Art of Tu

Skulls

2011-12-04T23:42:00.000-08:00

Skull study, acrylics, and a 3D model I made in a free 3D program called Sculptris. It was fun until the model became more complicated and the program would take a couple seconds to respond to each stroke.

Figure studies from the Massive Black Workshop

2011-11-23T12:52:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, long time no post. Not even sure if anyone follows anymore, but I attended the Massive Black 2011 Workshop this past weekend and was just exposed to so much great artwork. It helped me realize the current state that I am in and the amount of improvement that still needed to be made. Talked to Jason Chan, Wesley Burt, Kekai Kotaki, Jana Schirmer from SixMoreVodka, and a few other artists that attended the show. They've chewed up my work pretty well, which was great.

Definitely need to go beyond the mediocrity that I've been producing lately. Here are a few figure drawings that I did during the event:

Orc and Elf

2011-11-04T01:28:00.001-07:00

Haven't post here for a while. Still drawing and working on personal projects and sketches after hours, among those this was the most time-consuming. Took a lot more time and care with this one, whenever I felt tired or sleepy I'd rest up and come back to it, whereas before I'd man it out and keep going. Probably explains why a lot of my work looks rushed and unfinished.

In other news, the game I've been working on for the past couple of months, Wasteland Empires on Facebook, is out, so I'm excited to finally be able to show the bulk of work I've made for the game on my deviant site at dualprodigy.deviantart.com. I'll post it here too maybe.

Hulk vs Wolverine

2011-10-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

Finally colored it.

Gears of War Contest, Part 2

2011-10-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

Gears of War Contest

2011-09-26T01:02:00.000-07:00

So no updates in a while. I've been spending most of my free time since the last update on the Gears of War 3 contest on deviant. Still not done, there were a few iterations and changes in ideas during the beginning, but here is a work in progress. I finished the black and white/value studies and have been on the coloring for about 2-3 hours. Overall I think I have spent so far (on this piece alone and not counting the scrapped ones before) about 6-7 hrs.

Weekend Sketches

2011-09-12T01:00:00.001-07:00

Been out and about all weekend, but squeezed in few sketches. Went jogging and biking around the docks by Brisbane and sketched out a few boats. Not too amused by my crosshatching here, felt like I should've just left it as flat lines. Other sketches of wife, cousins, and myself, or my feet to be specific. I've always hated drawing feet, but realized that was why the feet in my work has always sucked, so there you go, if you're getting too comfortable you're probably not trying hard enough.

Wolverine vs Hulk Sketch

2011-09-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

Color next...

Figure studies 4.

2011-09-07T22:09:00.000-07:00

Figure studies 3.

2011-09-07T22:07:00.000-07:00

Figure drawing studies 2.

2011-09-07T22:06:00.001-07:00

Figure drawing studies.

2011-09-07T22:04:00.001-07:00

Skribble Contest Update

2011-09-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

So the previous piece I worked on for Skribble, instinctively I just felt that I was trying too hard and thinking too much. The contest should be a more relaxed exercise, so I backtracked and grabbed my initial idea of a thinking Langur Monkey sitting on a tree and painted it in Painter 11. Turns out this was much more well received than the first. Sometimes you gotta go with your gut, I guess.

Skribble Contest

2011-08-22T01:25:00.000-07:00

Something I've been working on for a Deviantart Contest.

Cityscape Study

2011-08-10T23:41:00.000-07:00

My worst enemy... cityscapes... besides Ibuprofen and squirrels...

This easily took more than an hour. Created a lot of rectangular custom brushes to create the windows and paint the sharp edges on the buildings.

Hawaiian landscape

2011-08-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

Study from a photo taken in Maui.

Wolvie... and pandas.

2011-08-02T01:07:00.000-07:00

Study...

2011-08-01T01:03:00.001-07:00

...from korean action, "Bittersweet Life". A boring study, but I felt like I needed work on some perspective and industrial-looking things...

