The Art of Brian Luong

Happy Valentine's Day!

2012-02-13T22:59:00.000-08:00

Here's my attempt at a Valentine's Day themed illustration! Ravens are monogamous :v

This piece feels like the first piece that I've finished in a really long time. Lately my personal projects have been piling on, but I haven't prioritized well on which projects I need to finish first; I would work on one project and when I happen to sketch out a new idea, I'll start working on the new idea a little more and the old project stops progressing. At the moment I am simultaneously working on 3 pieces that I've been working on for quite awhile, so hopefully I can get most of them finished before the end of the month!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Mum for my Mum

2012-01-30T21:25:00.000-08:00

Here's a little doodle I drew up for my mom! Yeah!

TOTD - Autumnal Equinox / Slice and Dice

2012-01-23T21:26:00.000-08:00

Awesome! My Autumnal Equinox design received Tee of the Day yesterday, and the design I collaborated on with my brother, Kevin, received Tee of the Day today! I don't think I ever had a design on mintees get TOTD that quickly, let alone the day after it was posted, so good for kevin and I!

Update: Strange... the design kevin and I collaborated on received TOTD for the day afterward as well. Odd and strange, but cool!

Collab with Kevin Luong

2012-01-22T00:06:00.000-08:00

Super excited to post this! This was a collaborative illustration with my brother, Kevin Luong. He and I have been trying to figure out what to draw for our collaborative piece for awhile, but had trouble coming up with anything. One day he showed me a sketch of a severed panther head he had drawn in his sketchbook, and from there our collaboration began.

The process was fairly straightforward: I drew my sketch over the photo of Kevin's original sketch, and then passed it on to him so he can work on/erase/add on to what I've sketched out. We passed the piece back and forth for awhile, adding onto what was there and sometimes redrawing what was already drawn.

The finished piece came out great! Kevin's drawing style came out shining brighter in the end, but I'm content knowing that I did my fair share in the piece. Our goal was to meld our drawing styles together to create a unified finished piece, in opposed to just having a piece where I would draw something in it and then have him draw something in it and call it finished. This was a nice project, and the outcome was well worth the time invested.

Bandjob Featured Projects - Some Assembly Required

2012-01-17T16:33:00.000-08:00

I logged onto Bandjob earlier today and was surprised to see the design I did for Enclothe being featured on the main page along with other featured projects! Yay!

You can check out the design on Bandjob HERE.
and if you want, you can pick up a shirt HERE.

The Farmer's Daughter

2012-01-12T13:44:00.001-08:00

Turned this little doodle into a finished piece!

VEAL E-zine

2012-01-04T16:52:00.000-08:00

The e-zine for the skull collaboration I did a while back just dropped! You can check out the issue HERE. Try finding my brother's piece!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T18:23:00.000-08:00

Here's to a new year! Drew this out earlier today with the help of my new-ish brush pen that I haven't heavily used yet. Colors added via photoshop.

I've been working on a handful of personal projects, but they're taking their sweet time.

The Plain

2011-12-19T18:08:00.001-08:00

I've been meaning to do some more digital paintings on the side of my shirt design/poster design illustrations, but I just never got around to doing it. I was asked by a friend of mine if I still did digital paintings, in which I responded by starting and finishing a painting for that day.

I had no idea what I wanted to paint up and didn't feel like painting something complex and intricate, so I started out with just a landscape. This painting was relatively fast and although I started it in the morning and finished it later in the night, the actual painting time was a lot less (I took a lot of breaks). I think I'll paint more landscapes in the future, as I enjoy the atmosphere. I'm also going to try painting something outside the realm of fantasy and see what I come up with.

Mintees Tee of the Day - Flight of the Keybirds

2011-12-07T16:43:00.000-08:00

Surprise surprise, my "Flight of the Keybirds" design got TOTD over at Mintees! No, seriously, it did catch me by surprise; I didn't find out about it until my brother pointed it out to me.

The illustration is also displayed as my new blog header, which I changed a couple days ago. I plan on having the headers for my website, blog, and store display a different image while demonstrating some sort of cohesion at the same time.

Here's a link to the illustration from my past post: http://artofbrianluong.blogspot.com/2011/10/flight-of-keybirds.html

and here's a link to the shirt design on Mintees: http://mintees.com/tees/344258-flight-of-the-keybirds

P.S: it's only fair that I also announce that my "Unlocking Horizons" design also received TOTD over at Mintees. Sorry for not posting about it, Unlocking Horizons. We love you.

Enough blog posts for the week.

Some Assembly Required

2011-12-06T18:45:00.000-08:00

The design I made for Enclothe's Winter 2011 Collection just dropped! This one was fun and a lot of invention/research and thinking went into the design. I approached the design in a layout fashion and decided to focus more on filling the composition with lots of different elements in order to create interest in opposed to drawing super detailed elements.

You can pick up the shirt here.

Harvest, Part 2

2011-12-04T23:50:00.000-08:00

I had no idea what to title this piece and was pretty close to settling with "Untitled", but thankfully I was able to come up with something fitting.

I originally sketched out this bee as a tiny element in my "Harvest" illustration, only to take it out because it just wasn't needed. I saved the sketch and started working on it as a standalone design, but had to put it aside for awhile because I started getting some client work and was busy. Other than that, I think this design took me so long to finish because I was intimidated with drawing the hair on the bee's body. I remember starting on the hair at the very end of the bee and having to set the drawing aside because I couldn't sit down long enough to get it done. I guess I just wanted to see end results quickly. It took me a long time to complete this piece and I think I spent more time staring at the screen than drawing, but I'm happy with how this one turned out.

