all sortsa nerd

i'm tonks for halloween.

and i just couldn't help but make this....

(i obviously intentionally ripped off this image.)

[click to enlarge]

it was a fun process, and i did it rather quickly. after 40 minutes, i went from the first photos on the left to the second image.

from that point on, the other 2+ hours were just tweaking and awesoming.


in short, i -- desaturated the photo, cut myself out, added grain, adjusted lighting and contrast, cloned part of the lower half of the body from the second original picture, painted fog, and added facial highlights.

the hardest part for me was painting the rim light and highlights. but i think i got the gist of it.
























i really needed a break from work/freelance/classes to recharge my artistic brain, and i think it worked. happy halloween!

for all you artists

i read this quote by ira glass a while back, and just found this video on it. oh my goodness, it is so great for anyone who creates anything.


Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

coming in the next few posts: portraits, guest artist lectures, and TOMS! stay tuned. :)

TOMS tomorrow!

sorry for the lack of update (i wonder how many of my upcoming posts won't begin with that apology.....). school and work have been crazy, but i have some awesome things to show you, so be excited! in the meantime....

remember the TOMS event i did a while back? well, i've since done two more and i'm doing another one tomorrow! if you're in utah, you should definitely stop by. not only will there be shoe painting, but there will also be face painting and a live band. bring your friends and family or just yo'self and come party it up!

{some TOMS i've designed since that last post}

if you can't make it but would still like some sweet custom-painted TOMS, contact me at kgull.art@gmail.com and i'll paint yours!

alice een color

does this look familiar? earlier this year (winter '10 semester), i decided to take my alice digital for jake parker's digital painting class. i could definitely go back and fine-tune this, but i'm not going to worry about it for now.

alice een vundaland!

...dunno where the german accent came from. has nothing to do with anything.

i just realized i never posted my 'alice in wonderland' dummy book from last year. here it is! in reality, i drew with blue colored pencil on green-tea colored paper (like the paper in this post). love drawing on toned paper. awesome in real life = weird on screen. so i made 'em b&w. and it's folded like a book, hence the crease marks in the scan. if i have time, i'll photoshop them out. or maybe it helps to see the crease. for now, ...meh.

wee square cards

first of all, sorry about the posting hiatus. i was planning on posting more often but, well, life happened.

anyway -- check out my new business cards! what do you think?

i thought they turned out pretty decently for the little time i had to design them (when i was on "vacation") -- of course, there's already half a dozen things i'd change about them. i wanted to get them done by tomorrow because i'm doing another TOMS event (like the one i did last time)! i'm excited. you should be excited, too.

ps, notice it says 'illustration and design'...do you know that i also do graphic design and photography as well as illustration? those have actually been taking up a good amount of time recently so you might see some of that on this blog soon. just a heads up...but i'm not making promises. :) art really is a way of life, you know?

drawing is my favorite.

{except for writing this sentence, i'm skipping obligatory "sorry for not posting for so long" preface....}

this past semester, i took a head painting class. as part of our out-of-class sketchbook assignments, we had to draw portraits with different lighting situations. i decided to draw them bigger and with nu pastel and conte crayon because i miss figure drawing. so, here they are! it's been a while since i've drawn, so it makes sense that the consecutive order of the drawings were also, in my opinion, good --> better --> best.

the two pinkish ones are self-portraits in nu pastel and it was fun to draw from the mirror. the others are drawn from photos in conte.

yeah. the paintings will be posted soon, but drawing's still my favorite.