Watercolor en plein air

2011-07-30T00:38:00.001-07:00

Done at Livermore.

Car

2011-07-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

Study from a photo in Hana. Not so great... 30 mins.

Tank

2011-07-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

35-ish mins.

Sorolla & Landscape

2011-07-26T00:09:00.000-07:00

40 mins, 20 mins.

Legion of Honor

2011-07-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

Went to Legion of Honor, did some studies. Here's one of the pages. These are sculptural studies from Rodin and others.

Tiger

2011-07-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

Went to the San Francisco Zoo this past weekend, let me my brother borrow my camera. He got a pretty good shot of this tiger. Here's a study from it: (45 mins)

Rocks and water photo study

2011-07-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

Another from foureyes (deviantart).

Ever since my friend, King, has been waking up early in the mornings to draw I decided to be a copycat. I started waking up at 7:30am yesterday, this is my second day--let's see how long I last. This is a 35 mins.

Drawings/Sketches

2011-07-19T01:30:00.000-07:00

First drawing of Thao, and then some figure studies from work. Been getting back into pen drawing to get cleaner, crisper lines. This translates well when switched back to pencil. With pencils we tend to reinforce the same contour with multiple lines, with pen it trains us to draw that contour right the first time. As you can see, I'm still working on it.

Photo study from "FourEyes"

2011-07-13T01:08:00.000-07:00

Hulk Sketch

2011-07-12T01:14:00.000-07:00

Another study from a landscape painting

2011-07-10T11:32:00.001-07:00

Hudson School Landscape Study

2011-07-10T01:47:00.001-07:00

Sargent Copy

2011-07-05T23:35:00.000-07:00

Sargent copy, maybe to be finished someday... been feeling ill since the long July 4th weekend.

More Studies

2011-07-01T01:01:00.001-07:00

Bruce Lee (1hr +), and another seven swords(under an hour)...

Meduso?

2011-06-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

A sketch w/o reference to break away from all the studies. Sigh, my values are always so dark... need to work on that.

More Seven Swords studies

2011-06-29T23:48:00.001-07:00

Some from 30 mins, others a little over an hour. From these I've learned to paint/draw very small as to get the colors down right the first time. As you can see, the last two images at the bottom are the same. I painted the bottom one first, and felt that my colors and values were jumping back and forth too much so I made a new one, zoomed out really small, and just laid down the basic colors and values from the reference.

I've also began to create a blank separate file to be used as a palette so that I could determine beforehand all the skin tone colors and also to compare the values. Before I would just pick a color and lay them on top of the painting and just hope that that the value and temperature works. This turned out to be really erroneous and time-consuming. (NOTE: in Corel Painter, there is a mixer palette, which would be perfect for this, but Photoshop doesn't have that)

7 Swords Study

2011-06-22T23:50:00.000-07:00

Movie directed by Tsui Hark. Great cinematography. This is one of my favorite scenes.

Getting used to the brushes and application in Photoshop more, so my process is moving a bit quicker. This took me 45 mins.

Pan's Labyrinth Study

2011-06-21T00:12:00.001-07:00

2 Hrs...

Rift Contest

2011-06-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

My entry for the Deviantart Rift contest...

Oil Portraits

2011-05-10T00:29:00.000-07:00

A Sargent study, and then a life study of my wife, the prettiest and craziest little woman out there. She was playing Mario Kart Wii and was losing while I was painting her, hence the angry expression on her face.

Alchemy Experiment

2011-05-02T01:17:00.000-07:00

Was quickly testing out a program called Alchemy my friend showed me a while back to draw a samurai. The mirror drawing option really came in handy for drawings like these, especially when the designs are very symmetrical. Once I had the rough shapes down I brought it into Photoshop for about two hours to add some dimension.

Norse Mythology

2011-04-24T23:37:00.000-07:00

The characters are Sigurd and Fafnir, the dragon, originally done for CGHub's biweekly drawing jams, but was not submitted.

