Happy New Year!

Happy New Year with a new you! Finally finished up that personal illustration.

WITH A SPEED PAINT VIDEO TO BOOT. https://youtu.be/rQw6Wyv7ZOo


Some of you might know I’ve been dealing with Topical Steroid Withdrawal for like 2 years now (month 21 yay). I made a ton of progress, my skin isn’t nearly as terrible as it was this time last year. So here’s to shedding red skin, healing up, feeling better, and getting over this intense hurdle. My hands are still itchy but I’ve been feeling a lot better about drawing in general these last few weeks.

Jon Snow & Ghost

Finished Jon Snow and Ghost for Fanart Friday :)  timelapse shots below. 

Dat Andrew Loomis Informal Subdivision. Lots of lines, lots of frustration trying to come up with something in the composition. But it works! 

More Informal Subdivision

New illustration in progress, using Andrew Loomis's informal subdivision technique. I discuss it greater length on my Patreon page
https://www.patreon.com/posts/loomis-lines-3305654

Practice Editorial Illustration

I'm attempting to break into more editorial illustration. To do that, it's best for an illustrator to show Art Directors that they can do those things. Soooo I'm going to start making samples that would correlate to particular articles that didn't have an accompanying illustration.

First up:
In recent years, San Francisco's expensive (astronomically un-affordable) real estate has been getting scooped up by Chinese millionaires, while more locals are forced out of the city.

Accompanying article - http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/How-and-why-buyers-from-China-are-snatching-up-5924991.php

Animated Hummingbirds

I hadn't animated anything in awhile, and I also hadn't tried to export an animated gif without getting awful colors/artifacts all over it via Flash. So I decided to try and animate one of my illustrations for a change, using a few extra steps to get a clearer animation. It was definitely worth trying out! Hope to animate a few other things in the near future.

still version

Short Film Poster - Client: Filmbox Productions

I had the wonderful opportunity of working with Filmbox Productions, creating a poster for the debut of their short film, HTM, directed by Sachi Ediriweera. Really fun project, and a heartwarming short film to boot!

You can watch the film online here! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkYnXgwjXrA

WIP - Illustration Project

Been hard at work coloring in some secret illustration project stuffs. 

Moar secret sketchies

Potential new project I could work on - conceptin some new things.

Illustration Career - Answers for Students

Some old, published work of mine above.

I had a student recently contact me with some Illustration Career related questions. I gave ungodly ridiculously long-winded answers. Maybe this will help someone else out there wanting to go into a drawing-related career.

Note: I work full-time for a video game company but I also freelance on the side for published works. I DID do freelance full-time for some gaps in my career though.

How did you get involved in illustration and what school did you go to become a professional illustrator? How did you prepare to get there? And what degrees do you hold?
I first became interested in illustration when I was in High School. I never stopped drawing from childhood, and when I realized I could make a career out of drawing (like being an animator for Disney!) I decided to work hard and take the art classes available in my public High School. I built a portfolio in those classes, drawing from life, learning basics for color and painting, as well as Art History. I went to Portfolio Review Days that are held at various colleges, such as University of the Arts in Philadelphia. It’s a gathering of art college representatives and a good opportunity for students to show their work and see what areas they need to improve. I remember standing in incredibly long lines with a giant portfolio case, with absolute fear at what the reviewers would tell me. I found MICA (the Maryland Institute College of Art) one of the most challenging reviews and loved their curriculum of 6 hour long studio classes. I applied and attended MICA in Baltimore, Maryland and majored in Illustration there. 4 years later, I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts for Illustration. After college was a bit of a struggle. I still had not found my own individual voice in my own illustrations but continued to work hard to make a career for myself. I took on a few art-related jobs but they were never really the right place. It took a bit longer than I wanted but was very much worth it! My goal was always to have a job where I had the opportunity to draw all day everyday. I do just that!

What media do you enjoy most? What are the sources you get expressions or ideas from?

When I was in college, I loved watercolors and ink but I was awful with them! A professor suggested I scan my ink line art and color it in digitally. I was very bad at learning Photoshop (younger artists learn this in elementary school now!!) but I was much happier with my results so I started creating everything digital. I now draw and color everything in Photoshop but always make sure it looks a bit like paint. I think things look too stark and fake when you can tell it was completely done digitally, but that’s my opinion. I am incredibly inspired by traditional Asian artwork and inks from Western-style comic books. My sources come a lot from everything around me, and I always sit and think about expressions for a very long time. I always think of human beings, their interactions with one another, their emotions, and how they react to certain things. It’s always interesting!

What do you enjoy about working as an illustrator and what are the challenges that follow?
I love the freedom of being able to draw, and to solve problems from limitations. Figuring out something insightful or witty for a complicated subject, or trying to draw a lot of information into a tiny icon. When people feel something from my work, if they are moved or sense an emotion from it, it’s incredibly exciting for me. It’s like having others visit my world and I don’t feel alone. I get to use my hard-earned work to make a living doing something that I absolutely love. The greatest challenge, that many illustrators will probably agree with, is finding balance, by loving and hating yourself at the same time. What I mean is, an illustrator’s self esteem is complicated - you must think highly enough of yourself to want to continue drawing, but also dislike your work enough to constantly want to improve and better yourself.

How did you get your job and how much are you paid? Is it per piece or per time that you get paid based on?

My current job is the Lead Artist of a mobile games studio, JuiceBox Games Inc, in San Francisco, CA. I was asked by the Creative Director, whom I’d worked with before at another game company, to help start up the company as a contract artist. Before JuiceBox Games, I worked for a few other game companies over the course of 4-5 years, gaining a lot experience. My current job is salary-based and I am paid within an industry standard for Lead video game artists based on the city I live in. I do freelance illustration on the side of this job as well. I usually receive an email from a potential client like a magazine or children’s publisher who asks if I am available, a budget for the piece, a deadline, and the description of the illustration needed. I then sign a contract for the artwork needed, and go back and forth drawing for the client. I hand off the illustration, usually via email, and then I am paid afterward.

