Sweetening Life with Digital Art

It’s been many years since I’ve done any form of artwork using graphics software like Photoshop and Illustrator. It was such a long time that I stopped that I even forgot that I even had a devArt and an unused Pixiv account that I signed up for some 2-3 years ago. I have been doing some doodling and adult coloring books on the side, and somehow, my dormant artistic inspiration of some 4 years have finally been awakened. I’m not talking about on a whim, that trigger came when I stumbled upon some YouTube videos of digital art tutorials and discovered that my current versions of Adobe software have implemented a lot of very useful features that I wasn’t even aware of existing. I watched more videos and then prompted to do some tests using some original photos I took from many years ago.

I’ve always thought that taking photographs and just photography in general is more than enough for someone to call them art. I mean photography is a form of art in a way too, but still different from traditional pen and paper/canvas art. And then, you have the ability to create original art directly from using a robust graphics software like Photoshop and Illustrator. I’m subscribed to Adobe primarily because of web design and development. I’ve dabbled with digital art before, but I wasn’t skilled or motivated enough. And then, there are other factors too that made me abandon digital art and my devArt (of more than 10 years) for good… until today.

My new workspace & sample digital art

The weekend before Thanksgiving, I stumbled upon the XP-PEN ¹ website and they were having their early Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale. I saw a Holiday Edition of the Artist Pro 15.6 graphic tablet ² that was less than $300 (original price – about $500) and at that time, I realized that I can actually afford it. I decided to order and the tablet arrived to me some 2 days later. That was also free shipping.

I also discovered the Actions feature in Photoshop, in which it records all your steps in creating at least the basis of your art. I tried that out and since then, I started recording some action files and just play them, so I won’t have to spend hours just building the art’s base. With the Artist Pro tablet, actions, and YouTube tutorials, I shed a tear when I finally made some “masterpieces” out of original photographs and even with photos of my favorite J-Pop idols and artists.

There are more on my devArt and Pixiv, but here are a few samples: Slap Face 2, [MADKID] YUKI x Hysteric Glamour, ³ [PRODUCE 101 JAPAN] Ruki Shiroiwa

I still want to learn and practice character art, especially with anime/manga style character art. I want to create my own original characters eventually, and also, maybe use some of my original artwork for selling some merchandise, like t-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc. I still don’t know how I’m going to do it just yet. This is more of a side job, and I’m still loving web development and software development. I’m currently bootcamping big time my own way, so hopefully while I’m still bootcamping, that I’d be able to get started in selling some items featuring my artwork to support my bootcamping and everything else at home.

Soon, I’m going to make a digital art of my dad’s portrait. I haven’t chosen the right portrait yet, but I hopefully, I’d be able to do this just to honor him. I think my mom and my family would really appreciate it.

It’s almost Christmas

Ever since my father’s death, many of us pretty much lost the usual Christmas spirit. It’s only my mom and I living at home and we’re both short people, so we can’t put up and go all out with the outdoor Christmas lights, just like how Dad used to put them up every year. My brother decided he would take Dad’s role as being the man of the house, but he also has a family to take care of, namely his baby son, so we decided not to bother with the Christmas lights anymore. We were able to put up Christmas wreaths at our doors and the interior. We also decided not to put up a Christmas tree for safety reasons. ⁴

We don’t know who’s going to host our family Christmas party yet. We don’t know what our plans are for Christmas except shopping for gifts.

Funny thing is, this is probably going to be my last blog post for 2019. I’m not really up to doing blog post recaps of the year because there were so many things that happened. I don’t like looking back because it’s too painful to think about it, and then I’d end up rambling and rambling. But somehow, thinking about the events back then, I feel that I may have a brighter 2020 than I thought.

They say that things happen for a reason. Months after my father passed away, I was able to see MADKID live at the Crunchyroll Expo. I also started watching PRODUCE 101 JAPAN new idol survival show first premiered in Japan, brought to them by the original Korean survival show series. Lots of nasty incidents happened in the K-Pop industry, but it seems that J-Pop is also shining bright, little by little.

Next year, maybe, I’ll probably change the theme of this blog. To be honest, I’m getting a bit lazy with building UIs and then creating themes out of them. I just want everything as minimal as possible.

This is it for the month of December 2019, maybe. Maybe I’ll write more before the end of the year, who knows. But, this is it.

Till next time!

1. Japanese graphic tablet company, close rival to WACOM, known for their graphic tablets as well, and is also one of Japan’s largest companies too…
2. similar to the famous WACOM Cintiq)
3. YUKI of MADKID actually saw me tweet my fan art of him and he retweeted it, very impressed and happy. I still have the screenshot of his tweet. It’s posted in my MADKID Instagram.
4. Baby nephew Robbie is a high-speed crawler and has sharp eyes with even the most microscopic of things. What he sees, he touches, grabs, and eats. The wreaths are more than enough.