Xxapollinexx's wardrobe post

Xxapollinexx is a hime lolita, which means that when she really sets out to dress up she emerges from the house looking like the kind of fairy princess little girls dream of becoming when they grow up. Pastel-themed froth, sparkle, accessories such as pearls and fans and little tiaras, bouffant hair with a pile of floral corsages  if not wearing a Victorian satellite bonnet. I tried to bring some of that style of elegance when my friend asked me to design her a perfume bottle in her favourite colour, pink.

Here is the the (un)original sketch...


...which marinated in my brain for a week before I decided, no good, it needs to be something a bit more dynamic.



Mad colouring time!!


I associate Xxapollinexx with yellow because she has beautiful blonde hair, but this didn't seem right. Too genie-ish. Not 'her' at all.

But I was running out of time. I got up at 5.30p.m. yesterday morning; work lasted from 8.30a.m. to 7.30p.m. Throw in the deadly commute and you get a very tired person indeed. By that time it was already 11p.m.


Even now I'm second-guessing myself, wondering if it would have turned out better if I'd left the smoke at that psychadelic yellow. Too late.

As for the final product -- well, it's decent, but not perfect. I'm really not very proud of this banner and I would have liked the opportunity to redo it, but I have an assignment due tomorrow that I haven't started on yet, and the month is almost as good as over! But Xxapollinexx said she liked it. ;__; I'll do better next time, Xxapollinexx, I promise.

In the future I will not take on more than three commissions a month. This time I promised five people because I forgot that there was going to be a deadline to begin with, and it serves me right.

Now I have to make a poster for my service-learning group. It will not turn up here because it will look very boring. Help, assignment due tomorrow... damn you, wardrobe meme month.

OK, I go.


Edit: wardrobe here!

Darkxdelirium's wardrobe post, or my contribution at least

This one took barely half an hour to arrange -- sketch, colours, communication and all. Work is tiring me out dreadfully, so I can't spend as much time on these things any more without sacrificing the little time that I have left for sleep.

The furry animal featured here is my friend's toy alpaca.

I'll admit that I was careless with the colouring -- should have made sure that the face bits and the cream patch were properly aligned, but by then I was half-asleep. The ears were a total bitch.

On the other hand, this series of commissions has been EXCELLENT at forcing me to produce stuff. There's just one more left to complete before Wardrobe Month is over; I must hurry.

Darkxdelirium swears that she will deco this picture up with a gold frame and sparkles to make clear that her wardrobe is not a SWEET but a CLASSIC wardrobe, even though her fluff-friend is candy purple and she had asked for that pink background herself. She has promised me a file of the final product so that I can put it up here...

Edit 1: And here it is.



Egad!

Cyanfemme's wardrobe post

The third in the series of wardrobe post banners for this month, and I am SO behind time. Now that I have given up my room at the hostel it takes five hours every day for me to travel to the university and back -- from one end of the country to the other. I must finish the other two before January is over. Omg.

This is Cyanfemme's wardrobe post, conceived over the same pancake dinner from the previous post. The sketch was made slanted on the foolscap, so I had to toggle the alignment. Cyanfemme provided the pen, and Disfigureddream provided the paper.



I wanted this picture in elegant, neat colour blocks. The banner is supposed to reflect its wardrobe owner's style, after all. And the city in the background is because Cyanfemme is an architect (and will raise great castles like that).



Cyanfemme actually owns a hat like that, but I took creative license with it.



This is a convenient fantasy landscape with no basis whatsoever in observable fact.



And then I brightened it up with a bit of fierce sunset light. I was going to put blue fire on the horizon, but I thought that it might be a little too distracting.

I was going to leave 'Cyanfemme's Wardrobe' in that corner, but it didn't look like a stamp that way. So I settled for the delicious irony of marking down the value for her clothes (for Customs). Her entire wardrobe of chiffon, dupioni and damask now has a declared worth of $2.

Finished version!



And there it is. Cyanfemme hasn't put up her wardrobe yet because she's been waiting for me. I'll put the link here when it's up. Two more to go -- I'll be attempting to do them in completely different styles again, but the ideas have had a week to incubate, so the execution shouldn't take too long; famous last words.

Edit: now that I think about it, perhaps it's not such a good idea to have the bridge in the middle ground; taking it away would draw more attention to the figure in the front. I wish I'd thought of this earlier. I'll see if I've any time to experiment with taking it away.

Edit 2: There.


You can see the actual wardrobe here.

Disfiguredream's wardrobe post

It's wardrobe meme month on EGL. Following Carmidoll's request, I've taken on three other commissions for banners from my friends (two of them in exchange for cake, hoho. The others are too far away to send cake).