Sketches and Stuff

2011-12-01T19:47:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to get back into the habit of keeping a sketchbook, and so far it's been good! I haven't kept a sketchbook for a couple months now, so I was starting to feel like my work was becoming stagnant due to the lack of new ideas coming in. I had an old 5x8 sketchbook laying around that I stopped drawing in because the inside cover got all messed up, so I picked up where my last page was and started drawing in that. The very first page in the sketchbook was drawn in 2008 and the last page where I left off was done a year later. It's nice to see how far I've progress in my technique, skill, and drawing style. Here are some doodles I recently drew:

Also, my "Oppressors" silkscreen poster was being exhibited at California State University of Northridge's West Gallery! The exhibit goes down today, though.

I'm currently working on a graphite piece. It originally started out as a pencil sketch for me to ink out, but then I kept going into it with more and more pencil until I was no longer interest in inking it out! I'll post it up if it turns out nice.

Offical Website

2011-11-22T21:15:00.001-08:00

I've been fiddling around with the coding and design of my site for awhile now, and I think I've finally reached the point where I am happy with the look and feel of the site. I'm really happy with how I integrated a drawing with the navigation links. Here's a link to my site: http://artofbrianluong.com/. You can also find a link to my site on the right side of this blog.

Mintees Tee of the Day - Into the Thicket, Part 2

2011-11-14T00:38:00.000-08:00

I was happily surprised when I logged onto Mintees after coming home from a great show. I made a black variant of my Into the Thicket Part 2 illustration, but I don't remember posting it here.

Here's a link to the design on Mintees: http://mintees.com/tees/341773-into-the-thicket-part-2

Dead Fuzz Big Skull Collab: The Eye

2011-11-10T21:41:00.000-08:00

Here's my contribution to the collab project over at Dead Fuzz. Not sure why I colored the gem pink, I guess all the other colors I tried out just didn't work as well. I really like how the beads turned out!

Remember, remember...

2011-11-05T14:20:00.000-07:00

Here's some V for Vendetta for today, on the 5th of November. I'm surprised with where this illustration went; It was intended to be a simple black and white illustration, but then I upped the color count to 4 (I was in the mindset of creating a silkscreened illustration) and filled the mask with color, annnd then I painted in the background and ended up using a bunch of low-opacity color overlays and gradients...

This piece reminded me a lot of a project I did about a year ago for my composition class where I used the same process of using low-opacity color layers and whatnot (here's the older piece I'm referring to: endangered-cranes). Even though I deviated so much from my original idea, I'm happy with how this piece turned out. It made me realize that I've been restricting myself too much by thinking in terms of silk screen applications and that I haven't been exploring as much as I should with new techniques outside the box.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T19:58:00.001-07:00

It has been awhile since the last time I posted some new/finished work, so I made a point to push myself to get something done and posted before the end of the month. I really wanted to create something themed for this month's holiday, but stuff like jack-o-lanterns and ghouls seemed too straightforward. I think I made a good attempt at keeping the theme low key without sacrificing too much.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Flight of the Keybirds

2011-10-10T10:47:00.001-07:00

I drew these key/bird hybrids in my experimental sketchbook during my last semester of college and felt that they were a really neat concept for future illustrations. This guy was actually part of my Unlocking Horizons illustration, but I had to take him out because he was covering all the details I spent hours working on. I'm happy I was able to find a new home for him where he can be the star of the show.

Rescuer - Autumnal Equinox

2011-10-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a shirt design I made for a band called Rescuer. They liked the fox design I made for Enclothe, so I created something with a somewhat similar look.

Unlocking Horizons

2011-09-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

This took forever to finish! There was a lot of "take 3 steps forward and 2 steps back" motions when making this design. I think a large part of the problem was being overly focused on singular elements and completely forgetting to view the entire piece as a whole. I ended up creating a lot of composition problems and had to take out a couple elements in order to correct them, which broke my heart (but it's alright, I saved the element that I had to take out and it's now in progress an another illustration). Lesson learned.

Among Villains - "The Oppressors"

2011-09-12T13:38:00.000-07:00

My Oppressors design is now available as an 18"x24" screenprint poster. It has an edition of 50 and is $20!

You can pick up the poster and check out the rest of the Among Villains line here: http://www.amongvillains.com/product/the-oppressors

The poster was also featured on OMG Posters! Awesome! http://omgposters.com/2011/09/08/the-oppressors-art-print-by-brian-luong/

Emblem of Beginnings

2011-09-07T03:58:00.000-07:00

Here's the finished illustration for an idea I had for a poster design. I think I did this two weeks ago, but I wanted to save from posting it just in case I wanted to make some changes to it. I didn't really have anything in mind when drawing this out, I just really wanted to try out different techniques to imply texture. 3 colors total.

Into the Thicket

2011-08-27T00:54:00.000-07:00

The design I did for Enclothe's summer line dropped today! It's titled Foxlight on the site. The design was a challenge for me, but I was able to get it done in a fairly short amount of time. I'm a little less intimidated when it comes to using light colors now.

You can pick it up here: http://www.enclothe.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=1072&idcategory=2

Harvest

2011-08-09T20:48:00.001-07:00

This one was done fairly quickly. I've been trying to add a more traditional feel to my digital illustrations without completely overdoing it. The washes I had on this image were super super dark at first, but then I pushed them back a lot in the final image. The illustration looks pretty cool on a shirt, too!

Edit:
The illustration was looking a little too cold now that I've been staring at it for awhile, so I added some warmth to fit the mood better.

Edit, again:
Ok, last revision: Added highlights.

Into the Thicket, Part 2

2011-08-02T01:28:00.000-07:00

Really happy with how this one turned out. I started this piece in order to try to break out of a streak of not wanting to draw, and I guess it worked. I drew a nice praying mantis evading/fighting off the bat, but then decided that it looked too out of place and replaced it with a moth. The moth looks way better than the mantis, trust me.

My Very First "Tee of the Day"!

2011-07-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

My Oppressors design has won Tee of the Day over at Mintees! I'm super excited!

