Another piece for the Wall Street Journal. I have actually already forgotten what the article was abo0ut… my memory seems to be getting worse and worse. Oh well. The ‘fashion mags’ were done in Painter, which was quite interesting. And quick.

Woman with hat and handbag

Did this the other day. I love those big sun hats. The bag is based off a real one; I wanted to use a photo of the real bag to see how the art would look if composited but agent suggested against it.

Bride

I could have sworn I put this up previously. Apologies if that was the case. This was another test to develop the style. I guess I should say that the point is to develop something suitable for use in the beauty industry, not fashion itself. Ink and scanned textures in Photoshop.

I drew these some time ago off photos of Beyonce. They were prep work for a project I did recently. They’re mostly as I drew them, with a bit of a touchup to the front pose because I can never seem to draw a frontal face well.

Another fun, and quick, job for the great guys at the Journal! Did this for last weeks ‘Ask Teri’ column. The lady on the left is wearing a tight top (you know the kind – the super tight superhero ones where it’s actually fastened at the crotch), and the lady on the right is wearing a twofer. Being fashion-challenged, I had to Google up ‘twofers’. Thankfully the art director sent me some links to check out. Thanks a bunch – that was super helpful!

Original Sin clothing - Click to visit site

'Santa Muerte' printed on ladies tee

I’m so happy I can finally post this! This was probably my favorite project from last year. I was contacted by illustrator Godmachine to create a piece for his new clothing line called Original Sin. As the name implies, the brand is stylistically dark, macabre, goth and well, wicked awesome. They gave me more or less free reign to come up with something, and I proposed a design based on the Mexican ‘narco saint’ Santa Muerte or Saint Death.

They liked the idea, but the original sketch I did was too tame, so they asked me to make it darker, more bloody. Best changes I have ever been asked to do ever!

So, while it’s not really a match with anything else in my portfolio, I’m really happy with this since it’s been a good long time since I had reason to play around with themes and imagery I really like, like mythology, folklore, and good old’ skulls and goat horns. True, it’s not really high brow art. But I think it’s darn cool.

Here’s the art with the colors I proposed. The colors are different for the t-shirt version:

Santa Muerte for Original Sin clothing, Charlene Chua illustration

Did some tests a few weeks ago. Trying to develop some more fashion type illustration pieces in the ink style. Still working on it.

Wall Street Journal - Ask Teri / Charlene Chua illustration

I created an illustration for the Wall Street Journal’s Ask Teri column. The piece talks about winter boots, and how they are more practical footwear for the cold, wet winter weather in New York lately.

Here is the original sketch. The art director requested that the buildings be removed so as to let the girls come to the foreground. I think it was a good call!

By the way, I am making all the sketches blue in the hopes that they don’t show up in Google’s ‘clip art’ search. I don’t quite have a problem with Google itself (though I wish they would call it something other than ‘clip art’). However I noticed that there are some sites offering what they call ‘free coloring pages’. They’re basically riding off the Google clip art search, and running their own ads on their site. While it’s not a unique situation, I really don’t like how they’ve set up and besides, it’s running up bandwidth usage for everyone. It’s not cool. Anyway, here’s hoping blue sketches don’t qualify as ‘clip art’.

WSJ Ask Teri / Charlene Chua illustration

This was done for the Wall Street Journal’s Ask Teri column for Thursday Jan 20. It was a very quick turnaround (same day). The column is about a man who lost weight and so got his suits remade to fit. He was asking if he should get his shirts remade as well since the necklines were still uncomfortable. The art director originally asked for a picture of a tailor working at making a suit, and I supplied him a sketch of that. I also supplied an alternative sketch for an idea with a pair of hands with a measuring tape across a businessman’s neck, which I thought had related more to the text. The team at the Journal liked the idea and we ran with that. I ended up making the guy look older with a bit of a heavier neck. It was a nice, quick job, and it was great working with the folks at the Journal again (who are simply amazing with their response time!).

These were the sketches I provided:

This was the original tailor idea.

This was my original alternative. I adjusted the guy to be older.

Did this as a sketch a while back. Started by drawing the girl and didn’t know what else to do so I kept drawing and added the hands and chicken. It reminded me of Baba Yaga’s chicken house so that’s why it’s titled as such. But honestly I have no idea what’s really go on…