Æon Ken

I finally got around to Netflixing the early 90s MTV animated series Æon Flux. It's awesome! It's the most "holy crap how did I not see this until now" show since Freaks and Geeks. Minimalist, avant-garde science fiction that tosses aside everything non-essential and just focuses on one interesting idea each episode. It also features show creator Peter Chung's distinctive character design. Here are the distinctive opening credits.

I decided to do a self portrait in its style, basing the design mostly on this freeze-frame.


Update: Okay, here's a less effete self-portrait I did the next day. :P

Air Doodles

I doodled my friends on my flights to and from LA (to see Depeche Mode). The likenesses aren't that great, but I did them pretty quickly, the first and third ones in about half an hour each. This is the first time I've ever tried drawing portraits from life!

SFO->LAX:


The next one is a mini-doodle that I started in the hotel and finished up on the plane ride home (with no reference!):


LAX->SFO:


I like drawing hair. Facial proportions are still hard, but that's why I need more practice.

Day 37: Colombian

Portrait of my Colombian friend. Same method as yesterday: Based on looking at the LCD of my camera after taking this photo. I'm really surprised at how well this turned out!

Day 35: Wide-eyed Man

Based on this photo I found on flickr. It's not quite the same, but hopefully it's more or less recognizable? I think maybe I needed lighter shading on the eyes, because it kinda looks like he's wearing makeup. I guess that's partly because I didn't shade it much in general, so the high contrast gives it a bit of that Joker vibe. :P

Day 34: Work in Progress: Hair

Another work in progress. I'll finish this later. Can you guess who this is? I hope you can, because then it'll save me the trouble of trying to get the eyes to look right. I haven't done them yet, and I bet it's going to take me forever. :P

Update: Okay, I've completed this portrait.

Day 33: God Rejects Your Bling

While waiting in line for the bus this morning, a pickup truck pulls up. This guy comes out and starts yelling angrily at everyone in line.

I don't remember much of what he said, since I was mostly trying to avoid eye contact, but I think he said something along the lines of the above. He ranted for a good minute or two before getting back in his pickup and driving off.

Day 32: Bride from To Live

This is how people got married in 1960s China! The circular pins feature a portrait of Chairman Mao. She's holding a Little Red Book off-frame, too. :P

Based on a still frame from my To Live (活着) DVD. I did a terrible job with the eyes. This looks nothing like the actress, but luckily the actress isn't famous anyway (that was her only film), so you don't know who you're supposed to recognize. :P The eyes actually looked better before, but I erased them in order to try to match the actress better. Instead, I still failed to match, and the eyes look even worse now. I gave up on trying to tweak them. I did draw them right-side up this time, so maybe I should try upside-down again next time?

To Live was directed by Zhang Yimou, who had previously directed Raise the Red Lantern, and would go on to make Hero, House of Flying Daggers, etc. I've always felt that his later martial arts movies were pale imitations of Crouching Tiger, but To Live is one of my favorite movies. I describe it to people as the Forrest Gump of China. It's about the lives of a couple from the 1940s through the 1970s, a tumultuous period in China that spanned the Chinese Civil War, World War II, the success of the Communist Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, the resulting famine officially called the Three Years of Natural Disasters (in which some 15-30 million people died), and the Cultural Revolution. There's a lot of heavy stuff, but the film also has a deft touch of humor, sometimes broad, often subtle.

The movie, made in 1994, was banned in China. Zhang Yimou himself was banned from directing any movies for two years. Later in life, he went on to direct those politically safe martial arts movies, and even the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. Some say he sold out. Personally, I think he proved everything he needed to prove with To Live, and while I would love to see more challenging films from him, I don't think he owes me a thing.

I guess this movie has special resonance for me because I know my own parents and most of my relatives lived through this stuff. I saw this movie for the first time with my family, and whenever something totally insane happened, they would tell me that the reality was even crazier!

Perhaps the best example of insanity was during the Great Leap Forward, when Chairman Mao became determined to surpass steel production of the UK within 15 years. How would he achieve this? Why, by asking everyone in the country to take all their iron, and burn it in furnaces into useless slag, of course! If you tried to withhold even a doorknob, you were billed an anti-revolutionary, and awful things could happen to you.

I guess the thing I most want to keep in mind with this stuff is that crazy revolutions and stuff aren't just stuff you seen in the movies. It really happened to my parents. And it could happen anywhere. We can never take peace for granted.

Day 19: Kilroy Self Portrait

I'm really surprised at how well this came out. I think it's the first time I've tried drawing myself, and it actually kinda looks like me! It's based on the photo of myself at the top-right corner of my main blog. I used my friend's advice and turned that source photo upside-down before copying it, to avoid distractions, and it worked pretty well! The proportions are a little off; mostly it's a bit too tall I think. But still, I can recognize myself. It's crazy. I'm excited. :)