The Fair Reaper

This sketch was done this year when I took an interest in the personification of death. This is the first time I've drawn a proper guy (chibis not counted) that looks like a guy... I think... And I was inspired by a variety of artist from deviantart. This is my idea of how Death might look like personified: His hair is not too long not too short, he wears the chaperone of a jester with a bell hanging at the end of the hood's tail, beneath the chaperone is a diamond-patterned harlequin-like shirt with long loose sleeves, and a pair of slacks with boots (that can't be seen 'cuz its off the paper). Though I didn't color him, I imagined his hair to be white, his visible eye to be silver, his skin to be fair and his clothes to be black and white (the bell will be silver)... so altogether, not much color either. 

Since I got the idea of him being an angel of death, so I drew one large white feathered wing emerging from his back on his left side. As for his right side, I thought, since he represents death, he should have part of himself fading away. That's why the right side of his clothes are frayed and his right arm is missing, pieces of it drifting away in the form of falling flowers. The idea of flowers came from the idea of life and death being closely entwined with each other. His right wing is also missing as it has dissolved into mist. Oh, and his left eye is also missing, though I had the missing eye covered by his side-swept fringe. The right side of his face is also cracking, like a broken mask. In his left hand, he holds the classic Grim Reaper scythe and there's a lamp hanging from the handle of the scythe by a long piece of fabric. The scythe would be his tool to reap the souls of the dying, while the lamp is to light his way in the dark. 

I think of Death as someone lonely, someone sad, who has the job of taking the souls of the dead to the afterlife. But to those who go with him willingly, he would smile and dance them away in the Dance of Death. He is also fair, in the sense that he isn't biased and takes both the poor and the rich, the good and the bad, and no one can escape him when it's their time. I think I'm quite satisfied with this drawing... it turned out better than I expected. I may consider coloring it someday, or I may leave it as it is, since it seems to look quite alright in black and white.

Firefly

This was done quite a year ago, when I first started writing fan fiction. This drawing is of my OC that I created. I think the waist and hip seems a bit too thin now that I look at it again. But I guess its not very obvious... I created her based on a combination of traits from my friends, with the idea of a personality akin to fire in mind. Like, fire personified? She has short gold-brown spiky hair that reflects her hyperactive character and high energy level. Her eyes are amber, a color that is also fiery. That's why her clothes have flaming designs on them too, as well as drawing a fiery dragon in the background. I like the colors I used for the dragon because it includes pale yellow, amber, vermillion, scarlet and blue. The blue was added because I thought it would give the dragon more color variation and besides, really hot flames are blue. I created the dragon to be either made of fire, in the sense that she created the dragon out of her fire elemental powers, or it could be her familiar of sorts. As for her clothes, its half traditional half modern, because of the fan fiction I created her in. The fan fiction is based on a manga/anime that has a half traditional half modern setting with characters that have elemental powers. Finally, the lollipop in her her hand shows her sweet tooth. She loves candy of any kind and has a childish personality. She is mostly mischievous and loves getting into trouble too. But her tantrums and anger fits are scary. I guess that's all I have about this character I've created... There's another drawing of her below, done this year:

The color scheme this time is slightly different, since I decided that using a yellow, orange and red scheme would be more suitable for her clothes instead of purple. Her hair color is also slightly different, for aforementioned reason. Her jacket is longer than before, her sleeves are long and folded up, her pants are longer too. She isn't wearing a scarf either, and the clothes are more traditional/oriental than before. This is because I drew this picture for another fan fiction, also an animation but not anime. The character is the same, but included in a different setting (?) Like the first version, she's a fighter. Her weapons are usually small long-ranged types, such as senbon needles and shurikens. That's what's in the small pouches strung on her belt and in the second version, the small slots on the inside of her jacket. Oh, and before I forget, her name is Ryuusei Akirai, which means Shooting-star Autumn-lightning in jap. And I think I prefer the second version I drew better than the first.

Pineapple Invasion I

Okay, so I know I've been stalling, and I shouldn't stall any more... I hope nobody minds that I didn't photoshop my art much cuz I'm no good at digital art. Besides, I think I prefer to preserve these pineapples in their original form, like how they look like on my pineapple aep notebook, since that's how I remember them as and would like to remember them as (memories~). The notebook was originally meant for my aep (Art Elective Program) notes, but I only wrote my notes on one side of the paper, so I began to doodle on the other side of the paper. I can only tell when I started the series by checking my notes... and since my first notes were about Expressionism, which was what we learnt in sec2, I must have began my series around then. There are 40 pages of pineapple drawings in total, with 300 pineapple drawings. I won't be showing all the pages though, maybe just 30+ pages, and I'll be separating this into 7 posts, which each post showing around 4 to 5 pages of pineapples.

