Charlene Chua
Charlene is a digital illustrator who work in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. She lives in Canada.
charlenechua.com | charlenechuakids.com
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I will be having my first solo exhibition this February at Manta Contemporary in Hamilton, ON. If you ar in town, please drop by and check it out. The show runs through February. Show opening is on Friday Feb 8, during Hamilton’s monthly Art Crawl.
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Did this as a sketch at FanExpo. It was the last day and I figured ah to hell with it, I’m drawing something fun and cartoony. Turns out doing fun and cartoony is A) fast B) recognizable and C) generally family friendly. I think this sketch attracted the most attention, and made more than one person think ‘if only I had a Cintiq, I could do that too!’. Which was kind of the point of the demo, so mission accomplished I suppose.
Anyway, fast forward a month and a house move later, and I finally found the time to use this as an excuse to test CS6. Some nice features like the editing on the fly line tool, but the somewhat slower responsiveness of the software is making me stick with CS4. Anyhoos, hope you enjoy the art at least.
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Sketched my cat Uno the other night. She sat still, mostly. Slapped on some watercolor and pencils. To the art, I mean, not the cat.
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We still miss out cat Zero. Personally, I don’t believe in the whole angel thing, but it’s a comforting thought. If cats could become angels, they’d be super cute though.
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Just a quick sketch last night. Pencil, acrylic ink and drawing ink.
It’s been a while since I posted anything for Traditional Thursday. It has been an exhuasting few months; we bought a house, we lost a cat, and all the while projects are surely and steadily getting completed. My mother, sister and aunt dropped by for a visit in June, a welcome visit though one that took up a lot of time. We’ve had to read up on housecare, how to choose a contractor, sort through (what to us are) huge sums of money.
Between all the change and tedium of long term projects, it is very hard to find the time, energy and enthusiasm to work on anything art related. Now, we are beginning to pack away our stuff for our upcoming move. Hopefully there will be more time for art once we move to our new digs.
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These are maybe the only pieces of artwork that I ever made of our dear, sweet Zero. I regret not drawing or painting him more, but I am glad that at least I have these. Photos and videos are great and I’m glad we have those to remember him by, but I do think my own art holds special memories for me, memories that I otherwise forget with the passage of time. Even if a painting or drawing isn’t as ‘real’ as a photograph, I do think that it captures something else that can’t really be stored via any other mechanical means.
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Did this some time ago but kept forgetting to put up the pictures. This was an interesting project for the wine label G. Marquis. The illustration was black and white; the final artwork was white embossed on a light grey.
The client wanted something that told a specific story, but also wanted it to be subtle. Originally it was supposed to be a more elaborate design but we gradually simplified it so that the illustration could rest on either side of the logo. The artwork was hand drawn with a brush pen and scanned in for delivery.
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Been a bit preoccupied lately with various things and haven’t posted for a while. So, here are some sketches to try and make up for the missing weeks:
The last one is digital, though it was based off a pencil sketch. When I get more time I would like to try stuff like this that’s simplified and graphic.
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Big thanks to the guys at Kayak for working with me on their Titanic anniversary issue cover.
The sinking of the Titanic was one of the big events of the 20th century; a tragedy that ended the lives of many people, but also marked the decline of an era of optimism and faith in human engineering and commerce. It also was a bitter display of classism at work - a theme that was played up heavily in James Cameron’s movie. As I was working on this, I kept wondering if society was slipping back into Titanic’s time, where a small number of super rich ruled the world and literally jumped ship when calamity struck, leaving behind the poor to perish. There were some 1st class passengers who did answer the call of noble self sacrifice, but the stories of those who didn’t have become even more legendary.
My initial suggestion was to show the Titanic in a more positive light, perhaps leaving port or being built. The magazine wished to depict the sinking however, but requested it not look too gruesome. I did want the ship to be visible, but I also wanted the passengers to be be prominently visible. So we settled on a shot of people in a lifeboat looking in shock at the sinking ship. I would have preferred not to have the small silhouettes of people in the water (as this is a children’s history magazine), but I guess for historical accuracy they had to be there.
The cover was accompanied by 2 spots in the article. I’d originally suggested the guys in the Marconi room, but we later changed it to the band instead.
For the record, in my head, the rich guy in the life boat is Bruce Ismay. He’s not meant to look like Ismay, but in my head that’s who he represents.
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Did this over the course of a couple of days. It was first and foremost a test for dry brushing oil on watercolor paper. I did the sketch (of 1920s starlet Agnes Moorehead) somewhat haphazardly in bed, and well, she’s not really lining up perfectly. But I think the painting part turned out pretty good! I do think the paper had too much texture (it’s a Canson cold press watercolor with a really heavy grain… makes it look almost like canvas paper), so when I get around to another test I’ll try a smoother paper instead.
It felt really good painting in oil, strangely. I used to hate oils, particularly when I was a teen. So either dry brush works for me because it feels more like drawing, or perhaps something has changed as I’ve gotten older and I now don’t feel as intimidated as before.
