Pen and Ink

I used a lot of brown paper, ink, gesso, oil paint, and only one nib. It was my favorite, it could do any line and it held a lot of ink. Interesting to work with these materials.

Osama's Legacy

Pen and Ink illustration for an article about 9/11. The article was hard to deal with since it was a little dry and not very interesting. The most interesting information I found on the article was the author's opinion on how the event divided the Muslim world from the Western world. I used that to portray him underwater cutting up a map. This was the very first illustration I have done with a pen and nibs and not with micron pens. It was difficult to control but in the end it was a good learning experience.

Oil Paint "Grisaille"

This is my very first oil painting. It has been an amazing experience to learn how to use the paint and paint mediums. I wanted to have a good digital copy of this stage of the painting since it will go on to be a color painting in a few days. I have to thank my friend Andres Taveras for letting me paint him and for helping me with all the poses I needed for this.

Globophobia!

This is my interpretation of this unusual kind of phobia. Globophobia is the fear of balloons. I decided to put regular balloons at the bottom and they come alive as they get higher and higher. My entry for the Halloween Phobias Contest. Done in Photoshop with a few textures from CG Textures.

OWLlusionist

This is one of the first characters I have done just in Illustrator. It is great to finally be able to push the techniques I know as far as I can. I am looking forward to the next one!

Latin American Heritage Month Contest

This is my entry for this contest. I wanted to have 4 different figures that are part of our heritage. The four figures represent different aspects of our culture. Literature, entertainment, government, and of course ART!!

14 x 17

Pen and ink on bristol paper.

Hall of Art LOGO Contest

This was my entry for a contest held by the Hall of Art contest. The idea was to create a logo that promoted environmental consciousness. I did mine on Illustrator. I was pleased to know that I had won the first place. It was good to take a break from all my other work on do something in Illustrator for a change.

 

This is the logo.

This is what the logo looks like on the t-shirts that were printed.

Just Dream

This is an illustration about a known fable (The Tortoise and the Hare) that takes on a different look when it enters a person's dreams. I used acrylics, markers, color pencils, and airbrush with metallic acrylic inks. Unfortunately, the scanner is, of course, unable to pick up the effect of metallic ink. I needed to touch up the top part of the illustration since the surface I used did not take color pencils very well. The surface was great for acrylic paint and ink but not so much for markers and color pencils. I used Photoshop to touch it up.

Jeny

 This is a digital painting of my beloved sister Jeny. I spent a lot of time learning about brushes and digital painting in general before I continued this painting. I started it last summer and I went back to it this year. I feel like I have a better handle on the painting aspects of Photoshop. This also helped me develop a feel for  my own workflow.

 

A detail of the area I liked the most.

The Study of Anatomy

That's me just trying to get more bones and body parts to keep them in my portfolio to study them!! I used a Copic marker and graphite on white drawing paper.

Beyond Beauty

This is my interpretation of being beautiful. Even weird and strange features cannot degrade her beauty, instead it makes her even more beautiful. Acrylic and metallic ink on Gessobord. The metallic properties of the ink cannot be shown on this image. It was great working with them.

The Frog King

This is my version of the Frog King. I found the frog in the story to be both annoying and adorable. I wanted to depict it as a strange looking frog but still charming. This is the scene when the frogs decides to help the princess and brings the golden ball back.

Acrylic on Gessobord

As Fast As You Can.

This is from the story by Dave Eggers "After I was Thrown in the River and Before I drowned." This story is about a dog who like to run though the forest. The story made me feel sad since I am a dog lover and the story itself seems a little cruel. I decided to give my illustration a happier spin. Through out the story the dog mentions how much he would like to have certain character run with him. I focused on those aspects and I decided to give him what he wished for. Watercolor on Illustration board.

It's Worse than You Think!

I read an article about the "mysterious" deaths of the red-winged black birds. I felt that the author was making fun of how people wanted to find an inexplicable and fantastically weird explanation for this. I wanted to keep that sense of fun with my illustration. I created a mysterious character that would be the explanation for all the dead birds acting and increasing the dramatic aura of this event.

