New prints & experimenting with traditional media

The paper I ordered finally arrived a couple of days ago, so I spent a bit of time yesterday experimenting with different settings and trying to get the color just right. Hopefully this is the beginning of a very different way of getting ready for conventions. :P
Needless to say, having more control over the quality and consistency of my prints feels great.

Also, I have recently undertaken the task of recreating a couple of pieces I had previously colored digitally in traditional media. One of them is "Ms. Jelly Anne," which I was commissioned to color by someone who stopped by my table at NYCC/NYAF. At first, I thought a combination of pastels and colored pencil would suit the original lineart the best, but I ended up using colored pencil almost exclusively:

Colored pencil is not a medium I normally use, but working on this was a pretty interesting and refreshing experience precisely for that reason. It felt like the progress went very smoothly and I was able to complete the coloring fairly quickly.

Recreating "Coucher du Soleil," however, has been a bit of a different experience. There was not much I could do with the original lineart--it was drawn on the same type of sketchbook paper as "Ms. Jelly Anne," and not wanting to render it in colored pencil, I decided to experiment with........ oils! D:> A bit intimidating, since I haven't touched oils in about 4 years or so, but I dug out my little set of oil paints and brushes from high school times XD, bought a couple more tubes and a couple of small detail brushes (as well as the necessary mediums), and decided to give it a try. *__*
The idea to do this was inspired by the commissioner I mentioned above, who actually decided to hold off on having me color "Coucher du Soleil." I just figured that I might as well go through with it and, if anything, display it at the DuPage Art League during their January exhibition. I had been wanting to try out something in oils after going down to Atlanta to spend some time with Sasha this past September, and this seemed like a good enough excuse~~

What was perhaps more intimidating than the unfamiliarity (and price!) of this medium was the time restriction. I transferred the pencil image onto the canvas around Dec. 17 and knew that I would only have about 15 days to complete the painting, after which point it would take at least a few days for it to dry--just in time for the date of entry for the January exhibition. It would've been nice for those 15 days to have been completely free, but thanks to my work schedule, that potential working time was severely cut.

I still have a bit of work to do on the painting, but I think that the hardest parts are done. An associate at Blick suggested Galkyd as a painting medium--it drastically reduces the drying time, which gives me today and tomorrow to work. :)

Sometimes it feels like I am getting a little too ahead of myself, getting too distracted by all the projects I would like to take on/complete. Seems like there's not enough time and energy. I'm sure this is not a problem particular to just myself. :)

Getting really close to finishing Chloe's commission~ Will reflect on it once it's actually done. XD

Post-JLPT Update

I had to dye my hair!! D:> But that is a discussion for later.

The JLPT is finally over, which is a pretty big relief. I was getting really sick of constantly trying to catch up on those study books. :\ I made some stupid mistakes and obviously didn't know some things, but I hope I somehow pass anyway! It's taking a bit of effort to get back into the drawing groove, especially since my emotional energy is being depleted by spending a considerable amount of time scouring job listings online (with no real success). >__>;;

Got this from the family as a birthday present:

Not the cat, the printer!! :D I really hope this will help the quality of my prints to be more consistent. Oh, the potential convenience of printing at home... Just a USB cable and some nice paper away from realization. :3 ♥

FAIL

Less than a month after embarking on this blogging adventure, I abandoned it. :P
Sometimes words feel very vulnerable to me. Vulnerable to misinterpretation, vulnerable to distortion. They are left out in the cold, unable to fight for themselves. But only sometimes. I don't know how much of what I wrote before is still true, but that's okay. I feel like I have experienced a slight (or maybe not so slight) shift of mindset recently, and I'll be able to express it as I work on more art.

The JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) is coming up in just a few days. Studying has been driving me a little crazy and I don't really feel like I'm ready (how could I?), but I'm looking forward to being done with the test and having more time to work on my own projects as well as projects I have taken on from other people.

In the meantime, here is something I started a while ago. I'm trying to work in a looser style, going for the finished-yet-unfinished look-- something in which you can see the "grain." Not focusing so much on perfect lines, at least for this piece.

