HOME | DD

Description
You may NOT use, alter, edit, or manipulate my work in any way. Please respect my art.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another year gone by already?! I swear the years get shorter and shorter....

Anyways, this year one of my New Year's Resolutions was to work on more of my own style. I feel that I've come a long way, but I know I also have a lot to learn. This next year I'm hoping to work more on my shading, which is always lackluster, and working on portraying different types of bodies and facial features.

January: fav.me/d5rrq2q - The "new" year started out with me in a crappy mood and painting a personal piece titled "The Ice Queen". I was trying to do perspective, showing her looking down upon the viewer, however all I see is a big ass chin and Matt Smith XD I rushed this so I mixed some cartoony features into the painting. I have a love hate relationship with it. Had I anything else uploaded in the month of January, I would have not chosen this. (edit, I did have a chibi pixel but didn't want to use that as an example). If you wanna see a better example of my portrait paintings, check out the one I did in July: fav.me/d6vavgg

February: fav.me/d5ukf4v - I'm still quite fond of this bust of *dedizenoflight 's senshi Sailor Dark Star. She was my guinea pig to start pushing myself to stop relying on the Naoko Takeuchi style. And Dezi was so encouraging in my art and this piece that it really helped me brave forward despite the nay-sayers who wanted me to turn back to the Naoko Takeuchi style. However, I still craved to go to a more comic book style. This was around the time I started going through all my comics and researching different ways to draw features.

March: fav.me/d5xbeid - All those comics inspired me to draw my absolute favourite super hero, the Amazing Spider-Man! Of course, I felt like this was a cheat cos Spidey is about the easiest super hero to draw, IMHO. No face and a lanky body (which is great for someone who normally draws women lol) I love this piece but oh gosh, there's so much wrong with it too. Namely the muscles and that right hand. I will have to do another Spidey one of these days. Also tried to play around with different types of shading...didn't like it lol.

April: fav.me/d63l4m0 - I got married to my best friend on our 7th year anniversary this month! I was soooo ecstatic. We got back from Hawaii and I was in a mystical and starry-eyed mood, so I drew this piece inbetween spending most of my time with my husband. It was inspired by Freezepop's Outer Space. At this time I wasn't 100% invested into art for...obvious reasons. But the following months I became more and more enthralled.

May: fav.me/d64m4za - This was for an on-going contest. My Sailor Abhijit in her princess form. I actually drew this a few months before, right after the contest started, oops, lol. I was over-zealous and super excited about drawing her in a saree, that I didn't want to wait. However, my style has already changed from when I first drew this, so it felt weird to me, like I was taking a step back when I was colouring it. I made up for it with the crystals in the background. Loved making those crystals. At this time I was moving towards traditional forms of lining - pens and pencils. All the saree details were done by hand. I had the worse hand cramp afterwards.

June: fav.me/d670yl5 - At this time, I got really into pencil drawings and then colouring them. I felt like they had more life and movement. Just something that seemed to get lost upon lining the piece. This is the phase I like to call "Sexy Baby Face" lol. I was drawing fuller cheeks, pouty lips and sleepy eyes a lot. As an effort to break myself of trying to make everything "perfect", I decided to draw loosely for a while. Including anatomy, hair, even lining with just pencil. It really helped because it opened my eyes to that fact that it was okay to experiment with different things instead of everything being so rigid. It was hard for me to do. I have such respect for those fluid artist who have that effortless movement in their art.

July: fav.me/d6ezmkp - Ahhhhh, finally. This is what I had been aiming for over the past couple of months. All that research I did really paid off. And to top it off - this is when I learnt how to use the Pen Tool! Huzzah! My sketches and finished lines finally looked alike now! However, even though I was so happy with my efforts in anatomy and lining, I still didn't know what I was doing with shading. I'm getting better, but I still am afraid of the harsh contrasts in soft shading. This is when I started doing more cel and soft shading mixed together.

August: fav.me/d6g8inz - I did this drawing basically because I needed some Sailor Galatea art, lol. I like it but....eh. I would love to go back to it and rework some of the areas...unfortunately I didn't save the files in the right places so I either have to redo half of the thing or go over it and edit a bunch, neither of which I was to do. The whole shading was half assed, but it's still Gally and I love her. I do love how tired she looks, leaning on her trident.

September: fav.me/d6mdu7g - Technically I sketched this at the end of July around the time I did that Rouge Messier 88 piece. Then when I was looking through my old sketches, I found it and was like "omg, I never finished this thing!" Thus I spent 2 hours lining the thing by hand (with no white-out in sight!) Then I played around with lighting on the lines on Photoshop. You can't tell much from this piece, but I was elated. It helped me get more into the amazing colouring seen in many recent comic books (not that my art totally reflected that).

