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.