Happy winter cheer to everyone in the northern hemisphere! Also happy summer cheer for everyone in the southern hemisphere! It has been a while, I know. So instead of babbling, here are my updates:

I redesigned my site!
http://www.tatsu-ryu.com/

My links in the previous entries broke with the redesign, so here is one of the images again:


Now for all the art I've done since my last update:
( Pictures everywhere )

And here is a bad photo of what the sign looks like:

I don't think I have much further to go until I'm finished. My mom seems a little suspicious of the color of the bunny slippers (she wants bright pink, but in the dark objects with red in them tend to be less red), but she'll have to check to make sure on a computer rather than her phone.

Have I mentioned how much I dislike it when people use their fancy 2x3'' smart phone screens to look at art?

Well, I dislike it. How do you expect to see anything that wasn't made small on that?? YOU CAN'T. That's what. Use a damn computer! Okay, rant over.

This image's fate is most likely to be printed on a nice aluminum sign courtesy the company I work at, and hung on the basement door of my parents' house where my mom works (telecommuting).

The thing with working at a sign printing company is that I want to get some fancy signs made using my employee discount, but I don't really need any signs. Boo.

Updates:
- Got a job (Very exciting)
- My crowntail betta Kawa died a few weeks ago. For my birthday, my grandmother got me another one that I've named Blacksea. Blacksea is peacock blue and quite small still. I'll try to do a study of him soon.
- I'll probably be moving again soon to a better place.

I'm just starting to adjust to where I'm not too tired to draw (they've put me on a 5am-1pm schedule and I've had to adjust to a major, MAJOR shift in my sleep schedule. Technically I should be in bed by 8-8:30 if I want to get enough sleep). And so here is a product of my sleep-deprived brain!


(click for a larger version)

I don't think this self-portrait looks much like me. My mother recently requested a sketch of a female basement troll since that's what she now calls herself. Here's the sketch:


(click for a larger version)

I added a few things to it that aren't in this version (bunny slippers, female attributes). She apparently had a different idea of what a troll would look like. The only other type I'm familiar with are the ones that lurk under bridges and have full beards, so I'm not certain what she's picturing (unless she means those collectible toys).

Yes, I'm still alive.

Ah, life.

If it weren't for you, I would be arting a lot more.

My mom's reaction to this one was pretty funny. She usually looks at the pictures I send her using her Droid smartphone (damn all this fancy technology!), so you can imagine the detail she sometimes misses. Case in point, this speedpaint. I emailed it to her saying, "Should I put this in my online portfolio?" and her reply was something along the lines of, "Oh, don't put a photograph on there. It's not very good."

So apparently my paintings don't meet the standards of photography. Alas! Now what am I gonna do? And I sent her a much less refined version than the one you see here, too, so there were stray brush strokes all over the place that she missed. Luckily my sister doesn't do that sort of stuff (mostly because her phone is terrible), so she thought I should put it up there after refining it a bit (so it looks even more like a photograph up close!) without us having to go through the whole 'That's not a photo' discussion.

Thanks, Mom. I know I'm not quite good enough yet for my paintings to pass as photographs under close scrutiny, but you make me feel like I have potential to do so.

Here we are. Image dump!

These illustrations are taken from the ideas of various members of my class (there are four of us students) that they sketched out and explained. Some sketches were more detailed than others, and three ideas were written summaries. They are the theoretical projects we would have liked to do for the show but did not have the time/materials/budget/technology to build.








What we had for the show involved TV transmitters we had built, some radio projects, and three graduate students whose work was pretty awesome in comparison. One had a mirror set up that replaced your face with someone else's. The theme was Dark Side of the Rainbow, discussing Alice in Wonderland, Snow White, and Wizard of Oz coupled with the synced soundtracks of Pink Floyd and other artists. For a mostly undergraduate show, it was a pretty good turnout. My teacher described it as "Not sucky in the best possible way".

The originals of these turned out to be too small to take up a substantial amount of the wall I was assigned, so I had to scan them in at 400dpi and print them out at twice the size. They scaled up very well.

CS5 is certainly an interesting experience. No crazy things in this image, but I have been with CS1 for so long I don't even know where to look right now. I also have a much nicer monitor now. It's amazing how much the size (21.5 inches versus 14 inches) helps. I figured there wouldn't be much of a difference, but I was wrong.

So. I have pretty much graduated from UNM with a BFA in art studio at this point in time. I've been up to a lot of things, like...



...this massive cloth backdrop for my African dance class, which was painted by the African II class while I oversaw the labor and mixed a ton of blue paint for them to use. The concept I started out with was 'A backdrop made out of donated fabric that covers the whole stage and has huts people can go in and out of as they dance.' I...pretty much ended up with the same thing. The straw huts are based on village scenes from Ghana and dancers come out of the slit fabric for the dances. The bit behind the drummers (I am the second to last drummer on the left - aka the smallest one there) is a hill scene from Ghana as well. There was meant to be more, like animals and drums and other things, but we ran out of time. It's hard to get people to show up to paint. Not to mention I had also thought to include actual house constructions (made of cardboard) that would back up onto one or two of the paper huts so that people were actually coming out of those huts to dance, but we did not get to those. I kept the design nice and simple so it could be read from far away and not be too distracting from the dancers. It worked out very well despite the issues we had with hanging (the bamboo poles weren't my idea...could've been better executed but we were really running close to the deadline. And by deadline I mean we were working on it until thirty minutes after the performance had been scheduled to start, but that was not my fault), especially for a move where the dancers dropped and rolled off stage right under the huts. It also prevented the audience from seeing the wimps in African I sitting on the floor backstage looking miserable. A+ all around. Anyway.

I've also been writing papers. So many papers. I'm so tired of writing but here I am writing some more. I'll never stop.

I've also done a gallery show with my Broadcasting class. No pictures right now, but I contributed a series of illustrations of theoretical projects to hang on one wall, which apparently pushed me into A range from B-plus-dom. I should have just drawn my way through all of my classes. WHY are there no illustration courses at UNM?

Never mind, I think I know the answer.

So that is what I have managed to squeeze into the last few weeks, plus a graduation ceremony and a lengthy drive home with a bunch of my stuff. My graduation gift was a shiny new iMac and that's what I'm posting from. I've already managed to hit the screen while throwing the tennis ball for my dogs. Whoops. I can't help it, it's a big target! Ahem.

The last one is a set of postage stamp-sized watercolor sketches. They are incredibly fun to make even if you aren't that good at watercolors (or haven't practiced in a looong time). I recommend them!

So, how was your Thanksgiving? I had Thai food because my family doesn't like turkey or pumpkin dishes and my mom believes that deep down inside we all harbor a little hatred for turkey meat. Plus, all those Thanksgiving day documentaries have shown me all that I've held true about Thanksgiving is false. Our schools are teaching our children LIES. But I guess that's not much of a surprise after all.

Anyway, I'm done with early morning flights that force me to get up before six for now, but apparently I'm not done with grocery shopping quite yet. That's what I get for letting my supplies run low so nothing went bad while I was gone. Feeeeeeed meeeeeeeee...

Click to enormousize

Well, I think I've gotten a little better at painting. It would help if I got some practice with live observation, I'm sure.