Alex

Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Wacom tablet
Commissioned by: Emillio Daniel
Project: Missing Seasons

Character Description

Alex Sutherland is one of the two main characters in Emillio Daniels "Missing Seasons: Equinox" light novel project. She's a studio session guitarist and has a penchant for music of the past. She's energetic but riddled with a mellow heart. She's a bit emotionally on guard but beyond her walls is a person who would fight for those she loves to any end.

Progress Shots

All I Needed Was

The only thing I could do is a super shitty sketch at the moment.

This sums up my condition. I don't know what else to say, what else to do. How do I stop thinking about it? How can I stop myself from feeling it?

I wish I could just... Why can't I just...

Don't Say Goodbye

Work in-progress.

There is a playlist that I keep on repeating for countless times every single day – when I wake up, when I commute, when I do my work, before I go to sleep. Not sure I was too hooked on, or I was addicted to feeding my emotion, feeding the pain.

I wish it's something I could just stab and let it die.

The only way to set myself free from the things that have been plaguing my mind is to confront it. Running away – which is something that I do often – won’t solve the problem. But it seems like it's the only thing I can do right now. I'm a lot stronger now, but still not as strong. The only reason I've been able to keep my composure is because I've been cutting off a lot of things from my life, including people. I've been trying to cut myself off from my social media. I feel like it's been only adding fuel to the fire.

I've stopped contacting a lot of people at the moment, including the ones I am close with. It seems like a shitty thing to do on my part as a friend and I silenced myself without an explanation. But I needed to do this right now until I am able to pull my shit together again. Or else, I think I'm gonna crack up. At least through this, I can see people who genuinely care and people who fail to notice anything, because I'm so damn tired of chasing after those who don't even want to be with me. Why let yourself get hurt by those who don't give a damn about you.

It's funny when those who had never been there in my life before are the ones to offer comfort in the form of kind words. Even if it's just a sentence.

A lot of things are wrong with my life at the moment. I'm done with telling myself lies and dealing with the same thing over and over again. Take this as a cleansing phase in my life. A phase where I rediscover myself. For once I feel like I'm making a progress in my life, albeit rather slowly. I'd still like to be able to put on hope, although the despair is still growing.

It's so hard to let go. I hope I'll find the answers I've been seeking, soon.

You. This is not a goodbye. So, please don't say it because I don't ever want to.

Tears & Roses

Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Wacom tablet
Background: Bokeh by TrishaMonsterr-stock
DeviantART: Tears & Roses

Sometimes you don't want to go through whatever that was put in front of you. Because it was never your choice in the first place. You feel like the only thing left is despair. You just want to give up and run away. Or disappear.

You've told yourself a million times, to go after what you love. If you don't love what you're doing, why still do it? But for some reason, you can't. You can't just leave. You don't have the power, or the resources perhaps. Or basically luck was never on your side.

You do have an option though. To pick up yourself and keep moving forward. You hate it? Why not try embrace it first? Maybe there's a reason you were brought to this place today. So please, never give up. Whatever situation you're in right now, just keep putting effort and do your best.

At the end, all those effort and struggles, all the blood, sweat and tears will blossom into something beautiful. And you can finally smile and say, 'I made it'. :)

♥ ♥ ♥
This was based on my experience, so I drew this to remind myself to never give up because God knows how many times have I fallen down over and over again, and I just wanted to run away.

♥ ♥ ♥

Progress Shot

My very first art in 2017 and also after 10 months of hiatus! Omg. I promise I'll draw more this year, creeyy. ;v;

Redhead Office Girl

Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Wacom tablet
DeviantART: Redhead Office Girl

A speed painting requested by my friend, Izzat. Sorry, no nice racks for you! :P

I initially drew this on Clip Studio Paint but boy it was so hard! I'm still not used to the interface, couldn't find a lot of tools that I normally use on Photoshop haha. Alas, I gave up and went back to Photoshop. Reeeeaally need to learn CSP soon, or I spent $50 for nothing.

Progress shot

Not-so-progress-shot.

I actually forgot to document the progress. "Orz I guess this'll do.

Cherry-stained Lips

Progress shot

Started with a sketch. I had each part (face, hair, hand, cherry) on separate layers so I can easily adjust the position later. Different colours to represent different parts. The shading was done in a single layer for each part.

I put on a base skin colour for the face and neck on a new layer beneath the sketch layer. Did the skin shading on the same layer and continued with the lips on nose, all on the same layer. Then, I started working on the hand on a new layer and adjusted the position to my liking. Continued with the hair, on a different layer too. I discarded the braid and let the hair loose. (Last picture is desaturated on purpose.)

Added the cherry as the finishing touch, adjusted the levels and hues 'til I'm satisfied, and voila!

End product

I'd smother your face with my cherry-stained lips. :-*


Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Wacom tablet
DeviantART: Cherry-stained Lips

My very first artwork in 2016, yay! :D

* * * * *

Happy new year! I wish everyone a blessed and blissful year ahead. ♥
My new year's resolution? Honestly I'm not really into this whole new year's resolution thing. I mean, as I get older, I realized that the first day of a new year is just the same as the rest of the year. I can just set my resolution any time of the year. Haha. But, if I were to set some, I'd say eat healthier, be more productive and less paper waste (go green!). ;)

Melisandre?

Current work-in-progress. This is one of my original characters, Scarlet Roku. I am planning to use this artwork as the official artwork of her when I officially introduce her.

I've been working on this one for a very long time now. Mainly because I decided to take an approach to a more realistic style of CG-ing so it's taking more effort than the usual (aside from being so busy as an Architecture student). Doing the hair only took up a tremendous amount of time since I did it strand by strand. Not sure if the details are noticeable to the others though.