This request was for one of the characters in a comic I used to do, Bethony, wearing BABY's koitsukihime stained glass print. Bethony is what we call a 'shiro' (white) lolita when she's not being trampled, defenestrated, broken or otherwise bloodied into a 'guro' (gore) lolita, so putting her in a print dress was a little uncharacteristic, but I envisioned the stained glass angels rising out of her dress through the blood and I thought, 'OK'.

The comic still lives on the Internet here.

On the side is the colour palette I use for this character. All of my characters have a unique colour palette for their hair, skin, eyes, and highlights.

The background used below is the actual sketch I'd done after we'd finished our souffle pancakes. (She and I were at a cafe.)



Final version: grittier. I considered putting the height/weight prison thing in the background, but it wasn't as if Bethony had done anything wrong. 

Disfiguredream's actual wardrobe can be accessed at... well, I'll let her put it up first. There'll be more of these wardrobe banners to come, so check back in a week or two.

Edit: is this karma? When I made this art I had red stools and a plaster on my knee from walking into a storm drain. Fast-forward one day, and I'm down with a cold and a cut finger (sliced into myself trying to make ginger broth for the throat). I'm losing blood in all directions!! <_<

Edit 2: I've been attacked by bloodsucking insects. Oh, and the wardrobe is here.

Cultural stereotypes

Yesterday my friends were discussing cultural exports. It started when I saw a comment somewhere lamenting how Japan was only known in the US for weirdness, anime, and sushi (we're talking common consciousness here). And then we fell to talking about other countries.

So here is my little list. It's not exhaustive, and some of the cultural exports are really unfortunate. Please don't be offended. This is an exercise in stereotypes and deliberately intended to be unfair. But if I had to summarise a country in three words, and to name the first three things that came to my mind, politically correct or not...

US: sex, guns, stupidity. (alas! fifty years ago, it was freedom, rock'n'roll and atom bombs. A hundred years ago it was speed, money, and good old-town generosity. whatever happened??)
UK: tea, the Queen, Benedict Cumberbatch.
Singapore: Singlish, muggers, prudery. (yup, that's my country over here. We're a sorry bunch. For those who don't know, 'muggers' are children who study very hard and have no life.)
Taiwan: fried street food, TV soaps, hilarious politics
China: Chairman Mao, cheap stuff, poisoned milk powder (that one really made a huge impression on me...)
India: rape, rape, ... rape. 

Rape is the new curry. I debated putting 'rape apologists' in but they were a part of rape, so -- well, you see India's receiving a lot of bad press right now. I wanted to explore India last year and partake of its magnificent history, culture, culinary environment and landscapes but now I wouldn't fly over it at an altitude of 2000ft in case I caught their cooties. It's for the same reason that I'll never buy milk powder from China. This is what publicity can do: tea here is being associated with the UK and no longer with China, where it rightfully belongs. And this is the UK which once owned 1/4 of the globe and was the world's single largest exporter of slaves, and which also endured the Blitz with resolution and courage, that now appears relatively harmless.

Of course the US contains many sympathetic, intelligent, and unarmed people who may also just happen to be celibate, and Singapore is trying its best to wipe out Singlish while engaging in some hilarious politics of their own. And I'm sure there're men in India who've never raped a thing. It's up to these people to change what their countries are viewed for... even though I really like Singlish and don't want the hilarious politics to stay.

Now that I'm done offending everyone, I'll put up some artwork. In 12 hours. Smell ya later.

Carmidoll's wardrobe post

I've found that a good way of making myself do art is to have people ask these favours of me. So if you are reasonably good friends and want something done, just ask (and treat me to cake!)

The request was for something with a gingerbread house in it. This friend lives in a cold, cold place with lots of snow, and the outfit she's wearing in this picture is something I once saw in her photos on Facebook! She likes pink, too, so I put lots of that in.




Pink! The colour was a sort of template for what I wanted, but I knew from the start that the background had to be fibrous and watercoloury. It was just one of those things. Fortunately, I had some stock that fit the bill just right. Cut, paste, colour adjustment, voila. Oh, and the gingerbread house.



The lolipop trees were in the plan all along. I was worried that the picture would get overcrowded afterwards, but I compared these two versions and found that I preferred having the them in.



At this point, I was almost tempted to just add snow and stop, but something seemed missing. There is no art without perfectionism, so I pushed on.

Final version:



The background reminds me of watermelon. I love watermelon.

This is one of the few times that something has turned out almost exactly as I'd imagined it in my head. I'm getting better at using textures, too. I need to do more art!!

The actual wardrobe is here. Have a peek. Carmidoll's got great taste in clothes.

A little night music

I've been thinking that I might have the skills to finally colour these sketches -- I must have done them four years ago, because I distinctly remember them being doodled on my Political Science notes. I'll try that out perhaps a little bit later.


Intended colour scheme: red, black, parchment colours, gold.


Intended colour scheme: blue, fawn, silver, foliage green with yellow notes

Note: just discovered that I in my former wisdom had actually DATED the sketches. They were from November 2009! Time flies!!