Before Opening

What does an artist do when they're in the hospital on a limited diet? Dream about going out to eat, then grab a scrap of paper and draw it out. Well, that's what I did for the past few days after my surgery to remove an organ. But luckily I did have the sense to bring my sketch book and pencils with me. This week's theme of Cafes actually got me to look forward to when I was released, as what type of images I wanted to do.
Today, we start with the black and white sketch of what I thought a cafe may look like. Of course, I featured desserts on the tables, since all that I could think about while drinking tea was "How nice it would be to have a treat with this cup of tea?" This picture was also a chance to do a room setting that I haven't done in black and white for some time. Look forward to tomorrow's project.

Yami Yugi

 This wasn't a hard costume to make. Most of it consisted of a few finds at Value Village that needed some modifications. I did have to make the wig, choker and the Millennium puzzle.
For the puzzle, I first craved a piece of building foam into the basic shape. Then I looked at several screenshots of the Yu-Gi-Oh! series in order to find all the details of the puzzle. Those details, I simply pressed in, using the end of a pencil. The 'Eye of Horus', I created by drawing it out with hot glue. Then I dug out a hole from the top of the puzzle in order to counter-sink a large ring, that was connected to a large chain. I hot glued the ring in place, then covered the connection with masking tape. Once the puzzle was assembled, I covered it with a few coats of gold paint.
The wig was just as tricky. I first sewed a cap and placed it on a styrofoam head. Then I took 5 chopsticks to create the structure for the spikes. Then I took strips of newspaper and glued them in place to fill out the form. Then I painted the form black, and hot glued black and red pieces of wool. For the yellow bangs, I hot glued yellow pieces of wool on a smooth piece of metal. This allowed me to form the wool into the shape that I wanted and easily detach the wool from the metal cleanly. Then it was just simply hot glue them in place.
For conventions, I also add on my duel disk toy and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards to complete the look. After not wearing this costume for a few years, I decided to bring it out for a one day event and I was swamped with people asking for pictures with the character. Always great to have a well known character costume once in a while.

Family Game Night

One favourite memory that I have connected to games is when my family would get together for a card game of Fustration. I wanted to create a black and white picture showcasing this memory, especially  when one of us would catch the rest of the family with full hands.

Yami no Game

This Photoshop project was inspired by episode 163 of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series. Some years back, my friend and I tried to recreate the duel of that episode, while at an anime convention, since she was dressed as Yugi and I was dressed as Yami. On their own, the pictures from that day were not that great, but add in drawings of the monsters, masking and special effects, I was able to finally create the kind of image that both my friend and I wanted. This project took about 6 images and about 6 hours to complete.

Game Box

The main things you'll need for this project is:

a metal box
48 small round magnets
decorative and/ or coloured duct tape
a print-out of a chess board
black and white/silver sharpies

*Majority of the items were purchased from Michaels craft store* www.michaels.com/

First thing that I did was make up a chess board using my drawing program, but can easily do a search on the internet. In either case, the image has to be scaled to fit the size of your lid for the metal box. The lid will become a playing surface for chess or checkers. I held the chess board on with 4 magnets as I cut pieces of tape to fit around the lid. I chose the duct tape for the lid since it was a plain red and act as a frame around the board. Then I used the decorative tape as a border around the box. You can used any pattern   that you want. I found a tape that had different typefaces of the letter 'L', which I thought worked well with my name. Next I laid out the magnets on the board and began painting the tops of half of them with the silver sharpie. These become your chess and checker pieces. Using the same sharpie I wrote the first and last letter on the 8 main black chess pieces. Then I did the same one the silver ones, only with the black sharpie. With that done, all I had to do was fill my new game box with a variety of game pieces; 2 packs of playing cards, dice, a puzzle book, note book and pen (for keeping score during complicated games), and scans of games that I found in the Yu-Gi-Oh manga series. I'll include a few in this post, but for the other games, it's best to check out the series for yourself.

Duel

Ah, a new week starts here on my blog and this week we're looking at games. For this coloured sketch, I decided to have two games of strategy as mirror images of each other. The upside-down one is a game that's been played for centuries, kind of looking down on a modern day game.  The reason for the red in a basically black and white picture, is because the term 'duel' was often refer to a match where the loser would lose their life. In history, there has been many games that had such bloody ends. The games mainly played today are much more tame in some aspects, where the only life lost is a virtual one.