I know the details aren't that great but I'm still learning!

I realized that all of my works don't bear a similar style because as an artist who's still learning, it's hard for me to stick to one style because I keep trying to experiment with different methods each time I do my work. I hope that someday I would develop my own distinctive style that people are able to recognize upon the first look. :)

Anyway, I've been into watching the series Games of Thrones recently and my friend told me that this character of mine looks like Melisandre, the red priestess from the series. I just realized it! Haha. Obviously it's because of her red hair and red getup that are very similar to Melisandre's.

I don't think I can finish this artwork in the near future but I can't wait to finish it up and finally post it! :)

Hello college life {A little bit of blogging}

Sorry for the lack of updates for these couple of months; for your information, I just started college last month (December 2012). I am now an architecture student in Politeknik Ungku Omar, Perak! After a one-year hiatus from doing anything, I'm finally, actually making a progress in life. Lol.

As you all might know this, being an architecture student can only mean one thing — busy, busy, BUSY. That's the definition of my life right now. Apart from the assignments, I'm busy with my duties as the class representative — YES, believe it or not, I, my tiny self, became the class representative for class DSB1B.

On a more artsy note, I am also participating in an International Visual Art Competition, where I'll be submitting my artwork to France and compete with the rest of the world; and whoever that wins will get an honors diploma. Crazy, right? I obviously am not expecting myself to win because seriously as a self-proclaimed artist I still lack qualities. Plus, competing with the entire world? In. My. Dreams. I'm only entering this competition for the sake of gaining experience. Because my motto now is to take whatever opportunities there are whenever they appear in front of me. :)

Last weekend was the first highlight in my life ever since I started college. My college held a design fest at Mydin Shopping Mall in Ipoh, where the architecture students took part in various activities / competitions. The Int'l Visual Competition participants also had to take part in the fest, where we had to draw and exhibit the artworks we are going to submit for the competition, in front of people. Meaning, we had to draw in front of all the passing by strangers / shoppers who came to shop at Mydin! Crazy, I tell you.

I'd never exactly drawn in front of people before; not strangers, not even friends. I prefer doing my work in isolation. At first it felt really awkward, I was really nervous, and when people came and stand behind trying to look at me working on my artwork, I sorta froze. LOL. But I try my best to just relax and ignore them, and after a while, I got used to it. :D It ended up being an amazing experience for me.

Honestly, I thought I was going to be the left one out because while everyone paints on a canvas or paper, I was the only — THE ONLY one, who was doing digital painting. So I just sat at the table with my computer and my pen tablet doing my artwork quietly. Though fortunately, quite a lot of people did come to me and talked to me, asking me questions and stuff. It was really exciting!



This is how it looked like during the event for the Int'l Visual Art Comp part. :) And that is my laptop, showing my work-in-progress.

I'm really glad that I participated in this competition and this event. It gave me a whole new experience in life and I really feel I'm making an effort in pursuing my passion. :D I will try my best to get involved in more competitions and events like this in the future!

Anyway, the artwork is still currently in progress. I will post it when I'm done. :)

Loose braid

Tools used : normal sketch paper, 2B 0.7 mechanical pencil

Taking a break from portraiture attempts and reverting to my normal, much simpler drawings. :)

I'm the kind that doesn't normally tie my hair unless under certain circumstances like it's hot or whatsoever. I dislike tying my hair up because a) I would love my long, flowy hair to fall over my shoulder, b) I could feel slightly insecured without my hair falling over my shoulder (call me weird), and c) I hate that tying my hair would leave tying marks. But somehow I do kinda adore this lazy-looking, loose braid style. :3

Currently working on a CG version for this drawing. Will post the final product later when I finished it. :)



Tools using : Art Rage 2, Wacom Bamboo

What makes me happy

For only almost 18 years being alive in this world, I must say that I've been through a lot in life, I've been through all kinds of things, from bitter things to the happiest. There are a lot of things that could make you happy, and there are things that could make you bitter, or even both. This applies to every single person out there.

I've always loved art. I love to draw. I've been drawing since I could first hold a pencil. It's the one thing that I truly love in this world; nothing could compare with my love towards the beauty of arts.

I haven't drawn in a while now. In fact, I seldomly draw ever since I entered high school. To be honest, this talent that was gifted upon on me, I started to doubt it. I could barely believe in myself that I could do it, that I could improve and be better than ever. I even started to feel like I hate drawing. Depression and bipolar feeling was taking over me. Like one of my friends said, it is the curse for the creative minds.

I went through a lot of hardship recently. I was becoming a wreck. I must say that 2012 started off really dreadful. Is this the kind of 'the end of the world' that the Mayans predicted? This phase had reached its climax and I felt like hope had died on me.

I had completely strayed and I had totally forgotten about that one important thing.

Today, I woke up feeling like trash. Or maybe even worse than that. As I was thinking of fading away, I decided to pick up my pencil, take out my sketchbook, put on some music and draw.

I have never felt happier in my life. I have realized that this is the one thing that truly could make me happy. The moment I decided to lift off that particular heavy burden I've carried for a long time, I could finally see myself and what I'm worth.

Love makes you happy. Love gives you hope. Love keeps you going in life. Only the truliest, purest love could be called love.



I am currently working on this piece. It's still not finished yet. Will post the final drawing later when I'm done. :)

To be honest, my skills aren't great enough because I rarely practise. Nevertheless, I would keep on trying and be the very best I could ever be. Fingers-crossed. :)

P.S. Who's the girl? ;)