Painting and Perspective

This is a first! Lately I have only been getting around to posting once a month, however this month I managed to get in two blog posts!!! Yay! But anyway Fall semester starts tomorrow, so that is going to disrupt my art life a little, (or at least how often I get around to a new post), but I am making it my goal to post as much as possible! There it has been said! And so it shall be done!!!

Anyway getting down to business now, this is what I have been up to lately!

Street in Japan

Here is some more perspective practice, I'm trying to get better at creating scenery and background images, because I'm in the process of making a Graphic Novel (Which is a fancy way of saying Comic Book, except a little more sophisticated, and artistic). I'll post more on that later.

Tea House Interior

This scene turned out a little better than I expected except I find that when I get frustrated I tend to "make up" the perspective, which is a bed habit of mine. I believe that the room is mapped out pretty accurately but the table legs and the screen on the wall kind of bother me...

UC Davis Arboretum

This was yet another attempt at watercolor, which I must say was easier the second time around now that I actually have the right paper to paint on (It made blending a whole lot easier!). I still haven't mastered it, as I find that this turned out a little flat (even though I wasn't really going for realism) and it turned out darker than I expected, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. 

Inari Shrine Foxes

This is another water color illustration that I was trying out just for fun. Personally I feel that this was more successful because i was able to create the kind of mood that I wanted with the lighting. Plus it has cute foxes! And who doesn't love cute foxes!!!???

Japanese Shrine

Yay! New post! Anyway, here is an illustration of a Japanese Shrine. I was having a really hard time getting the perspective accurate. I think I managed to draw the bottom half of the temple in perspective but the top half I kind of made up because the curve of the roof was throwing me off, But its not very far off from the photo I was referencing (Oh yeah! And the background is made up by me too). It's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with it nevertheless.

IF: Obsession

     Wow I am really not doing a very good job of updating this blog! Also I haven't drawn anything for Illustration Friday in quite a while, so since I had the time now that summer session is over I decided I would give this weeks topic a shot, and am very happy with the results :). 

     This weeks topic was obsession, and because I have had Egypt on the brain all week, I drew Osiris and Isis sharing a moment together while Set spies on the two filled with hate and desire. Although I think this may be better described as jealousy, I would say that jealousy is a form of obsession. 

     Materials: Bic Pen, and Prismacolor. 

Sketch Dump!

Yes it has been a while! A friend informed me that I never update my blog so I figured that I better do so. Thus I am dumping everything (or mostly everything) that I have been working on for the past few months into one post! Enjoy!
Landscapes for my drawing class the first is done in graphite and the rest are in charcoal (This was actually my final):

Quick gestural studies from the Legion of Honor:

Practicing Perspective:

Here's a helpful tip for those who struggle with this concept (myself included)....Use a ruler...(For some reason it took me three years to figure this out, Drawing teachers often prefer that you don't use one because they want you to master the art of drawing a straight line, but truthfully I don't believe it matters (even professional artists use a straight edge when they want to get their angles and perspective just right) Anyway that was my rant...Oh yes! and one more thing! The Trans America building is difficult to draw (I did not use a ruler to draw that and I think it shows)

Just for fun:

This was actually an Illustration Friday entry for the theme "shadow" that didn't make it on time: 

I actually finished this back in February, It's based on a series of Chinese myths involving the moon:

Drawing 7B

I haven't posted anything new for a while, So here's some class work!

Pen and Ink gesture drawing, (She put various objects around the room for us to sketch, and so I tried creating a composition by combining the skull with the statue of a female figure, in the end I didn't end up finishing)

Here's a close up:

And another! 

 Prismacolor sketch, ( Practice in blending complementary colors):

More Prismacolor work, This time we were drawing fruits and vegetables (I ended up with a very purple eggplant) : P

Still Life (Graphite, and Prismacolor) 

And my current project is landscapes, she highly recommended that we try using a circular format for this assignment, which was interesting but I don't like being confined :( 

That's all for now! :) 

IF: Cultivate

"Cultivating a Friendship"
I decided to make it my mission over spring break to try out some new mediums and techniques, so for this weeks submission I chose to play around with water color. This was challenging as I feel that I have only just become comfortable with using a pencil, and now I'm trying to learn how to deal with the unpredictability of a paint brush! However even though my first try turned out to be a messy experiment, I'm determined to master this new medium!
Also there is an exhibit at the Legion of Honor featuring the work of Arthur Szyk, which further inspired me to improve :)

IF:Stir

Yay! I'm finally posting my first Real Illustration Friday entry!

When I heard that this weeks topic was "stir" the first thing I thought of was stirring coffee or cake batter, so wanting to make something a little more out of the box, I then came up with the idea of Poseidon stirring the ocean with his trident. However when I began developing my composition, I began to think of other element that I could add to make the image more interesting, so because the horse is one of Poseidon't attributes, my whole idea changed into a young Poseidon going for a "joy ride", and recklessly stirring up waves with his trident.