Day Light Savings Time?

This illustration is about confusion as a state of mind. Time is what the confusion is about. This was possible thanks again to Dre Taveras. I used acrylic paint on gessobord.

3 Hour Pose

This was an 18x24 graphite drawing. It was such a good pose that I had to keep working on it. I wanted to try something I have done before which is adding a background with photoshop. It took me about 6 hours total.

Roman Centurion

One more I did with Tombow Markers. It took me about 2 hours.

Brown Eagle

I used a reference photograph I intended to use for a different project to do this drawing. Done with Micron pens on sketch paper. It took me about 3 hours.

SI Sketch Night "Cabaret 2"

This was a very interesting night. The music was great and the models were great. However, I was only able to get 1 good pose through out the entire session. Black Tombow marker.

 20 min pose.

SI Sketch Night "Amazon Hunters"

More figure drawing this time using Tombow markers with different colors. It's exciting to see how the colors blend with each other since they mix in very strange ways.

 20 min pose.

 20 min pose.

Drawing at the Museum.

I did these two drawings at the American Museum of Natural History. I used Micron pens on sketch paper. It's always interesting to draw at the Museum since it's full of amazing animals and all sorts of inspiration.

Andean Condor

 

 This took me about 2 hours.

Northern Elephant Seal

 

 This drawing took me about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

SI Sketch Night "50's Housewife"

This was a very entertaining evening. The models were really putting on a show!

 20 min pose.

 20 min pose. For this one the model decided to change the pose after we had already started. Her body turned but her head stayed in the same position. When I moved on to her body I realized that I would have to invade the next page in order to get most of her in my sketchbook.

SI Sketch Night "Sitting Nudes"

After a while I started noticing that some poses have to be repeated which makes it interesting. All of these were done during different sessions but since they were too similar I decided to upload them together. They are all charcoal on brown paper.

 

 20 min pose.

20 min pose.

 20 min pose.

SI Sketch Night "Cabaret"

 20 min pose.

20 min pose.

 20 min pose.

SI Sketch Night "Caribbean Night"

This was one of the best sessions of last summer. The models were very interesting and they offered great posses. They were the kind of models that would be great to have during a 6 hour pose or even longer.

 10 min pose.

 20 min pose.

SI Sketch Night "My Favorite"

This was so far my favorite 20 min pose during a nude session on Tuesday. I remember this model being really energetic and dynamic with her posses. I really enjoyed this one. 

SI Sketch Night "Victorian Days"

 10 min poses

 

          20 min pose

 

Last pose of the night, 20 mins

SI Sketch Night "Portraits"

 Some 20 min portraits done with black and white charcoal with some Venetian Red drawing pencil.

 

SI Sketch Night "Nude Tuesdays"

These were done on different Tuesday nights at Society of Illustrators. I used black and some white charcoal on brown paper. Most of them were 20 min poses.

SI Sketch Night "Raggs to Riches"

 This was the first Sketch night where I went back to using Tombow markers. They are fast and easy to use. It was great to reacquaint myself with them.

 

20 min pose.

 

20 min pose.

20 min pose.

20 min pose. Last pose of the night.

Pratt Draw-a-thon!!

 This year was my first time doing the 12 hour Draw-a-thon at Pratt. It was an great experience being surrounded my many talented artists and friends working through out the entire night. My plan was to finish only 2 drawings that I could be happy with. The plan was working for the first couple of hours since I started to get really tired around midnight and the event ended at 7 am. These are the two drawings I came up with.

This was the first drawing of the night. It was a 3 hour pose. I was really enjoying working on this drawing since it was the begging of the night and the model was incredibly good and interesting. It was done with graphite on drawing paper 18x24.

 This was the second drawing of the night. It was a seven hour pose!! I started to slow down a lot after the first 3 hours and I decided to only focus on doing another portrait. I knew that it was going to be harder and harder to keep my focus and draw as I usually do as the night went on. Even though it was really tiring it was something I'll remember for a long time.