Upgrade Complete

2011-07-14T02:43:00.000-07:00

Did this painting of Mega Man for Udon's Mega Man Tribute book awhile ago. Turns out it made it into the book. Stoked!

Megaman X was my primary reference for the armor, but then I made some modification to really emphasize his robot/machine aspects.

The Mega Man Tribute book will be premiering at the San Diego Comic-con at the UDON booth (#5037), July 20-24.

More info on the book "here"

Oppressors

2011-07-08T02:41:00.000-07:00

I wanted to really try out something new and different this time around. I feel like I've been drawing too many skulls, ribbons, and plant thingies, so I really stepped out of the box for this one. I'm not a huge fan of the subject matter, but execution-wise I was really happy with the finished piece.

More Ink Drawings

2011-06-22T21:48:00.000-07:00

A couple of cards/drawings I've done in the past week or so. They're all done using micron pens and are around 2x5 inches each. First one took awhile to finish, but the rest were done in a single one hour/hour and a half sitting.

Cyber Boy

2011-06-15T15:13:00.001-07:00

Here's my first digital painting of the summer. I've been meaning to brush up on my painting skills, but I didn't know what to paint. I started sketching this piece without really having an idea of what the final piece would look like, and the sense of freedom was really nice. I'm really happy with how the clouds in the background came out.

and here are some process shots:

Harbingers

2011-06-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

I started this months ago but had to put it aside due to school projects. I picked it back up when summer started and knocked it out pretty fast! I like it!

I'm going to try to use more colors next time around.

Traditional Inkwork

2011-06-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

I've been getting into the motions of doing work traditionally and have been drawing a lot with my micron pens as of late. I've come to realize that I could put a lot more detail into a traditional piece using pens than a digital piece using a wacom tablet. Here are a couple cards I drew for family and friends.

I've been drawing a lot of wood grain-looking stuff. Also, 100th post? Wooooooooooo!

Heavens - Fear

2011-05-21T02:02:00.000-07:00

I did this illustration for my senior projects class. The whole class (made up of art historians, graphic designers, fine artists and illustrators) worked together to create a book filled with illustrations and text.

The overall theme of the book was the heavens, and my topic for the book was fear. My illustration depicts a girl that is about to receive a halo, but then she gets punk'd and the halo gets shattered and the monster says "sike, you gonna go to hellllll!" ...in other words, my illustration was basically about the fear of not knowing whether you'll get into heaven or not. I'm not a religious person... I just wanted to draw a monster but had to settle with drawing monster hands for the assignment.

I'm really stoked at how the image came out, though! It was the first time I've had a high quality/decent quality printout of one of my illustrations. I'm also proud of the illustration in itself; I learned a lot from it.

Artifacts Poster Prints

2011-05-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

I finally found the time to screen print this poster!

The poster is a 4 Color, 18x24 screen print. There are three gem color variations, with an edition of 9 with orange gems, 5 with yellow, and 4 with maroon. I'll put select versions up for sale in a little while.

The Prowl

2011-05-05T02:38:00.000-07:00

Here's another project I did for my composition class. I got a bunch of new acrylic paints from a good ol' pal, so I was looking forward to using them for this project. I was out of masonite, so I recycled an older test painting and used it as my surface. Really like how the colors turned out.

Plague Doctor

2011-04-29T16:45:00.000-07:00

I did this for my illustration class. Took awhile for me to finish it, but I finally got it done! It was designed to be a 9x24, 5 color screen printed poster, but I've decided to focus on printing another project and hold off printing this for another time.

The project theme was called beautiful/ugly and the class had to illustrate the beauty in something ugly. I chose to illustrate the bubonic plague. The beautiful aspect I found in the plague was the elaborate costuming of the plague doctors and their way of combating the plague through the use of herbs to cover up the deathly smell wafting from the infected. It kind of reminded me of a wizard or alchemist mixing up a powerful elixir using various ingredients, and although utterly futile in curing victims of the plague, I found the use of herbs in order to cure a disease to be a beautiful act due to its mysticism.

Stones

2011-04-25T01:24:00.001-07:00

A new design of mine was just released, this time for Enclothe!

Link

CSUN Illustration Exhibition 2011

2011-04-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

I was recently showcased in my college's illustration exhibition a couple weeks ago. The prepping for the show felt like a lot for something that was only going to be up for a week, but it turned out great.

The Wolf

2011-03-30T22:17:00.000-07:00

Here's another piece I did for my composition class. I'm still sticking with my central concept of the story of little red riding hood set in the future, but I'm slowly starting to stray away from the original structure of the story and giving it my own spin. The title of this post is extremely misleading as there is no wolf in the painting, only a mass of cloth and flesh. I decided stretch the story a little bit and portray the wolf as a shape shifting creature. I thought it fit nicely since the wolf was a devious character in the original story. Plus, I just wanted to draw a monster. I've actually been drawing a lot of weird creatures in my sketchbook as of late. Lots of skinny legs and whatnot. Fun stuff.

and here's an early sketch:

Change the Thought

2011-03-17T23:09:00.000-07:00

Whoa, I'm super stoked to be featured on the art blog, Change the Thought! I've been following the site since 2006, so I feel extremely honored to be showcased on a site that has featured and introduced to me several of my favorite artists that I've looked up to throughout the years.

http://www.changethethought.com/brian-luong/

I'd also like to thank my friend who got me posted on Supersonic Electronic a week ago. I think that played a big part in spreading my work around. Thanks :)

"Cycles" Screen Printed Posters

2011-03-10T16:53:00.000-08:00

I decided to screen print one of my illustration assignments from last semester during my free time. I wasn't excited about the first colorway I printed, so I decided to print it again. I ended up printing A LOT of different colorways, but I kept the runs extremely small. I printed 5 of the orange variant, and only 13 on the blue variant (I haven't counted which prints came out perfect, though). The minty green variant is actually printed on back of the blue variant because I wanted to experiment without eating too much into my paper supply.

