Happy Halloween!

20th SketchCrawl - Vancouver

Joined the 20th SketchCrawl in Vancouver on Beautiful Granville island. Thought no one is coming until someone showed up a hour pass the meeting time.(I totally forgot about the "artist time" thing. One hour later than any set time for any gathering...) Got to meet quite a few friendly local artists.

Beside the first time experience with the crawl, is it also the first trial run for my home made paint box.(Just finished it this week.) The box works surprisingly well. Beside having to hold on to it until the water bottle is clipped on,(as a counter weight to prevent it from tipping over.) it works perfectly. The box came with the light bulbs purchased at Costco, and the spare parts and screws comes from Home depot for about $12. Compare to the wooden paint box that costs about $50 and up, this is definitely a good way to save money. Besides, most of the boxes are designed for oil painting and doesn't work perfectly with the setup I have with Acrylics. Now I can finally go everywhere with my Acrylics.(Everyone should make one!!!.)

After freezing my butt for 2.5 hours, most people had found their way inside the market for some warmth. I drank a cup the hot tea in my backpack and head over to the boats.(No way I am going inside, especially with the Saturday crowd in the Market.) When I got back around 2:00pm, I can hardly find anyone around.(although I knew they are still around some where on the island.) Too bad I couldn't meet up with the group at the end of the day, as I had to take off early. Maybe next time.

Fashion stuff

It is about time to start putting fashion stuff up. To the power of contour lines! Gouache with my new $8.00 watercolor brush. The new brush is a treat compare to my crappy 9 year old synthetic brush. However, the hair is starting to fall off as I push the brush around like a cheap labor with water bucket...(The nice Series 7 brush is still sealed in a air tight box somewhere in my brush box. Can't get myself to torture a brush that cost as much as 2 month worth of Walgreen cookie.)

Purpose of concept art

The purpose of the concept art is to save money and plan out the production at low cost. So, what is the point of spending a few K on fancy computer equipments to do the same thing that can be done with less than a few bucks?(pencil and paper) Even including a decent scanner and a dozen cups of good coffee, it would not even come close in cost. It just does not makes sense to spend more to save money, not to me anyway.

Anyway, here is a quick sketch done in Photoshop.(As you can see, it would be much cheaper doing it with pencil on paper instead.)