The 2010 Tigress

Haven't been showing step-by-steps lately. So yea...

I started off with wanting some anatomy practice, so i looked through my sketch book and hey, let's use this. Not much of an angle or dynamic-ism, but heack i thought if i were to study anatomy i can screw all that.

lalala did this rough when i was artjaming with some nutty friends beginning of this year. Initially i was lazy and thought of just going with this and touching up the features a bit. Then i thought "Hey why not try doing semi-realistic for once. It might be interesting". Turned out to be quite fruitful and fulfilling since i haven't really done this before. Besides i could hand this in for simplified figures...I WISH! i will get killed by SS if i do orzlll


Continuing where i left off, i used the above rough as a base, sketched the supposedly more realistic curves, and changed the pose a bit to make her more menacing than pouty. Did some initial shades for the body. I tried working differently this time by going from dark tone to light, just like acrylics. Turns out i'm pretty bad working this way so i need more practice.


Added in stuff i forgot like the tail and some of the waist length hair. Rendered some more to bring out the basic 3d form of the clothes, hair, etc.


It was pretty done when i reached this stage, all was left was to clean up the rough outline and touch up more places. IMHO i could have stopped here but i felt that the outline was giving the pic less than semi-realistic result. Still very manga-ish which defeats my purpose. So i pushed on.


Somehow when the outlines weren't so obvious it made her look a bit broad. As in really plump and well-covered. Realistically it would be the body most women would have in real life. But i wasn't satisfied at stopping here and soon realized after a while that she did seem plump to me.



So time to put in my own touches and made her slimmer and gave her more ideal, sexy proportions which our lects can't seem to stop emphasizing. I suppose it did add a bit of aesthetics to it after i did so. I decided to stop now cause my main focus was not to spend too much time on this piece. I wanted it as learning material so i considered it done. Took roughly 4-5 hours, done between short breaks of work i have piled up.

What i have gained (slightly):
- how to draw a less manga-ish pretty face.
- a more realistic sexy body.
- insight of the beauty of real tigers (i was fascinated by the stock photo references i have)

What i could have done better:
- spend more time polishing the body and working on the arms. Still not too familiar with doing nicely shaped semi-realistic arms.
- worked on a better background to really bring out the character.

I Dream a Dream

my dream is to make a name for myself in art.
my dream is to be a gentleman to a princess i can pamper.
my dream is to invent a time machine which can make 48 hours a day possible.

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ok ok those are not the actual point of this post.
Though the word dream can be used to mean wishes/goal for oneself, what i meant was the literal dream. The one we all have sometimes when we sleep at night.

i've been having very awkward dreams lately. 3 within a time span of 2 weeks to be exact. This is an anomaly to me since i do not dream a lot. Sometimes as long as between months.

1. I dreamt the world's population declined drastically, with me living alone in my own house which is the only safe sanctuary. Everything else is hostile, since well, think along the lines of "I am Legend". The people have somehow turned to zombie/vampires roaming around trying to kill me when they can. The mood isn't dark though, so i did'nt deem it a nightmare and wake up to cold sweat. It's more like how i lived my life alone, which was actually quite enjoyable even with no one around. Woke up unharmed and feeling a bit weird.

2. I dreamt i had only a week to live. I was hit with some incurable disease and i knew my time was running out. So i spent that one week telling families about my impending doom, passed on my belongings to people who would need them. And finally, my most inner wish, to create a final masterpiece of art before i die. I made in time and i woke up when i died. Again i felt out of place finding myself still alive when i woke up.

3. Just today i dreamt that i found the girl of my dreams (lol?), went out with her and had plenty of happy times together with her. Not much detail here cause it was just courtship and hanging out together. The most perfect dream girl i could pamper. I woke up halfway feeling...disoriented...and sad. It was so real i was like really living in it. Actually, i had such a dream in the past before very long ago. I felt depressed the rest of the day then knowing that it wasn't real. Different girls for this time and then, but personality wise? i think i can confirm to myself that my specifications did not change. I am still looking for that dream girl.

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So are these dreams some sort of sign to me? people have been said to find dreams as an omen for something that has happened, yet to happen or really just passed off as another wild imagination. For myself, i think it might have been things i've kept in myself subconsciously taking form in my fantasies. How i interpret it myself is

1. i am always, and still is a home boy. Meaning there is no place like home. I can't leave home for more than a couple of hours without thinking of heading back there again. It was always in me also to love being alone. My favorite way of passing my holidays is to spend them alone. Not with anybody. Just alone. Perfect get away from everything. I'm pretty antisocial which i am constantly forcing myself to change because this world is too complex to live a life of a hermit now. But i sure don't enjoy mingling with zombies/vampires.

2. i dunno about this one. I don't think i can interpret it accurately but i think what my own dream is telling me is to do the things i need to do NOW. Before everything just passes by in a blink of an eye. Maybe in future when i'm near death this is what would actually happen.

