Here's wishing everyone a prosperous year of the rat!

Fanart of my favourite gymleader in Pokemon Sword and Shield.

I asked my wife for suggestions on our next destination for the Family Travels series. "Australia" was her answer. We have some relatives and friends living there and it was also where we took our pre-wedding photos with the help of my brother. However, I was struggling to come out with an iconic representation of the place other than the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge. And then I remembered the Great Barrier Reef.

The recent attention on climate change has reminded us of how much we have damaged our planet. Reports have also surfaced on how the Great Barrier Reef was affected by this global phenomenon. I decided that I wanted to do a piece on one of the world's eight wonders.

When visualizing the image in my head, I was suddenly reminded of a piece of concept art I did for Mekazoo years ago. It involved the frog character diving into an underwater cave.

Some caricatures I did at the latter half of this year.

This is a custom Hearthstone card I made for a colleague who was leaving the organization. He was the only other person I knew IRL that was a Hearthstone fanatic so I decided to create a special artwork for him.

Keanu was everywhere this summer: John Wick 3, Netflix's Always Be My Maybe, Microsoft's E3 press conference and Cyberpunk 2077.

My wife and I love Stranger Things. In fact, we built the Lego Stranger Things set together for her birthday. The latest season saw the group of kids hitting their teenage years. And just like Harry Potter and his gang during book 4-7, I must say that the teenage hormones have made the main characters in Stranger Things really annoying. The only character that I have actually grown more fond of is Steve.

It's been a reeeaaally long time since I did a Hearthstone fanart. Truthfully, I have been meaning to quit Hearthstone for a while now. Having a kid meant that I had less time to play games. Because of that, I felt that I have to properly utilize that and clear some other games that are starting to pile up on my PS4 and Switch. Besides, I think that it is important for me to play a wider selection of games as an educator in this field. All these, coupled with the fact that the meta went really stale leading up to the recent expansion led me to drift away from Hearthstone.. ... Until the release of Battlegrounds.

I have tried League's auto battler but I prefect the simplicity and familiarity that came with Battlegrounds. It is just more fun for me to interact with characters and minions that I have come to love. 

I conceived the idea for this artwork one day while playing Battlegrounds. I had the vision of the other minions joining forces to buff a giant Amalgam, much like how the Power Rangers combine their zoids to form the Megazord.

Little did I know that the Nightmare Amalgam will be removed from the game the day I am done painting this. Good bye and thank you for letting me win games I wouldn't have otherwise won.

This has got to be the longest break between posts since the creation of this blog. Truth is, I have been caught up with parenting for the most part. And since I usually blog on the computer (yeah, I'm old school like that), I have been neglecting this site despite producing some new works of art. I'm going to do a little bit of a dump in the next couple of days so do watch this space. In the meantime, you should follow me on Instagram to get my latest.

In this post, I will share with you a new series I am creating called "Family Travels". It basically chronicles the fictitious adventures of my family in a cartoony style that I started exploring late last year. I look forward to continue more of these next year.

This post is long overdued.

I first posted this series of artwork created to coincide with the Lunar New Year (which took place early February this year) on my Instagram page but I didn't find the time to do a proper post here on the blog. So here it is, in its full glory:

Like many artists, I was super inspired after watching Spiderverse late last year. I really love the art direction of the movie and the way each shot is composed and set. While not a huge fan of chromatic aberration in general (the effect was used awfully in Netflix's Sabrina in my opinion), I appreciated the application in Spiderverse. The effect seemed appropriate for the frame-by-frame visual eye-candy overdose that the filmmakers were going for.

In creating the above fanart, I set to emulate the film's art style. Coincidentally, it aligned with the style I am currently exploring in my art as well (using blocks of solid hues with little to no blending). In preparation for the above piece, I also did simple sketches and paintings. I have never painted black people before and I took this opportunity to learn more about achieving that particular skin tone.

Did this LOL fanart as part of a in-class demo.

Rexxar rings in the festive cheer.

Created a tribute piece for Stan Lee. I emphasized on the lineart to mimic the comic book illustration style.

Some progress / close-up shots: