Cull in the void

So today I have something very special to share. My very first professional job. I received this job through email after the lovely Lulu Rae saw my Loop profile. Let this be a lesson to all that you should keep free portfolio websites up to date, they are just important as the ones you pay money for.

I was stoked! I couldn't believe someone actually wanted me to do work for them! I was to illustrate a band for Happy, which is a NSW based blog and web-zine that promotes local indie music acts.

The band in question was Cull, a NSW band that classify their style as friendrock/dreamgaze. These are not genres I'm at all familiar with, so I would suggest you have a listen here. You can also check out their website. I'm going to be honest and say that I hadn't heard of them before I started this work.

"Wow, let me just say first! Amazing illustration!!
We all love it. Thank you so much."

After a few back and forth emails about the requirements for the image, I set myself into research mode, which is always the first thing I do. This involved going on the bands Facebook page, website and Youtube channel. The later was for drawing (Pun!) inspiration from the visuals in their videos and the music itself. I concluded the music made me think about the unknown, particularly the great unknown expanse of the galaxy and universe itself. I considered the emptiness and excitement of space exploration, the final frontier as Star Trek calls it (big fan by the way). This was also helped by the clip to their newest single 'The Sacred Burial Urn' which features footage from a 1960's era science fiction. So I did some research into retro sci-fi and spacesuits, since being a portrait I need would something for the band to wear. Research done.

So into my sketchbook I went, though the entire process of the final artwork was digital, I still find it easier to sketch on paper first. This took about 4 hours or so, which is pretty quick for me. The whole time I was listening to Cull's Youtube channel on repeat to really get in the mood.

"You're so lovely!
I'm so glad you're as happy with everything as we are.
We are stoked!"

When it came to the band's faces, I ran into some difficulty. I don't often base the faces I draw on real people, and the only times I do is in life-drawing. What made it more difficult, was the lack of good photo-reference on the net. To get more I looked up previous bands the members had been in...I felt like a stalker!


The next step was to use my sketches to work up the line work in Photoshop. I usually start quite rough and slowly develop the drawing as I go. You might ask why the line art in red rather than the traditional black (which is what I usually do)? I knew that the background would be space, which is black (no, really?), so I thought black lines would mostly be lost in the background. Next time I do an artwork I'll be sure to take some screen-grabs so I can show my process in pictures. Until then, you must wait.

Most of the rest of the process is fairly self-explanatory, but I'll go into more detail when I have pictures to support what I'm saying. After being happy with the figures I moved on to the background. Now originally I decided to have a space shuttle flying through behind the band, but after finishing the figures I realised it might make the picture look a bit busy (not to mention the size the image would appear on the website would probably render the the shuttle too small to make out properly) and instead opted for a planet (with bonus moon).

So I finished the final image after about a week of fairly continuous work and emailed it to Lulu. What happened next was something I did not expect...

Now I will admit that on a personal level I thought this artwork as one of my best to date. However I didn't expect the fantastic response I received. I've interspersed this post with a few choice quotes by Lulu from our emails (used with permission of course).

"Thank YOU so much Reiko, people like you make it
easy and such a pleasure for us."

Truly, I was awed by her words. I was not expecting such high praise! I've really felt a boost to my confidence as an artist: I never imagined my first job would go so well. But it got even better! I also received a lovely message on Facebook from Alex Sol Watts, one of the members of the band. To get a positive comment from the band as well left me ecstatic.

I hope every job I do from now on turns out as well as this one did. It was such a joy to do. ^_^

Until next time...

Horsey with magic birds and a revival

Hey there people!

Posts seem to come with two and today is no exception! As per usual I have two new artworks for you today. So without further small talk I'll get straight into it!

 

So this first image was done for my traditional Chinese new year illustration. You might remember last years work for year of the snake? This year being horse, I had the option to draw a mount, which I always love doing. A bit of further research showed that one of the five Chinese elements is also associated with the year, this year being wood. There are also colours, symbols, seasons and even planets associated with the element. This gave me plenty of direction in my self-brief.

I thought this time I got through the sketch and line-work stages much quicker than usual, though I still think I could be quicker. The biggest challenge in this work was working out a good and stylised way to "texturise" the wood, which I think worked quite nicely.

Now to the story behind logo on the wind barrels. It turns out the planet Jupiter is associated with wood, so I wanted some way to include that in the art. I remembered from a previous piece of work that all the Roman gods and thus planets had a graphic symbol to represent them, and obviously what you see on the barrels is the symbol for Jupiter. Out of pure coincidence the symbol also looks like a two and a four for 2014! I love it when things like that happen.

