It feels like I was given the time to write again. An introduction.

What happened before I signed up?

Hello, reader. I'm so relieved to be writing again, yet so nervous that I may have completely forgotten how to write. I have tried to start a blog since 2008, but fast forward to 2011, the business-y blog trend was just all over the place. The "proper blogger" standards intimidated me. Since then, I just stopped "blogging", leaving my website to a near-dead hiatus. This means I stayed silent for almost 6 years. For someone who loves expressing herself, it was torture. On top of that, painting is also my favorite hobby, which makes it double torture. All just because of fear that the people I know IRL (family, friends, classmates, college instructors) may find my works and just make fun of me.

You know, that "LOL-what-are-you-doing-in-the-internet" kind of thing.

For the past few months, I was lurking and reading some interesting articles in Medium and started adoring the community. Last night, I found a Steemit link through the comments of an article I've been reading, and decided to sign up. I went through some articles which were a bit more casual than the articles in Medium, and I loved it. I thought that this might be a place where I can feel free to express myself without carrying the standards of being a 'blogger' and without letting the people I know IRL find out about my works (for now).

So here I am, writing my first post.

Hello, Steemit community. :)

Hi! I'm Vic, short for Victoria, currently 23 years old and in my final year of university to graduate on June 2018 with a bachelor's degree in architecture.

Ten years ago, I never thought that I would be the person I am right now. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I enjoyed reading, painting, and writing. Now, so far, I've also experienced "what-college-kids-are-supposed-to-experience-because-we-are-young-only-once" - like drinking liquor (occassionally, hah!), partying, running a half-marathon, twirling a baton for a parade, and the most important of all: food tripping (because food is life).

Here are some of my art:

The two interior digital paintings above were done with a reference. I used Paint Tool SAI. I forgot the name of the magazine where I got the images, but if anyone can recognize please don't hesitate to tell me so I can give credits here.

The two portraits above were also done in Paint Tool SAI, but not without reference. People are my second (next to landscapes/architecture) favorite subjects to paint. I remember that when I was in high school, I practice a lot in my sketchbooks to draw the human figure. Below are some images of pages from my old sketchbooks:

I tried to imitate how professional concept artists would practice - achieving accuracy with less strokes. I did this using watercolor with no underdrawings. Just paint straight to paper while looking at my reference. Again, if you recognize the references I used, please tell me so I can give a credit. :)

This kind of art was not appreciated in my place, so I just stopped. But looking through the art section of Steemit inspired me. The artists here are very diverse. Everyone was just confident with their works, and it gave me courage to just introduce myself, show some of my works and maybe get some feedback on how to improve.

This was a "digital sketchbook" where I would treat my digital canvas as just a traditional sketchbook page. These were painted with references. Also done in Paint Tool SAI.

For traditional media, my favorite is using poster colors. I would really like to try gouache, but I find them really expensive. So I practiced instead with poster colors, and learned to work quickly because it dries out really fast. In the image of my painting below, I used a reference from one of Andrew Loomis books. I re-painted the reference with no underdrawing and in a little less than an hour. It was nowhere near close to how good Andrew Loomis' version is, but it was a great challenge.

And then using poster colors without reference:

Lastly, I would like to end this post with lineworks:

Thank you for making it to the end of my first post. Nice to meet you! What about you? Please comment a brief introduction of yourself so I can know a little bit about you, too. Don't hesitate to comment on my art as well, do you like them, don't like, and how can I improve? :)

See you in my next post!

Sincerely,
Vic Abuan