Charlene Chua, illustration news

Finally had some time yesterday to work on something not work related. Since God of War 3 is out today, I thought this was a suitable celebration.  Technically the image should be flipped to accommodate Kratos’ (the dude in the white circle) red tattoos on the other arm. I decided to make the color scheme orange instead of red, since  a lot of art based off the game features red and black. Orange seemed like something high energy which is something I wanted to emphasize over the violence and blood apparent in the game.

Top is final color work, bottom is the sketch on 8.5×11 paper.

Did this during a couple of Livestream sessions last week. I guess I forgot to post it up here.

If you missed the stream, you can see the recordings here. A good 2h of my computer screen and me rambling on about stuff! Hear my rant about Captain Planet!

Also, I just realized that the last year of my life practically disappeared from under me. At least, it seems that way when I look at my previous blog entries for 08 and 09.

Thanks to Adrian at Indeziner for including me in their Best female web designers list!

I decided that this year, I was going to send clients something to thank them for their business once projects were wrapped. I was thinking about doing a printed card, but the idea of sending the same card to a client more than once didn’t seem nice, and I didn’t want to have several different designs lying about the house. I was also thinking of a Print Gocco thing but it’s an expensive little thing that is also pretty tedious if you’re just making one card.

Then I remembered that they sold little DIY cards at the art store and thought ‘why don’t I just paint cards for them?’. It’s great – my clients will get a little piece of real art, and I don’t have to worry about anyone getting a repeat design. And I’ve been meaning to paint more anyway, so it’s a nice way to sneak in a bit of painting now and then!

So here are the first two I’ve done that will be going out soon. The inks were done with a brush pen, with watercolors for color.

My client, Angela Moore, at Santa Fe Reporter was featured in ‘Great covers from the Santa Fe Reporter‘ on the Society of Publication Designers website. Thanks to Angela for including my cover for the magazine in her feature – it feels great to be mentioned in the same breath as some of the other illustrators who have done covers for the magazine.

Please stop by Angela’s website to check out her design and art work!

Since Valentine’s Day and the Lunar Year of the Tiger fall on the same day this year, I decided to combine the two for my greeting. Best wishes for love, luck, wealth and life!

Did this for the band Ideosphere for their album Black Hole Transmissions. The image is based on the idea of the ideosphere (look it up on Wikipedia).  The album, which has some fantastic sounding nu-metal progressive rock licks, is currently available for download on Bandcamp.

Finally had a little time to do something of my own. So naturally, I render a character that belongs to someone else…

Ah, but Death is timeless, and appropriate for what I intended to do anyway. Pity there is no new Death Gallery book being published.

These were done for Best Health magazine for their New Year Resolutions article. From the top: taking up a dance class, getting a bra fitting (yes there is such a thing), and putting on sunscreen.

Had some free time to paint today so painted this. Sumi ink, drawing ink and white gouache.