I might actually print another colorway next week!

Little Red Riding Hood... IN THE FUTURE!

2011-03-01T00:43:00.001-08:00

Here's a project I did for my composition class. The compositional theme we were focusing on was diagonal themed compositions.

The concept behind my piece was, if the title didn't give it away already, Little Red Riding Hood in the future. The ongoing concept for my pieces in this class is the story of Little Red Riding Hood set to take place in a futuristic setting. It was painted using acrylic on masonite. I had the urge to scan it up and finish the piece digitally, but fought the temptation and worked traditionally through the entire piece.

Poster in the works Pt3/Painter's Guild Exhibit

2011-02-24T20:53:00.000-08:00

I finished the poster I was printing and was able to submit it into my school's Painter's Guild Exhibit. I'm glad that I was able to display my piece in the exhibit, even though it wasn't a painting (speaking of which, there was actually a good amount of photography and screen prints displayed in the show).

The concept of my piece is the assassination of Julius Caesar. There are 60 daggers in the composition representing the 60 approximate individuals that participated in his assassination, while 23 of said daggers are coated in blood to represent the number of times Caesar was stabbed.

I also submitted one of my digital paintings to the exhibit (It's the one on the bottom. The top piece belongs to my friend, sarahe)!

The Witching Hour @ Design By Humans

2011-02-24T01:49:00.001-08:00

Awesome! My design "The Witching Hour" won shirt of the day and is now available at Design By Humans! The print job looks really sweet.

Link: http://www.designbyhumans.com/shop/detail/8440

Poster in the works Pt2

2011-02-21T00:52:00.001-08:00

First color laid down for my poster:

Poster in the works!

2011-02-14T23:47:00.000-08:00

First project of the semester for my illustration class! These are photos of a black/white xerox copy I oiled up and prepared to shoot onto a screen. The actual design was done digitally. More info on the design later.

The Hunted

2011-02-11T23:00:00.000-08:00

uh, weird creature that got shot with an arrow. Enjoy!

Random Paintings

2011-01-18T21:38:00.000-08:00

Here are some digital paintings I did this past month. I used these pieces as studies in order to test out different techniques and approaches.

Renewal

2011-01-05T13:14:00.001-08:00

Just in time for the new year! (actually, I had this laying around for awhile and just recently put the finishing touches on it)

The Ambush

2010-12-20T23:07:00.000-08:00

Here's my final assignment for my composition class. I was planning on doing the whole thing in acrylic, but sick days and time constraints forced me to finish digitally. The composition theme for this assignment was subjective movement through the use of gestures (things pointing one way, eyes looking another way, etc.). For the concept, I decided to have a robot wondering through a rain forest and being ambushed by a monster with molten claws. The whole piece felt rushed, even after going back into the piece to push it a little more.

The Discovery

2010-12-12T22:01:00.001-08:00

Another composition assignment. I decided to continue experimenting with an acrylic under painting plus digital. The composition theme for this assignment was space movement through the use of archways, windows, pathways, clutter, and empty space. I decided to illustrate the scrap metal robot, the robot I drew in my earlier assignment, discovering a strange rain forest.

Hybridization

2010-12-01T08:17:00.001-08:00

This piece was done for my illustration class. The image was first created digitally, then outputted as a screen printed poster, which is three colors. I've known about the screen printing process for awhile now, but this was my first time going through the whole process and doing it with my own hands. You really do learn to appreciate the quality and craftsmanship of screen printed posters made by big name artists after trying to do it yourself. There was a lot of trial and error and a lot of messed up prints. I decided to make a small run of 12 to test the waters, but only 6 prints came out looking decent. It was a good learning experience overall, and I plan on printing some more of my stuff in the future.

The Everlasting Journey

2010-11-05T17:53:00.000-07:00

Another assignment for my composition class, this time focusing on a serpentine composition. The serpentine elements are there, but I feel that they're pretty weak. The concept behind the piece was a group of nomadic robots roaming the desert in a sandstorm. The first image was done entirely in acrylic, while the bottom image was a digitally enhanced version. I could have pushed the acrylic painting a lot more, but time constraints forced me to scan my painting and finish it via photoshop. I like it though, and will experiment with this traditional underpainting/digital touch-up process in future.

Splintering Bird (Cycles)

2010-10-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

Done for my illustration class. Something to do with life, death, and the soul and physical "shell" returning to nature.

The Scrap Metal Golem

2010-10-08T17:07:00.001-07:00

This was done for my composition class. We had to choose an overall theme for all of our projects in this class, so I chose robots. The concept behind this robot is a small, spherical robot that manipulates scrap metal to form a body.

Some backstory (since my instructor wanted some sort of narrative to go along with my chosen theme): The actual robotic components of the golem are the little, metal spheres located at the center and at the joints of the golem. A single orb-shaped drone is able to form a clumsy, yet mobile, metal body while a body controlled by more than one drone can be highly complex and agile. Through the use of magnetism and coordinated teamwork, the drones are able to control their metal shells as if it encased a single entity. The drones are employed by a mysterious factory, which sends out the drones to retrieve valuable scrap metal and bring it back. The drones search for the metal, create a body out of the found metal, and walk back to the factory to deposit their findings and repeat the process. Several variations of the scrap metal golem exists and it is postulated that each drone has its own unique personality, which in turn affects the look and feel of its newly created body.

Endangered Cranes

2010-09-19T02:26:00.000-07:00

Here's my first project for my composition class. We had to pick out a magazine article and illustrate the article using horizontal and vertical themes. I picked an article about endangered cranes wintering in the Korean DMZ. I tried putting a lot of strong horizontal and vertical elements into my piece, but they weren't noticeable enough to fit the assignment. My instructor was willing to overlook the fact though because the piece I made was so awesome. yay.

and yes, my eyes were hurting from drawing so much grass.