Jui; future "postcards" in jeopardy XD

I finally found my super-crappy sketchbook (the one in which all the "postcards" are born >__>;;), so here's something that's complete bs because it's straight from a reference photo. XD Jui from Vidoll:


I don't know if I'll really keep drawing things like this. Originally, I started the sketchbook to practice getting the shapes/lines/contours down while drawing from references and to experiment with different modes of coloring, but I don't want to keep drawing from professional photography. Even if I deviate from the original photo significantly in the final result, it's still very questionable, from the perspectives of both legitimacy and worth. >__>;;

In other news, the last two weeks of the quarter are here and they're going to be pretty chaotic, so I have to keep suppressing my urge to draw until spring break. ;___;;

(For something not-so-serious) I sketched this dumb thing over winter break and started inking it the other day XD:

Inspiration, Jrock art

Sometimes people at conventions will ask me what inspires me. Of course, to cover my/Alex’s Jrock fanart, I say that I am inspired by certain musicians and their music; in the case of our GDS collaborations, we take visuals from music videos and arrange them into a composition (which by itself is not a very creative endeavor, actually). But after mentioning my Jrock art, I pause and think about the rest of my art. I think about the art style I’ve been moving towards lately. What inspires that?

I like the question, because it lets me know that someone is interested in how a piece of art is conceived. But I also dislike the question, because it seems to me that it is not always a matter of inspiration. Lately, I have gotten several ideas for projects/drawings I would like to start. They’ve come to me in a stream, whereas usually, I start doodling something in my sketchbook and it turns into a picture eventually. But that doesn’t translate in my head into: I must be inspired lately. Inspiration, to me, denotes a sweeping feeling, a connection to something greater, maybe something divine, or something that feels really close to it. I cannot remember the last time I experienced such a feeling in connection with my art, let alone with my life in general.

Would it be accurate to say, paradoxically, that my inspiration comes from having no inspiration? From having to struggle to find some sort of purpose for my art? I don’t know that either. Lately, I feel like I have encountered a series of disillusioning obstacles, and frankly, I do not even really know the importance of what I do. I keep doing it because it seems there is not much, if anything, I would rather do.

Naturally, I am drawn to a darker aesthetic. The same aesthetic I first discovered in Kagerou, then found in Dir en grey, and continue now to find in a multitude of other sources, not music alone. I’m not talking simply about image here, sound and meaning figure in as well to create something larger, something that continues to speak to me even now. I’ve been trying to have my art internalize that aesthetic, so instead of drawing pretty, flowing pictures like I was aiming to in the past, I’ve been focusing on setting up an atmosphere and mastering the medium while creating something that resonates more strongly with what I feel inside, with the kind of person I vaguely perceive myself to be, and with the kind of disintegrated outlook on life and the world in general that I naively believe myself to carry.

Most of the time, I used to like it when people came up to my table at conventions and got excited at seeing Jrock fanart. I like meeting new people who are into the same music, because it always seemed to me like there is something there that we share to begin with that leads us to the same thing. And it seemed like that “something” had a strong uniting influence. Lately, I’ve realized that isn’t necessarily true, but that is a subject to be discussed another time. :P

Really, what I’ve wanted to do lately is take the aesthetics and general characteristics of Jrock/visual kei that first lured me in and try to incorporate them into my own art without having it be simple fanart, without depicting anyone in particular. I think that I’m slowly getting there; nonetheless, it seems that I have not yet developed this aspect of my art well enough. And whenever I draw Jrock fanart, I want it to be more encompassing and meaningful than a simple portrait; I know it won’t always work out that way, but I want to be much truer to the atmosphere and meaning of the music, which is what matters to begin with.

To me, the aesthetic I am speaking of is often connected to the depiction of the contrasting elements of the world/society, to social critique (whether active or passive), to the fragmentation and isolation of the individual, to the final ambiguity of meaning, and other themes I have been trying to explore lately and will be addressing more from now on. Those themes reverberate deeply within me. It is not simply visual. Inspiration is dead to me right now. What is alive is a sense of confusion, a lack of purpose, a vague yet poignant dissatisfaction with something I cannot even clearly define, a feeling of pressure constantly closing in on me and threatening to extinguish the last of my breath. That is what drives me now.

(Oh, so dramatic. >__>;;)