Memories of Mexico

While i was walking around admiring the beauty , magic , and charm  of this Mexican city , San Miguel de Allende, I spotted a little round ball in the sky that was tied up to what looked like balloons. As it got nearer I noticed that it was a flying balloon man ! This memory captured me ever since.

I wanted to give Miguel a special treatment , and do something completly different then anything I have ever done before. So , I built the little guy out of wire, foam , and sculpey . Then I painted him , cut out his clothes out of fabric- and voila ! there he was, exactly the way I saw him .

Then for the entire weekend I sculpted, and sculpted, and sculpted those ballons. painted the ballons and background- and there he is . So the next time you are in Mexico , be on the lookout for Miguel and wave to him , it might bring you some good luck .

I still didn't get the high res, better lighting quality  photo for the finished piece , another thing that will have to wait till I get back to Savannah =( but at least I have something to show. 

I'm SO Confused Without YOU

 This is my set of I miss you cards !! I wanted my cards to be unconventional , and started thinking of how the people we love influance our everyday lives and often bring more sense and stability to us . Thus, we night be happy enjoying everyday , yet something inside is missing and things don't appear the way the were before. So everything just gets so confusing .  The outside of the card carries the illustration , and the inside will say " I'm so Confused Without You ".
As with Lady Savannah , I painted each character individually

 and then started collaging and transferring some elements. I then made some nice color prints , and cut and pasted different elements on different levels so that they would cast shadows . I then had it lit and photographed and printed out onto.

At first I liked the idea of keeping the backround for the cards a nice clean white , so that it would enhance the actual image and add simplicity to the already complex figure.  However, my curiosity struck me and I started thinking how it would look like if I painted a background. This is what i got :

 I'm actually still not sure what I prefer. I think as a  greeting card set  I would go for a white clean background, but if for an individual illustration I would go for  the colored background.

Lady Savannah

 Another Savannah poster , but this time it's about the historical aspect of Savannah . The beauty of these old houses, the trees, and the warmth of  southern hospitality .

I'm exploring more and more now with adding 3D into my illustrative work , which I am enjoying very much . I painted everything separate in oil paint and then transferred and collaged the tress onto the background. For the southern lady I cut her out of the illustration board and then placed her a little higher on the background to cast a shadow.  

Tree of Life

 This is a poster illustration for the music of Omar Tekbilek http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmvKQ0fmBdU
 his music is so soft and inspirational, it's a blend of traditional and modern , and just so magical  and beautiful in my opinion .  I wanted my illu to convey this magic and how the music coming out of the trumpet is of a new color and dimension .   It transforms everything around it , and overflows with mystic and magic.
More technique experimenting here ,  it's a mixture of oil painting and paper coiling

Homage to King Abdullah

 I have been thinking lately of how fortunate I am to get the opportunity to fulfill my life dream of going to art school and getting my MFA in illustration, and how those dreams have been possible with the help of the Saudi government and especially King Abdullah . With over 30, 000 studetns on full payed scholership in the US alone, many young Saudi's find it possible to travel and study and prepare themselves for a better future. So when i was asked in my Collage class to illustrate an homage piece , I knew that this is one way I can thank the king for all the money and his support to education .  The background design and colors are a reference to Saudi money, but I also didn't want it to be too straight forward. here is a sample of it :

The Slowest Bike Race

 more and more in the journey of playing around and exploring the journey of experimenting in style and technique.  This is made for a long rectangular mural piece, or a hallway. the idea was that while a person would walk down the hall way , they would walk along side to side with these fun individual characters, and enjoy their differences. I was going for the idea of  simplified  quarcky   characters , surreal bikes,  and bright intense colors.

degital portrait practice

 A little digital painting practice using photoshop, and using a quick under painting technique and some background textures. What I mostly liked about this technique is how fast it came a long. I was thinking about experimenting using this technique as an under painting and enhancing some elements by going over it with oil paint. I think it would work in speeding up an oil painting illustration time. I'll get back about that when I try it out.

