Natural Paintings

Second semester has started and now I unfortunately don't have as much time to paint anymore. But I did paint quite a bit on my semi-break; I painted mostly nature, flowers, a bird, and a butterfly. I'm testing my abilities with watercolor and oils, and so far, I'm liking it. I find watercolors to be loose and easy to use but they tend to test my patience a little; it seems to take so long for it to dry. Oils actually do take forever to dry, and whenever I want to put a new layer on, the new layer just blends with the old one. It can be pretty frustrating.

But regardless, I loved being able to paint after so long of not doing much of it. Photo creds to a good friend of mine, Abdi.

The flowers are in watercolor and the butterfly in oils. I might end up making a series of watercolor flowers at some point.

And remember this pen and ink drawing? It was from a previous post and I promised to do a bigger, colored version later on. Well I did, actually a while ago. I just never got the chance to take a picture of it.

Digital Art

Happy New Year! Sure I'm a couple of days late but, oh well.

I'm finally back on campus after spending about three weeks at home. It was fun and relaxing and I finally had some time to do art, more specifically, digital art. I bought a Wacom intuos5 tablet a while back and I haven't used it in a while (mostly because I have no time and because it's a very expensive tablet that I didn't want to bring with me to college). When I got home, I just had a sudden urge to do digital art. It's easy (-ish) and you can use the much desired "undo" button. Seriously, if that were and actual button on my computer, it would probably be broken since I can be very particular about things.

But I had fun drawing on my computer. I drew one portrait but I edited it a little with different colors arranged in a triptych. I might do another version of it later on or draw another portrait when I go back home. I also drew lips since no matter how I draw them, there always seems to be something wrong with them. So I practiced a little bit.

Let's Go Back

So my dad was trying to find something on one of his many flash drives and he was trying to lead me to a certain file...all via phone. Long story short, I found it, we were both happy, yay.

But I noticed that the flash drive that I found the file on was one of the back ups that we used when we were switching from our PC to our Mac. I went under my file (they were named according to my family) and proceeded to scroll through everything that my 13-year-old self deemed worthy to keep essentially forever. The pictures I'm going to post require a little bit of explanation though.

I was one of those kids that was super-obsessed with Neopets and coding (I know, they go together wonderfully!). I actually redid my gallery and profile to whatever I wanted because I knew CSS and HTML. Now if you're gonna edit your profile or gallery, you can't just change the background image or scroll bar color or cursor. You've got to have some pretty awesome graphics. So I made animated GIFs not only for my Neopets profile but for my websites as well (yes I was also making my own websites that never got published thank goodness). And for your viewing pleasure...

The backgrounds were originally transparent so pardon the red.

I was also pretty obsessed with drawing manga, not so much with watching anime though. So in elementary school, I drew these two pictures in colored pencils for an art exhibit (or whatever you call an exhibit in elementary school).

Mixing two obsessions together!

So that's what I did when I was younger. Just in case I ever forget how I started with art, I will now have these to forever remind me.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Just a little poinsettia WIP for you because of this happy season. Although in all honesty, who's idea was it to put finals week so close to Christmas/New Years? I am not feeling the Christmas spirit at all this year. I am studying though (I'm just taking a study break to make this post) for my only final on Tuesday. I'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't have 3 or 4 finals this week, and for that I'm eternally grateful. 

In other news, I got into glass lab! At MIT, glass lab is really tough to get into considering that many people want to take it and the students are chosen by lottery. I can just say that I am blessed to have gotten in my first year. So expect some glass sculptures/bowls/cups etc. in the coming weeks.

Also, here's a love poem I wrote from a past relationship I had in high school. He gave me three red roses, and I thought (and still do think) that it was the sweetest thing ever. We did break up but we are still friends and we do talk occasionally. I decided to post the poem since its theme is a flower, a rose, and a poinsettia is a flower is well. It's kind of a stream of consciousness relation.

A Rose

a rose is a rose

symbolizing love, friendship, even innocence
he gives me three roses, red to be exact
soft as silk and red as blood
red means love you know but
even if they die
will his love still exist?
after the petals have withered and
fallen, creating a soft carpet on the floor
can i trust him to still love me?
after the poems have yellowed with age and
the kisses no longer leave impressions on my lips
will he still keep his love?
after the wedding bells have ceased their sounds and even after the
funeral marches have played
will he still love me?
i say yes
'cause each time he pulls me in his arms
each time he steals a kiss
and each time he reads me his heart
is an everlasting red rose always whispering
"i love you, forever."

And should I not post until 2013, Happy New Year!

Obsession

Obsession: the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, or desire.

Very cliche opening, I know. It describes my feelings exactly about drawing, especially drawing eyes. Lately (as I may have said before), I have not been able to draw as much since college happened. But that doesn't mean that the desire has gone away, just that I don't have time. Well today a bunch of time opened up thanks to a girl called Sandy. I'm sure students everywhere are rejoicing for her wonderful appearance, especially since none of us are responsible for anything super important but ("just") our education. And I should be studying for an exam I have tomorrow, but art!

So, this the lovechild between me and hurricane Sandy. Two eyes drawn with weighted pencils, 4H-8B or thereabouts.

On a semi-unrelated note, this photo was taken on my new iPhone 5! That kind of explains the not so awesome quality (not to say anything bad about Apple but it is a cell phone, not a Nikon).

You'll notice that there's a slight difference in how the eyes look in terms of sharpness. On the second one, I used more of the point of the 8B pencil for the eyelashes and iris detail. Personally, I like the second one more; I paid more attention to the details in that one than I did in the first one, and it's more dynamic (basically not straight on like the first one). Thanks to Sandy, I can be productive art-wise, and maybe cure my artist's block.