Enough with the babbling. Here's the first page:

Though the pineapples drawn here aren't very nice, but hey, I just started. And I'm showing this page cuz I think I should show how my very first pineapples looked like and how the whole series started. The number written beside the pineapples can be kind of misleading... it doesn't show the order in which the pineapples were drawn--the numbers are just for me to keep track of the pineapples I've drawn. The first pineapple depicted is, well, a normal pineapple, albeit simplified and cartoon-ified. Most of my pineapples are like that--the only features that define them as a pineapple are the round-ish shape of the pineapple's body, the spiky leaves on top and the criss-cross lines/pattern that represent the spiky "scaled"-skin of a pineapple. The themes of the other pineapples are as follows: Shot by an arrow (with juice spurting out like blood); Drowning; Sliced (for eating); Roasted over a flame; Cycling/Fleeing; Vampire Pineapple; =_=||| Pineapple; Grim Reaper Pineapple; Giant Pineapple. I guess I could have edited those pineapple drawings of mine, but I wanted to preserve how awful they were when I first started drawing them (so that I can point at them at a later date and laugh). Lolz.

'Kay, so here's the next page:

So the pineapples have gotten more gruesome... I know. The first pineapple depicted there (no. 66) is simply about a pineapple splitting its skin into half. Inspirations: Evil clowns. That pineapple was the one that really got me into continuing the pineapple drawings and in the end, turning it into a series. This isn't actually the original. The original was much nicer (my originals are always nicer... I can't seem to draw a perfect copy of anything) but it was drawn on the whiteboard and had to be erased later... so I drew a copy of it into my pineapple notebook later. After having drawn it on the whiteboard, some of my classmates began to leave comments beside it (we're an aep class, in case you haven't realized that by now) and most of them seemed to like the pineapple... so I drew some more. The themes of the other pineapples are: Partial-disembowelment/decapitation; Dissolving; Soul-fly-away-shock; Rotten pineapple; Devil; Angel; Bloody cactus; Disgust; Carnivore; Shattering-self. That last shattering pineapple is one that I like a lot, mainly beside this was my first (and last) time that I was able to draw out such an effect nicely. As for what any of these pineapples mean, well, I'll leave them to your interpretation, cuz I never really meant them to mean anything.

This is the third page in the notebook:

The first pineapple depicted here was inspired by a typical anime flowers-appearing-out-of-nowhere-in-the-background scene that usually takes place when the character is in a really gay (definition: cheerful, merry, "high") mood. The next few are mostly inspired by natural stuff. The themes are: Rainy day; Pineapples everywhere; Hot springs; Eskimo; Night; Music; Sunburnt; Tornado/Hurricane; Lightning strike; Um.... I think no. 65 should be... tweeting? Like "fishing"? But "fishing" for birds that leave behind text as they fly past? yeah... one of the few pineapples that has a proper meaning behind its drawing. 

Moving on to the fourth page... also the second-last page for this post:

The first drawing depicts a pineapple using a sparkler (you know, the long colorful stick you light up with a flame and it starts shooting out sparks like a mini firework?) to um... that's a snail by the way. The drawing was inspired by the time when my cousins and I were celebrating the Mid-Autumn Fest and we found out that if one holds a sparkler very near a snail, first, it'd retreat back into its shell, then the slimy thing in its shell i.e. the snail will start to bubble and uh... yeah. And the shell will start to form grey-white stuff that could be ashes and... I shall not say anymore about killing/torturing innocent creatures. The next few pineapple themes are: Stuck in time (hourglass) (YES!!! another pineapple drawing with a proper meaning behind it!!); Accidents; The Scream (by Munch): pineapple version; Food chain; Wanderer Above the Mist (by Friedrich): pineapple version; La Musique (by Matisse): pineapple version. No. 26, no. 28 and no. 29, as you can see, are inspired by some of the artworks I learnt about during aep. 

Now, the last (but not least) page for this post:

As you can see, most of these pineapples have been inspired by the school stuff. The first pineapple was inspired by physics. P.E. stands for Potential Energy and K.E. stands for Kinetic Energy. If you want to continue digging into the meaning behind this pineapple drawing, well, look at what its doing and you can see how that links to my idea of physics at that time: "suicide". Haha. And the next pineapple was inspired by the idea I picked up from the net about paintings coming to life. And there's the barcode pineapple. And the pineapple that got sucked into the stuff it was writing. The last pineapple drawing was inspired by chemistry. And yes, both my pineapples AND Chemistry are EVIL.

Hm. That's all for now... Will post another few pages up soon... Do not ask me to define 'soon'.

BeiJing Halloween

Two pictures I took in BeiJing, both were taken in the garden of the Forbidden City. The first pic is of a tree trunk. The cool thing is that it looks like there's a mutant animal head sticking out of the tree trunk cuz the bark in there is of a different color than the rest of the tree trunk. A few of my friends (and family) got a fright when I showed them this pic. This interest I have for this particular picture may be the reason why I like to draw things that have morbid stuff (like skulls) merged with it.

The next pic depicts a skeletal tree. because I didn't use flash, the tree appeared black against the sky and I like the contrast. I can almost imagine a black hand clawing at the sky with many twisted fingers... or the whomping willow from Harry Potter. Come to think of it, I wonder why this tree is so bare and has a lightning-struck look....