To Forgive is To Forget

 For this illu we each got a fortune cookie, and we were asked to illustrate our fortune. Mine was " to forgive is to forget " . As I was thinking how I  should go about illustrating this , I thought whatever happened to Marry and her little lamb!!!!!! Turns out , as Marry grew older , she had a thing for fluffy and fancy furry stuff. So she took advantage of her friendship with the lamb and decided to use it's wool as a scarf !!!! The lamb managed to forgive and forget . I hope this was a wise dessiscion from the lamb.

As far as media, I dabbed with a different technique. I startted off with some watercolor washes , then topped that with some chalk pastels, and just left that there without much blending. I subsequently added more layers of both watercolors and pastels. To sharpen some edges, i went over them with pastel and color pencils.

I noticed some composition adjustments that I wanted to add, and clarify the lamb and scarf a little more. I started working on that , but unfortunately I didn't get a change to finish before leaving Savannah . Here is a little phone pic of how it might look , even though the colors are very off in this one.

Thank You !

This was an assignment to illustrate an environmental issue that we felt passionate about. I did so much reading and research for this project , that every time I pick up a plastic bag I think about all the unrecycled waste and all the dying animals =/.  Once a plastic bag , alsways a blastic bag. It can never be recycled, it either floats in the bottom of the ocean , or somewhere in the sky. Lots of animals get caught in those plastic bags, thinking it's food or another animal .
There is a lot in this illustration that I like , and some that I don't really. I hope I can get back to it soon , and revisit some of the issues I'm having with it . 

sketchbook

I'm working hard on trying to update my blog. The last few months I have been really bad with posting. but I promise it'll get better = ) . One of the most things i have been enjoying in Savannah is sketching , I love doodeling and playing around with different techniques that I usually don't use in my finished work.  I try to at least go through a skechbook every quarter ( every 10 weeks ) .
This is some stuff from the sketchbook from last quarter . Even tho most of them are from location , i did add more color and lines to them at home

OCD

OCD or not so OCD ? I was asked to illustrate the mental illness OCD, not so much the everyday actions rather how these people feel . I was trying to do that , while conveying an OCD feeling in the illustration.  However, I found out that I'm probably the least OCD person EVER . The idea of repeating the same task ( drawing ) over and over again was just not my thing. 
I enjoyed coming up with the concept and also experimenting with some new mixed media techniques .

Days of the week coasters

Thursday 

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

This was a little coaster assignment I was asked to work on last quarter. I decided to do mine on the days of the week and how we felt  on each one of those days. I'm still missing Tuesday and Wednesday . So I guess my week goes from Thu- Monday.  The 2 missing days will have to wait a little , who needs Tuesday or Wednesday anyway!

World largest feet

Savannah Haunted Ghost tour poster

   I did some updates to this one and got a better scan . This one looks so much closer to the original painting.

Sad Heart

Finally , I did the color for the Smoking Heart . This was mainly an experimental piece, both content and media. I colored this in color pencil , oils , and then touched up on Photoshop. I enjoyed this project a lot . would like to do more of them in the future.

Back to computer illustration

I'm taking a digital illustration class this quarter. Which is great , there is so much about Photoshop that i need to learn . Here is our first assignment, we had to select an illustration from our sketchbook and color it using Photoshop. I cheated a little and got some help from Painter as well ;-) This is another version of my Urban Legend about the lady who wandered Savannah in hair filled with spiders. Guess what she did at night when nobody was watching ? helping her friends with their cob webs.

Hilton Head Piano Competition

This is a poster for the Hilton Head Piano Competition . Giving Lino cut another try , I was going for a more simple rougher style than my usual, and heavily relaying on a dynamic composition . Not sure how I feel about this poster yet . Non the less , it was fun , and I gave hand lettering a chance.

Fish on Leash

It's been a while since an update. Been busy trying to catch up with all my projects at school and working on some other stuff. but it's all going pretty well and I'm enjoying my 2nd quarter at SCAD.

I plan to take this assignment to a finish , for now it'll have to wait and just be a color comp. This task was to illustrate " a fish on leash " , whatever that meant to you . This is my interpretation.

new portrait

 So my big plans for my winter break got kinda canceled . I kind of got busy enjoying the winter season with my beloved family and friends in California.  So , I just had to postpone those projects a few weeks. However, I did do this portrait. It was great doing this again , after a while of illustration.