Ninja vs Penguin

Ninja July 3rd, 2008

I’m taking a break from NvP + I’ll be back on the 20th!

Kit Kat Chunky photo from Wikimedia

I’ve been feeling so scatterbrained lately.

I’m going to be traveling to Taiwan to teach English. So in the past couple weeks, I’ve been trying to cram 2.5 weeks worth of work in, in addition to my regular work load. Bleh. I also managed to stuff 2.5 weeks worth of clothes (plus toiletries + 2 spare pairs of shoes) into a 22″ suitcase, so really anything is possible.

Before I say farewell, here’s a sneak peek at a painting I’m working on. It’s a detail of antlers from the underdrawing. Since then, the drawing has grown + has a fresh coat of gesso on it.

See you soon!

Cheers,
Ninja

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Ninja June 20th, 2008

My dream started off with me hitting a few simple notes on the piano. Then I realized that I was playing Gershwin’s Sleepless Night. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. Amazing!

After I finished playing that piece, the room got darker and sank. I started to feel this glowing warmth in my chest, and it spread through my veins to the rest of my body. I felt like I was floating. My fingers effortlessly found their way back to the keys. I felt a strange tingling sensation in my back. Small lumps were forming and growing larger with each breath. And then I sprouted extra arms!! @___@ What’s a girl to do?! Play Blue in Green, of course!

Yawn, sweet dreams,

Ninja

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Tags: Blue in Green, Dreams, George Gershwin, Graphite, Miles Dewey Davis III, Piano, Sleepless Night

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Ninja June 13th, 2008

Ah, I know it’s Friday, but I don’t dream that often. Instead of posting a dream this week, I thought I’d offer up this portrait that I just finished inking.

Meet Dan. He’s the owner of the barber shop that I frequent. He’s a very sweet guy, but he acts all tough. He’s also a huge NvP fan—he told me that he painted and decorated a whole room to match our First Kiss print (which is proudly displayed in said room). O.o Wow, thanks, Dan!

When I last visited his shop, he joked that I should paint him some time. Why not?
Here’s a bit of my inking process:

I finished most of the line work, but the wash on Dan’s shirt was uneven and boring. It could use some texture and pattern.

I photocopied the drawing and cut out the shirt portion to create a stencil.

I placed the stencil over the drawing and used nail polish bottles to weigh it down to avoid shifting. Then I dipped an old toothbrush in sumi ink and used my thumb to create small splatter marks. The harder I flicked, the larger the marks.

And here is the drawing after the stencil was removed.

Here’s a detail of the splatter pattern. I varied my flicking to create different sized spots.

Here’s one of the wallpaper patterns I made in Illustrator as a background for Dan’s portrait. For this pattern, I drew a pair of hair cutting scissors, rotated, and repeated them. I didn’t like the way it looked with Dan’s portrait, so I nixed it. I may tweak it later, and give it a go again.

Here’s the final. I evened out the wash of the shirt, then added more shading to Dan’s jaw and neck to give him definition.

Happy inking & happy Friday,
Ninja

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Ninja May 26th, 2008

Amy Sol has started posting process photos on her blog. Here’s a taste of her upcoming show at Thinkspace Gallery on June 3 in LA. This exhibit will feature 13 pieces by Amy.

Keep checking her blog for more photos!

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Ninja April 29th, 2008

A behind the scenes look at how the BBC created the BBC iPlayer trailer for April Fool’s Day, featuring a colony of flying penguins.

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Ninja April 25th, 2008

A year ago, I met this girl at a birthday dinner. Her name was Genevieve.

Genevieve’s a photographer’s assistant, so I’ve seen her again at 2 different weddings (and the most recent one I attended on April 5th). After talking to her, I was shocked to find out that she doesn’t realize just how beautiful she is. She’s quite down on herself because her mum is a such stunner, and she feels she takes after her dad. Which is complete rubbish. She’s got these huge eyes framed with thick lashes, but hides them (and her face) behind long strands of hair. All the things she claims are her flaws, I think just make her even more lovely.

With her permission, I painted her portrait. And here are the steps.

Oh, haha, before we start, I should probably note that I only have about 10 acrylic paintings under my belt, and that I really just sort of feel each one out. It’s a learning process for me, and each time, I try something new.

I started with a pencil sketch on pine. Unfortunately, most of the time that I did see Genevieve during the wedding, she was either looking down and changing lenses or hiding behind a camera.

I don’t think I did Genevieve justice with this sketch. You’d have to see her in person. She glows.

Then I added a little bit of white gesso to blend the pencil.

I blocked out the highlights with the white gesso and gave her face a wash of thinned down white gesso. Afterwards, I put down a layer of clear gesso to give the wood some tooth.

The clear gesso smeared some of the pencil, tinting the wood this ugly, murky shade of grey. I had no choice but to sand that section off. After the wood was clean, I applied another layer of clear gesso to the sanded area.

I then blocked in some of the shadows with Payne’s grey.

I built up layers of Payne’s grey and Raw umber to fill out her hair (pure black would have flattened out the image too much).

I used tea for the washes on her face to add warmth and color.

Then I used coffee to deepen the color and add more depth to her face.

Her lips are a blend of Cadmium red, Yellow ochre, Thio violet, and white gesso.

