I Know Misery…

Another personal artwork I’ve done, all hand-drawn. I was amaze how the Dying tree turn out, it came out just as I imagined it in my head! As you can see I included the Floating window and the evaporating moon from my previous artworks, but this time I gave a little bit of a character. I added a sad kinda crying face just to show how the moon felt for the bleeding Heart with a gaping hole hanging on it.  I also added a personal message to give it a little bit of Gothic feel to it! The added wind-blown leaf gave the image a soft and subtle feel look to the heart-rending image. This artwork is influenced by the likes of my favorite artist, Alex Pardee and Tara Mcpherson.  You guys should check their works, its epic!

Doodles #1

Initial concept drawn on Stabillo HB Pencil

Doodles #2

Additional doodles drawn on Stabillo HB Pencil

 Doodles #3

Additional doodle and rendered in Berkely 3B & 4B pencil

Doodles #4

Inking using Unipen & Artline pigment ink 0.2, 0.3 .05

doodles #5

More Inking using Unipen & Artline pigment ink 0.2, 0.3 .05

Doodles #6

Final. Inked in Unipen & Artline pigment ink 0.2, 0.3 .05 and Brush Ink for the foliage

Opening Pandora

Opening Pandora’s Music box was inspired by the story of Pandora’s Box.  I was going for a dreamy look clashing with nightmarish images like the tentacles and man-eating plants while the floating window and evaporating moon gave it a softer feel to it. It turn out the way I wanted!  The artwork kinda came about with the way I felt that night, so it has a personal and deeper meaning to it.

Doodles #1

Initial concept drawn on Stabillo HB Pencil

Doodles #2

Additional doodles drawn on Stabillo HB Pencil

Doodles #3

Additional doodle and rendered in Berkely 3B & 4B pencil

Doodles #4

Inking using in Artline pigment ink 0.1 and 0.2

Doodle #5

Final Inked in Artline pigment liners 0.1 and 0.2

Sketch n’ Doodle

One day while listening to my favorite music of  my favorite band, I was inspired to draw based on how I felt that day. Most of it is bunch of doodles that I put together. I continued adding on to it as the day’s progress. When I reached to a point where I felt that it was good to stop, I’ve decided I wanted to render it in ink as suppose to leave it in drawn pencil. Although I like the pencil-drawn look, I opted to inked it (Beside it won’t fade as easy).

I felt really good after completing my doodle project, something I have never felt for a long time. I felt very accomplished doing it! I’m thinking of doing a few more of this and I’ll be posting it here. For the meantime do check this out.

Doodles #1

Initial concept drawn on Stabillo HB Pencil

Doodles #2

Additional doodles drawn on Stabillo HB Pencil

Doodles #3

Additional doodle and rendered in Berkely 3B & 4B pencil

Doodles #4

Final. Inked in Artline pigment ink 0.1 and 0.2

Scratch n’ Surf

I am a huge fan of graffiti and ‘Street’ Art! Although my work and lifestyle are not really associated to the Graffiti Scene, nevertheless I have great fascination and respect for the Art style. They have provided inspiration & influence both in my artwork and designs.

The bright colors and playful illustrations done at a large scale are amazing to look at! You got to appreciate the creativity and discipline that goes behind this work of art. And the artists in this video are no exception!

Scratching the Surface from [weAREtheIMAGEmakers] on Vimeo.

I came across this video in one of my frequently visited website, Delarge. This awesome video was shot by Matt Fezz & Glenn Stewart and music courtesy of Sailmaker. It showcases the artist’s creative process and painting the 2.5m x 10m (8.2 ft x 32.81Feet) mural on location at Westsyde Connection, and was then installed in Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Arts. This was part of a free Public Event organized together by Creative Sydney, which was held in June of this year. The mural was a collaborative effort that took a week to accomplish, painted by five renowned & leading street artist of Sydney Australia. The featured artworks were painted by Beastman, Max Berry, Numskull, Roach and my recent favorite Phibs.

The Installation & Live Painting Event entitled “Scratching the Surface” was presented and made possible by [weAREtheIMAGEmakers], The Opening Hours, Ironlak and Stupid Krap. The idea behind the event was to explore “the high quality, but temporary nature of Public Art” in Sydney. But its sole intention was to “draw attention and make a bold statement” against Sydney Councils strict point of view on this kind of Art Style & discipline. (Don’t forget to watch the twist at the end of the video).

Click the image to see the finish mural in full.

