RSS
chimpanzee with widow webs illustration by patrick wong runnerup in creative quarterly 31

Death Ritual Illustration Runner-up in CQ31

death ritual in the animal kingdom editorial illustration runner-up in creative quarterly 31

My illustration “Death Rituals” was recently recognized in Creative Quarterly, the Journal for Art + Design. I received runner-up for this piece and really excited to be included in the competition. The illustration is an editorial based on Death rituals in the animal kingdom by Jason G. Goldman. “Death Rituals” explores the capacity for chimpanzees to grieve for their dead and that through this common experience, it serves as a reminder that humans are also connected to the animal kingdom.

“All winners will be exhibited in the next issue of Creative Quarterly, on the newsstand Summer 2013. The winners and runner-ups work will be posted on our Online Gallery in Summer 2013.”

Split Characters

This is a short time lapse video showing my friend Ryan Tsutsumi and I painting characters on a black wall. The idea was pretty simple -we were going to start with the black wall and draw a line down the middle with his face on one side and mine on the other. Up until that day we both didn’t know what either guy was going to do, so it was an interesting experience seeing what kind of collaborative effort we would put in.

Ryan ended up painting this large skull using mainly Sabotoz and accented the piece with wispy bits coming out of the nose and eyes… Much like smoke. I painted a character I entitled Prober who is an immortal being that sucks up (destroys) other characters into his 2 sets of eyes.

The video is only 2 min. long and I hope you enjoy watching!

Split Characters from Patrick Wong on Vimeo.

custom designer toy by patrick wong titled water snake for 2013 Chinese New Year

Year of the Snake Mini Toyer Qee Custom

This is a custom I worked on leading up to Chinese New Year this weekend – entering the Year of Snake in 2013. I wanted to make some artwork to mark the occasion and was set off down this path when Andy at Toysrevil had a call for Year of the Snake artwork he would feature on his site. From that, I immediately went to work priming and designing the character that is ultimately presented here.

Front and rear view of patrick wong's Water Snake custom designer toy

The whole process was a great experience working with cultural motifs and celebrating something, in a way, I inherited in the being Chinese. I read a bit about the cosmology surrounding the upcoming year and incorporated the water element to combine with the snake. You see, the Chinese zodiac is on a 12 year animal cycle and those 12 years are further organized into 5 cycles, which in total repeat themselves every 60 years. These 5 cycles I thought were the most interesting, they overcoded the animal years with cosmic elements – water, wood, metal, fire, and earth.

Side views of the water sanke year of the sanke toy2r mini qee custom design toy

I rushed to get this piece completed in time for Andy’s deadline, which I did make in the end. But the light ceramic blue was not solid and here in these photos you can see the version the next day after I had a chance to fine tune some details. Cleaned up the whole thing and made sure to fill in those blues.

sketch and design of a snake character on a toy2r toyer mini template by Patrick Wong

Above you can see an in-progress screen grab of how I worked with the Toy2R template I made. I was working fairly rough here, maybe rougher that I usually would if it was a bigger project. These mini qee’s are so small, I knew I couldn’t go crazy on the details of the design and chose a really reduced style.

in progress design phase of the water snake custom mini qee toyer

The above image represents the phase where I had the bulk of the design for the toy worked out and just worked on choosing the right colors. I use a limited palette in my workflow. I see a lot of custom artists using craft paint as opposed to Golden or Liquitex or whatever, but I never really go into easel painting with the mid/heavy body paints. So with that said, I use a graffiti liquid hybrid acrylic Molotow from Germany for my pieces and this chart on the side represents the range I have, which is everything except the metallics and fluorescent.

The piece is available in my shop for sale at $100 (+$12 Shipping Canada/USA).