3. this is...leaving me quite speechless. Has the 24 years of solitude gotten subconsciously to me that my inner desires are to have a companion? i sort of enjoy the freedom and solitude i have now (read number 1). But without me knowing i might have been longing for my other half. With my current tight schedule truth be told i can't afford to. I might just neglect her, which is not what i want. So i guess i just have to tell my inner self to hang in there.


The funny things about these dreams are, it never felt so real before to me. All three of them. So real i felt i was still connected to it when i woke up. It took a while for me to get my bearings back on track. It was just like the story of Lao Zhi dreaming he was a butterfly, or was he a butterfly dreaming he was a human?

i scream...

wat the...

If you're wondering what this is all about...i bit my lip a few days back while eating a popsicle, hence illustrated above for a pictorial view of what happened. (illustrated in bakemonogatari ending theme style)

Feels kinda surreal sucking/licking on my own blood which kept flowing non stop while i was having my popsicle. The process kept repeating until i completely finished it. The bleeding stopped eventually which by that time i had a wonderful aftertaste of copper instead of the red bean flavor it was supposed to have.

i love blood hmm yess....

One Year Anniversary!

Pfft...can't imagine i have been able to keep this blog alive for a exactly a year on today. Never thought that it would last more than a month when i first started. Let's hope it stays alive for another year eh?

New year, new stuff, new semester, new sinking feeling, same old me.
Been spending my new year paint chatting with my crazy art friends and wasting away precious time which could have been spent doing productive work. My engine has not warmed up yet.

Here's some of the doodles and stuff we did.

theme: Warrior girl, guess which is mine?

theme: Stationery girl. Meet erasers, staples, paper clips, sharpeners, 2b pencil and so forth. i want to be stapled (*´Д`) =3 -3 =3

theme: Vampire girl, Y SO SRS?

theme: Guns & girls. What is batman doing here...

Met some of the Degree course peeps and they totally give a different breathe of air. Refreshing.
That's it for now coz i don't wanna go into another rant post involving the hell i live in now.

Doodle oodles

Just some doodling on paint chat that me and my ex-student been doing on Pixiv to test the beta out. Totally whole new paint chat experience.

welcome the year of the tiger! 2010!

Friendship

Heh as expected of myself. I barely visit my own blog during the breaks when i have almost nothing to rant about. So i'll just write down what pops into my mind right now.

The Kai-ism definition of Friendship.

Friendship is only a thing of circumstances. Because i need to meet you often, i have to get along with you only for my own benefits, and vice versa. Out of sight, out of mind.

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Best friends exists only because there is something you want off each other. For example similar interests bonds a pair of best friends together. What both of them are looking for is close companionship whereby anything can be discussed openly, again for one's own benefit of killing boredom or just having an outlet for rants.

So what happens when both of them ceases to meet up that often because of the paths they chose?

The gap widens and they get drifted apart further and further away. Things of the past will just be for memory's sake and life goes on. Meeting again in the future will somehow be different. The bond shared will not be as close as it used to be, but using the lame excuse of "for old times sake" it will try to be revived.

Personally, friendship is a temporary thing to me. I used to treasure it so much that i never thought of losing the best friends i used to have. But as i grew up the harsh realities of life made me realize that 'friendship' is over-rated. I keep seeing stuff like 'Friends Forever' and the likes, which are all very fake and superficial to me. I won't disagree with you if you believe in it but to me it just rubs me the wrong way. The camaraderie-hood only lasts as long as the time we spend together.

I'll never do anything so pointless as to sacrifice myself for a best friend's sake. Everything i do, i have a reason to think about how it would be beneficial to me in the long run. If you speak about brotherhood and stuff like that i don't even believe in it. Your not even blood-related to me. I might only do it for an actual person related to me. You can tell me about how close we used to be, but that is that. Now is now. If there is any reason to help you it is in my own interests. Arms length.

How about old acquaintances i meet accidentally on the streets? Well, i still need to don on the cloak of "friendship" to keep things rolling. So i'll just wave and maybe do some small talk. Who knows i might need to deal with them again later in life, be it at a new workplace or environment.

So, that is the general idea of how i perceive friendship. Sad you might think, about this poor fool named kai which has such a bleak outlook of life as to condemn the notion friendship. No fool i am, just a realistic person very down to earth and tries not to be governed by emotions. Strong emotions do nothing for you but tie you down to attachments of worldly affairs.

Of course, things of theories are always idealistic. That is what i believe in, yet there are always exceptions to it because i am still a human and not a mechanical device. I am happy living as a one man island. But the world now is such that i would need to forge temporary friendships in order to survive. At some point i would still need your help, and you, mine.

More bluntly, i need to use you and you need to use me too.

Capturing Valueless Moments

warning: image heavy post

These are the assignments i had to do for photography, according to theme.

TEXTURE

LIGHT & SHADOW





LINES




REFLECTION




COLORS




MALACCA

Jonker Street

red buildings

free piece

temple


FINAL

frosted glass: back

frosted glass: front

self composition

Any AD students ending up in this blog might laugh his/her ass off over the lowly nature of skillz IL students have for photography. Not that i really care since i'm not specializing in it.

Now begone this subject! and hopefully i wont have to see you again so often in the near future.