Zelda

2011-04-03T21:00:00.001-07:00

Something I tried to dish out for CGHub.com's drawing jam. Didn't finish, oh well.

More stuff from work.

2011-03-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

All work is ©Crowdstar.

Recent Crowdstar Backgrounds...

2011-03-20T00:49:00.001-07:00

Some recent backgrounds I've made for work. All work is ©Crowdstar.

Still Life Painting

2011-03-20T00:31:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite classes.

Master Studies

2011-03-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

Pastel/Oil

Figure Drawing

2011-03-20T00:24:00.001-07:00

Clothed Figure (colors)

2011-03-20T00:19:00.000-07:00

From Bill Sanchez's class, miss that guy. One of the most fun classes in the Academy.

Clothed Figure Class

2011-03-20T00:15:00.001-07:00

Some work from my clothed figure classes.

Anatomy Class

2011-03-19T23:33:00.001-07:00

Face Study

2011-03-06T00:44:00.000-08:00

Face study from great photographer: http://mastowka.deviantart.com/#/d3ay4og. Included WIPs this time. Before I usually would just paint in big shapes, but I found out that I had problems getting the shape and proportions right, so I decided to draw an outline first this time. My drawing skills (outlines) are significantly better than my painting. Wanted to find a picture with subtle values...

Figure Drawings

2011-03-03T23:43:00.000-08:00

Figure drawings from tonight, courtesy of Crowdstar.

More studies...

2011-03-03T01:26:00.000-08:00

Sin City

2011-02-24T00:15:00.000-08:00

Been busy as of late, but managed to squeeze out one more bad looking Sin City study. First one was done two days back, but I realized I had few too many drinks and gave up. Second one was done sober, but still looked like I had been drinking. :)

Sin City

2011-02-17T23:54:00.000-08:00

Spent too long on this one, doesn't even look like her. I think the problem was the angle--I was too focused of drawing the "face in my head" instead of observing the structure and angle in the reference picture... if that makes sense.

True Grit

2011-02-17T00:05:00.000-08:00

Funny character.

Iron Man study, Samurai

2011-02-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

Iron Man study, and a samurai work in progress.

Digital Master Studies

2011-02-15T23:52:00.000-08:00

Some master studies. Decided I really needed to get back into the practice. Been too absorbed with work, but that's no excuse. As you can see, I'm rusty and need a lot more work. I tried to work pretty small, quickly filling in shadow and light areas. Spent probably a good 45 or more minutes on each.

Portrait of Kate

2011-02-15T23:46:00.000-08:00

Portrait I did recently. It's been a while since I've gotten back into drawing heads. I've always had difficulty with symmetry, and I found myself going back and forth to a mirror to make sure one of the eyes is not too high or going too far off to the side. As I draw more and more, I realize that even if the drawing does not completely resemble the picture, it's not the end of the world, as long as I get a good likeness. One thing to note, though, I was drawing on a regular dinner table so the surface was flat instead of slanted like a drafting table, so the head appears longer than the picture, making the girl seem older.

Noir Project

2010-12-18T20:07:00.000-08:00

A series of illustrations I've made with a noir theme. Done in 2008 for a summer class.

Crowdstar Work

2010-12-12T15:08:00.002-08:00

Crowdstar Work

2010-12-12T15:01:00.002-08:00

Crowdstar Work

2010-12-12T14:54:00.001-08:00

Cartoon Characters

2009-10-23T21:46:00.000-07:00

Characters created for Funmail.com.

Toka's Restaurant

2009-02-16T02:32:00.000-08:00

Monkey King

2009-02-05T03:54:00.000-08:00

James Wu Final

2008-05-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

My finals for James Wu. We had to do four different paintings, so I kind of played around with it, explored different mediums, and then combined them into one collage. They were 18x24 each, so combined they were 36x48:

Paintings

2008-05-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

Some Paintings?

First Submission!

2008-05-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

I finally hopped the bandwagon and got a blog going. Well, time for the submissions. I'll post up some digital work, first.