Year of the Tiger

New Year's cards are kind of a big deal in Japan. Sort of like Christmas cards in the States. Anyway, I made these a while back ---sometime in the beginning of this past summer--- for a bunch of New Year's card contests.

























[ all: concentrated dyes & color pencils on watercolor paper, & Photoshop ]
The last one was selected as one of the winning works, and is now available on sale at Joyful-2 (an arts & crafts store) around Japan!



Hope everybody is enjoying what's left of 2009.

Silver & Celebrities.

Like I mentioned last December, one of my illustrations had been nominated as a finalist for the 2nd annual SCADDY Awards. Well, yesterday was the ceremony, and I got a Silver Award for it! Yay! Also I was informed that I became the finalist for the local Savannah ADDY Awards as well. So double yay!

Here is the with-type version of the piece I won for:


---

For my caricature class, we have to come up with 2 celebrity images, one horizontal and one vertical. Being a shameless avid Hannah Montana & High School Musical fan, I decided to do Miley Cyrus & Zac Efron. Here are the sketches:

^ Yeah, half Hannah Montana/half Miley... sort of creepy.


And a sneak peek of the color comp sketches in progress:

Yes, I have a TON of references.

SCADDY finalist!

Yay!

I entered a bunch of my artwork into the SCADDY Awards again this year, and my Robbie Williams portrait was nominated as a finalist for Advertising Illustration! w00t w00t.



My Screaming Jack wine label was also nominated as a finalist for the same category last year. I didn't win anything last year and am not going to have my hopes too high for this year either---- but it's still quite a rush to get approval for my work. :)

Super Blob!

Here is a 16"x12" collage-painting I made recently, based on the sketch from the previous post:



I've been wanting to paint on collages for about a year now. I improvised the entire thing, with hardly a clear vision of the final product... a total no-no for most Illustration, but I like how spontaneous and fun it turned out. Here are my impromptu steps:

- ripped magazine pages glued on canvas with watered down gesso
- yellow dye for tint
- peeling off some glued parts off to create ripped texture
- graphite to transfer the sketch
- putting down gouache with a paintbrush
- putting down gouache with a toothbrush (splattering)
- industrial duct tape to rip the surface + create further texture
- black and purple Sharpies for outlines (oh, how un-artsy)

I entered this into the SCAD Small Works exhibition call for entries, alongside random pieces from the past. We'll see how that goes.

I will definitely continue doing more fun personal projects like this!!

Into The Deep Sketches

SCAD's Society of Illustrators is hosting a juried show, and the theme is "Into the Deep"-- so basically anything that has to do with the ocean. The format is 10"x14".

Here is how my sketch progressed:







I'm thinking about using concentrated dyes for the colors-- not only will it be super vibrant, but it's also a very versatile media to work with. The piece is due in about 2 weeks so I've still got a lot of time.