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Artwork

Dragon Dog Pandas

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Dogs throw the best party, because dogs always pay for catering.

Smash Pandas Commission

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Hooman ask panda if panda could dress up like Smash Brothers characters from video game.  Panda guess hoomans like video game, but panda don’t understand why sitting in front of TV and pushing buttons is fun. That don’t sound fun, it sounds weird and unproductive. What is productive is sleep. Doctor say sleep very important and the more sleep panda get, the more panda is productive. So panda is going to get A LOT of sleep.

Business Pandas

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Like hoomans, panda have bills to pay. Panda’s work is no different than hoomans. Some all days are hard, but panda don’t mind, so long as panda get paid so panda can buy bamboo to eat.

Hoomans can see business pandas on display at Eastern Cafe from March to April. Go visit and buy coffee to support cafe, and then give coffee to panda.

Happy Chinese New Year

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Happy Year of Dog! Dog is good friend because dog pays for panda’s drinks. Even if dog doesn’t know.

“The Panda is Fat” and ECCC

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Panda has special announcement, panda will release new book, “The Panda is Fat and Other Panda Haikus” at ECCC, March 1-4. Panda will be selling book for hoomans visiting convention. The book is panda’s biggest book with over 90 panda pages with drawings and haikus. Panda will have hooman pet hooman Nolen update the shop because he too busy drawing panda’s book lazy. Below are some samples from the best book in the world.

Panda will also be at Table J4 in Artist Alley. Panda drew directions in map below, panda is so talented. My pet hooman will be chained to at the table to help you with all your panda needs. Come visit table and show some panda love, or else.

Panda out.

Monsters and Dames 2018

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I’m happy to announce that my entry was accepted into Emerald City Comicon’s Monsters and Dames art book. This year’s entry also includes a cast of three compared to my last couple of entries.  I will also be tabling at the ECCC artists alley again Mar 1-4, so if you plan on purchasing the art book, come see at Table J4 so I can sign your book. You can read more about the details and other artists in the book on ECCC’s Monsters and Dames page.

It took a while for me to land on a concept. I knew I was going to do something with northern lights, so my first concept had glowing fish flying out of a lake and forming the lights in the sky. After trying out several compositions, I felt like the idea wasn’t working for me. I was also starting to run out of time to work on the piece, so I decided instead to go with a different idea for the figure in the sky.

I also doodled a bit with the colors to figure out what the end result could look like. Another reason for abandoning the fish concept was because I didn’t want to make this piece feel like a continuation from last year’s entry which was also on a lake.

I started playing around with the lines of the northern lights and ended up with a stag-like creature. Northern lights have a flowing quality to them, and it felt like the stag was a good solution.

Lastly, I gave the Panda Courier a winter makeover and included the red panda just because I feel like it’s about time he gets included in one of these pieces.

Oh, and one more thing. Next week, I might be taking over a certain Instagram account. You’ve been warned.

Picture book preview

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Here’s a little work in progress for a story I’ve been working on. I won’t reveal the plot just yet, but let’s just say it has to do with a gorilla and a picnic. Below is an art test that I made for the gorilla. Right now, I’m also putting together a dummy book as a rough draft, and eventually moving on to more developed art. There will be more updates coming up in the next few months, but in the meantime, enjoy this little preview of things to come.

Smartsheet: Photon

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UPDATE: You can read more about Smartsheet’s Photon release on their blog.

This is another commission that I completed for Smartsheet’s “Photon” release similar to the Endeavour piece I worked on a few months ago. For this month’s theme, I decided to go a bit more abstract. When I was in engineering school, one of the physics courses went over light. One of the cool things about light is the phenomenon known as the wave-particle duality. The quick and dirty version is that light is made up of particles that can also act like waves. You can observe the particle behavior by looking at a shirt that’s been lying out in the sun too long. What’s interesting is that light can be reflected and refracted like a wave. For this piece, I wanted to incorporate both the idea of a photon as a ball of light and wave shapes to imply the duality. Man, this is sounding all so heady!

