Heaviside - "Wasted Generation"

I was contacted by Edmonton based rock band, Heaviside, a while ago and was given the opportunity to design their new album. Here are the illustrations I did for the front and back cover of the album, sans the text.

You can check out the band HERE.

Mantas

I drew me some manta rays! Mantas doing backflips! This was a relatively quick doodle.

TOTD - Hooded Eclipse

My Hooded Eclipse design received Tee of the Day over at Mintees a couple nights ago. Awesome!


I'm also starting to sketch more often in hope that it will loosen up my drawing style and bring in fresh ideas. My brother Kevin has been drawing post-it note doodles for awhile now, so I'm going to follow his lead and give it a try. Here goes my first post-it doodle:

Hooded Eclipse

I wanted to draw another hooded figure after I finished the last one, so here it is! I also wanted to draw a sword.

Art Battle L.A. - Brian Luong VS. Kevin Luong

My brother, Kevin, told me about Art Battle L.A. a while ago and said that I should sign up for it. "Watch, they'll totally pair us up to go against each other!" he said. Sure enough, we both received an email asking if we were brothers and that they would love to have us compete against each other for one of there upcoming competitions.

After setting up a deadline that worked for us both, we set out to pick an overall theme for our pieces; We figured that there would be a more leveled playing field if we picked a single theme for both of our illustrations. Numbering off the list of themes we came up with and using a random number generator, the theme that won the raffle was "sea life/marine life". I decided to go with the idea of a hermit crab that grew large enough to wear a treasure chest and have corals and anemones growing all over it.





At first I wanted to just have the hermit crab living in an overly elaborate shell, but that seemed too natural and kinda boring. I jumped to the idea with the hermit crab lugging around a treasure chest for awhile, but then I later played around with the hermit crab lugging around half of a pirate ship as a home. The pirate ship idea was a little far out there and if I went with it I wouldn't have been able to add all the cool little critters without super sizing them as well, so I went back to the treasure chest idea.

I wasn't sure about this illustration as I was starting it out. I knew the deadline was really short, so I had to nail my concept down quickly and get started on the piece as soon as possible. I didn't like what I had and pretty much figured I was gonna lose after I laid eyes on what Kevin was working on, buuuuut I still worked on it knowing that I needed to give the competition my all. Sure enough, the illustration took a turn for the better as I kept working on it and it started to come together nicely. I'm fairly happy with how it turned out in the end and I'm really excited about the competition!

You can vote for Kevin's awesome piece and compare it to my sad excuse of an illustration at ARTBATTLE L.A. I'll update this post later when the winner of the competition *coughkevincough* is announced!

Update: Updated the colors. Thanks for the helpful critique, Christina! It looks more coral-y now and a lot less like Christmas!

Detail shots can be viewed over here.

Update: The voting period has ended, and the winner issssssssssssss... me! Yay! This was a really nice challenge; thanks for putting up a good fight, Kevin! Thank you to all who voted!

Flourish

I did the sketch for this about a year ago. The sketch sat around in my computer folder until last week when I decided to tackle it and turn it into a daily doodle project. What was supposed to take only a day to finish up turned into two days, then three, and then finally a week. I guess I seriously got sidetracked while working on it!





I tried out using halftones for this piece, and I think the results were decent.

I've come to realize that I've been hopping onto new/different projects too often. Working on different pieces simultaneously isn't as effective as I thought it was, so I'm going to try to focus on one piece at a time.

Happy Valentine's Day!

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!

Collab with Kevin Luong

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.

The Farmer's Daughter

Turned this little doodle into a finished piece!

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.

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.

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.