Couch beneath the heavens

Getting into that Corel Painter again. Still pretty hard to figure out which brushes do what since they're all named obscure things like "wide, flat, wet brsuh" — super helpful. I'm also still not sure if I should be trying to use layers at all, or if I should try to do it traditional-style and just paint everything right onto the canvas. 

This piece accompanies a poem written by Kelsey Amos. Hopefully they both get selected to appear in Hawaii Review Issue 79. Still waiting to hear.

UPDATE: Hawaii Review selected Kelsey's poem and my painting to appear in HR issue 79! Look for it at the end of the Fall semester.

The Four Elements

Part of my "real, live superheroes" project, this image was created by taking a photo of four friends posed as superheroes representing The Four Elements.
At the Ka Leo Arts Festival, my booth was a "get yourself drawn as a super hero or villain" booth. Thanks in large part to my marketing champion Reece Farinas, I made a lot of money and made a lot of people happy at the same time! Most of the customers took their pencil drawings home with them, but these guys asked me to keep theirs and turn it into a full blown, colored comic cover. So here it is! Hope you like it.

To the left is the original pencil drawing I did at the fair.

As always, right click on an image to open it in a new tab and view it full sized.

TOKi

This past Saturday the talented TOKiMONSTA (LA born Jennifer Lee) visited Fresh Cafe in Honolulu and dropped some dope beats in one of the best live shows I've been too. On par with NextDoor's presentation of DJ Krush, TOKi kept the energy high and the dance floor packed for her entire 1.5 hour set.
The hip-hop beats and layered, electronic soundscapes she created with her equipment was mesmerizing. After the show she stayed and talked with some of her fans, including my friends and I and was available to sign copies of her debut album Midnight Menu which, together with her recent release, Boom (released by Analogue Monsta - the combination collaboration between Suzi Analogue and TOKiMONSTA) were both available for purchase at Fresh Cafe for the fan-friendly price of $10.
I had such a good time and enjoyed the music so much that I decided to paint a picture based off one of the photos I took at the show using Painter12.  This is the result. The hardest part was getting the glowing neon colors to sit well with the dark hues that make up the complimenting shadows those neon lights were casting. That and getting her face right at this angle (still not completely satisfied with that, but she does look Korean at least). 
Anyway, this was one of the first portraits I've done in Painter12 and I thought it worked pretty well. The oil brushes definitely feel more real than in photoshop, but there are a few silly things about Painter too that, one would think, after 12 generations would have gotten fixed - c'est la vie. 

Vignettes on the margins

Tomorrow's issue of Ka Leo will feature an article about Gail Tsukiyama, author of "A Hundred Flowers" and "The Street of a Thousand Blossoms," and the Celebrate Reading Festival, which she will be speaking at as well as reading from her works.
The artwork was originally created as an accompaniment for the article so, for the purposes of the blog and the Internets in general, I decided to turn it into a poster for the event, partially because I'm trying my hand more and more at design as well in an attempt to market my skills a little more strategically. Enjoy!


We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.


- Billy Collins, Marginalia