October: fav.me/d6p29e8 - I worked on this for soooo long - a comic panel! I didn't even line the thing, it was all sketches (2nd version sketches of course), I just ran out of time since it was for another on-going contest. I found these amazing black and white comics that inspired me to add lots of black shading, which made me cry quietly after sketching so many details that were to be lost in that black. I added manga elements to pay tribute to Sailor Moon. The whole thing was messy, fluid, raw, and I love it. Thus breaded my love affair of doing sketches and colouring them. I have to tell myself no, Kiwi. You need to do some finished art. Don't be lazy. Oh well...

November: fav.me/d6vavgg - Another entry for the on-going contest with Sailor Abhijit. So much difference between the one from May, but I feel like they still have a lot of similarity. I wanted to go for more harsh contrast in this piece as I'd been itching to do so for a while, but it just didn't look right with this piece, which was filled with bright soft light and a foggy haze. I did the same technique I used for the crystals in the May piece, but sadly, I had to cover them up with that stupid fog. Like the comic panel, I cried inside to mourn the loss of my details. This piece was done in one day which is pretty much unheard of for me. I wish there was more contrast in it, but I'm ready to move on instead of dwelling on past drawings. Times like this though, I wish I had a colourist, lol.

December: NO LINK YET - Last entry for a nearly year long contest. I worked so hard on this piece, I thought it was going to be the end of me XD I played more with lighting and texture, but sadly every time I look at it, I feel like I could do more. Again, another piece where I put a LOT of detail in and then covered it up for the sake of ambiance! The details I did on the stairs took forever and then I just blurred it all to create movement and focus. At the time I was too tired to cry silently inside. Perhaps later after I've had rest...I used it as an opportunity to practice painting galaxies and nebulae as well, which still hurts my brain to try to do. So much detail in it even though it looks soft and pillowy. Even though I want to do more to this piece and push it further, I'm very proud of it. And I'm happy to have this be the last mile stone of my 2013 art summary.

.......2012 Art Summary..................2011 Art Summary.................2010 Art Summary........
...... ......

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi

Spider-Man belongs to Marvel

Sailor Dark Star belongs to *dedizenoflight

Sailor Galatea, Abhijit, & Messier 88 belong to =Singing-Kiwi

Description
You may NOT use, alter, edit, or manipulate my work in any way. Please respect my art.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another year gone by already?! I swear the years get shorter and shorter....

Anyways, this year one of my New Year's Resolutions was to work on more of my own style. I feel that I've come a long way, but I know I also have a lot to learn. This next year I'm hoping to work more on my shading, which is always lackluster, and working on portraying different types of bodies and facial features.

January: fav.me/d5rrq2q - The "new" year started out with me in a crappy mood and painting a personal piece titled "The Ice Queen". I was trying to do perspective, showing her looking down upon the viewer, however all I see is a big ass chin and Matt Smith XD I rushed this so I mixed some cartoony features into the painting. I have a love hate relationship with it. Had I anything else uploaded in the month of January, I would have not chosen this. (edit, I did have a chibi pixel but didn't want to use that as an example). If you wanna see a better example of my portrait paintings, check out the one I did in July: fav.me/d6vavgg

February: fav.me/d5ukf4v - I'm still quite fond of this bust of *dedizenoflight 's senshi Sailor Dark Star. She was my guinea pig to start pushing myself to stop relying on the Naoko Takeuchi style. And Dezi was so encouraging in my art and this piece that it really helped me brave forward despite the nay-sayers who wanted me to turn back to the Naoko Takeuchi style. However, I still craved to go to a more comic book style. This was around the time I started going through all my comics and researching different ways to draw features.

March: fav.me/d5xbeid - All those comics inspired me to draw my absolute favourite super hero, the Amazing Spider-Man! Of course, I felt like this was a cheat cos Spidey is about the easiest super hero to draw, IMHO. No face and a lanky body (which is great for someone who normally draws women lol) I love this piece but oh gosh, there's so much wrong with it too. Namely the muscles and that right hand. I will have to do another Spidey one of these days. Also tried to play around with different types of shading...didn't like it lol.

April: fav.me/d63l4m0 - I got married to my best friend on our 7th year anniversary this month! I was soooo ecstatic. We got back from Hawaii and I was in a mystical and starry-eyed mood, so I drew this piece inbetween spending most of my time with my husband. It was inspired by Freezepop's Outer Space. At this time I wasn't 100% invested into art for...obvious reasons. But the following months I became more and more enthralled.