I actually knew what I wanted to paint even before I made the thumbnails, but I still did them just in case something more interesting came around. The thumbnail below is the concept that I had in mind.

After I had the thumbnail approved, I started created a bunch of geometric shapes in Illustrator. When I used shape layers in Photoshop for the Endeavour commission, it ended up increasing my file size and causing my computer to lag. made it a lot easier to edit the individual shapes instead of doing them all in Photoshop.

Below is a WIP screenshot of the piece as I’m importing the layers. I know it looks ugly, but it’s actually helpful from an organizational standpoint since I can easily tell the objects from each other as I’m moving things around. After I’m finished with placing them in the piece, I use Photoshop to blend and paint to make the piece feel more organic. Usually when working in digital, the piece tends to look sterile because the colors and shapes can be so precise and perfect. So much of the work is spent trying to “roughen” up the piece to make it look more appealing and interesting.

Finally, after many adjustment layers, masks, and smart layers, I finally arrive at the final piece. This piece was a lot of fun to work on since it’s more of an abstract subject that’s different from the usual characters and pandas. Thanks again to Smartsheet for the opportunity to work on this.

I have a special coupon for my shop that’s good until 12/24. Use the code “bfpandas17” to get 30% off your order. Happy holidays, everyone!

Holiday Pandas

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‘Tis the season for holiday pandas!

I’ve been posting some daily sketches during Advent season on my social media channels. You can subscribe to any of the following feeds to see the latest pieces.

[social_icons type=”circle_social” icon=”fa-twitter” use_custom_size=”no” size=”fa-2x” link=”twitter.com/punchingpandas” target=”_self”][social_icons type=”circle_social” icon=”fa-facebook” use_custom_size=”no” size=”fa-2x” link=”https://www.facebook.com/punchingpanda/” target=”_self”][social_icons type=”circle_social” icon=”fa-instagram” use_custom_size=”no” size=”fa-2x” link=”https://www.instagram.com/punching.pandas/” target=”_self”][social_icons type=”circle_social” icon=”fa-tumblr” use_custom_size=”no” size=”fa-2x” link=”https://nolenlee.tumblr.com/” target=”_self”]

Also, back in 2014 I did a series of holiday pandas based on the #Illo_Advent prompt on Twitter. You can check out my old drawings in this post. Happy holidays, everyone!

Inktober 2017: Red and Black

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It’s that time of year again! Time to pop bust out the ink and brushes for Inktober. Last year’s drawings took me a long time to finish, I ended up finishing sometime in mid November. This year, I went with smaller sketches so that I could finish them in time especially given how busy life has been lately.

I also wanted to try out a bottle of red sumi ink that I’ve had for a while. It says “red sumi” on the label, but it’s more of a reddish orange. I made the drawings as little vignettes of the Panda Pals, and looking for any potential stories I can tell with them.

I’ve also added all of the originals on my store. Enjoy!

Smartsheet: Endeavour

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This is an overdue post, it’s been pretty hectic trying to sneak in some blogging in between parenting, moving, and remodeling.

Smartsheet commissioned me last summer for a piece based on the title of one of their monthly software releases. For this commission, I had to base the artwork on the title, “Endeavour.” I reviewed some of art of their previous releases, and saw that they were recently going through a space theme, so I decided to have my piece follow in the same vein.

I did some Wikipedia research about the shuttle, Endeavour, and a couple of interesting bits that helped inform the piece. What stood out to me was that it was the first shuttle constructed after the Challenger disaster in 1986, so I wanted to capture a sense of hope after such a tragedy. Also, the definition of the word, “endeavour” is “an attempt,” so that’s why I positioned the cockpit at the moment it crosses the horizon of the earth as it attempts its venture into space.

You can see some of Smartsheet’s previous release artwork which was done by the talented Carissa Weber.