Chiblossom, the Rose Elf

Chiblossom has been one of my more fanciful characters to design and actually construct. I first started by constructing the base dress, by making the skirt selection out of two shades of pink bed sheets attached to a halter top made out swim suit lining. Over the base dress, I sewed on a layer of pink organza that parted in the center and a fluffy pink scarf; both at the bust line. Then I made a detachable decoration for the center of the bust out of a Christmas snowflake and 3 pieces of red cord. At the other end of each cord, I attached a fake rose. I took couple more fluffy pink scarves and made a couple of bracelets and a choker necklace. Each of these got a fake rose and some red cord. The red cord of each bracelet was long enough to clip onto the elf ears; that I made out of craft foam and attached to a metal headband. I chose a white wig to top off costume, since it went with the gradation that was happening with the whole costume, and really made the red cord stand out as the accent colour and vertical lines that I wanted. For the chilly night festival I also wore a white shawl.  In the end, the actual costume turned out differently from my initial sketch. But I don't mind, it's still a nice costume to have. 

 

Avalon Castle

A while back, I created a lantern for the lantern festival in Victoria, BC. That year, my friends and I decided to do a fairy theme, complete with accompanying costumes. But since I was the one who got everyone involved in the festival, they left the design of the lantern to me. The one condition was that it had to be a castle to house the fairies. I researched many designs of castles, but found that all of them were not organic enough to suit a fairy realm. While watching an anime series, I became inspired by one of the building in the background. Combing the look of that building with elements of a flower, I came up with the lantern's design. The lantern was easy to construct, by using a couple of 2 litres, small pop bottles and cardboard for the structure, and the petals were cut from scraps of organza fabric. The whole thing was lit with LED lights.

As for the drawing above, I drew out the lines on paper, scanned it in, then proceeded to colour it in Photoshop (since I wanted the glow and varied colours that I can't achieve by using pencil crayons). Of course, I simplified the design of the castle just for the drawing.

Elven Magic

Here's another magic inspired Photoshop image. I decided to create an image of an elf releasing her magic. I first started by creating the background by using a picture of a rose bush overlaid upon a deep purple. Then I took a picture of myself and blurred it a bit. Then I laid in drawings of butterflies and finished it off with the mist and sparkles. There is about 10 layers and most have some sort of effect on them. It took me about 6 hours to complete this picture.

Rose Tiara

 What you'll need for this project is:

craft lace
braided ribbon
a fake rose
jewels (tones of pinks and purples)
hot glue gun with glue sticks
pins
scissors
styrofoam head

Most of these items you can get at a craft store like Micheals, but I did find the head at Value Village when their Halloween stock comes out.

 First thing I did was wrap the craft lace around the styrofoam head, pinning it in place. Then I cut off the excess lace.

While the lace was pinned in place, I hot glued the braided ribbon along the top of the lace, removing the pins as I went.

Next, I cut off three of the leaves from the fake rose. I glued those in a "T" formation at the front of the tiara. Then I cut off the head of the rose and glued it on top of the leaves. I cut off the last two leaves and glued those on top of the rose head, hiding the base of rose head.

Lastly, I adorned the lace and the rose with jewels that where glued into place.

By Rose Gate

This was another interesting sketch to do. I wanted to capture an archway that I had seen on one of my walks, only using black and white. The way the roses just seem to wrap themselves beautifully around this arch and I tried my best to capture how they looked. The character with them is an elf that I created, called Chiblossom. Because of the roses in her jewelery and the tones of pink used in the costume, my friends called her the Rose Elf. I decided to capture her just before she was about to touch a rose in a dream-like state and someone spoke to her.

Kaito Kid costume.

 Well, the end of the week for illusions has with this week's costume, the illustrate gentleman thief, Kaito Kid. There was certainly more to do with this costume, though I did try to search for all the pieces at various thift shops. In the end I did have to make a few parts from scratch. Those parts were the jacket, the cape, monocle and of course, the top hat. None of the parts were easy to make, but the top hat took the most effort to figure out. I couldn't even find clues on construction of top hat via the internet. So, it took some trial and error before I had a hat that fit and was just the right look. But thanks to that, I was able to create the tutorial on the trick hat. The other piece that took a bit of time to construct was the monocle. I constructed it, by taking a large key ring as the base, then changed out the chain for a longer one. At the other end of the chain, I crafted the lucky charm by craving and painting a piece of plexiglass. Then I cut out a nose bridge out of craft foam, hot glued it to the key ring and wrapped the nose bridge and key ring with tape. Part way with the taping, I attached a thick nylon thread that would wrap around my head and hold the monocle in place. The thread would be hidden under the wig, allowing no one to really know how the monocle stayed in place.  Since it's first construction, I have only made minor changes to the costume. I've remade the jacket, adjusting its length to a bit longer, made the cape detachable and shorten the length of the chain on the monocle.  In the second year of portraying Kaito Kid, I've seen more fans of Detective Conan come up to me and express their thanks for being one of the few cosplayers to portray any character from the series. The thanks are nice to receive, but I just love portraying this mischievous character.