As for my point of view, public or ‘Street’ Art has been and still is, an excellent way of self-expression and free promotion if I might say. I wouldn’t even consider it vandalism or defacement of public property, unless the Artist and its artworks intention & motives are other than self-expression. This form of discipline is still a work of art. It is no difference from corporate billboards and advertisements found in bus stops & subways or installed in public transportation. Street Art are known to be accepted in other parts of the world as a Cultural Art & History.

I think people should open themselves to the beauty & possibilities that this form of Art Style can do and utilize it in a way that would benefit everyone. Who knows what it can achieve down the road. Cheers!

For further reading and info, visit the links found below.

- Creative Sydney: www.creativesydney.com.au
- Delarge: www.delarge.co.uk
- [weAREtheIMAGEmakers]: www.watim.com
- The Opening Hours: www.theopeninghours.com
- Ironlak: www.ironlak.com
- Stupid Krap: www.stupidkrap.com

Artists:
- Beastman: www.beastman.com.au
- Max Berry: www.idlepassage.blogspot.com
- Numskull:  www.funskull.com
- Phibs: www.phibs.com
- Roach: www.theopeninghours.com.au/roach

Music:
- Soul by Sailmaker

Design Process: Creating Email Newsletter

OK. In this post I’ll be discussing my Design Process for an Email newsletter. This might come to you as a shock; I’ve never done or design an e-newsletter before in my life, honestly. Until now. You might say “What?! You’re a Designer and make graphics for a living and you never done e-newsletter? For shame, For Shame!

Yes folks it’s true, I’ve never design an e-newsletter. So shoot me! I never had a project or the opportunity to work on one. I also never gotten around in making one for myself or even realize the benefit of it for a freelance designers until now. So I guess everybody has their first. And this is mine.

It just happens a client came to me and asked to mock-up a design template for an E-newsletter of theirs. And I thought “Hmmm? This would be a good opportunity for me to learn something new.” So I accepted the challenge!

Like I said, I never had the experience in making one. As a self-taught designer, what I did was, I approach it like any other project or design I worked on. With the help from a friend called the “Internet”, I did a little bit of research, and then I conceptualize, design and finalize my ideas. From all the stock knowledge that I’ve gathered in the net, I manage to learn the basic foundation of designing a newsletter.

With that in hand, I first started conceptualizing and drafting two possible layouts on paper. I revised and redrew the layouts until I was satisfied with it. Here are the scan images of what I’ve done.

I took my rough-draft of my design template and started making my guidelines in Photoshop. With the help of the guidelines, I laid out my design.

Since it’s a design template, I don’t need to worry about any coding. My only responsibility was to design the template and the contents will be added later by the client to their hearts content.

I was very satisfied in how the final outcome turned out. Not bad for a beginner, hey!

Although the design was finish, I still think there’s a lot of room for improvement.  It did give me some great ideas and opportunity to make it better. For now I leave it at that. Learning from the experience and the benefit of having an e-newsletter gave me the idea of making one for myself. So I thought of adding it to my personal project and work on it someday soon. Overall it was all good!

Yet another Awesome Video

Here’s another advertisement promoting the new Adobe Creative Suite 5, the video is called “The Shadow”, posted by Michael Klok in his Vimeo site.

This is a very well thought-out concept, revolving on the Key Ideas of Adobe CS5. The idea of the project was to present how seamless the design process and production is, using the new software collection. To creating a project from concept art, to photo-shoot, to production, and to a well polish & final product (with a finish poster design at the end). How cool is that?!

Adobe CS5 – “The Shadow” from Michael Klok on Vimeo.

All Fired Up!

I gotta admit I am one of those people who get extremely excited waiting on something that had finally arrived!  Let’s take the new Adobe CS5 Suite for instance. They sure made a lot of buzz and fuss on magazines and on the internet. You got to give them credit for it. They lived up to the hype and expectations of all the people who’ waited and anticipated the launch of this product. I myself included.

Having attended at the Adobe CS5 Road Show 2010 Product Launch Event, I can’t help but feel excited for every Suite being featured on the screen projector. I was immersed with new technology and visual treats. But what got me all fired up, are the commercials that Adobe put together for it! After leaving the event and reading up in all the posts & forums and visiting websites that I came across the internet about this awesome software long after.  I kept wondering how these commercial films were done? So, I had the urge to know more. After a little research and surfing the net, I finally found what I was looking for! I came across a very informative and interesting interview article of a studio called Seagulls Fly by the good people of Motionographer. You got to read what they got to say! Read more on this on my blog post at BigEyez Studio Blog spot.