Merci beaucoup!

Graduation, FML, Howl and Summer Finn paper doll

Oh my goodness an update is long overdue!

May was crazy, as Mays usually are at Soka. This year's finals seemed to be prolonged for an additional week--my last paper was due 4 days before the graduation ceremony! And I was an emotional wreck during graduation--that's another story all together. It was incredible watching my peers in 2011 walk the brand new, waxy floor of the Performing Arts Center in their gowns and blue sashes and from the seats I felt like I was walking beside them, too. But I've overcome my bitterness about not graduating this year--as a matter of fact, I'm quite excited and honored that I get to stay at Soka for one more year. I'm able to take all these courses that I otherwise would never have had time for. And guess who's learning cello next semester, too!! :D So I see my status as a "supersenior" a privilege. And hell, I am in no way ready to be stepping out in to the workforce.

So that's that and I'm at home in Japan now, with my darling family and my getting-kinda-senile-there cat. I've got this month in Tokyo to prepare for my big trip to Europe in July. I'm just in the process of finishing up commissions. 

Oh, also! I was recently asked to illustrate for fmylife.com! I was so thrilled so I jumped on the opportunity to illustrate my favorite FML:

Today my friends took my phone and changed all the contact's names to characters from Harry Potter. I have over a hundred contacts and no idea who I'm talking to. I've been texting Draco Malfoy for 4 hours now. FML

Here's what I came up with:

Click image to enlarge

So that was a ton of fun. And I was so amazed to find out that this got over 40,000 hits in two days. Thank you everyone at DeviantArt and Tumblr!! :D

And here are some more Howl fan arts I've done over the past two weeks:

「消えて行くハウル」("Vanishing Howl")

The Water Ring

Also, I finally finished a second paper doll. After posting the first one of Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) from 500 Days of Summer, I got a great number of replies on Tumblr asking for a Summer version. So here it is! A Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) paper doll!

Click image to enlarge

Finally here's some Potter Crack I drew as a post script in a letter I wrote to a friend. 

Click image to enlarge

That's about it for now! Sorry this post was so image heavy! Good day!

Fixing and Tom Riddling and such

So it's been a tough week so far. But the upside is that I've been thinking a lot about art. I'm trying to get my Independent Study project going and I've been hammering out ideas in my sketchbook while poring through art books from the library. Um um um, also I began adjusting the colors of a lot of pieces in my dA gallery because I recently realized that the formatting from PSD to JPG and uploading washes out so much of the original color that everything looks dull and muted. On top of that, I started to make the corrections that I've been meaning to do for a while, like the Amelie pic below.

And then this Tom Riddle pic (below, left)... this was actually one of the first drawings I ever did on photoshop, and this was the first lineless drawing that I ever attempted. I've been meaning to update it with a new version, so I guess I started that process today (below, right). You can probably tell that my latest impression of Tom has been strongly influenced by the movie's rendition. 

Deathly Hallows doodles

Hello again! As I mentioned before, I've been re-reading Deathly Hallows this winter break and listening to Jim Dale's audiobook religiously. Here are just a few doodles I've done in between projects:

Sevvy, baby Sevvy, Grindelwald and Voldy

FYI, this is right when Ron returns and Hermione offers her warm welcome.

Luna Lovegood

Also, the nuclear disarmament illustration is le finished as I mentioned earlier. Here's what it looks like:

This illustration took up so much time! Goodness! I'm hungry for a fan art break. Speaking of break, I had a break; I had a KitKat. I had a Wasabi flavored KitKat. By far the most bizarre chocolate I have ever put into my mouth. 8/

Books! And Cleverness!

Just finished Hermione today. I wanted her to hold a wand so I flipped her to face right. I also got rid of the Devil's Snare because it looked too ominous. I've been practicing floral motifs lately after buying a book of 1,001 floral motifs and ornaments. I really want to develop my sense of design and pattern and practicing linework is one of them. I figured, since it's unlikely I'll be taking actual art courses any time soon, I might as well be my own teacher and study through reference and practice. c:

WIP dumps

With my personality, I need to work on several pieces all at once. Majority don't get finished, mainly because they are generated from 2AM boredom/insomnia and aren't really things worth finishing anyway. But I thought I'd share them here because I don't know if all of them will get up on my deviantArt.

So this first piece is from last week when I started reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It depicts my interpretation of the scene with Clarisse and Montag in the rain.

I'm also re-reading Deathly Hallows simultaneously, as I mentioned earlier. Drew this scene when they enter Grimmauld Place and encounter the freaky Dumbledore dummy for the first time. Did this at 4am.

Drew this today mainly for fun. I guess I'll finish this tomorrow. 1st year Hermione with Devil's Snare.

This here is Neville. I'm using this illustration for a tutorial that I'm trying to make because I've been receiving a lot of requests to share my painting techniques on Photoshop. I've taken several screenshots with this one but I'm not so sure if this is gonna be the best example... meeehhh TBA.

Drew this today, too. I really am starting to pick up a new style that stresses on patterns and simplicity. I'm still in the experimentation stage and it's hard to venture right now because I've got a pile of other illustrations I need to be doing for other people but still... it's good to explore during breaks.

This was one of the five drafts that were tossed for the World Tribune newspaper's Seize the Day section on Nuclear Disarmament. It's depicting an enormous bunch of doves formulating a mushroom cloud shape. The sunflowers were added as a common symbol of nuclear abolition. I've yet to finish the actual illustration that was chosen.

Another draft for the World Tribune cover art on nuclear abolition--this one focuses on the section of Daisaku Ikeda's UN Peace Proposal that advocates youth empowerment and education.

This is a draft for a notebook cover design for the SGI Young Womens Division. This exact design won't be used but a cleaned up version of the circle of girls may be used for the YWD section on the World Tribune. 

A wip (work in progress) of a commissioned piece featuring a more grown up Draco and Harry set in an earlier gilded era.

Finally, this I began last summer and haven't touched since. It's a collage of the years that I have spent growing up with Harry Potter. I really want to finish this and make it look nice but it's RRREAAAALLLYYYY time consuming. In the center it will have JKR's message: "To you, who* stuck with Harry until the very end." I hope to get this done before or soon after the release of the very last HP film, Deathly Hallows part 2.
*The actual text is: "To you, if you have stuck with Harry until the very end." 

Warning: heavy image dump ahead--you're welcome.

I haven't updated on my life at all since the New Year, but there really wouldn't be much to divulge anyway. I'm a little horrified to know that we're already 1/24th done with 2011 and all I've managed to accomplish are a few illustrations, even fewer e-mails, a couple trips to art galleries and two visits to the gym. I've been mainly preoccupied with a number of illustration requests from the SGI-USA, one which was to design a logo for the Ikeda Kayo-Kai, and another two colorful illustrations for various sections of the Buddhist World Tribune newspaper. I'm pretty happy with the finished product of the logo but I'm not so sure if I'm free to share it in public yet. I feel very fortunate that since I began posting my drawings publicly on dA and Facebook (mainly from this summer), I've been receiving a number of requests and commissions from various sources. It's all great practice to get a small taste of what it would be like to pursue art professionally. However, the idea of living as a freelance illustrator (and most likely a part-time worker for something else to be able to keep a constant wage) is still a little unnerving to me.

Other news, like I said, I went to a couple art museums. I went to the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi Hills on Wednesday with my friend from high school, Saya Signs. Right now they're showing the works of Motohiko Odani on his theme "Phantom Limb"--it was a collection of bizarre, symbolic installations revolving around the theme of physical sensations and psychological states. The pieces included a full-length dress made completely of human hair, a bunch of enormous female bodies, unicorns and lilies made of white bandages suspended from the ceiling, and fluid, geometric sculptures made of animal skeletons and bones. And lots of other strange stuff:

Today, Saya and I met again to go visit the art gallery in Shibuya Bunkamura, which is displaying a number of Claude Monet paintings, along with works of other impressionist painters from Giverny, France. After we got our fill of the lilies, haystacks and orchid gardens, we had lunch at Botejyu, an okonomiyaki and yakisoba restaurant, which was followed by quaint, Chinese tea and annin-dofu at Chamate on the 4th floor of Loft. Yes, there has been a lot of delicious eating during the first 15 days of 2011, I am unashamed to say.

Wow, it's already past 1:30... I need to sleep. Okay, the rest in bullet points:

• Began re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• Simultaneously began reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, proving to be an awesome, captivating and illustrative read.
• Began, actually this evening, formulating (for the 4th or 5th time now) a new Capstone idea revolving around the construction of physical and conceptual space and atmosphere through light, objects, sound and words.
• Bought my flight back to LA (Jan 29th) by milage.
• Films watched: How to Train Your Dragon (AGAIN), Inception (AGAIN), Nine (the movie-musical with Daniel Day Lewis, not that potato-sack-tiny-people-animation movie), Julie and Julia (again) and Wall-E (again)
• Got my parents addicted to Angry Birds
• Went to Tama Zoo with my high school friend, Jeannie and took these pictures:
• 
• Drew these things:
• 
• And finally, totally screwed over my sleeping schedule.

Hally! Hally Pattah!

Been drawing all day! Omg so much to update. I'll do that sometime when it's not 4:12 in the morning. Here's a little snippet of what I did today:

For a friend, Vi-rose, whose dAbirthday is in 3 days. Can you tell I had chocolate mint ice cream for dessert? I tried emulating her style a bit.

Really quick sketch of Harry's first encounter with Cho on the Quidditch pitch. I dunno what pushed me to do this--I've never been a fan of Cho. But for some reason this scene has been on my mind. Man, once I'm done reading Water for Elephants, I really want to get back to Deathly Hallows for srrrsss review tiiiime.

That's all for now, folks! I reaaallly need to sleep.

Tadaima!

Oh my god it was a long week!!! It still is a long week!!!

Finals are impending. I just had a presentation this morning for Sociology which I believe went pretty well. I was pretty eccentric to say the least--even without the additional mug of caffeine I was passionate about my topic as it was (the replacement of traditional grading systems with alternative assessment).

I spent the rest of the day preparing for the next American Experience presentation I have tomorrow. I'm having fun with this one, too. I'm looking at a couple of World Fairs that were held in the US and how through the process of exhibiting "American culture" they were in fact shaping a distinct American identity. It's interesting because for instance in the 1964/65 World's Fair in Queens, New York, a whole bunch of prominent industries such as General Electric, IBM, General Motors, Coca Cola, constructed pavilions displaying their visions of a "space age" in America's near future. There was a strong emphasis on the development of science and technology that promised for the raised standard of living. General Motors constructed a "Progressland" in which visitors could actually ride an attraction that cruised them through future sub-Oceanic resorts, remote-controlled massive desert reforestation machines and models of the future city landscape. There was even an interactive section on nuclear fusion and sub-atomic power for kids. Exposing citizens to these glamorous visions harvested in them a newfound perspective on their nation and the potential of their lives.

Anyway, so that's what I've been working on today. But I needed a break desperately, so I doodled some Harry Potter characters for relaxation:

A young, seasonal Lily Evans

In loving memory of Fred Weasley.

*BAWL*

Young Sevvy Snape, a self-proclaimed prince.

Aaaanyway das enouf. I need to sleeeeeep!!!