Sky and Trees

2010-08-31T19:01:00.000-07:00

An ink painting I made for a family friend.

...and a digitally modified version of the same painting.

The Wonderer

2010-08-16T15:38:00.001-07:00

A little project I started in order to practice drawing faces, which I'm terrible at. Female faces are the hardest for me, so I took that into consideration and went from there. I'm pretty neutral about this piece; I'm not too proud of it nor do I hate it. Oh well, practice makes perfect!

My life for Aiur!

2010-07-25T22:28:00.000-07:00

More Starcraft inspired art. My own take on the Protoss Zealot.

Starcraft II Propaganda Poster Contest

2010-07-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

Starcraft II is holding an art contest! The prizes are nice, but I'll probably not place in the top 10 (some of the other submissions are incredible)!

As awesome as it looks, the very first image was not the version I was able to submit into the contest due to time constraints. The image below was the version I submitted:

Not as detailed as the first image, but it was all I had by the deadline. The image I submitted took about 5 days worth of work, from start to finish. It took another 5 days to finish it all up.

Anyways, vote for it here! http://us.starcraft2.com/dominion/propaganda-contest.xml?i=53&s&a=5#inum=53&sk=&ap=5

Landscapes

2010-07-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

Some landscapes I did awhile back. I churned these out pretty quick. The last one took the longest to finish just because I kept going back and adding stuff.

Lotus Hands

2010-07-02T19:08:00.001-07:00

Wanted to revisit the figure eight composition again for a shirt design. I was also inspired to draw seven fingered hands!

Why seven fingers you ask? Four fingered hands are too prevalent in today's cartoons, and five fingered hands are normal and boring. If I drew a six fingered hand, people would think that I added an extra finger on accident and laugh at me. Adding two extra fingers should be enough to let people know that I mean business and added extra fingers on purpose. Seven fingers also felt like a good amount; not too high and not too low of a number.

Simple, but this actually took a lot of work. Mainly because I didn't have a set idea of what to do and planned as I went along.

Aerial at Teefury!

2010-06-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

I have another design featured at Teefury this upcoming Tuesday (the 29th)! You can get it for $11! The sale will start at 9pm (Pacific Time) on Tuesday the 29th and end 24 hours later at 9pm on Wednesday the 30th.

Link to the site: http://www.teefury.com/

S'more Digital Paintings

2010-06-23T03:35:00.000-07:00

I've been working nonstop as of late, so I have a lot of work to show!.. but I'll save some of it for another post. I'll start off with an updated version of an older piece.

Lately I've been fond of adding little floating particles to my pieces. It adds more dimension to my work and it keeps the piece from looking too clean and flat.

This piece was inspired by my D&D human rogue character from long ago! My character liked to throw knives. Took forever to get done, but I'm glad that I stuck with it till the very end. I learned so much while doing this piece (Note the dust particles floating in the air and the use of blurring). I also approached this piece differently than my older pieces in that I worked in gray scale and then added color afterward; this way gives me more control over the colors. I'm proud of how far I got with the piece, but the composition feels a little weird to me.

Here's another game character, but this time from World of Warcraft (that's right, I gave the 10 day trial a try). I tried painting this guy by using a solid black silhouette as the base. The final image turned out a lot darker than planned, so I had to lighten him up. It would have been easier to start off with a mid tone. I traced the solid-base silhouette from a screen shot of the character, so the proportions look weird because of the character stylization, not me! However, I think I really really messed up on how really knees and elbow joints are suppose to looke like :p

Yup, he's missin' his jaw! And eyes. But that's fairly normal for an undead.

Ponder

2010-06-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

I always like to record my process on my pieces from start to finish, but I always tend to remember to do so when I'm already halfway through a piece. Luckily, I remembered to do it for this piece! This piece took around 6-7 hours, which is pretty fast (it usually takes days for me to get stuff done). Those 6-7 work hours were divided into two sessions, with 3 hours in between the two sessions for sleep/break (I ended up getting no sleep and pretty much stayed up all night).

I was extremely proud of myself and impressed at how fast I was able to get this finished. I thought the overall piece looked too much like Aaron Horkey's work (the drop shadow idea was inspired by his work), but my brother said that the overall piece was my style. His statement has validity due to the fact that he is a die hard Horkey fan, owning a couple of Horkey prints and spending too much money on prints altogether. Coincidentally, it was my friend's birthday the day that I completed this piece, so she got it as a birthday present!

Not coincidence, actually. I felt like drawing a gift for them, haha!

Artifacts

2010-06-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

Took forever to finish, mainly because I kept forgetting about it! Check out all the little symbols on the beads! I threw in a skull, an eye, and some stars on one or two bead segments for kicks.

Stuff I completely forgot to post.

2010-06-02T00:23:00.001-07:00

Here are some assignments I did for my illustration class last semester (the semester that just ended). I was meaning to post these right after completing them, but whoop dee doo I forgot.

Assignment: Using only reference sketches and memory, complete a drawing that demonstrates the moods and/or feelings of a particular place or area.

I took the easy way out and drew my room. Not only was it an easy location to visit ( sarcasm, I'm always in my room), I practically know my room inside and out, making the need for reference sketches almost obsolete. I wanted to convey a warm and cozy feeling, but I don't think that worked out too well. I wanted the finished piece to have a sketchbook feel to it, so I drew out all my lines and then scanned the drawing up so I could thicken some of the lines in photoshop. I'm fond of using minty green colors, so that's why I decided to color my walls in said color. Next!

Assignment: Pick an editorial article and create an illustration for it; Narrative illustration project. (Somewhat bummed out that we weren't going to actually illustrate a story. I was looking forward to drawing knights and dragons).

