A Different Kind of Inspiration

I haven't posted in a while :P
I realize that it's been a little more than a month. I guess I've been caught up with life and where it's been taking me. But this semester has proven to be very interesting. I just finished my first still life with oil painting. And it's not bad for someone who hated painting. I know that no one will teach me how to paint and that it must be done myself. But at least in my oil painting class, my instructor Julie Kirk has been very thorough in guiding us through this new medium. She gave us tips on how to use our brush and how much paint would suffice etc. Just little tips that you think you know, but you don't. And it's been great.
Actually... the picture of my painting isn't finished, but all I had to do was fill in the rest of the background on the bottom. Oops. For some reason, the painting looks a lot more monotonous. I hope it's my camera or the light bouncing off my canvas.
Now that I can see my painting in another context, I see that my sphere looks like it's deflating. Haha
I can also improve on using less paint next time. For this still life, I applied a lot more paint that I wanted to because I often misjudged the lights and the darks.


We'll be starting on a new painting on Wednesday and I'm not dreading it :)
But on Monday I have jury duty... which I hope I'll be excused from because I'm too young or something.
My mom reassured me by telling me they won't pick me because I look inexperienced and young.
I guess that's kind of reassuring :P
I'm also fighting off a cold right now. (another reason why I haven't posted) Maybe they won't choose me
cause I'll be coughing. Hopefully

Since I'm not enrolled in any life drawing classes right now, I'm a little rusty with my pencil work. And for fun, I thought I would draw a portrait of my boyfriend.... and make him into some glass superhuman type being.
The empty half of his face will be rendered into glass after some research and observation. Seeing this piece up and on the blog, I can see that I can darken some areas on his face. That's usually the problem that I have with pencil. It looks dark enough but when posted or put up, it can always do darker.
We'll see how this turns out.

Also, since I'm not pounding through a portfolio right now, I've been focusing a little on something that I've been doing for a few years on the side.
Jazz dance. Dance has always been another get-away for me and another form of expression that I enjoy.
I think having a dance background, it has made me appreciate the human form a lot more.
I remember when I first went the Bodyworlds exhibit, the plastinated bodies looked fake to me even though they were real. My drawing teacher wanted to discuss the topic of being alive and what life is.
I thought that, seeing the body in motion and performing to it's limit is beautiful and that is life.
Recently, I went to see a Giordano Jazz Dance Company performance. It was my first time seeing dancer's on stage and it was almost surreal. But it was exciting and fresh at the same time.
I recommend that any artist interested in anatomy go see a jazz dance performance.
Seeing the energy and flexibility of the body is inspiring.


I'm still waiting for Cal Arts to send their decision. I've also sent in an application and portfolio for Otis, another art school in Los Angeles. I'm hoping that if Cal Arts doesn't accept me the first time, I can go to Otis for a year of their foundation program and try again for Cal Arts. It feels better knowing that I have a back-up plan. So either way, it will work out. The month of March is coming, which is also the notification period. I will have my fingers crossed very tight for both schools.
Until then, I will continue to plow through oil paint.

Wildlife Waystation Trip! *Long Post*

Yesterday was the Wildlife Waystation trip. It was really really fun and it was the best opportunity that I have ever had to draw animals up close. We mainly drew big cats. I wish we got to draw some of those grizzly bears and zebras but that's ok. Usually the big cats are the ones who are never seen at zoos. So it was great that we could be so close. There are many many many pictures. I just wanted to post a summary of the trip. There are actually more pictures but I put up the best ones.
I also posted some scans of my drawings. I have never drawn big cats before. I was actually going to look up some big cats online first and do a warm up but I didn't get the chance to. But I thought my drawings turned out really well. And it's mostly thanks to the fact that we stayed for about 8 hours and also because the animals were only 3 feet away behind a cage.
Very awesome :)
Some of the other people who were there had some awesome drawings too.
Next time we go, I hope I can do a more intensive study of the big cats.










Our waystation guide warned us not to stare at monkeys or else they'll go crazy. And when we passed by the chimpanzees, we were told to stay quiet, not to look at the chimps and to walk in a tight group very fast pass the chimps. We knew we were successful when our guide reported that no one got spit on this time. :P
Pretty interesting. As interesting as the crimped hair on the baboon in the picture.

SketchCrawl

Last Saturday the 10th was my 2nd sketchcrawl!
I must say that I was a lot more successful this time. I didn't post pictures of my last sketchcrawl because it was my first.
And I didn't like them as much :P
But I'm making progress and I hope that the next sketchcrawl will be even better :)









I've also been experimenting more with my Chinese painting.
I know I'm breaking all kinds of rules when it comes to Chinese painting.
I use the water straight out of the tube :P
But it is mixed with ink and such... so I'm not cheating too much!
This flower that I've been painting is an Iris plant. I added a bit of blue to make the color a bit cooler and it turned out very nice.