Her hair looked too faded and washed out, so I added more layers of Payne’s grey and Raw umber. I also overlaid washes of a Payne grey/Raw umber mix to the hair’s highlights to tone them down a bit.

Well, there you have it. If you’ve got any painting tips, feel free to share them in the comments.

Happy painting,
Ninja ^___^

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Tags: Acrylic, Genevieve, portrait, Process

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Ninja April 15th, 2008

Falling children. Lonely teens. I get drawn and sucked into the characters, worlds, and narratives that Nate Frizzell’s creates in his paintings.

Via Sketch Theatre

Related links
+ View Nate’s web portfolio
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Ninja March 29th, 2008

I’m at home sick. It sort of hit out of nowhere. I was fine this morning. Now, I’m feeling awfully tired and weak. I spent most of the day in bed with my stuffed penguin (Christmas gift from Jasmine) and Mr. Pooh doll (birthday from Ophelia). Been eating jook aka congee too, don’t ya know.

Anywho, the point is that I haven’t gotten around to drawing/inking today. Inking is such bliss for me. I get a real kick out of watching others ink, too. Here’s a viddy of Fábio Moon inking a Casanova page.

Related link
+ Check out Fábio Moon/Gabriel Ba’s blog

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Ninja March 24th, 2008

Here are the steps for my bird nest/geisha hair portrait.

The eyes are the window to the soul, so I always start there. No real reason why I was using a blue pencil other than I couldn’t find my regular pencils and this one was just on my desk.

I really enjoy drawing/inking hair. Yes, I was inking on top of my laptop. I could have cleared the table, but I was too lazy. I was listening to Radiohead and Death Cab for Cutie on iTunes, too.

I go about blocking in the shadows and midtones. Highlights are created by leaving those areas blank, so the white of the paper shows through. I just started using the Rives BFK paper, and it soaks in the ink wonderfully (plus, it’s thick enough that the moisture doesn’t cause it to warp like crazy). Good stuff.

After layers and layers of ink, the hair is done.

It’s lonely, so I add a little, feathered friend. I think it also gives the portrait a bit of a fairy-tale vibe (and kind of makes the funky hair style excusable).

I deepened the blues in the face and finished inking the bird.

Here, Stefan pointed out that the bird’s tail was too large in proportion to his body. What can I say? The man’s got a critical eye and a keen sense of detail. Danke, Stefan for your help!

With the pen tool, I created a selection of the bird’s tail and moved it to another layer (I feathered that selection by .2 pixels so that there wouldn’t be such a hard edge). Then I scaled and rotated it to the proper proportion. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough image (because it originally bled off the page). With a bit more of the pen tool, cloning stamp, and healing brush, the extra bits of the tail were created.

Happy Drawing,
Ninja ^__^

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Ninja March 14th, 2008

Our next print, really!
The Daydream Believer print was originally slated to release last spring, but life, work, and doubts prevented me from getting it out. My apologies for those of you who requested a print last year, and I truly thank you for your loving patience!

So what made me get off my butt to finally do this? You! You, lovely people, you. I’ve received really encouraging emails from some NvP readers. A few of my friends had commented that this was their favorite out of all my vector illustrations and that they would love to have it hanging in their homes. My coworker Jason recently inquired about the print’s release and gently nudged me to complete it. His wife requested this print for her birthday, and she’s been patiently waiting over a year for me to get this printed. I just can’t refuse that wish. ~__^

Ready for proofing
I finished tweaking the paths this past weekend and am finally satisfied. I sent this baby out for a color proof so I can really make sure all the bezier points are just-so.

Process
These are 2 of my printouts (there are piles of them lying around). I will print the vector drawing out at full size, mark up corrections, make the changes to the file, highlight the printout to indicate that they were made, and repeat. I went through about 20 or so rounds of revision. At one point, I realized that butterflies should only have 3 body part segments—head, thorax, and abdomen. In a daze, I had given some 2 or 4. After I noticed this, I carefully inspected each butterfly to make sure they only had 3. @__@

I get pretty obsessive over the details. This is just the feet. You should see how nuts I went fixing all the little bumps in the butterfly wings.

Now for my doubts…

Some time after I had made that first post about the Daydream Believer print, I came across this gorgeous illustration by Jillian Tamaki. My heart sank. She’s so unbelievably talented, and I didn’t want people to think I was copying her. I would just forget about my Daydream Believer print, I told myself. Then a bit later, I read this fantastic post by Asaf Hanuka about how different illustrators may have similar ideas and similar results (independent of each other).

Even though Jillian and I share similar subject—a girl in a tire swing hung from a tree, we have obvious differences. For one, the perspective is different. Hers is from below, looking up; mine is straight on. Our styles are VERY different. She has this beautiful, delicate brush work, and I have my vector paths/silhouettes. Our palettes are different, too. Jillian has soft, muted tones, while I opted for bright, vibrant flat colors.

I was minorly freaking out about this a few months ago, but now that I think about it, I’m sure there are other illustrators who have girls playing in tire swings… ~__^

What now?
I’m working on other projects while I wait for my proof to come in. Then more revisions (of course).

Thank you for letting me share my art with you (and for listening to me go on a bit about my worries).

Buy Daydream Believer

Smiles,
Sighs,

Ninja ^_____^

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