The Message

This is a Gothic Illustration I made a few months ago. The concept of this illustration was to use color in a very subtle way to depict a dark scene.

Small Still Life

This was one of my first attempts at painting a still life with acrylic paint. I was satisfied with the results.

Forest

This is a 20 x 30 acrylic painting on canvas I did some time ago. The image was provided to me and I was in charge of interpreting it with acrylic paint.

Clean up of my Grandmother's Old Photo

This was the original photo. There were many
problems with it, including the painted eyelashes.
The scanner also added some extra dust particles and scratches.

After a few hours of working on it, I was able to clean the entire image.
I fixed the eyelashes and burned the background just a bit to add some contrast.

A detail of the face before doing anything to it

A detail of the fixed eyelashes and all the other imperfections.

After everything was done I added some color to the background

and the face.

Portraits of Julie & James

All these portraits were taken with a 35 mm camera with a b/w film. I scanned the negatives and corrected all the imperfections I found on them using Photoshop CS4, including scratches and dust particles. I am thankful for all the help they gave me to create these portraits.

Xavier Emanuel

This is a photo I modified of my nephew Emanuel. Photoshop CS3

New Central Park

One of the first things I remember when I look at this image is, how cold it was when I had to go to Central Park to take all the photos I needed to create this panorama. I used 12 photos to create it. Photoshop CS3.

Greed

This is my interpretation of greed. I used about 20 images to create this illustration. It took me about 20 hours including the time I used to take the pictures at different museums in NYC. Photoshop CS3.

Paint and Perspective

I feel that this illustration was relatively easy to work on. It took me only about a day to finish it from beginning to end. I took about 30 photos of different objects related to painting. For some reason most people miss the light posts that are also brushes!! I used Photoshop for this digital illustration.

Logo Design

Although I do not consider myself to be a graphic designer I feel like I have a good sense for design. This and my love for vector images have led me to explore areas like logo design. This has become a really interesting and fulfilling area for me. Most of these logos were based on sketches I came up with that later on became logos in Illustrator. This top logo was meant to be used for a store that offered organic products.

I created this logo in order to use it as a part of a restaurants visual identity. One of the things I find interesting about logo design is the interaction of text and images. I am usually used to dealing with nothing but images to convey certain information. Text is very interesting and hard to deal with in a successful way.

This logo was for a TV network that focused on pets. I felt that dogs are a very common pet or even the most iconic one we know. For that reason I decided to use the image of a friendly dog as part of the logo. Nonetheless, this channels had also different programs that involved other types of pets.

 Finally this logo was part of a campaign that had as a goal to bring art to less fortunate students. The whole idea behind it was to recycle different materials to buy art supplies for those who couldn't afford them. The name of the campaign was "Recycling Dreams."For this reason the three hands are forming a recycle logo. Each hand holds an art supply such as charcoal and brushes. The hand at the top holds a plastic bottle to emphasize the importance of recycling for the program to function.


I created all of these logos as part of different assignments for different classes. None of them were used in actual jobs, which would have been ideal for me ha ha ha.

A view in Central Park

This is another vector image I created in Illustrator. I feel that it is important as an artist to always base my work on my own photographs when possible. Therefore, I based this vector image on my own photograph. This piece was difficult to work on since I had to force a 2 point perspective view on a photo with a 3 point perspective view. It was relatively easy to work on certain areas. However, I found areas that had to be so far away from the original picture in order to retain the preciseness of the actual vector, that was very hard to make the image look believable. I only used flat shapes for this image. That means no gradients or anything like that. It took me about about 35-40 hours to finish it. All done in Illustrator.

Still Life

This is one of the illustrations I am most proud of. It was very challenging and very frustrating at times. I feel that I knew how to use illustrator before working on this image. However, I felt even more comfortable with the program and with my skills after finishing this illustration. I feel like I learned so much about the program and about my abilities when I was done with it. It took me over 50 hours to finish it. It was a lot of work but I would gladly do it again in order to achieve even better results. This is all vector and I used gradients and the great Gradient Mesh Tool. Illustrator CS4.