Illusionist's Tools

Today, I decided to photograph some of the tools that magicians may use during their shows as part of this week's photo collection. Since I chose the hat from my Kaito Kid costume to be among the staples of this collection, I decided to use a black spandex and black bristol board as the background materials to really make the objects pop, especially the cards and the hat. Most of the items can be easily identified, but the coins have a special connection to Kaito Kid. That connection is that they are both from Japan. The coins are 1, 10 and 100 yen pieces which I was given to by Japanese tourists and are a small part of the foreign currencies I have collected, thanks to tourists. There is also one playing card that I had purposely placed on top of the hat,also has a connection to Kid. The Ace of Spades also known as the Ace of Swords, represents the start of a journey or battle as well as the champion of duels. And since Kid is always looking forward to being the victor in his mental duels against Kudo Shinichi (the protagonist of Detective Conan), it makes the perfect card to be on top of Kid's hat.

Face Illusion

To come up with the black and white sketch for this week, I decided to look up various black and white picture illusions. A number of them entailed one scene, but adjusting your perspective a bit, you saw something different. I found a few dealing with a person in a setting, but upon a second look, the whole picture also formed a face. I like that idea and took the character for this week, Kaito Kid as the central figure that would also help form the nose and mouth of the face. It was a lot of fun researching and creating this illusion.

Magic of Kaito Kid

In this week’s theme is the art of illusion and those known magicians. One fictional magician uses his craft in order to steal the precious jewels all over Japan. In order to capture the feeling of magic used by the “Magician in the Moonlight”, better known by Detective Conan fans as Kaito Kid, I had to employ a number of special effects and take full advantage of Photoshop. Though I couldn’t have done it without the help of Tempest photo, who ran the photo booth at Vancouver’s Cos & Effect and captured such great shots of me dressed as Kaito Kid. This image just shows that with some imagination and the right mix of tools, the art of illusion is not far away.

# of layers = 24

# of pictures = 8 (2 pics of birds, used twice)

# of special effects = 20

# of hours spent = 6

Trick Hat

This hat has a nice place to pull stuff from, but no one will see from where you pulled it from. And best of all, the hat is made to fit your head. I first did the basic part of this hat because I couldn’t find a white top hat for a costume that I was putting together.  I’m not going to lie, it will take a bit of math to build this hat. Items that you will need is:

2 sheets of Craft foam

Bristol board or Cardboard

fabric (optional)

ribbon

tape measure

ruler

pencil & paper

calculator

mirror

math compass

hot glue gun with glue sticks

scissors or an exacto knife

The first thing to do find out the circumference of your head. Take the tape measure and wrap it around your head. The number closest to the end of the tape measure when it reaches back around your head, is your head’s circumference. Best to write down this number and other measurements that you’ll be taking. It will make things easier later on.  Next is to figure out how big of a brim for your hat that you want. Place the end of the tape measure to your forehead and pull the rest out from you head. Looking in a mirror side ways, will help you decide how big of a brim that you want. The final measurement will help you figure out how tall of a hat you want. Place the end of the tape measure on the top of your head and stretch the tape up until you reach the desired height.

Now it’s time for that bit of math. Take the following formula to figure out your head’s radius. This will help you in creating the interior of the hat.

(your head’s circumference ÷ 3.14) ÷ 2 = your head’s radius

The following pictures will help you understand how the measurements will be used.

Radius + extra height = height of hat’s main body

circumference = width of hat’s main body

radius = hat’s top and interior top

radius + extra width = outer edge of brim

Cut out a rectangle of craft foam using the height and width measurements that you just calculated. For me, it took 1 and a bit sheets of craft foam to create the body of my hat. Next cut out a circle with your head’s radius out of craft foam. Down the center, but not quite to either edge, slice a line in the foam. This will allow you to access the hidden compartment that you will create in the hat, but do to shadows in the hat, the audience won’t see it. Next cut out a circle that is the radius plus extra width from bristol board or cardboard for your brim. Remove a hole that is your head’s radius from the center of the brim, to make room for your head. The part that was removed from the brim, now becomes the top part of your hat. 

Take the rectangle and glue the short ends together, forming a tube. Place the tube over the brim, lining up one end of the tube with the interior edge of the brim and glue in place. Take the interior top and place it inside the tube, about an inch or two from the top of the hat and glue in place. Then glue in place your hat’s top. You now have a hidden compartment in your hat, between the interior top and the hat’s top. Now to finish your hat. You can choose to overlay the foam and board with fabric by just using the same measurements for the hat’s top, main body and brim. If you chose coloured foam and bristol board, you may only need to put on a hat band using your choice of ribbon. Have fun with this project.

