portrait of Aurum

Digital Illustration project that was due last Friday. we were paired up with students from our class and were then assigned to do a portrait of them that captured their "essence." we were also supposed to incorporate into the composition some of the objects that the other student found.

i was paired up with my girlfriend's friend, Aurum. i'd say she's my friend now, too, since learning more about her and talking to her more.

what i tried to depict in this image is how Aurum, a native of South Korea, is will be facing a predicament once she graduates. she's only here on a student visa, so unless she can find work right out of school, she will have to return home. she wants to stay and is hoping to find work in California, possibly go into animation (3D stuff like Kung-Fu Panda. i guess the character designer is Korean as well.). her father on the other hand is wanting her to return home and find work there.

the balloon from her cell phone is in the shape of Korea because it is her father calling her home. i tried to take a portion from Aurum's shoe and layer it into the piece. it felt like i was just slapping stuff into the background, but the further i got it seemed like i was trying to emulate waves. waves with detail and ornamentation from Korea that carried her to the United States. on the left side of the image i tried to have the final destination of Arizona, where she wants to stay. i had fun manipulating her lipstick into the shape of cactis. also have a chain running from her phone to her wrist because she said that it's always by her side, so i wanted to embellish that by chaining it to her. also thought the inclusion of Korean would be a nice touch, too. Aurum's saying, "Hello, how are you?" while her father is saying her name in Korean.

i had fun with this. liked how it turned out. also was well received by Aurum and my professor, so that was great.

this class is supposed to be about progressing our skills in a digital medium while already possessing a basic understanding of Photoshop. sadly i have none of that right now (i did this in Painter IX) so i'll need to jump on that and check out the tutorials posted...somewhere. i think U of A's computing resource site?

iscribbblesss

yep! this time with my friend Jed. (usually i use iscribble with Angela. i'll have to post those soon.)

did this with Jed last night (090608) and i really like how it turned out. i was feeling pretty loose and ready to draw so you could see that in my barbarian girl. i had the idea that we should draw our significant others all beefy and amazonic, but i guess we took a more barbarian approach on this one.
he drew up his wife, Belem, with the awesome skirt and Xena-influenced outfit. i really like how he did the detailing on her, too, as well as the axe. pixel art is really awesome when done well.
i drew up my girlfriend, Angela, as the barbarian on the right. i was going with this one pose that wasn't work and decided to change it up and trade out her other hammer for her mom's dog Momo. i thought she turned out pretty well over all. tried to make sure i got her face and hair down, as well as her long torso. thought hammer was pretty sweet, too.
i had her saying that she'd kill me for drawing her like this because during the summer i was showing a coworker my sketchbook and she was saying that i should draw Angela like some of the muscular women i had been drawing. i told Angela about that and she was all like "NOOOOOOOOoooo. Don't draw me like that!!" so i thought it'd be interesting to try drawing her like that anyway, and brought it up to Jed who liked it and went along with it when we were iscribbling.
it was funny though, because i thought she would freak out when i showed her today, but she said she really liked it. (only cuz she didn't recognize it as herself. makes sense.) i told her i wouldn't spell it out for her but then i told her anyway and she was all like "WAHH?" but she just laughed and said she still liked it. thought it was funny that i included Momo and all that.
wasn't as bad as i thought!!

update: burned toast

need to update. too long since last update.
so i thought i'd post this sketch i did last night.
i've had the idea for a while now to start doing a daily drawing or something or other showing what my girlfriend wore that day because a lot of the outfits she wears are really cute.
and she's pretty cute anyway, so good outfit or not, it'll still be an enjoyable image.
so....i guess i should call thisss.....Angela's Outfit-A-Day? yeah, i'll just use that.
no...Angela-A-Day?
or Angela's Outfits since i'm not sure if i'll be able to do it every day since i won't see her every day due to work and not living together. but i'm going to try and shoot for something every time i see her.