The article I chose to illustrate was about stem cell research. The finished illustration was pretty straight forward; A stream of stem cells flowing from a petri dish, changing into nerve cells. It didn't really illustrate the article specifically and could have been used for any article about anything relating to stem cells. I had a different concept that had a scientist surfing on a stem cell with student interns surfing behind him while he led the way, which would have worked with the article better since the article was about students interning with real researchers, but I scrapped the idea because it wasn't serious enough for the publication.

Looking back at all my assignments from my illustration classes, I can conclude that my style was all over the place and I didn't do too well when it came to picking a style and sticking with it. I can tell, though, that the stem cell illustration shares similarities with my past illustration of an unraveling brain, meaning that I was starting to settle down with some sort of style.

Death wears a white robe...

2010-05-24T01:46:00.000-07:00

...and armor.

The final product wasn't as dark as I intended it to be and the earlier phases caught more of the mood I was aiming for. The initial idea had that Lord of the Rings/Ring wraith look going on, so I'm glad that I was able to stray a little from that look and have the final product look less deathly and more divine.

Summer Reading

2010-05-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

I did the initial sketch for my illustration class, but scrapped it because it didn't meet the criteria of the given assignment. The original sketch had a bunch of summer related imagery (like beaches, ocean waves, sail boats, animals, and flower fields) coming out of the book. When I redid the whole thing, I took most of the summer related imagery out and added fantasy elements to make it look like the reader was reading a fantasy book. I kept some elements that were in my original drawing, like the field of flowers and sail boats, because they still looked cool.

On a slightly related note, I am finally done with school this semester! SUMMER IS HERE!!! Time to do some........ summer reading!

nah.

Sing Everyday

2010-05-13T10:45:00.001-07:00

Assignment: Illustrate a fortune from a fortune cookie.

For the assignment, each student was given a fortune cookie and had to illustrate the fortune that was inside their cookie. My fortune read "Sing everyday and chase the mean blues away."

I had a couple different concepts I wanted to work with. One involved a person crouching in a circle of light while being surrounded by shadow creatures that were being torn to bits because of the light. I decided to go with the concept with a bird chasing the "mean blues" away.

I got the original idea from staying up all night late enough to watch the sun rise on a number of occasions. I noticed that birds would always sing when dawn was just around the corner, so I came up with the idea that the birds sing in order to chase away the darkness, or the "mean blues." Instead of having the sun rising in the background behind the birds, I decided to have the birds be portrayed as the actual light of dawn.

The "mean blues" were depicted as darkness. From the beginning, I knew I wanted to portray the "mean blues" as shadowy monsters, so I threw in some hands and drew skulls and faces in the fog surrounding the shadows. I added in the stars to drive the point home that the shadowy monsters are the embodiment of the night that is being chased away by the coming dawn.

I was going for a fantasy type illustration, and I'm glad that it read that way when my instructor was critiquing it. I got excited when he said that it had a Dungeons & Dragons-esque fantasy feel to it because that's exactly the type of work I want to get into, and hearing that meant that I was traveling in the right direction.

The Struggle

2010-05-06T21:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't used traditional mediums in a looooong time. This was a nice break from working digitally.

Panoramic

2010-04-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

Click Here For Full Image

Assignment: Illustrate a map.

This was a very open ended assignment. I chose to map out my entire Monday/Wednesday, which are the days where I spend most of the day at school. My original concept started with me waking up and ended with me going to bed. This concept was obviously too ambitious, so I had to trim the concept down in order for me to complete the project on time. I decided to cut my concept in half and only mapped out from the time I woke up to the time I got home from school. My illustration would have been at least twice the length it is now have I stuck with my original concept! I had to shrink the canvas size to six inches tall in order to keep the file size small, but the illustration would still be around 7 feet long if I decided to print it out. Luckily I didn't have to print it out for my presentation... that would have been expensive, especially for something that might need revisions.

...and our minds will fail us

2010-04-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

Assignment: Choose two subjects from the lists of available subjects. Create an illustration portraying your two chosen subjects. There were two lists of subjects, and I was only allowed to pick one subject per list.

I chose mental illness as one of my subjects and human anatomy as my other. I discovered an interesting way of approaching the assignment; I noticed that one list of subjects could act as a list of editorial article themes and that the other list could act as the subject matter of the illustration used for the editorial article. For instance, mental illness would be the theme of the editorial article and human anatomy would be the subject matter for the illustration I would create for the article.

The conceptualizing for this piece was rather easy. I knew exactly what I wanted to draw, so I was able to get this finished rather quickly. The concept came to me so easily that I started to worry if I've seen it done somewhere before and forgot about it. Various google searches came up with nothing, so I went along with my original concept. Colors for the top of the piece took awhile. I tried using blue at first, but the tatters started looking too much like water. Red was one of my first choices, but it was too chaotic. I went with a pale/drab purple because it reminded me a lot of necrosis, thus working well with the overall theme of mental illness and decay.

EDIT:

Made some revisions after my critique. The withering/shredding brain strand was a little too orderly, so I added more strands floating off in various directions.

Personals Ad

2010-04-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

Assignment: Find a personals ad and illustrate the person who created the ad.

I found an average personals ad about a girl plagued with short-lived relationships. She describes her situation and goes on to making a list of things she wants in a relationship. The things were pretty simple: wanting to hold hands, being surprised with hugs, kisses, and gifts, etc. The whole ad was pretty... average, so instead of making a boring illustration of a girl crying in the corner, I portrayed the girl as being extremely needy and turned her into a black hole; I wanted to over exaggerate the whole ad. It was fun.

What Have You Been Up To, Brian?

2010-03-21T23:44:00.000-07:00

Digital painting, that's what.