The Picture that Could have Been

About a month ago, I decided to attend a new fashion and costume convention in Vancouver, BC. Since I was heading there straight after work, I didn't have time to run back to my apartment for things that I may have forgotten. It wasn't until after I got to the convention that I realized that I didn't have a camera. I was okay for most of the convention. There was just one point where I wished that I had a camera. I happened to meet a person dressed up as Hattori Heiji from the Detective Conan series and with me dressed as Kaito Kid from the same series, it would have been a great picture. That thought was still with me days later when I decided to draw out the picture that could have been. I hope in the future that I meet other costumers for that series.

Boy's School Uniform

The costume was inspired by boy's school uniform, most commonly seen Japanese comics and anime. It was one of the easiest costumes that I have made, since the only thing that I had to really make was the jacket. I took a black polar fleece jacket and opened the seams of it collar. Measuring the length of the collar, I cut a piece of white polar fleece about an inch wide and the length of the collar. I folded the white polar fleece length-wise and inserted it into the collar, leaving about 1/4 of an inch exposed. Then I re-sewed the seam. I did the same for each of the cuffs. Finally, I sewed on some golden buttons down the front of the jacket and one on each cuff. With the jacket done, all I had to do was pair it up with some black dress pants, black men's shoes and a short dark wig, and I'm ready for class in Japan.

School Day Shots

It's the first day back to school for most kids. Some will be taking these vehicles to school. Others will walk and some will be even driven by their parents.

I was lucky that in elementary school, I only lived about a couple blocks from the school. Though now I'm a little sad that the building that I went to school for 7 years, is no longer a school. Luckily, the building was classified as heritage and still stands. So, I can visit the location whenever I'm in Victoria.

High school was much more than the basic subjects. I was also quite involved in the arts, both visual and performance. I found this photo of my high school choir when we were acting a bit silly after a competition. I don't remember how well we did, but I do remember all the friends that I made because of that program.

There was actually quite a bit of damage to the photo when I found and only recently have I acquired the skills to repair the image. This is also the image that I used as the basis for the coloured sketch from yesterday. See if you can pick me out, though it shouldn't be to hard. My profile image and yesterday's sketch are clues to finding me in the choir.

I am truly thankful for the skills that I gained through those art programs in the early years, since they helped me become an artist and the handy person that I am today. I hope that kids today won't have to lose such programs do to cutbacks to school funding and gain those valuable experiences that will help them later in life.

What if my high school had uniforms?

I had gone to a public high school, which meant fashion and individuality reigned. Sometimes I had wished the school required uniforms, since I was often teased because my family couldn't afford the brand name items or non-handmade clothes. It was those thoughts that brought about this picture. I took a picture of my high school choir (since that was the only time that I whore anything like a uniform) and focused in on myself with a couple of girls. Then I figured out the elements of the boy's and the girl's uniforms would be like, making sure that I used my high school's actual colours. Finally I decided to recreate the courtyard that my high school used to have, as the background. Fashion and individuality was good for the arts, but they just interfered too much with the general learning. 

Meeting After School

Photoshop is a great tool to have when you can't capture the image you have in mind with one shot from a camera. I wanted an image of a high school boy and girl meeting after school, but since I lacked the models, I decided to use myself as the subjects and two costumes that I had. In creating this one image, I had to use 5 different pictures, along with a number of colour correction and special effect layers. The result turned out pretty good. Though this image is not as obvious that Photoshop was used, there are times where the right mix of pictures and technique can create some memorable images. 

Changeable Art Clock

Lately, I've been looking for a clock for my room, but could never find a design that I liked and knowing myself, I'd keep changing my mind on what design I liked over time. Then it hit me. Why don't I make a clock that has a changeable face.

So, I went to Micheals craft store, picked up an acrylic frame and clock mechanism, and started planning out my clock. Above, you can see the clock mechanism and the frame. I chose a frame that holds a standard letter size paper, 8 1/2" by 11"; allowing me to either draw out the clock face or print up a design from my computer. 

I next drilled a hole in the center of the frame and its cardboard backing, just big enough for the post that holds the clock hands, to pass through and mount the rest of the mechanism on the back of the frame.

Next, I drew up a template for the placement of the numbers. That way, whether I hand draw the clock face or use my computer, the placement will be the same. On the lines, I not only put the standard numerals, but Roman numerals and Kanji ones as well, for quick reference when designing the clock face. After that it was simple to draw up my first clock face using some favourite characters from an anime series that I'm currently watching. But as you can see from the top pictures, I'm not limited;  I can unscrew the clock hands, take off the acrylic and change out the clock face for a new one. It's a nice and simple idea for any creative mind.