45 Shades of Yellow.
Oil on Canvas Panel.

testing oil paint using a variety of tints, shades, and hues
to create different tones of yellows. 

Destination:Oz.
Pastel on paper.

An assignment I did back in Fall 2010. I think.
Point of the project was to pick an Impressionist artwork of your choice and expand on it however you choose. It was to not only inspire creativity, but we had to match the colors around it as well. I could not for the life of me get the brown dark enough to match Degas’ Waiting. Either is was because my of my limited choices in colors (broke college student, okay? Didn’t want to buy too big of a set as I’m not too fond of pastels, personally), or because I wasn’t doing it right. Either way, I failed. But close enough.

Oz was based off of Sailor Moon’s Crystal Tokyo

 At first, I wanted to have the ladies sitting in a bus stop in the middle of  a post-apocalypse city but realized that it would have been too much work for the time given at that time. Then I noticed that they looked like Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the East. So now I have them sitting at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere; coming from Narnia and waiting to be transported over to Oz. If they can get past the field of poppies first, of course…

photos courtesy of Andrew Dam.

Sketches from life drawing class back in Fall 2011.
Wish I had some with skeletons and muscles but I
couldn’t find any worth posting. So these will have to do.

Things I still need to work on:
faces. hands. feet. perspective. among others.

One of the toughest yet most enjoyable class yet.
Seeing the human form as you’ve never seen before.

_{photos courtesy of Andrew Dam.}

Mademoiselle Loverly, 2011
30”x40” Oil on canvas.

Last assignment for the Fall semester.
Self-portrait in the style of Picasso.
Synthetic Cubism, to be exact.

_{photos courtesy of Andrew Dam.}

12”x16” Oil on canvas.

Created April of 2012.
One of the few (okay, two) paintings I did for leisure.
Based off of a photo that my friend took on his trip
to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach:

This painting is no longer in my hands
and I’m sooooo sad to see it go.
Thought I’d still be around to see it, but alas, life happens.
Bye-bye sea jellies, I hope you’re in a good home.

_{photos courtesy of Andrew Dam.}

Bottles and Feathers.
18”x20” Oil on canvas.

Another assignment for painting class fall of 2011.
Focus was on fine details and transparency.
This was a bitch to do. I had to paint and repaint
continuously over each other because I could
never get the transparency or proportions right.

That’s about as close as I could get.
Not the best, I know. Still a lot i could work on.

I ought to practice some more. 

_{photos courtesy of Andrew Dam.}

Sprinkles and Frosting.
20”x20” Oil on canvas. 

Another assignment for Painting class back in Fall 2012.
Had to work with actual cupcakes in the room. Professor wanted to see if, by connecting all of out senses together, if the sweetness of the cupcakes themselves would conjure an image differently as opposed to simply painting from a picture of a cupcake alone.

I’ve always loved pastel-colored rainbow gradients (my friends would know seeing what I always do to my profile pics on Facebook) so thought it’d be the perfect fit for the subject. Same color scheme was used as the backdrop as well as the frosting of the cupcake. Only major difference was that i used Artist Medium and applied it onto the canvas via palette knife to give it that frosting effect.

_{photos courtesy of Andrew Dam.}

Blue Ball.

(sorry, i chuckled.)

14”x16”. Oil on canvas.

First time painting, ever.
Painting 101 circa Fall 2011.
Assignment #1.
Practiced with light source, shadows,
and the warms and the cools.

This was almost a year ago.
…I think I forgot half the things i learned.
/sadness. 

“To think is to put in ink.”
I give my memory so much more credit than it really deserves.
forreaLz. 

_{photos courtesy of Andrew Dam.}

Ah! Finally!

After a month sans laptop, I finally got it back!
Downside, majority of my files were lost :(
Uber sad right now.

But on a brighter note, at least I got the newer version of Adobe up and running :)

But all my graphic works… gone. I should have gotten a cloud :( lol

Anywhoo, ready to post up pics but I’ve noticed that all my images look washed out on the screen compared to what it looked like on the photographer’s Macbook or on my phone. Either need to reconfigure my screen or buy an external monitor with good to exceptional color accuracy.

Currently looking into Dell’s UltraSharp U2410, as recommended by a graphic classmate.

Promise is a Promise

So i promised a friend roughly three months ago that I would have a site up and running by today showcasing all of my works. Good news and bad news. Let’s start with the bad, as it’s always good to end things on a good note.

Bad news: my laptop finally crashed due to unsuspecting viruses that have been eating away at my hard drive for some time. You know something is wrong when pop-up advertisements begin show (that’s so 1990s, for reals). So it’s at one of my sister’s friend’s house getting worked one. He’s one amazing kid, I tell ya.

Good news is, though, that the site is here! Just no photos of my work to go along with it…. (my apologies, Juan). A couple weeks ago, I asked Andrew Dam (a newbie but a goodie) to help shoot some high quality photos of my pieces and I must say, they came out great! Now I am just waiting for my laptop to be fixed (I’ve been told this past Saturday that it is already fixed and that he just needs to re-install many of the programs and I’m just eagerly waiting for its return) before I can post any of them.

My life feels utterly useless and incomplete without my dear, dear Photoshop.