Horsees horsees horsees horses horses!!!

So I’m having to hold off on the figurative work for a duration that I’m up here in Oregon, so I’ve gone back to another favorite subject of mine… horses. I love rendering wildlife in general, but horses are a passion of mine. Their so majestic, powerful, and graceful… well most of them are.

Here’s another attempt at using only additive drawing. That means I put the erasure away. Figured I’d leave my blending stump in its place too and just see if I can do it with Nicole (my .5 mechanical pencil with HB graphite loaded) alone. YES! I named my pencils! Why wouldn’t I? She never talks back, always does what I want her to, never says no, and is always ready to go! Oh, and she never puts on any weight either… no matter how many pieces of graphite she gets in her belly. LOL! Save the remarks on how big of a pig I am, I’m only kidding. Cara is my .7 mechanical pencil with 2B graphite loaded. She’s for when I want to get rough and dirty ^_~.

 This was a speed exercise. Finished in 2 hours. Didn’t let myself get too deep into detail, which worked out (I think) since I used more of a cross-hatching technique which makes obsessing about details kinda difficult at the size I was working at. All I was concerned about was trying to capture the essence of the hose in a fast a time as possible.

Oh, put up another piece I was fiddling with for a while. Got the ref from a maxim mag. Started it in traffic school. Figured I’d be stuck in that classroom for 8 hours, minus well do what I used to do in school… doodle.

That’s it for now.

Later

Arabian mare and colt 2

Second installation of this piece. Things are going well for this piece I think. It's been kinda hard for me to try to stick with just trying to capture the feel of this piece instead of worrying about all the little details. Also using less of the charcoal pencils and more of the compressed charcoal blocks. The pencils I usually use for fine detail and the blocks I use for wider coverage and just laying down values. Gotta say it's kinda liberating. Using the compresses charcoal blocks also adds to the mess :) which I love. It looks like I worked in a coal mine all day.

This is one of my more recent projects. I'm stepping back a little from the figurative work and I'm going to focus on the wildlife art for a little while. For some reason, I can't bring myself around to taking this piece too seriously. I mean, I want to bring it up to my usual standard of work, but I just kinda threw it down, not really caring if things are just right or not and I've just been slowly picking away at it. I've been more focused on trying to feel and capture the life of the image instead of the technical side of it all. Don't know if I'm happy about how it's working out yet, but then I'd say I'm only about 15% don't at this point too.

Went to a local barn today with Angie, little Izzy, and Angies mom today. Set it up as a "meet and greet" for little Izzy to see horses for the first time. She abso-freakin-lutely loved it! The owner of the barn also extended an invitation to go out there anytime to take reference photos for any future work I want to do. SCORE! They have some beautiful horses there. So now I'm trying to get my hands on a good DSLR camera since I left mine at home thinking I wouldn't need it. I'm never going anywhere without it again. My little waterproof/shockproof 12mpx camera is ok, but no telephoto or other bells and whistles. Trying to see if I can barrow or rent something.

More to come!

This week on "What the Hell am I Drawing Now?"

3/15/2011 11:47 PM

Actually, this is more for everyone just tuning in... that, of course, includes me since this is basically going to be my first posting. So i guess the best thing for me to do is to write sort of a preamble, a preface, a background, a brief "what's lead to here" type posting. So here goes.

I love what I do. So much so that it interfered with everything else I’ve tried to do. At least as far as jobs and such where concerned.  I’m 100% MIT (Made in Taiwan). Being asian, my parents had aspirations of me being a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, so you can probably guess the size of the happy hat my parents were wearing when I told them I was going to be an artist or die trying. Why did I come to that conclusion? I had been drawing and doing art since I could hold a pencil, literally. In every job I’ve ever worked, I’ve always thought to myself that I’d rather be drawing, so I went for it.

I’ve done airbrush painting, equestrian art, portraits, some light graphic design, vehicle painting, logo art, tattooing, and gallery art.

So at this stage of my life, I’m doing only special cases tattooing, and mostly gallery art. Got a couple big opportunities in the gallery art department, but I think I’d rather ease into talking about that as things become more concrete.

So I’m writing this now as a visit a friend here in Salem, Or. This is significant only that Salem is where I learned to tattoo. I’m out here on a little vacation… vacation here having the meaning of “getting away from LA distractions so I might get my head clear and get some work done.” So far, this is exactly what I need and I think I’m getting some work done. I’ll be back in LA on the first and I should be flying to China for a one month adventure in the middle of next month. But that’s a story for another day. Can’t wait!

I’ll be posting sketches and WIPs (Works In Progress) periodically from here on out and various other “Dairy” posts as often as I can, so stay tuned kids =)