These were all done using photoshop. The first painting was for my digital illustration class. We had to paint a landscape twice, each portraying dawn or dusk. The project gave me the tools and knowledge to do a digital painting, but the next three paintings of the snow scapes were the real catalysts that got the ball rolling. I painted the first snow scape for fun, and then decided to make a storyline out of it. I guess the story is about a lost soul searching for something. I started painting on my free time and from what I noticed, I got exponentially better after completing each painting. The last painting was done straight from my mind, which was nice because it showed me how creative I could be. The face came out too Asian, though.

I always wanted to get into digital painting, but I didn't know where to start. Sure, I could have watched tutorials online... but that never occurred to me. Learning how to do it has opened a door of possibilities for me. A door I plan on walking through.

Sticks, Stones, & Bones

2010-03-11T09:42:00.001-08:00

Cool

Probably the most detailed piece of work I've ever done... I think. I drew a twig/branch infinity symbol in a past design I never finished, but this one is far more detailed. I'm glad all of my hard work was noticed as this design has been fairly popular with the tshirt community known as Emptees.

I've been holding back on posting some school art projects as they have been sub par. I've been wanting to post one or two projects in particular, but I will wait.

Apples

2010-02-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

Assignment: Using familiar symbols and visual metaphors to communicate the abstract.
Topic: School Violence

Same assignment from my last post. I had extra time after finishing the other two, so I made another one.

Don't Lose Your Identity

2010-02-11T00:40:00.000-08:00

Assignment: Using familiar symbols and visual metaphors to communicate the abstract.
Topic: Identity Theft

I wanted to try out a super flat and graphic style suitable for editorials. My traditional watercolor and ink didn't fit the bill for the look I was going for, so I went full digital for this one. The only thing I did traditionally was the acrylic texture in the background, which I painted and scanned. More to come.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

2010-01-24T11:48:00.000-08:00

I was super busy with the starting of classes and whatnot, but managed to scrap together enough time to make my mom a card.

This was interesting. Started out as a ink pen drawing, then added some ink washes to it and messed it all up, and then decided to cover up the ink wash poo by turning the whole thing into a acrylic painting.

Owls and Wires

2010-01-14T00:07:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of illustrations I did during my break from classes. All designs are applicable as shirt designs even though I didn't mock them up on a shirt template.

This one took me awhile to do. It's a redo of an older design I did 9 months ago. I redid the line work once I purchased my tablet, but set the design aside because I was too busy with school. I just recently finished it... FOR GOOD!

Here's another design I finally had time to finish. Yup, it's based off my oil painting. At first I had a waterfall flowing down the faces, but it didn't look as good as I wanted, so I redid the design and replaced the waterfalls and streams with wires. It's funny how I started with one theme and then ditched it in favor of a theme that contrasted with it in terms of meaning: The natural stream of consciousness vs. the technologically "wired" minds of today. Natural vs. Artificial.

For the past month, I've been striving to be as productive as possible with my free time since I might have a very limited amount of it next semester. I used a lot of my time working on my art projects for just one class last semester, so I'm expecting to be super busy this upcoming semester with the two art classes I decided to take. I'm excited though because I'm going to be constantly churning out art and hopefully some really great pieces for my portfolio. Who knows, maybe I won't be as busy as I imagined.

As for striving to be as productive as possible, I think I've achieved that. I've probably never been as productive with art during any other break as I was during this break. I remember at the very beginning of the break I would always wake up early at around 8am and sleep around 12am AND would actually have trouble trying to sleep in late. Funny because it's usually the other way around for me. I would wake up and just do art all day. There were a couple weeks were I got into painting with acrylics and that was fun. I never got around to doing another oil painting, though. There's just so much planning involved, so the spontaneity of acrylic painting seems attractive. All in all, It was a good break.

Billabong!?

2010-01-11T01:57:00.000-08:00

Was originally for Design By Human's contest for Quiksilver, but it never got anywhere. Thankfully, Billabong was interested! You can get the shirts here: http://www.billabong.com/us/product-cat/297/t-shirts#item_3319_chroma

Shiny

2010-01-03T03:07:00.000-08:00

Another acrylic painting. The painting looks dark when you see it in person, but the branches are painted using gloss medium so you can see them every once in awhile when they reflect light. I need to make a habit of painting all the way to the border. Happy Birthday to my cousin!

More Acrylics

2009-12-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

This was nice. Someone is gonna get lucky this Christmas.

Acrylics (The Letter T)

2009-12-05T04:24:00.001-08:00

This is another project for my Illustration Materials and Techniques class. The assignment was to paint a two-page illustration focusing on a letter and objects that start with the letter. I chose the letter "T", and one of the first things to come to my mind was the Tusken Raider from Star Wars. One requirement for the assignment was to use a collage element, so I collaged the birds on the right, a bear trap, and the tulips. After I finished painting, I went back in and added a glossy sheen with gloss medium to the highlights and some shapes. The gloss on the light pouring from the tree looks awesome when you look at it right. I also painted "invisible" glossy twigs scatter throughout the painting. I also got a little carried away and painted some tattoos on the tits... that's what the birds are... they are tits...

It's too bad I can't really show a good photo of the gloss medium in action... photos don't do it justice.

Oils

2009-11-06T01:16:00.001-08:00

My first time using oils :D
This was an assignment for my Illustration Techniques and Materials class. First we made a "random"collage (I say "random" because I actually planned out my collage to a certain degree...) and then we used the collage as a reference for our painting. It was frustrating and difficult at first, but I progressively learned as I went along. If you knew the order of the faces I painted, you would see a lot of improvement... but I'm not gonna tell you! My instructor said that the people looked like they were at a party and had too much to drink (or stoned out of their minds! lulz). I painted the faces as if they were hollow shells/mask and painted the swirls to represent thoughts and memories escaping their hollow shells. Cool. Expect to see more oil paintings by me in the future!