May: fav.me/d64m4za - This was for an on-going contest. My Sailor Abhijit in her princess form. I actually drew this a few months before, right after the contest started, oops, lol. I was over-zealous and super excited about drawing her in a saree, that I didn't want to wait. However, my style has already changed from when I first drew this, so it felt weird to me, like I was taking a step back when I was colouring it. I made up for it with the crystals in the background. Loved making those crystals. At this time I was moving towards traditional forms of lining - pens and pencils. All the saree details were done by hand. I had the worse hand cramp afterwards.

June: fav.me/d670yl5 - At this time, I got really into pencil drawings and then colouring them. I felt like they had more life and movement. Just something that seemed to get lost upon lining the piece. This is the phase I like to call "Sexy Baby Face" lol. I was drawing fuller cheeks, pouty lips and sleepy eyes a lot. As an effort to break myself of trying to make everything "perfect", I decided to draw loosely for a while. Including anatomy, hair, even lining with just pencil. It really helped because it opened my eyes to that fact that it was okay to experiment with different things instead of everything being so rigid. It was hard for me to do. I have such respect for those fluid artist who have that effortless movement in their art.

July: fav.me/d6ezmkp - Ahhhhh, finally. This is what I had been aiming for over the past couple of months. All that research I did really paid off. And to top it off - this is when I learnt how to use the Pen Tool! Huzzah! My sketches and finished lines finally looked alike now! However, even though I was so happy with my efforts in anatomy and lining, I still didn't know what I was doing with shading. I'm getting better, but I still am afraid of the harsh contrasts in soft shading. This is when I started doing more cel and soft shading mixed together.

August: fav.me/d6g8inz - I did this drawing basically because I needed some Sailor Galatea art, lol. I like it but....eh. I would love to go back to it and rework some of the areas...unfortunately I didn't save the files in the right places so I either have to redo half of the thing or go over it and edit a bunch, neither of which I was to do. The whole shading was half assed, but it's still Gally and I love her. I do love how tired she looks, leaning on her trident.

September: fav.me/d6mdu7g - Technically I sketched this at the end of July around the time I did that Rouge Messier 88 piece. Then when I was looking through my old sketches, I found it and was like "omg, I never finished this thing!" Thus I spent 2 hours lining the thing by hand (with no white-out in sight!) Then I played around with lighting on the lines on Photoshop. You can't tell much from this piece, but I was elated. It helped me get more into the amazing colouring seen in many recent comic books (not that my art totally reflected that).

October: fav.me/d6p29e8 - I worked on this for soooo long - a comic panel! I didn't even line the thing, it was all sketches (2nd version sketches of course), I just ran out of time since it was for another on-going contest. I found these amazing black and white comics that inspired me to add lots of black shading, which made me cry quietly after sketching so many details that were to be lost in that black. I added manga elements to pay tribute to Sailor Moon. The whole thing was messy, fluid, raw, and I love it. Thus breaded my love affair of doing sketches and colouring them. I have to tell myself no, Kiwi. You need to do some finished art. Don't be lazy. Oh well...

November: fav.me/d6vavgg - Another entry for the on-going contest with Sailor Abhijit. So much difference between the one from May, but I feel like they still have a lot of similarity. I wanted to go for more harsh contrast in this piece as I'd been itching to do so for a while, but it just didn't look right with this piece, which was filled with bright soft light and a foggy haze. I did the same technique I used for the crystals in the May piece, but sadly, I had to cover them up with that stupid fog. Like the comic panel, I cried inside to mourn the loss of my details. This piece was done in one day which is pretty much unheard of for me. I wish there was more contrast in it, but I'm ready to move on instead of dwelling on past drawings. Times like this though, I wish I had a colourist, lol.

December: NO LINK YET - Last entry for a nearly year long contest. I worked so hard on this piece, I thought it was going to be the end of me XD I played more with lighting and texture, but sadly every time I look at it, I feel like I could do more. Again, another piece where I put a LOT of detail in and then covered it up for the sake of ambiance! The details I did on the stairs took forever and then I just blurred it all to create movement and focus. At the time I was too tired to cry silently inside. Perhaps later after I've had rest...I used it as an opportunity to practice painting galaxies and nebulae as well, which still hurts my brain to try to do. So much detail in it even though it looks soft and pillowy. Even though I want to do more to this piece and push it further, I'm very proud of it. And I'm happy to have this be the last mile stone of my 2013 art summary.

.......2012 Art Summary..................2011 Art Summary.................2010 Art Summary........
...... ......

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi

Spider-Man belongs to Marvel

Sailor Dark Star belongs to *dedizenoflight

Sailor Galatea, Abhijit, & Messier 88 belong to =Singing-Kiwi