It has been months since my last artwork. I have been super busy with work that my creative juices for persnal art has been drained. When I create a digital art, i want it to be personal. There is always an inspiration behind all artworks. It may be a simple idea, another work of art, a stock image that i want to make something out of it, deep-seated emotions, or simply boredom. With these inspiration i fuel my creativity and explore into the world of creation. Sometimes i come up with doodles, sometimes photo-manipulations, and sometimes poetry. For so long i really wanted to come up with something but because of stress, i just can't. I have been searching for photos and looking for inspiration in my favorite sites but my hands froze like something is blocking me to create.

But all of these came to an end when i was convinced to make an artwork for a very talked about issue these days. It is none other than BULLYING. A few months ago news were spreading about people committing suicide because they had enough bullying. In my favorite TV shows they also talked about bullying like Glee and ANTM. I really felt that it's a universal issue and everyone is a victim of this ignorant act. People are bullied about their race, sexuality, height, gender, religion, and more, when something is not "normal." Well, we are all abnormal people. No one is perfect and we all have imperfections. Thus, no one has the right to be a bully.

A while ago i had an idea in mind. I created a portrait of a giant in a fantasy world. A world where he is respected by the normal people. A world where he can fit in despite of his monstrosity. Then there is a rainbow beside him that represents happiness and hope. It may also symbolize the different kinds of people that live in harmony. Here's is my latest artwork titled "Giant and Rainbow".

Have you seen Chowder? Oh that cute stupid thing in Cartoon Network? Well, Chowder it the next cutest thing in TV. He is a squeezy toy inspired character who is an apprentice of a chef named Mung Daal. What I like about the show is the style of animation that they used. They used patterns on the characters' clothing or skin, when a character moves, their patterns do not follow, but display as a "static" background.

I also love how they used stop motion and puppets at the end of the show. Anyways, I made this character while practicing drawing in Flash. I used one type of brush and created variations of thickness by zooming in and out while drawing. I created the bold outlines first and then zoomed it to created dots and dashes for the details. The design is inspired by paisley patterns. I colored and textured it in photoshop using this amazing victorian textures [link], of course inspired by the show "Chowder". I named it "Ambao" coined by my sister's goddaughter, Mica, which means daga or mouse. (she is afraid of tiny fury creatures.) Click on the image for larger view.