Akali Pirate

Have I mentioned I love playing champion Akali?

I keep painting these Native American skins cuz I can.

Sketch for the next picture. Ashe, Akali, and Sivir.
I'm trying to keep it as simple, but I'm so tempted to put details that will kill me.

Native American Akali

I think I liked the sketch better. I think I got to focused on the coloring that I lost the original flow of the line I was going for. It's so static now, like she's posing for a camera. Looks like I'm just saying, "hey Akali, look over here, look pretty for the camera". I wanted a more, "She's-gonna-kill-me-for-taking-her-picture-I-better-do-it-now-before-she-eats-me" pose; I could've gone for a more threatening look for her, but...this IS just a practice anyway. I guess it doesn't help that I was looking at old photographs of studio-posed Native Americans. Their static poses influenced my coloring process. :-x

Sketch

For another painting practice, I decided to work on another champion. What could be better than drawing my favorite champion to play! I'm not amazing at playing her, but she makes an awesome ninja assassin. Just thought maybe a Native American warrior outfit on Akali would be pretty sweet. She's IS the deadly beauty. So, I'm using warrior images from google to give her, well, a warrior look, while also incorporating clothing of Native American women. You don't mess with Pocahontas Akali. For me, this is another good digital painting practice.

Tralalala LoLing

Lately, I have been playing more League of Legends and have been neglecting my PlayStation. But it's not just the game that consumes me, it's the art. Every time the game loads after picking out champions, I would see the beautifully painted characters for the game. It makes me think, that's where I wanna be: I wanna be the artist whose work is a visual representation of the animated characters that can be controlled by the masses. I want to see my art come to life. I dream to design a character that people will see spring into action. Whether it's for video games, movies, shows, I aspire to have them live and breath before my eyes.

I've been inspired by Katie De Sousa's paintings for Riot (her blog: http://katiedesousa.blogspot.com/). Her style is a mix of gorgeous and bad-ass. She's obviously very experienced and has developed her painting techniques. The beauty of her painterly style can be seen on both oil paint and digital paint. Her oil painting style translates well towards her digital paintings, which I'm trying to develop myself using the techniques I've picked up from school and on my own. My heart beats fast when I watch those LoL art spotlights. I've got a long way to go to develop a proper digital painting technique.

Memory Series

I had to do a series project for my painting class and we had to incorporate a style of an artist of our interest and one whose style differs from our own. I decided to give Gerhard Richter's faded sweeping motions to give that blurred motion we capture on camera. It's like showing memories on old videotapes and pausing to the right moment in time for me to capture onto canvas. I mean, I bet you can get the same blurred motion effect if you pause a YouTube video and then paint that blurred screencap. All the more fun when trying new styles!

I'm capturing a moment in time on canvas. I can create motion with a paintbrush that cameras cannot. I can make a still-photo, a static image, move. I'm controlling these movements that I shouldn't take for granted. These movements are essential. A faded memory surfaces in paint.

The End is Only the Beginning

I've decided to post up my first moleskine sketchbook drawings. The drawings range from when I was still a senior in high school to when I was finishing up my freshman year in college. I've been meaning to post these up, to at least immortalize the drawings into images before they smudge into smudgy oblivion. I tried posting this in about the same order as I have drawn them. The only thing you have to understand is that I started drawing from the last page first. Then went on from there. To me, it was convenient cuz I'm right-handed. But cuz I like being the different one, the one who you'd stare at cuz she says something strange. I started from the back because I believe that the end is only the beginning.

You know, it was pretty weird for me to look at these again as I was enhancing their qualities over Photoshop and posting them here in the nearly correct order. It was like I was sucked into some worm hole where the voices of my past echo from every page. Do you know what I mean? It's like every page, every minor detail, has a story. But the story--they're all personal to me. I could show these pictures to someone and they can nod in approval of my technical skills or laugh or sneer at some of my random drawings, but they wouldn't get the same effect from the pictures as I get from each page. Little aspects of my life are capture in a bottle. Pieces of time captured in ink the same way moments of time are captured on film. Those moments become immortal.

Hmm, I'll give you an example of what I'm saying about these drawings. The third to the last picture seems like some casual observational sketch. Just ehhh. A chair, a table, some people. That's all you see. But what I see, what I hear, what I smell, is the moment of when I was in the library around finals (for the record the library smells nice. i like the smell of books, okay?). I'll admit it now. I rarely go to the library. I didn't really have reason to be there. I mean, c'mon. I was practically done with all my finals. Reason I came was cuz I was seeing someone. A boy who'd eventually become my boyfriend. At the time, I was making excuses to go to the library--work on my paper. Pshh. I bullshitted that paper (but heh, I got an A on it). That page in my sketchbook reminds me of when we were passing notes to each other across the round table while he worked on his assignment. I still have that note.

The drawings make sense to me. They tell me of some passive heartbreak, some boredom, some exploration, experimentation, ideas, thoughts, notes, lectures, memories. I don't have to write little memos to myself to remember some moments (and I mean little as in ant writing). Memo to self though....write down the friggin' dates I drew the pictures!!

But eh, that's just what I see from my drawings. You can see whatever you want, make something out of it however you'd like. It's kinda like meeting someone. You see an image on the surface, but the story is really in the artist who gives you these images to look at.