Happy Holidays

Seasons Greetings and Happy Holidays to all my viewers!

For the coming year, I'll be trying to expand my repertoire of art styles, and I hope to work more on fantasy and conceptual art. I think I need to work on my composition, color and making my fantasy art more believable. If I could turn back time, I would really like to study as an apprentice under the shadows of past masters. As it is, I'm a self-taught artist. I find it easier to work digitally than using traditional methods though I've not completely given up on traditional (I still do pencil art) However, I find I'm able to experiment more on digital canvas, especially with the 'undo' command. The workflow is cleaner, and I don't have to take photographs or scan and adjust the color/contrast as I would if I were to do traditional art.

As the year is drawing to a close soon, I hope you will all continue to work on whatever you have been striving to do, keep reaching out to the stars and most importantly, have confidence and believe in yourself!

Horse Study

Took me about half a day to complete. This is dedicated to all horse lovers.
Thank You for watching.

City in the sky

Another work inspired by Avatar's floating islands.
Full view would look better.

Climate change

This is just a response to the fluctuating weather changes that is going on around the globe which could get rapidly worse. I don't have anything to offer as a solution for it...except maybe we could established base on moon, which will be used for further exploration and colonization, in particular Mars. We could ask people like Bill Gates to donate half his fortune to fund extra-terrestrial farming, for example. Just a thought.

Beautiful Japanese Artwork

Shu Mizoguchi is a truly talented and unique artist. I lost the link to his site a few years ago but I'm thankful to have found his site again. There's such a celebration of colors and nature in his paintings. Although my painting style is more towards Western classical semi-realism, I find his paintings very inspiring each time I look at them.

Michael Jackson Tribute

Pencil drawing.
My tribute to MJ whose birthday falls on Aug 29th.

What fascinates me is his passion to use his songs to harmonize the world and highlight the plight of suffering children. His music really brought healing to many people around the world.

Cleopatra's Dream

I've always wanted to paint this to show how connected we are to this universe which to me is both a beautiful and dangerous place to be. A place where time has no beginning and no end.
The recent discoveries by the Kepler space telescope of abundant earth sized planets in the universe will push us further toward space exploration and perhaps make contact with intelligent beings - if they ever exist.
Whatever it is, there's no escaping the fact that we are all made from stardust....we may even share atoms with some legendary historical figures, and we may not even know it!

Model reference: Jasmin OK (used with her permission)

The universe is filled with Earth-like planets

The earth is just a pale blue dot compared to the universe. By age, the universe is 13.7 billion years old but our earth is 4.5 billion years.
Since space and time are both interacting parameters, we may be very insignificant in space but NOT in space/time.
The discovery of abundant Earth-sized planets have given hope that we may be able to witness life in these planets in the near future with the invention of large aperture space telescopes.
The Copernican Revolution continues!

Angelina Jolie

Faber Castell pencils mainly F, HB, B, 2B
Kneaded eraser
Cotton pads
Q tips
Tortillion
Highlighter gel pen

Contrast slightly increased post-scan

Thanks for watching!

Eva Longoria

Pencil drawing on smooth drawing pad using

Faber Castell 2B pencil
Kneaded eraser
Cotton pads
Q tips
Highlighter gel pen ~

Thank you 4watchin'

A Poet's Dream

Model photo reference: Jazz Weir from Sydney (used with her permission)
100% digital painting, no repainting done; model outline digitally traced

Keira Knightley

This one took me many hours to complete but I love a big challenge and anyway, I'm still in learning mode.
Thank You for watching.

Scarlett Johanssen

Trying to refocus on portrait paint, and hoping not to relapse into selective detailing syndrome as I did many times before.
I think this one turns out OK. I've added a light green tint for that cinematographic effect.
Thank you 4watching.

Timeless

If time travel is possible, what would be the first thing that you would do if you could travel either to the past or to the future and back. Wouldn't you want to save the lives of the ones that you love? How would this disrupt events in your present day?
I still hope the construction of a stargate or time travel machine to be not impossible but I'm not so sure about what the consequences will be. A much awaited dream of a unified theory of quantum mechanics and gravitation will be able to help us explain the process in a long way.

A Rising Legend

Birth of a rising legend

Rose Galaxy

This is my first attempt at space art.
Some facts about our universe and some new concepts in today's world of cosmology:

* The age of our universe or more precisely the time since the Big Bang expansion is estimated to be 13.7 billion years.
* There are about 100 billion galaxies in our observable universe, each able to accomodate billions of stars.
* Our universe will decay either thru rapid expansion (imaging blooming of a flower) into nothingness or it may collapse and we will tunnel out of space/time. However, that is still a long way to go...
* String theory and cosmic chaotic inflation have given rise to the possibility of infinite multiuniverses around us - no longer fiction or a far-fetched idea :)
* Though we are anchored to this one observable universe, we are continually differentiating into many versions of ourselves, even as I paint/write this, out there in other dimensions or as we say, other 'realities' with different sets of 'physical' laws.
* If this is true, it will inevitably lead us to the fundamental question: Is this universe created by intelligent design for us only or is this seemingly bio-friendly part of the universe created out of randomness from an infinite number of multiverses?

Because no one really knows for sure, a little humour is necessary:
We are not only given free lunch (our existing universe) but we are also served free lunch with all possible dishes you can ever imagine (multiverses), except that you won't be able to taste them at this point in time/space, if ever.

A Distant Dream 2

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks Plutarch

Greatly inspired by classical seascape artists...
Thank you for watching!

Pandora Rainforest Paradise

In the movie Avatar, Jake Sully successfully completed his ritual path that a Navi chose that culminated in bonding with an ikran, a native bird found in one the many floaty Hallelujah Mountains.

Greatly influenced by the magnificient views of Pandora, a rainforest paradise that only the magic of film and digital art can produce.

Thanks 4watching!

Earthquake Survivor

As the chaos is still raging in the Haitian city, we see the child survivor being pulled out of the rubble and looking at life again. Beyond her wounds, we also see much more: confusion, anger, sadness, emptiness...
Gratitude is something we should be feeling right now, and for me, I'm just thankful to be living another day, and not looking beyond for any afterlife.

Digitally painted from blank canvas using a photo reference.

Search n Rescue

Search n Rescue Leatherback turtle submersible crafts looking for signs of life after another volcanic earthquake hit the underwater community in a post-apocalyptic scenario.

100% digital painting with references using leatherback and Angkor Wat images.

Final Goodbye

...on the precipice of life.