I'm taking an oil painting class this semester with a teacher named Julie Kirk.
Back at UCI, I had some pretty horrible painting classes where technique and skill were kind of thrown out the window, and creativity was encouraged.
I ended up hating paint. But Julie Kirk stresses technique and skill, so I'm very happy to take up painting again.
This semester will be very interesting.

Movie Critique

I found this trailer on the apple site a few days after it was released. I must say that I'm excited about Tim Burton's next film called 9. I want to watch the tiny knit beings save our planet :)
Not much to say about it now, but I do have high expectations for it.
It could be a good thing or a bad thing.
Looking forward to the movie! I've also recently have ventured into the curious world of Benjamin Button, starting with the movie poster. It was the large billboard movie poster that first caught my eye.
Two faces that were cut in half :)
Very lovely. I was wondering when a movie poster was ever going to look like this. I know that the movie poster of Face Off also includes two halves of a face, but this time Brad Pitt's face and Cate Blanchett's face are completely cut in half and are at opposite sides of the poster. I really like it :)
Reveals the different relationships between the people I guess.
Warning! Spoiler!:
I like rambling a bit about movies that I have seen recently. Benjamin Button is the topic tonight.
I think the story was interesting and I don't think I've seen a movie quite like this one. I give props to the movie for being very ambitious. I enjoyed the love story and the time line of a man who grew younger instead of older. But being ambitious may also be the downfall. I feel like Benjamin's character development was a bit poor. We never really see him sad, mad or extremely happy. Coming out of the theater, you conclude that Benjamin Button is a humble, courteous, and curious person. He experiences love, war, and death but most of his reactions are the same. Perhaps that is his character though. But a movie that is almost 3 hours and about a man's entire life, I expected more.

Well, it's just a thought. Overall, I still enjoyed the movie.
Definitely a gorgeous movie :)

Happy 2009!!!

I couldn't be any happier about the new year.
It's about time that 2008 ended.
Truthfully, 2008 was quite the tough year. And to end it, my trip to Taiwan was canceled.
:P
Let's just say that I didn't realize that my passport had been missing for over 2 years until the night before we left. I think I'm more weirded about by that fact than sad.
Taiwan will happen again soon.
So I'm very much looking forward to the new year!
I'm hoping that 2009 will be a promising year :)




Happy New Years!!!

Done!

I just finished my life drawing final at Irvine Valley College. This class has really led to some improvements in my figure drawing. The picture below is a portrait that I did with faber castell color pencil. My main objective was to capture the flesh on the model. I think that was kind of successful, but I was unable to make my drawing look like th model. I thought I mapped out his face correctly but in the end, my drawing doesn't quite look like the model :P
I really need to improve on drawing portraits. But maybe in the end, I like the fact that I can draw people that exist somewhere in the world :)My master copies are done too. I was able to put them up side by side with the originals and critique myself.


This piece is by William Bouguereau. I remember having a lot of trouble with the face on the this one too. I think the eye is too big. But better than when I first started out drawing her face. That was just... scary.
uh... her breasts may be too far apart too....
I plan on fixing my master copies. Especially this one so it doesn't look like she got implants...


This piece is by a wonderful artist named Luis Riccardo Falero. I've been admiring his pieces because they really are beautiful. I can make this one a little darker because the fixative faded the charcoal a bit. Also, I made her look bald... she has a shiny spot on her head.
But other than that, I really enjoyed how dynamic this piece was.



I wanted to draw a male figure for one of my master copies so I chose one of Michelangelo's Ignudi. This one took 3 days because it was done with color pencil. I liked the way this one turned out but I need to go darker in certain areas like his cheek. This was probably the hardest piece to map out. It was very very very tricky.

His upper body was a lot more compressed than I thought it was. So it took me maybe 5 tries to map out his body because I kept making it too long. But I'm happy that I didn't give up :)
I think this piece will look much better when I make it darker.

The most appealing part about this piece was probably the male's little flowy hair :)
This piece is called Patroclus by Jacques Louis David. We were required to do a piece in pastel.
Pastel is witchcraft... and I don't quite understand the language of it.
I started with the left side of his body and it was a wreck.
Then I moved my way to the right side of his body and his arm and I started to get the hang of it.
So this piece turned out better than I thought because I can't work with pastels.
But it is definitely a medium that I would like to work more with.
Next semester at IVC, I won't be taking a figure drawing class. But I'll try to make trips to Otis for figure drawing workshops. I really don't want to stop life drawing, even though I turned my portfolio in already.
I won't be posting in here for a while because I will be in Taiwan for Christmas :)
I've been tracking the weather in Taipei City and it's been raining every single day!
I was hoping I can get some little sketches in, but we'll see what happens.

It might be 2009 when I post again!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!