Art for Oregon Asian Celebration, 2015

Once again, I want to share my artwork created for the Oregon Asian Celebration. Each year, I am honored to work with the celebration on some great illustrations. This is their 30th anniversary, and this is the 10th year in a row that I have had the honor of creating their artwork! I am so excited to be a part of this event.

This year, the theme was Celebrating 30 Years of Love and Diversity. In brainstorming for the design, I asked myself, "What do I think of when I attend the celebration?" That's easy! The food, the music, the vendors and the variety...variety of people, of cultures, of art, and amazing performances.

We've shown the diversity of the people before, and as much as I would love to draw a yummy plate of all the foods you can find at the celebration, we decided to work with the theme of music from around Asia and the Pacific islands.

This year's poster is a compilation of 13 instruments from different countries. Each instrument is a separate, detailed marker rendering.

Starting at the top, going clockwise:
Mrindangam (drum)
Kulintangan (set of small gongs)
Buffalo horn trumpet
Pipa
Sompoton (bamboo/gourd pipes)
Pattala (ornate xylophone)
Ukulele
Dhyangro (leather drum beat with a bent stick)
Vina (stringed instrument with a resonating chamber)
Kutiyapi
Tibetan Trumpet
Sarangi
Center: Taiko Drum with the Kanji for "love"

With any of my work, especially with a client that I am trying to explain a concept to, I start with a rough sketch. Not very detailed, just enough to convey the idea. Here is the first pen sketch for the client. Needless to say, they were a little skeptical when seeing this sketch.

But after they were receptive to the initial idea, I made a slightly more refined sketch, not with final drawings, just showing more details.



At this point, the Celebration committee added input about instruments and countries represented by the instruments, so I had enough direction to make the final sketches.

For each instrument, I looked at extensive reference photos on the internet. Then I drew a top-view in pencil, traced it on my light table in multiliner, then scanned it into the computer. I fixed any line work that was wrong, then I scaled it to the size I needed (about 2x what the final artwork would be, so it had plenty of detail). I printed each instrument on nice paper so I could color it. It took me probably 2-4 hrs. per instrument to make this drawing.



Here are a few of the more complex instruments for you to see up close. All of these instruments are colored with Copic markers. I used a bunch of colors, so I can't tell you exactly what colors I used where.

Most of the instruments had a variation of wood texture. You can find many tutorials on this blog for coloring wood, just run a quick search. iIt seems like I used every E marker that Copic makes when coloring these instruments.

The brass trumpet was colored with a nice range of yellows and browns. I faded out the highlights on the ornate areas with the colorless blender. The little blue gemstones were tricky to keep clean while I was blending all the other colors around them.

The leather texture on the Taiko drum was made with the colorless blender, pushing color out.  The only digital addition is the pink heart and the Kanji symbol for "love".

If you live in Oregon, I hope you can make it to Eugene for the celebration. Each afternoon, Copic will be sponsoring a table in the Youth Art area. You can come and color your own instruments, or artwork from the past years that I have drawn.

See you there, Feb 14 & 15th.