As you might've noticed I've included detail shots, which I think I might do from now on. Often I have  details in my work that really can't be seen properly in these web quality versions.

Now onto the next work...

 Before

 

  
After

This next piece is a little different from my usual work. It's actually my take on one of my sister's creations. That's right, my sister is an artist of sorts too. She dabbles in collage and crafts, mainly sewing and knitting. She does some great work, though she won't admit it herself. I'd be plugging her website here, but she doesn't yet have one yet.

So as you've probably gathered, the top image is my sister's original and the after is my take on it. I simply decided to do this because I liked her character, but also because I wanted to try "complexifying (tm)" a quite stylistic design.  

I tried to keep as close to the original as possible, however I did tweak the colours a bit and decided for fun to add some birds, two of which are birds my sister likes (namely the fairy wren and the barn owl), the others are made up. The particularly daunting task in this image was the pattern on the skirt. I couldn't decide whether to opt for a scan of a illustration from the same book as the original or attempt to draw my own in the same style. In the end I though it might look at bit too busy full of really complex line work, so I opted to do it myself and rather pleased with the result.

Vicky was actually really proud that I used her creation, which made us both feel good!

One last thing to post, I lied. A while back I worked on a new version of my 2012 image (year of the dragon) So I though I really should update my blog with the improved version, so here it is.

Pretty much the only major change to the original is the pattern on the kimono, which was supposed to look like stylised fire works, but I don't think it really worked that well. Most of the rest are just adding more detail or tweaking shadows.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I've recently joined 'Drawcrowd,' a community site for sharing illustration and concept art with other artists. It was created by the ever generous Feng Zhu, who I ranted about before. He continually gives back to his industry in ways that are awe inspiring. So what are you waiting for? Check it out here! You can find a link to my page on Drawcrowd in the contact section of this blog.

Well that's it from me, time to get back to drawing. What's next you say? Well it involves penguins!

Thanks for reading.

Rusty pipes and a piece of Melbourne

Greetings! I hope this day finds you relatively free enough to check out this update. Today I have two works for you to check out, both of which were presents for friends. I seem to do more of that than anything else, but that's alright. Doing work for friends always involves unique challenges since I have a completely open brief, but need to try and create something I know they'll appreciate. This can really test my knowledge of the people I know.

So this piece was for a fan of Mario obviously. Now usually I don't do fan art. The reasons for this are two-fold. Firstly that it can quite often not look as professional as original work and secondly that it removes the most interesting and complex part of art for me: Design.When one does fan art, the design is already well established, so there's less to do from a design perspective.

However there are times I love a game or anime so much that I really want to do some fan art. I decided though that the best way to keep design an integral part of the work is to insert an original character into an existing world.

In keeping with that rule, I created a new Mario brother, or sister in this case. Much of the design comes from feminising aspects of Mario's costume.Note the puzzle box earrings. Since my friend is a nurse, I wanted to make out that this character could be much like a healer in RPG style games, the idea being that from her magically bottomless bag she could throw out power-ups for her co-players to collect.

The background I knew from the very beginning would need to contain the iconic sewer pipe (when you google it, the images are mostly Mario related). So I decided to have them floating in the sky. I have  a penchant for flying things, just can't help it.

The last artwork for today was for a good friend and fellow illustrator going back to her home country after living in Australia for 5 years in which she attended the same university that I did. It's a fairly simple concept. I wanted to draw her something that would remind her of Melbourne and have a character eating cheese as she rather enjoys it. I chose Flinders Street Station, as not only is it a lovely old building, but also has a nice strong recognisable colour scheme that makes it stand out. I'm quite happy with the result, especially when you consider my last attempt at the building with my Flinders band piece, which can be found in the illustration section of this site. Levene loved it too!

You can check out her website here.

That's it from me, see you next time, in the blogs ^_^

New Year? and a foppish DI

Hi there, as you probably expect, the reason for this post is to show some new work. It's almost impossible to believe that I haven't updated since April, but that's the truth. So anyway here's the new stuff.
 

This first piece I did for the new year, but never quite finished it for a while. As you can probably guess, 2013 is the year of the snake. As with my 2012 artwork, I decided to keep a somewhat Japanese feel, but I also at the time on a whim decided to incorporate Art Deco elements in the clothing and bottle design. My sister thought the pattern on the kimono looked like stylised bamboo, which I'm okay with. I'm particularly happy with the design on the bottle, though there's probably way too much detail in the label, as you can't even make most of it out at 100%. Still it was fun to do, I just need to make sure in the future that I stop zooming in so close. I've included a detail shot of the bottle. Serpent's Kiss - Seductively deadly.

