The Bookstore

(= u = ) some of you may remember seeing the sketch i did for this...well, as promised, i have colored it. It's taken more than 3 weeks to complete(i've lost track) and i can say that this piece is, without a doubt, the best thing i have ever done. it's a bit rushed since i needed to get it down for a NFAA scholarship portfolio(wish me luck!) but i'm proud of it. I hope you enjoy it~


uhh, if you're interested... i critiqued my own work for you guys. i'm not sure if anyone would want to read all of it but... it's sort of hard for me to let go of this piece so easily, so... too bad, haha

idea:
i absolutely love going to bookstores (and small crowded chinese bookstores are the best). They are always so full of life and color - I did my best to capture the feeling I get when I'm inside one(which is a very nice and warm feeling). Also, i really wanted to put myself into this work and not to just do some random image that looked cool.

method:
randomly sketched out a scene in my mind one day and really liked it. as you can tell by all the errors in architecture, no references were used for anything. i also did not correct my sketch before i started to color.... that probably wasn't a very good idea because I had to constantly rework it while coloring A LOT, haha. i did save it at various times while i was coloring, if enough people are interested, i can show the progression from the sketch.

analysis:
this is a very personal piece. almost everything in the scene is a reflection of something that has to do with me. In the first place, the guy in the center is (no use denying it) me and the girl is someone that i care about very much. The woman and the child in the background are my mother and sister and the old woman in the far right is my grandmother. The other people are simply in the likeness of random people i have seen when going to the bookstore(specifically, one in san francisco). The man at the register watching tv is someone i actually have seen before. There are many other things in the piece that I personalized as well. The posters on the walls are actually pieces that I have done before and the books on the table have covers that i made using images of my friends. Aside from two covers that use photographs of my friends, I drew all of the covers. You may also notice that the text and books all have fake text. Actually, they are not even text but simply scribbles I did to immitate asian text. Sadly, and embarassingly, this is a reflection of how I really want to learn Chinese(though, even if i did...scribbling is a hell of a lot faster, haha). All of the other objects in the piece - The cat in the far left, the buddist statues on the right, and the chinese lanterns - are not arbitrary, but are meant to give off a peaceful feeling(i wanted to the viewer be able to relax and simply take in all the details of the piece...get a nice warm feeling). Also, the young man and the girl in the center also form yin and yang, symbolizing balance.

errors i noticed:
it has lots of architectural errors. the layout doesn't make much sense practically....and sometimes my laziness is too apparent. oh and, the girl being short isn't an error - she's meant to be short.


thanks for reading~
sorry for gramatical errors in this but...i have hw