 

Here are the ink drawings for the first week of Inkober 2015! I've been practicing with a brush pen to simplify details and isolate the darks and the light area, but as a creature of habit I move straight into to detailing the drawing. Theres been some success and some failures with the ink drawings but I'm still learning to control the burshpen. I'll attempt using a bush next week for the ink drawings and see what comes out from that. Let the learning begin!!!