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 .