Happy Holidays!

:)

Daily sketches

Hi, I hope all of you are having great holidays!
Did you notice that I changed the blog header? I didn't really like the last one, but didn't have time to change it until today. I wanna hear your comments on it!

Today, I would like to share some of my sketches I did as daily sketches for the illustration class. We were asked to do a sketch a day. The subjects were: a person on Monday, an animal on Tuesday, a food item on Wednesday, an object containing type on Thursday, and anything you want on Friday.


Here they are(For some reason, my animals are better than the other objects):

More coming soon :)

第11回epa入賞

こんにちは～
久しぶりに日本語です！訳すのサボっててすいません^^;
ところで先日、第11回エンタテインメントパッケージアワードのグラフィックデザイン部門に応募したデザインが入賞しました！ﾊﾟﾁﾊﾟﾁﾊﾟﾁ～笑
受賞作品紹介のホームページはこちら
ラブジャズというタイトルのコンスピレーションCDのジャケットデザインです。

私のデザイン

また次もがんばります！
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My design got into the Entertainment Packaging Award in Japan! :)

The Third Day in...(2)

Hi, guess where I am this time? ...Dallas!
Yes, I'm back in Texas :) I was planning on going back to Abilene on the day I got back, but it's been too good to see my ex-roommate(she's working in Dallas now) and haven't been able to leave her apartment. Today is the third day.lol I didn't think I would ever miss Texas when I first started living here, but now I totally do. Only a year left til I move out of this state... a little scary.

Anyways, I started using my little toy camera again, so I would like to share what I did today :)

 My friend's polar bear :)

 She working

 IKEA catalog is always inspiring!

The sketchbook project I'm working on :)

We took a nap and chilled all day long today. Good Sunday!
Using toy camera is more difficult than it seems. And it's fun!

The Third Day in...

Hi, guess where I am? ...BOSTON!!
My roommate and I are almost frozen here but having a great time :) I love this city so much! People are super nice and food is great, so many arty stuff too. Boston became my third dream city to live in(the first is San Fransisco and the second is New York).
We went to Museum of Fine Arts today. Among all the great art works there, the one struck me the most was New English Calligraphy by Xu Bin.
Here is his signature:

They look like Chinese characters, but they are formed up by alphabets. The first one is Xu and the second one says Bing. So smart, isn't it?
His website is here.

 

Me in front of the museum.

...I was proud to be a Japanese when I saw this piece by Monet :P

My roommate and I at the Boston City Hall.

Team Lets Go

Hi, I'm finally done with finals!! What a great feeling to have :))
The last project in the packaging design class was a group project, and we were asked to pic a beverage and redesign it. So we, Team Lets' Go(Bonni Wattigney, Bryan Couchman, Jessica Floe, Richard Lee, and I) picked La La's Lemonade :)
Here they are:

Photos taken by our professor, Nil Santana.
The group mates were great! I generally don't like group project much, but I enjoyed working with them.

Photo by Jessica Floe :)

Paintings

Hi :)
I'm taking a break from studying for the modern art history final tomorrow. I'm having a super hard time focusing on studying because images of me enjoying the winter break keep coming up to my mind! Finals on Friday are the hardest ones for that reason.
So right now, since I'm in the "fine art mode" for the exam, I would like to share my paintings I did this semester!
Here they are:

The last one got into the Big Country Art Association Juried Competition :)
The picture was taken when it was displayed in the art building. Sorry for the quality!
I'll try to get a better quality pictures of them once I get my camera fixed.

ABC for Font Nerds poster

Hi, I got the poster done! Phew, finally :) I will get them printed as a book soon. I'm excited to see how it'll turn out!
Here is the poster:

ABC for font nerds preview

Hi :)
I'm working on ABC book for my illustration class. I finally got them done today. Oh my, this might have been the biggest project I have had in my life! I'm now fixing them a little on computer and putting them all together to be printed as a book.
Here are some of them:

 

I hope you like them!

The Sketchbook Project

Hi!
I'm participating the next year's Sketchbook Project, and I'm so excited about it. Here is my profile on the project I just edited. Check it out! :)
The theme that was given to me is "In 5 minutes..."
In progress illustrations:

I'm still not sure if I'll put colors or not, we'll see :)

My art on market?

Hi :)
I had so much fun at the Art & Craft fair last night! I got many compliments on my work there, and it helped me to build more confidence in what I'm doing.
I also signed up on Etsy yesterday to start selling more art! I don't have any of my stuff there yet, but I'll definitely post it here when I get them. 

Picture of me and my roommate at the fair last night :) I'm not so good at talking, so she got the part and helped me a lot!! Thank you!
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昨日の夜、学校でアート＆クラフトフェアというのがありました！
たくさんの人が私の作品を買ってくれて嬉しかったです^^Etsyという、アートを売ったり買ったりできるサイトにアカウントを作ったので、よかったらそちらもチェックしてみてください。まだ作品は載せていませんが、出来しだいこちらでもアップしていきます～～
写真は私とルームメートです^^
彼女はビジネス専攻で話すのも得意なのでだいぶ助けてもらいました！
ありがとーう！

Making Sashimi

Hi, have you ever wanted to make some Sashimi by yourself? If so, this is for you!
We designed "How to" instruction  in our Information Graphics class, and I chose "How to Clean a Sea Bass to Make Japanese Sashimi" as my subject :)
Here it is(click to zoom in):

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インフォメーショングラフィックスのクラスでデザインしたイラスト付きの説明書です。スズキの刺身の作り方！どこまでシンプルにできるか工夫するのが少し難しかったです。

Umbrella

Here's my new illustration freshly done :)

Portraits

Hi, let me share my photographs!
I took Introduction to Digital Photography over at UC Berkeley in the summer 2009. It was so great to get to take a class at the world famous school. I met many cool people(I met Paige there, too) whom I still stay in touch with :)
Here are the works I did for one of the projects:

Since I was at a different school and different city, I decided to do something totally different, too. Urban portraits in Berkley! Most of my models don't smoke, but I made them look like they do :P It was such a fun project.