BeiJing doodles

Just to let you know, the artworks I post up here aren't in chronological order. Okay, so the next few pics are of the stuff I drew during my GCP trip in BeiJing. The first four are designs my roommate, Kai Li requested me to make. The first one was originally something I drew without any intention for anything (except maybe alleviate my boredom) but halfway through, when i was asking my friend what else should I add to the cluster of random little things that I was drawing, she said "Hoya" which was the name of some k-pop guy she's crazy about, so i added his korean name in it. In his design, you can mostly see items I would relate to water or bubbles or round-ish stuff, such as a coconut tree, a whale, a shark, a scorpion (which taste like ebi tempura), an eye, a turtle, octopus et cetera.

The second one was done with the Alice in Wonderland theme in mind, so you can see the Cheshire cat in the middle, circled by the dormouse, red queen, tweedledum&dee, white rabbit with his giant pocketwatch, mad hatter, Alice herself with her face colored in black, and a unicorn (which is a character from the Alice in Wonderland book written by Lewis Carrol--not the one by Disney) Then, in her usual fashion, Kai Li pops in and insists I do something for "L"(that's his nickname, I forgot what his Korean name is)(oh and this is another K-pop guy from the same band as Hoya and is the obsession of another friend of mine) since I 'did something for Hoya'. So the block and square background of the Alice in Wonderland icon (i honestly do not know what you call this sort of thing) was inspired by doors, books, Cubism (I can't believe I'm saying this) and the letter L.

The third one was specially requested by Kai Li. She told me to do something for Jill (another friend crazy over the same k-pop band, particularly someone named... darn it. i can't remember what's he called) and so I made a design for her with the korean name of Jill's 'idol' (which i do not remember and cannot read cuz its korean) in the middle and added a ball labelled 'netball' in one corner cuz Jill's a netballer.

The fourth one is the last of the unintentional k-pop series (how on earth did my lovely innocent designs end up with k-pop??) and was designed for Kai Li (again) who wanted a logo (finally, I found the right word to describe these!) for that particular K-pop band (which I have no care for... what I care for is the design) called 'Infinite'. So I wrote the korean words approximately in the middle in bold, I drew their 'infinite' sign behind the words and added my usual little elements around it, using squares, blocks, the outline of a cog/wheel/gear, the four suits (heart, diamond, clover, spade) of poker cards, a fish-like design that I took from henna drawing and the erratic heartbeat lines that form the word 'Infinite Ftw'. This one was done on a black sheet of paper with a white pen.

The last one was 'a tribute to Domo'. Domo is a... brown thing with two round blank eyes, square-ish body, stumpy limbs and a giant mouth with sharp teeth. It's something like Hello Kitty in the sense that it is becoming an increasingly common design you can see on pencil cases, wallets, bags et cetera. Anyhow, like most of my other logos, this one is also drawn with a rough circular 'outline'. This particular design isn't quite asa satisfactory as the previous few though. I didn't do any planning (spontaneous works better for me) beforehand (though I should have done a rough sketch instead of using the pen straightaway I guess) so I think the 'composition' is a bit unbalanced. Ah well, at least it seems to have influenced my dear friend Kai Li into going crazy about Domo.

Death of Caesar

Okay, so this is my first post... don't really know what to say... I think I shall start with the background of my blog title. I call it Caesar Salad cuz it was inspired by Julius Caesar and I don't know if you can see it clearly, but there are like humans er... forming the blood/cap of the toadstool (toadstools are poisonous by the way) and the stalk of the fungi has skulls merged with it. A bit morbid, but you know me... loves sadistic pineapples but before pineapples, i was crazy over mushrooms and toadstools don't ask me why. I did this last year and I intended it to look creepier... don't know if I succeeded in that aspect. The lemon slices, cherry tomatoes, and random vegetables are just there as food deco, and to contribute to the 'salad'... the main subject is, of course, the toadstool. I've always imagined this kind of poisonous mushrooms as red and white. The red was convenient as not only does it say: warning! I am poisonous and not to be eaten! but it's also the color of blood (albeit a bit too bright red for real blood but i thought this shade of red would stand out more so...) As for the stalk, I didn't exactly color it white cuz white is a bit too plain and I don't think the stalks of real mushrooms and toadstools are really white anyways, so I used beige and conveniently added skulls (which are also things that are white-ish in color) to it. I used the melting wax of candles as reference for this part.  Did I mention the toadstool is black/hollow inside and is purposely colored to make it look half rotten? And the part where the knife (yes, its a knife, although apparently, after what some people said about this artwork, it looks like a spoon. Does it??) cuts through the cap of the mushroom was inspired by all things slimy, gooey and gruesome. The rotten part of the fungi was also made to have a vein/blood vessel/root/parasitic look. You can imagine my delight when I was told we were going to dissect a pig's heart later in the year. This was done using color pencils, a black, a red and a white pen. oh well, the original's below (the pic above was slightly edited using... i forgot. Photoshop i think):