Flutter @ Teefury

2009-10-17T17:17:00.000-07:00

My design "Flutter" will be available at Teefury for 24 hours starting at 9pm (Pacific Time) October 18th-19th!

BuhBuhBuhButtons!

2009-10-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of the folks at Purebuttons.

MASTER OF TIME AND SPACE!!!

2009-10-07T05:05:00.000-07:00

not really. This is another class project for my art class. We had to choose one of our pieces from our last project and color a copy of it using color pencils.
At first I wanted to make the chameleon bursting out of a tear in the space time continuum in space (hence the title), but that was too complicated. I drew the chameleon as if it were semi transparent and made his organs and innards visible. I didn't plan on making the organs anatomically correct since that would be boring. His innards are just a swirl of ribbons and loops, giving the final piece an air wonder and making it a little more interesting.

I also realized that the ribbons inside remind me of the work of James Jean.

Art Class Stuff: Updated

2009-09-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

4 hours of nonstop work. MY BRAIN HURTS!!! OWWW MY EYES!!!!!

We had critiques the other day in class and I found out some ways to make this piece better. I darkened up most of it and added more shadows. I also added more detail to the eye turret. Looks cool.

Art Class Stuff

2009-09-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

For my first project in my Illustration Media and Techniques class, I had pick a topic and create 4 drawings using ink and a variety of techniques listed for each of the drawings. I randomly chose chameleons for my topic.

^Tonal drawing using crosshatching and stippling

^Graphic use of line

^Expressive use of line

^Scratchboard

P.S: I've updated the black version of the Witching Hour design. I spent a lot of time making it work because I wanted to have two working colorways for the design. It garnered a good amount of votes and support, so hopefully it'll get printed in the near future.

Witching Hour

2009-09-15T16:52:00.001-07:00

More trees!!!!
I've been wanting do a much larger piece based off the last piece I posted. This piece is 11''x25'' tall, and it looks pretty cool up on my wall. I started this piece just for the sake of doing art, but I didn't really have anything to lose so I mocked it up on a shirt and entered it in Design By Humans' Halloweek 3 contest: http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/62929

The Tree Line

2009-09-05T19:33:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to realize that I make something cool every time I do a warm-up painting or drawing. I had another drawing I was going to work on and initially started this as a test page to try out the new ink I bought. It ended up looking cool, so I set my other drawing aside to focus on this one. The purple branches were done using brown ink, but the ink turned purple when I added subsequent washes over them. I used masking fluid for the stars. They came out a little bigger than planned, though. The wet on wet technique was perfect for making the clouds, and that's the main thing I'm proud about in this painting.

Diviner: Updated

2009-08-29T15:36:00.001-07:00

Redid colors, got rid of the distressed overlay, and made several variations. I went with a more toned-down color scheme. Three color count goodness. I like all of them. Now up for voting at Design By Humans: http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/62214

Diviner

2009-08-28T16:48:00.001-07:00

I've been working on this for awhile now. I had a sketch of this idea in one of my really ancient sketchbooks and decided to revive it. Came out nice, but a little too top-heavy for a shirt, design wise. It's something I should have caught early during the sketching process, but overlooked entirely. Some ways to alleviate this would be to drop out the color in the hands or shrink the design so it would fit smaller on the shirt. Other than that, I would have to make drastic changes to the design to get rid of the top-heavyness, which I don't have the heart to do. But it could have been worse: it could have been bottom-heavy, which I despise :D

Zach Johnsen study

2009-08-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

My classes started this week, so you'll be seeing a lot more school projects and a little less design work *sad face* I do however have one or two completed designs, but I'm gonna keep them hidden for a little while ;)

The only hands-on art class I have this semester is Illustration Materials and Techniques. A lot of instruction on traditional mediums such as pen and ink, acrylic paint, and oil paint. For a homework assignment, we had to pick an ink drawing from one of our favorite artists and re-create it using the same mediums the artist used, in this case ink and ink pens. I chose to re-create a piece by Zach Johnsen.

I didn't bother scanning it, so perspective of the photo throws out the proportions, but other than that the drawing is pretty dead on proportion-wise. It came out better than I expected, but I need a lot of improvement when it comes to crosshatching and taking my time.

I'm AWESOME!!!!

2009-08-07T01:47:00.000-07:00

This mass of cardboard and twisted wire is my attempt to make a working live trap to catch the mice that have decided to hang out in my kitchen. Funny how I used a fatal spring snap mouse trap as the trigger mechanism for my non-fatal mouse trap. Go ahead and laugh, this thing works!!!

Edit:
I was still full of energy, so I made another one! This one feels more refined, even though it still looks like crap. I like the arms closing the door better on this one.

If you look carefully, you can see the trigger bar inside the trap... which triggers the snap trap on top... which closes the door.

Edit: yea, it works. Caught the mouse last night!

CHUUU (Pika Post)

2009-08-05T16:07:00.000-07:00

Yea I know, the skin wouldn't hang onto the skull like that. I wanted to give it a "face melting" look, hahaha.

Decided to draw this because my kitchen has been occupied by mice as of late. Since I don't like to harm animals, I have been trapping them using a tin snack can in opposition to using fatal snap traps. So far I've been able to catch 4 out of 5 mice. They're pretty small and the largest one I've caught had a body of about 3 inches.

The Jelly King @ Teefury

2009-08-04T22:29:00.000-07:00

Available at Teefury.com for only 24 hours!!!

lolwut? (Pika Post)

2009-08-02T19:32:00.001-07:00

For some unknown reason, I couldn't stop myself from uncontrollably laughing while I was drawing the last face.

I am simultaneously working on two designs at the moment. While working on one of the designs, I stopped and asked myself, "Who would want to wear a shirt with a half naked girl on it?!?!" I Think I'm going to set that design aside for awhile and focus on my other design, haha.