The Plain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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!

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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"!

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