Hand Study

This was a study of my left hand focusing on the relationship between muscles, bones and the effect on the outer appearance of it. It was difficult to maintain the same pose for such long periods of time but it was great to do another study of my hands. I used graphite pencils and copic markers on bristol board. The background was very difficult to deal with so I replaced it in photoshop to enhance the overall appearance of the drawing. It took me about 6 hours to finish the drawing itself. Cleaning it up in photoshop were an additional 2 hours.

"Boy Playing the Flute"

This is my graphite version of Judith Leyster's "Boy Playing the Flute." It was very useful to copy a great master like her. Her work is very inspiring and is just as good as any other old master, of course with her own identity and style. The color image is a picture of the original painting. 1630-35.
Oil on canvas, 73 x 62 cm.

FLY-64 Dragon.

I did this Illustration about 3 years ago and I still find it very interesting. I feel that this illustration helped me solidify my picture-making process. I felt like I knew what I was doing for every step I took. The results were very satisfying. The creature itself is a mixture of a dragonfly and a helicopter. Very simple idea but challenging to visualize. I used a good range of graphite pencils going from 3H-9B. It took me about 17 hours to finish it over a period of 2 weeks. This drawing was too large for me to scan it so a photograph had to help me with it. It was incredibly hard to clean up since there were lighting variations.

Still Life and Abstraction

This is an old drawing but i like it very much.
It was one of my first times working with decent drawing paper.
The still life that I had was very interesting.
It took me about 10 hours to finish it but I kept going back to it.
I used a very soft graphite pencils like 6-9B.

This is an abstract drawing based on the original still life.
This was done in micron pens and color pencils.
It was incredibly interesting to create an abstract piece of work since I am usually not interested in abstraction. I found out that it's much more difficult than drawing from life. I think it's because for the original still life,I had everything I needed in front of me. This abstraction was much more difficult to visualize.

Skin, Muscles and Bones.

I used a photograph as reference for this drawing. I really like working with this heavy paper since the texture is so rich that makes the drawings look great. It took me about 6 or 7 hours maybe even more. For the muscles I used a color pencil and kept mixing it with a soft graphite pencil.

Anatomy Drawings VIII

I had a 40 min pose for this sketch. The model was great but
I decided to focus on his left hand since it was closer to me.

Anatomy Drawings VII

40 min pose using charcoal on toned paper.

I like the structure on the knees and feet.
It was a 40 min pose, I used charcoal on toned paper.

Another 40 min pose with a focus on feet only.

Anatomy Drawings VI

I had a great angle for this pose.
It was a 40 min pose and I used a black color pencil
and white charcoal on toned paper.


40 min pose with a focus on hands only.
Charcoal and traditional pencils on toned paper.

40 min pose with a focus on hands and feet.
Charcoal and traditional pencils on toned paper.

Anatomy Drawings V

This is one of my favorite drawings because of

how much I learned from it.

I really took my time to observe everything
and break it down into geometric shapes
40 min pose, charcoal on toned paper.

Study of a face and the skull as its structure.
Charcoal on toned paper.


Another study of a face and the skull as its structure.
Charcoal and traditional pencil on toned paper

Anatomy Drawings IV

This was the only sketch I was able to come up with after
6 hours at the Bodies Exhibit in NYC.
It took me a long time to do it but I was pleased with the results.

20 min pose, charcoal on toned paper.

This was a 40 min pose. I was happy with the figure

but I feel that this drawing constantly reminds me that I have to
pull back on how much white I use for the highlights.

Anatomy Drawings III

I used traditional drawing pencils for this piece.
Originally it was a 20 min pose, that I worked on for about 3 more hours.

This was a 20 min pose using charcoal on newsprint paper.

I was very pleased with this sketch.
It was a little stylized but I enjoyed it.
20 min pose, charcoal on newsprint paper.

Anatomy Drawings II

Study of my left hand. Pen and ink on regular sketchbook paper.

I feel that this was the first successful portrait I have done since I started drawing.

I had a 40 min pose for this drawing.

Charcoal on newsprint paper

Anatomy Drawings

These are some of the most successful drawings I have done from actual models not photographs. Using toned paper has definitely become a need for my life drawings. I feel that it takes away some of the work I encountered when using white paper since it takes care of most of the middle tones in a given drawing.