University Portfolio

‘King of the Jungle’ is a painting I created as a form of self encouragement. The title may lead people to assume the subject would be a lion or a tiger, but I painted the feline as just a little, everyday house cat. You don’t need to have a high status or to be born into a luxurious and perfect life to feel powerful and great about yourself, every talent is earned and I believe that everybody has potential to become great. The artwork is painted in acrylics to represent the fact that we do not need the best of the best and despite how acrylic may be a shadow to oil, it is still used and loved by many.

A digitally painted portrait of an original character named Shui Hua Lin. Taking inspiration from many digital artists who claim that "less is more", this portrait shows the techniques of illusion of detail in the floating water as it is created only with blobs of solid colour and the variety of hard and soft shadows on the skin to create a realistic look. This piece shows and improved my technical skill as a digital artist and was also very fun to paint a face with realistic proportions. I’ve chosen a cool colour palette of greens and blues in order to have a hue contrast with the figure’s warm skin tone and a light background to make the character’s black hair pop in the portrait.

Eridanus is an illustration of a character created for the tabletop roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons. This piece captures the character’s flamboyant and showy personality through his body language, anatomy, facial expression and attire in which I have chosen to add flowing elements in his design such as the flowing fabric in his outfit and the medium length flowing hair to emphasise and thematically suit his hobby as a dancer. The painting itself also features a very painterly and textured style to replicate the fantasy style illustrations with its heavily textured paintings and the use of dull, harsh hues and values.

This piece is a more cartoony style with vibrant, solid colours and cell shading. The drawn-on cat ears and crown on the cat and the figure gives off a light hearted and cute aesthetic as if a third party has drawn on the illustration. Complimentary colour palettes work very well and the purple and yellow combination emits a warm and comforting aura which is what I intended this drawing’s atmosphere to have. The rim light I have placed on the character and the cat emphasises them as the focal point and makes them “glow” to further express the warm and soft aesthetic. Overall, this painting was my attempt to create a piece pleasing to the eyes and the heart, something cute and wholesome.

“Chill Woods” captures the feeling of tranquility of being alone. Alone and lonely are two very different things and this painting shows what it feels to take time for yourself away from everyone else. I’ve chosen the time to be set at night due to the fact that the low amount of light emitted from the moon gives off a very relaxing vibe in contrast to the energetic and active mood sunlight would give. I’ve used very freeform brush strokes and just relied on limited strokes to convey detail as it gives it more of the relaxing charm, similar to how a handwritten note feels more at home compared to a typed note.