The right mood for the right drawing

Whether you're doing commissions, working, homework or drawing for yourself you'll always find yourself one time or another having to draw something you're not in the mood to draw. For example you might have to draw a bad guy but at that moment your in a jolly mood and can't get into the groove of drawing something evil. You try but you fail to think up an evil pose or perhaps the clothing they are wearing and when you try they just don't look evil or ominous enough. When this happens to me I turn to music as the solution. If I really want to draw something well, I have to really feel what I want that character/monster to feel. I actually have playlists in itunes and pandora for the right moods. They are usually categorized like so: Emo, Happy, Sexy, Evil/angry/badass, sci fi and relaxing. This is going to be a bit embarrassing (for some parts) but I'm going to share examples of what I listen to. 

Starting off with "Emo" or emotional. Now emo isn't always something sad but can be something with just a lot feeling, perhaps a women looking out in the wind with a look of longing. Or maybe lovers reuniting after an epic battle, any of these can be put into the emo category. Lately I've been listening to a lot of Lindsey Stirling and Escala for this category. Their music is filled with lots of feels. But I find a lot of anime songs fit in this category also.

Next up is happy! Any art that is filled with joyous happy feeling. Anything from frolicking in the grass, happy couples, best friends together etc. all counts. Lately Ellie Goulding has been dominating this playlist. 

For sexy I usually go with upbeat party-ish music. I have a lot for this playlist it varies from Lady Gaga to Katy B. 

Evil/angry/badass I generally always go with jrock or rock but for badass I go with some hip hop.

This goes more along the lines of "badass" haha. 

Sci fi is probably not hard to guess what I'd choose but I go with techo. Daft punk, skrillex (if i'm in the mood), and trance. 

Last but not least, relaxing music. If I want to be very relaxed I'll listen to classical music but otherwise this playlist consists of fischerspooner, owl city, kate Nash etc.

Those are samples of what I listen to. I hope this helps someone who has artists block or someone who's in a pickle and just can't get into the right drawing mood! It's a good idea to create "mood" playlists or set up some stations on pandora. 

Have fun and keep drawing! Cheers! 

Prismacolor easy skin tone tutorial

Over the weekend I spent a large amount of time working on one of my art midterms. During the process I felt it would be a good opportunity to make a small tutorial out of it. In this tutorial I used Prismacolor pencils (set of 48), a mechanical pencil and a kneaded rubber eraser. I hope you find this tutorial helpful! Enjoy!

Step 1: First thing I did was draw a sketch. After drawing the sketch I used my kneaded rubber eraser and dabbed at the lines until they were substantially lighter. This can be done with a regular eraser.

Step 2: When coloring anything whether it be in black or white or color I like to start with a base color. Starting with a base color makes it easier to add colors and blend. The color I picked for my base was "Light Peach". I went with a very light color because I wanted her to have very fair skin. Again if you want a tan look all you would have to to do is use a darker color. It's also important to remember to shade lightly and not to add too much pressure on the pencil. 

Step 3: The next few steps I use slightly darker shades to enhance her face and shaded areas. As you can see in this step I used the color "Goldenrod"(yellowish brown) under the hair, under her neck, around her cheeks, the nose and eye area. Again I'm not putting a lot of pressure on the pencil just lightly shading. 

Step 4: Because I don't want her face to look too yellow I picked a pink color(Peach) and went over the shaded area like in step 3. 

Step 5: Using the same color as in step 3 (Goldenrod) I went over the shaded areas yet again but this time putting slightly more pressure on the areas I wanted to shade even darker. You can see these areas would be right under the hair, eyes and neck areas. 

Step 6: Here I did the same exact thing that I did in step five except with an even darker brown color (Burnt Ochre).

Step 7: Time to make things really pop! This is usually my favorite part of coloring, when you get to see your drawing come to life. For the even darker shading I used one of my all time favorite colored pencils, "Tuscan Red". For the eyes I picked two blues, one light colored and one dark colored (Light Cerulean Blue and Violet Blue). I started with the lighter color as a base then went over with the darker blue on the top of the eye leaving the bottom a lighter color. I didn't add pupils because I wanted her to have a dazed expression on her face, but if you wanted to add you would add now.

Step 8: Time to give this girl some lips! Again I start with a light pink base color (seeing a pattern here?).

Step 9: Darkening the sides of her lips I went over lightly with "Mulberry" and then went a bit harder at the very sides of her lips and center. 

Step 10: Using "Tuscan Red" I darken the very edges of the mouth and the very center. I used "Blush Pink" to highlight the top and bottom of her lip. The brown color "Burnt Ochre" was used to shade around her mouth.

Wasn't that easy? Once you get used to this process you can go on coloring just about anything. If you want to color a more sickly looking face all you would have to do is incorporate more blues instead of pinks and yellows. For a darker skin tone more browns instead of pinks. Whatever skin tone i'm painting I usually pick around two light, medium and dark colors. 

Here's the end result after adding eyelashes and hair color. One of my favorite things about Prismacolor is how the blending of many colors looks so eye catching. Her hair wasn't difficult to do at all. I started with a light blue base color then using long strokes went darker and darker leaving the highlighted areas alone.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Have fun drawing! 

Concept art and a big wip!

