FLIGHT 4 pages - updated pages

this is my FLIGHT story, with the text. click on the images to enlarge, then click on it again for a legible viewing.

the colors aren't quite correct because they were converted automatically by photoshop into ready-made web images, so all is a lot more washed out than that of the actual files. still though, if you see something really ugly color-wise, or something mis-matching, vibrating etc. etc. please let me know.

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page 27

blah blah

really got the nose to the grind stone. miss being outside, i miss the sun. behind on my Flight 4 deadline, nervous that the blues aren't going to reproduce. should work out though. i'm expecting it to be a real solid story.

exerpt from my Flight submission the Story of Binny

pretty happy with how it's turning out though. cartoons running constantly as i work. this is a weird tick. i'm going to turn into one of those freaky old artists that's got a lot of nonsense lying around the house.

doodling anime heads whenever i need to take a break. i love the lines in anime (battle scenes are rad) but the big eyes kind of trip me out. and the hair is just, well... i guess i do love duran duran.

left: anime-manga style (i copied a picture, sort of)
right: not manga (i can't draw anime-manga style without looking at some reference.)

well, sometimes i'll put on a visually stunning movie on as well. i dug around and found 2046 the other day. lots of slow sexy people moving about. i'm not partial to asians, but lately i've been seeing a lot of them. maybe that sounds funny to say, since i am chinese.

olmec art at the de young museum, my favorite old world culture.

if i do get out i like to go to the museum. went to a bookstore yesterday, but wasn't really interested. plowed through the entire art and photography section - stopped for a closer look at medardo rosso book (my favorite sculptor) and a book of cy twombly sculptures.

medardo rosso, they have one of his sculptures at the Guggenheim, i think.

last friday i did get out to the city and enjoyed a walk-in life drawing session at the SFAI. beautiful school! the session was sooooo fun. i know this is in my head, but i heart art.

my lines aren't so good yet. pretty shaggy looking, but one day... one day!! also, in reference to a previous blog entry, here's another example of overlapping space and lines. the thigh on the reclined figure and the left forearm on the back-facing figure are the same lines. i didn't mean for it to happen, it just did. it's definitely weird.

the model had weird props. like a gambling hat, and this shabby purple rope. it was a little creepy, since i'd never seen models with props before. but i sort of liked the rope. it had a nasty-ass texture, but i liked the dull weight of it.



i'm wishing i had gone to life drawing classes earlier, when i was drawing up the Flight story. i think it would have helped a lot. well, staying indoors for a long time doesn't help. should go for a walk today. that's it for now.

g'bye BASE

fondue by scott
(probably not called this, i just made it up)

here are photos from the BASE open studios show. i forgot to take pictures at the Giant Robot show. that was the other night. i'm kinda crappy at taking pictures in general. for instance, i forgot to take pictures of sarah's work at open studios. her stuff is my favorite of everything there, so i'm just dumb for forgetting. i hope she shows in a gallery so i can see her stuff again.

oh man, and i just realized i forgot to go to Bagel's show! man, i am lame. brain's like a sieve lately.

this is early in the morning, day after the party. i can tell you that the studio did not look like this the night before! so somebodys did a real nice clean up job. we were all pretty tired or hungover or both. this was all the enthusiam we could muster.

hannah's wall

melissa's wall

hannah in the corner

sarah's wall, some of my wall


everyone sketching... that's how i wanna remember you

SHOW! - PANELISTS II @ giant robot SF

this saturday! a big group show at giant robot SF - come see work by cartoonists that is other than cartooning! i'll be there if you'll be there.

click on the image for a larger, more legible view.

temporal style

ichigo and this bird toy that he carries

this current sketchbook is a mess. all my styles are crashing together on a page. i guess i'm not so interested in style right now, as i am the interaction of everything as the pieces overlap. the temporalness of style annoys me: it's popular one day (everyone loves curly-cues and unicorns) and then it's crap the next (been there, done that). once style has been done, even if it's technically excellent, nobody cares to look at it, especially me! it just feels like a tool - i don't have a real love for it.

for example, the most interesting thing on this page to me is the shape cut between the cat and alien in the center and the little heads below (the one with the black hair; a character in Bleach, but he usually wears all this 'barrette' crap - i have no idea what it is, but it looks ridiculous. so i didn't draw it.) while i'm sketching i don't notice the style that i'm working in, so things like the critters and the heads more often than not, end up on the same page.
the scale doesn't seem to matter either.

if i look at it in a more positive light, style is something that is familiar, and it helps the observer to look into the art in order to discover what is then unfamiliar, the individual 'me-ness', the perspective. i don't mean this in an egotistical way. it's just that nobody ever knows exactly what anyone else is thinking, because we all live in our own heads.

that said, the art may be interesting, it may not. but it is permanent. even though it's visceral, what i am trying to encapsulate, it's meaning stays the same. whether the style is popular or not, becomes immaterial. the part that is important won't ever change.

this is one of my coffee mugs, that a dear friend gave to me. this is from a page in my sketchbook, and shows another way i draw a lot of the time. random objects placed by one another, in a precise sort of way. but in my head i don't have it planned out so well. i just draw it, and then realize it's exactly what i mean.

back in july i did a collage comic (blomp) that reflected this champuru of lines and shapes. and now i'm about to start back up on painting large abstracts which mostly concerns space and shape. so when i step back and look at it all, my work is going in a direction, i'm just not all sure what it means yet. a little ironic, considering i just went on this rant about how very important this part of the art is.

this is a 3'x3' commission i did in 2003. i think i am happiest when painting large abstracts; it's a great head space to be in.

this blog is nice because i can post and then look at things a little more objectively. it helps me see when i am drawing well (o.O), and also when i am trying to compensate (using a 'trick', cheating on a line by changing to a style that i know the vocabulary for, rather than drawing the object truthfully).

see the bad legs sketching? the parts not in color. terrible anatomy! a big cheat that i often do is give the heads hands and feet a lot of volume, but then flatten out the torso and appendages. pretty lame, i'm ashamed.

the weirdest cerebral excercise lately has been trying to draw in a manga style. though i like anime and manga, i have a hard time drawing the super huge eyes on a person's face, because i can't imagine it. for animals it is easy, but for people it seems flat and incredibly ugly. if i look at a picture i can copy it, no problem. but straight from my head is hard. like all other styles, manga has a formula. i know i can learn it, it just takes some practice and time.

some bleach characters - i forget all the names; there are a billion of them. plus, it's hard to watch when i'm drawing, so a lot of the details are fuzzy. i make stuff up if i don't know. but this cartoony/comic bookish sort of look is more comfortable for me to draw in than the manga style. i can make it 'pretty' without losing my suspension of disbelief.

i'm also going to start going to a life-drawing class. i'd taken one life-drawing class in college and i loved it. i think it'll really help with skills, but i think i'll find that something i am looking for as well.

i'm getting better at drawing arms and hands. and guys in general. i find it hard to add mass to bodies - the friend who gave me the bird mug also told me my guys looked like wimps (which was true). since then i've been working on it (six years now!!!)

okay, well i guess that is what i have to say about style and art for now. since all the time is getting eaten up by deadlines and moving studios i haven't really been able to post a reflective entry. i'm glad to get this off my chest. i'll end it with a whimsical sketch.

thanks for visiting!