The second I have for you today is a present I drew for my mum. If there's two things she loves, it's her Tonkinese cat Bashir (As in Dr Julian Bashir) and murder mysteries. Enter DI Tonks! Being a cat I believe he would have a rather foppish dress sense and I also trying to incorporate fish into the design. The tail waistcoat was based on fish scales and the shirt is herringbone. Yes, that's a fez, just because, you know, fezes (what the hell is the plural of fez?) are cool. This was my first attempt at full background in watercolour, so I'm pretty happy.

Number three is my fifth work in my patented 'Quick Concept series,' This time combining a bird (vulture) with a sniper. The limited palette worked quite nicely I think.

Well that's it for now, I've got a few more pieces ready to upload but I'll do that next time
 Bye!

Otherworldly charms

With the ending of my exhibited work at Brunswick Street Gallery, I'm happy to now present those pieces on this blog. If you were unable or unwilling to see them there, you can now see them with the ease of the internet. 

I actually had 4 pieces planned, but because of space and time constraints I had to cut down to only two artworks. Still, I'm happy with how they came out. I will eventually get round to finishing the other ones.

So without further words, here they are.

This was my first time doing backgrounds in this particular style, as I usually do characters on their own without background. This time, I really wanted to make prints worth buying, so I had them professionally printed. They are 100% archival quality on Museo portfolio rag, signed and numbered. Currently I don't have a store, but if you'd like to buy a print, contact me (using the contact tab at the top of this blog) and I'm sure I can arrange it.

The work continues...

Otherworldly Charm exhibition

Hi there everybody!
Just a quick post to inform you that I have some work in the NOW! group show at Brunswick Street Gallery opening tonight at 6pm! Details are in the invite above. You should check it out!

More info on the gallery Here

Hope to see you there! ^_^

Venetian robots and goblins riding a dog, oh my!

Hi there everyone. Sorry again about the infrequency of my updating, I've really got to work on having something to post at the very least once a week, as right now I'm not even getting something out once a month.

Things have been rather busy though, I've finally found myself a job, but no, unfortunately it's not illustration or even design, but retail. It's something though! With some income at last I'll be able to save up some money for printing and gallery space next year. That way I can hopefully get my name out there and start getting some real work. It's true certainly for artists that you need to spend money to make money >.<

In-case you missed it, here's my piece from Illustrators Australia's annual 9X5 exhibition. It was a really interesting piece to work on as I haven't very often worked off a theme that hasn't come from my own head.

I actually sold my piece! My very first sale of art...ever! My wonderful and supportive parents bought it. Now they have the challenge of trying to work out where to put it in the house...one of the walls good for art is already covered in mine and my lovely sister's art.

So if you're interested in some background of it, I shall now provide...

Each year the 9X5 always have a theme, this year it was carnivale, so you can bet there were many artworks of masked characters based on the Venetian carnivale tradition. One of the most curious things I came to learn about the introduction of masks was that it was a way to remove the harsh class system imposed on the citizens of Venice. I loved the idea of hiding something completely different behind the mask.

Anyone who knows my art, will know that I love to mix old and new up in my illustrations. I enjoy taking something historic and trying to futurise (that's so not a word) it, or trying to make something of pure fantasy fit into a historic setting. This was of the latter, A robotic musician playing during the carnivale at the time of the renaissance. I chose a 3/4 back view to show both the illusion of real from the front, in which she (it's a female robot, machines can have genders!) is wearing a period dress, and behind to show the gears and other parts that make it work.

The reason she has a long neck was originally to fit in a speakers that were going to be attached to her shoulders. As this would end up blocking out some of the details I decided to instead have wires trailing over to a speaker somewhere out of view.

I really quite like the effect of graphite on wood, so I think I shall have to experiment with it in the future.

My second piece for you today is my fourth quick concept piece. A suggestion from my sister: To combine goblin and umbrella, I instantly got the idea of using a giant leaf as an umbrella, and just now got myself thinking of Totoro and the classic scene at the bus stop in the rain. Before I knew it, rather than having one goblin I ended up having 2 goblins riding a dog as a sort of trader. travelling the world selling whatever junk they happen to find that they think is worth something.

I've got some more quick concepts just around the corner and some quite detailed Xmas presents in the tunnel too, so look forward to uploads of all of those, eventually. I'm also doing another re-design of my blog banner and a new design for my logo and business card coming too.

Until next time. ^_^