                                                                                                      Midterms are fast approaching so most of my work that I will be posting up will most likely be school work. The sketches below are an example of that. I'm enjoying a little bit of a break before midterms at the moment. During this time as much as I would love to draw from dawn till dusk I unfortunately have some school projects to finish. Granted most of my big projects are actually fairly enjoyable. My personal work will imaginably be done in between doing homework.  Moving  onward, the drawing above is a concept sketch. For those of you who aren't sure what exactly a concept sketch is, it's a visual representation of an idea or design. These sketches don't have to be a completed art piece but as the word says a "sketch". When I think up characters or creatures most of my females wear elaborate outfits; especially the queen characters. But thus far I haven't drawn out any of the outfits I create in my imagination till today. My first outfit concept sketch I wanted to be more on the simple but alluring side. There will be more to come! 
Below is a midterm project that's due in 2 weeks but since I like to get things done ahead of time I've been working on it while catching up on some TV shows. This piece is fairly annoying only because the paper physically does not fit on my desk. I really have no other option so I have work with what I have. The troubles of living in a tiny apartment! Just awhile ago I finished the sketch but I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to go about coloring it. As much as I would love to color this black and white with good ol' fashion sketching pencils, I know my teacher would be displeased. Anyhow this piece would pop more with color added to it. But whether I'll be painting on this or using colored pencils is yet to be decided. It's one of those moments in art when you draw something perfect, but because of that you're too scared to add color in fear of messing it up. I have faith though that the finished product will be eye catching.I'll keep you updated on the progress of this piece. Until then, cheers! 

Close up no.1

Close up no.2

Speak no evil and a look at this weeks doodles

This week like most just flew by so fast. Even though I was busy with school work I was able to make some time for drawing. For me like most people, time is precious. I absolutely detest wasting time on anything! From the moment I wake up till the moment I crawl into bed, i'm continuously doing something productive. Even when I watch TV I'm generally always doing something like drawing, cleaning, cooking, or homework. Most everything I do is in hopes to fine tune my skills for when I graduate. When I browse Tumblr or youtube I'm usually researching tutorials, art styles, different jobs in my field and hopefully some pointers. This is probably the reason why the days just fly by. I honestly can't remember the last time I was actually bored.

Anyways as you noticed I did some monster concept sketches this week. One of the things I would like to explore this year is drawing more than the human figure. Sometimes it's nice to have a change and draw something completely unreal from the imagination. I got my inspiration for the monster on the top left corner from watching Silent Hill II. As I was watching the movie I was fascinated with whoever the monster concept artist was. The monsters they had were so creatively done that I actually went and looked the artists up and their portfolios. Unfortunately their websites didn't have much for me to see, but nonetheless it inspired me to draw something bizarre. 

I hope everyone's week was fun filled, and if it wasn't I hope the weekend will be more fun!
-Cheers!

Soul eating and SPLAT!

I finally finished "soul eater"! After working on it on and off for a few days I can say it's done. A few days for me is a quite long time for me to work on something. The reason being is if I work on something for too long I'm bound to get a new idea and work on that instead of my original piece. I probably spent so much time on it because I had issues deciding what I wanted her to wear and what I wanted her back piece to look like.

    This piece I focused on adding more detail than I usually add. I'm pretty satisfied for the moment on the results. I see flaws but then again I always see flaws. Although seeing improvement (no matter how small) encourages me to work even harder on my next piece.

"Splat" (the piece above) was actually done right after I finished "Soul eater" (aka no social life). I was still in a drawing mood and wanted to do something very quickly just to get a simple idea out. The idea I had was lots of color, female and something mechanical. I also practiced a new technique which requires shading in black and white first then adding color later. At first I was scared I would have to scrap the piece but after I figured it out, the outcome was satisfactory. Actually, more people preferred this piece over "soul eater" which I found amusing considering I spent very little time on this. On to my next project which I haven't really decided on yet!

Hope everyone had a grand weekend! Cheers!

Trying out new styles

As you might have noticed I was able to find time during the week to get some art time in. It's a bit crazy how obsessed I can be with art and design. I'm fully determined to at least double my skill by the end of the year. Usually when I'm determined to do something, I get it done.

I started this blog in hopes that I can encourage other people who have a strong desire to become better artist but perhaps feel overwhelmed. I sometimes too feel overwhelmed and helpless at times when I see other artist who just sneeze and produce mater pieces. But we all have to remember that everyone started off as a nobody and worked to get where they are today. I don't consider myself a great artist by far but to get at where I am today I had to put in the hours. To get where I want to be by the end of the year I'll have to keep working hard. But this isn't an issue with me because when you love doing something time has no meaning.

Alright, so what you are seeing above are my experiments. I wanted to try out drawing in comic book style which was very fun but a bit of a challenge to get used to the style. Up left is my boyfriend as a made up comic book hero. It was entertaining and my boyfriend loved it. I do plan on doing some more pieces in this style but for now i'm working on a digital illustration which I hope to post sometime during the next week. In the meantime I'll probably post some of my doodles. 

Cheers~

Travels

This past week has been extremely hectic since I was getting ready to head back to Taiwan on Friday to start my spring semester. I'm still very jet lagged and probably could use more sleep. But after finishing all my errands this morning I got the itch to draw something. I had actually done the rough sketch for this last week but hadn't found the time to finish it. I like the overall look of it and it was a fun piece to draw. Will probably draw in this style a bit more before I go back and work on my more realistic art style.

 Anyways I hope I can upload some more stuff this week if i'm not too overwhelmed with homework. Knowing me I'll make time during the week or weekend.