Check out my Flickr page here, too. There are some other pictures from the class, random pictures I took, and my old art works uploaded. Some are terrible now that I look at them.haha You might be impressed how much progress I made these days! :)
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2009年の夏に、カリフォルニア大学バークレー校で夏季授業を受講する機会に恵まれました。そこでデジタルフォトグラフィーのクラスを取ったので、そのクラスでやったプロジェクトの1つ、ポートレートを紹介しています。

Cameloon

Here's another illustration I did for fun:

Cameloon :)

half way

Happy Thanksgiving!
I wanna share paintings I'm working on here. This time, I decided to try something new to me; cubism. This has been a challenge! I got stuck many times and was tempted to paint over in black. But I tried to be patient and now it's getting to look better.
Here they are:

Sorry for the quality, web cam was the only camera I have with me.
It's so good to be alone in this big studio :) It's the advantage you get when you work on holidays! I'll share good quality pictures of them once I get them done. Let's hope for the good results.
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ハッピーサンクスギビング！
今まさに描き途中の絵です^^
今回は今までと違うことをしよう、ということでキュービズムに挑戦しています。なかなか思うようにいかなくて、何回もまっくろに塗りつぶそうか…と思いましたが、思いとどまってここまできました～
もっとよくなるようにまた頑張ります！出来上がったらまた載せますね^^

Pictograms

Hi, Happy Thanksgiving eve! :D
This year, since I'll be traveling a lot during the Christmas break, I decided to stay in Abilene for the whole Thanksgiving break. It seems boring, but nah, I'm so happy to have all this time to work on projects. yeah, I'm super nerdy.
One of the projects is for an illustration class, and I'm working on an ABC picture book. My subject is typefaces. (Again, I'm such a nerd!!) A for Arial, B for Bauhaus 93, C for Comic Sans(illustration for this would be fun), D for Desdemona... and so on. I will definitely share it here when I get it done!

Today, I will share pictogram I designed for an Information Graphics class. Here they are:

Can you tell what they are?
They are: Tsunami caution, Keep the volume down, Do not sit on, Watch out your way, Wet paint. This project was a lot harder than I expected at first!
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ハッピーサンクスギビングイブ!!
今年のお休みは家に残って課題をやることにしました～。冬にボストンとサンフランシスコに行くので、お金もセーブできて課題に集中もできて、完璧です！笑

上の標識はインフォメーショングラフィックのクラスでデザインしたものです、慨存の標識デザインで、弱いなと思うものを作り直しました。なにがなにかわかるでしょうか？
思ったよりも難しくて大変でしたが、これもまたすごく勉強になりました^^

Pantone

Hi,
Here's my design for the packaging design class I'm in this semester. The client is Pantone and the product is their Eco paints.

 

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私のデザインです。パッケージデザインのクラスで作ったもので、クライアントはパントンです。

Good Advice

The other day when I was looking through blogs, I found a great advice for art students and young designers. Like many others, I'm still not sure about what I should do after my graduation. There are so many things I want to do; I feel like becoming a designer, painter, illustrator, picture book writer, teacher, or translator. They all seem like fun and cool, and I don't know which one would be the best suit for me. Sometimes it's hard to know and pic what I love out of the things I like. Well, Jessica Hische said in one of her interviews,

‎"The work you find yourself doing while you're procrastinating is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life."

Wow, it struck me so hard. It's super simple, but I didn't realize at all until she said so. It's a good start point to look more into my career.

Here are some of her works:

Her website is here.

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このあいだ、インスピレーションを求めてブログめぐりをしていたら、Jessica Hischeさんというブルックリンを中心に活動しているタイポグラファーでデザイナーの方のインタビューを見つけました。学生生活もあと丸1年の私ですが、やりたいことがたくさんあって何に集中すればいいのかわからずの私にすごい響く一言でした。

｢あなたが怠けているときとほかの仕事や宿題を先送りにしているときにも、気づくと手を動かしていること、それがきっとこの先の人生でもすべきことでしょう。｣

訳すの下手ですけどこんな感じですかね^^;　シンプルにみえてなかなか気付かなかったです。

彼女のホームページはこちらです。

Fun at Mori Art Museum

Ok, I got to talk with my best friend, Paige, whom I mentioned in the first post and got "go" for posting our pictures!

Here they are:

Illusion art? ;)

Check her blog, too, it's great. She is from California and also an artist and a writer.

She keeps me being inspired all the time :) Having to know her has been such a highlight of my life!

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最初のポストでも少し登場した私の親友、ペイジからGOサインが出たので、森美術館で撮った写真を紹介しています^^
彼女はカリフォルニアの出身で絵も描き、物書きも上手なアーティストです。彼女のブログはこちら。
覗いていってみてください！