What is life as an illustrator like in a daily basis?

When I did freelance full-time, a lot of my day was sending out emails and postcards to art directors in hopes that they saw my work. I would research names of people at publishers for magazines, or textbooks, or companies for a lot of the day. If they liked my work, then they would contact me to draw for them. If I get an email, I will begin thinking out lots of ideas and doing a lot of research on the internet for the illustration. A lot of my illustrations have been for history, so I love reading about the topic the illustration should be about. If it’s for current events, I look up recent news articles. I would stay up late drawing because there were less distractions - no friends were online to talk to, and no noise from outside because everyone was asleep. It became a bad habit! In the past few years, I couldn’t handle the stress of whether I would get another client or not, so I went into video games because the pay was more stable. I think this is a per-person basis, some of my friends can handle full-time illustration very well, and I think that’s great! I personally like to do it on the side these days!

What pieces of art works are the ones you feel best about and what were the processes to make those pieces? How did you get your motivation for those pieces?

Some of my favorite pieces involve lots of origami or anything meticulous. It’s nostalgia for me because my mother would fold lots of paper cranes and other animals out of paper. My process is to sort of channel my own current feelings into a piece. What sort of emotion do I want to convey? I start with a bunch of thumbnail sketches, and find a proper composition that seems to work best for me and what I want others to see and feel in the piece. I then sketch out as close to what is in my mind but it never turns out to be close to what is in my head! I’ve just learned to accept that as part of my process. I lay out flat colors to get a sense of atmosphere and then put in the rest of the details after I feel strongly about the color tones. I get a ton of motivation from friends and those around me. I follow a lot of people on Tumblr, and my Facebook feed is constantly streaming posts of the work from my colleagues and friends. This sometimes can work against me, where I start to feel overwhelmingly pressured. You have to realize you should not get distracted by the cumulative work of everyone around you, it’s another form of balance illustrators have to find.

And is there any advice you would give for studying illustration or working as an illustrator?
Draw. Draw everyday and don’t stop. Don’t get caught up in the details of a sketch too early on. Don’t think you’ll never be able to draw a face or a hand better than you drew by just accepting it. It’s what erasers are for! The more you draw and observe things around you, the more you can improve. Don’t try to ‘find a style’ early on. It’ll come naturally on its own, whether you want it to or not. Also, you don’t have to listen to *every* critique that is pushed onto you, however, if maybe five or more people are all saying the same thing about your work, maybe it’s time to listen to what they say and change what you are doing.

Hope this helps some people out there!

Topical Steroid Withdrawal

New personal piece that shows how I've been physically feeling lately.

So. I haven’t been posting much artwork these days. There’s a good explanation for this.

For the past three months I’ve been battling against Topical Steroid Withdrawal (aka TSW). I do not recommend googling images of this, but if you do, be forewarned. It’s not pretty. TSW is not a well-known thing and this doesn’t happen to everyone. It occurs after heavily using a topical steroid cream on areas of the skin, usually in cases of eczema. I’ve had eczema all my life. Usually used Over-The-Counter hydro-cortisone creams and for the most part, I grew out of it in High School to college. But a really persistent area on my hands refused to go away.

I decided to visit a dermatologist this year and she prescribed me a stronger topical steroid cream. Needless to say, I used it, and it worked. …For a total of about 1-2 months. I started slathering more of this cream on my hands in hopes of remedying my returning problem, but my eczema came back, even worse than ever. In fact, it started spreading to areas of my body that I’d never had eczema before. Over the next few weeks, I tapered off this prescription cream, and was left with red, horrifically itchy skin across my entire body. The entire length of my arms, my entire torso, down my back, my legs, my throat and back of neck, with the worst area being my hands.

This is not a normal eczema/allergy-induced itch. I want you to imagine fire ants constantly crawling and biting under your skin. It doesn’t go away. And you can continue scratching, even until you reach blood and bone, and you still cannot stop scratching. You actually feel like you’re losing sanity. There are so many side effects that come with this and here are some of what I’ve experienced so far:

- Red Sleeve Syndrome (entire length of arms turn red and raw, stopping at the wrist)

- Insomnia

- Raw, bloody, oozing skin

- Intense fatigue/constantly tired

- dry flaking skin

- sensitivity to foods you were never allergic to before

-swollen, painful skin

- random pangs of pain/nerve pain

- lichenification of skin (aka elephant skin, swolling with wrinkles)

- hot/burning like feeling from skin

- chills/shivering

List goes on and on. The cure is stopping all topical steroid creams and giving the body time to recover from it’s addiction to steroids. The only problem: recovery time can be somewhere on average between 9-18 months. People drop out of school or work for months at a time because this can be incredibly debilitating. I was lucky enough to stumble across ITSAN and their very friendly forums of other individuals going through the same thing.

For now, I’ll try to draw and post when I can, but for the most part, I’m dedicating my raw/bloody hands to drawing at my full-time job and resting when I am at home. Wish me luck on a hopefully more speedy recovery!

Sketches

yes...MORE sketches. Very fast ones from before, on the way, and during my weekend festivities in the city. Granted I went to NYC this weekend, I can honestly say I didn't go outside much due to the cold and the drizzling. My initial idea for visiting was to go here. ...I think it's the only Chinese Scholar's Garden in America where each and every rock was brought over from China. I thought, why go in the cold winter when it would probably be a bit more comfortable in the spring?