September 2007

Continuing with my fears theme, and a direct opposite of my previous post, this image represents a fear of being left alone. This is the kind of fear that sits in the pit of your stomach and can make you weary for days.

I don’t think this is a very personal fear. Humans are social by nature, so a lonely soul is an incomplete one. However, I had severe self-image issues when I was a kid, so I believed that I would grow up alone. Thankfully, I’ve gotten over most of my self-image doubts and am now happily married, so this particular fear has subsided greatly in me.

This is the second page of my “fears” themed notebook. Contrary to my first post on this theme, this fear is a more personal one. I tend to be very introverted in large crowds. I think this is in response to the fact that I feel very unimportant in overly-large groups; as if no one would notice if I were there at all. I suppose this is a self-image issue.

Large crowds also scare me because the collective mind can often be very stupid, causing violence and hysteria in situations that wouldn’t normally merit it. Plus, people tend to feel more anonymous in large groups, making them act in unusual and often brazen ways.

This month I’m participating in an artistic effort called The Sketchbook Project, run by Art House Shop in Atlanta, GA. They’ve sent 500 sketchbooks out to artists all over the world and the artists have to fill up the books with the theme of the project: fears. Once the sketchbooks are sent back, there is a gallery planned in October to showcase all of the notebooks on the walls of the Art House Shop gallery.

The notebooks are 3.5″ x 5″ Moleskines, so I carry mine around with me all the time to draw out ideas on the spot.

This image shows the front inside cover of my notebook, where I wrote out the theme, and the first page. The fear I’m trying to represent isn’t so much a personal fear as a collective one: the unknown.

Stained glass is one of my favorite mediums. I would delve into it much more if it didn’t wreak havoc on my hands… Once I start working on cutting and grinding glass pieces for a project, I start getting loads of tiny, superficial cuts on my fingers and hands. They aren’t deep enough to draw blood, but after a while the tips of your fingers lose sensitivity.

This peacock was completed for a class project where we had to create a three-dimensional stained glass piece. I could have just created a lamp, but the idea of a stained glass sculpture seemed so cool. Stained glass blues are so vibrant that I knew that a peacock would be a perfect subject (plus I have a weakness for birds).

To create this piece, first I made a plaster mold of the peacock’s body. Then I covered the mold in aluminum paper and covered it in papier-mâché. Once the paper mold was completely dry, I drew lines along the body where logical divisions should be. Obviously glass will not bend at all, so small curves had to have many small pieces while larger flat surfaces could have larger pieces. Once all of the pieces had been drawn, I numbered each one of them (a total of more than 500) and then took pictures of the mold from every angle in order to have a clear reference of where each piece should go.

After the mold was completed, I cut the paper mold into sections that were different colors, and then I cut those sections further so that they could be laid flat on the glass. I also cut the plaster mold into different sections: this time making sure that I could easily remove the mold from a stained glass section once it had been completed.

The flat pieces of the paper mold were used to trace onto glass of the correct color, and these pieces were then ground and foiled with copper. Once I had enough pieces for a section of the peacock, I would solder them together, using the plaster mold as a base so that the final form will have the correct shape. I went on this way for each separate section, and then soldered sections to each other as they were completed.

The final piece was completed after about 100 hours of work, though my mom and husband had to start helping me with grinding and cutting near the end of the project or I wouldn’t have completed it in time for finals.

In November of 2006, Puerto Rico implemented a sales tax for the first time its history as a commonwealth of the United States. Before that, the government made its money on what we call an arbitrio, or “import tax”.

The goal of the sales tax was to make contributions to the government more transparent, as well as lower the price of goods by removing the import tax that was hidden in the retail price. The problem with this idea was that many of the goods that were in store inventories at the time of the switch to sales tax had already paid the import tax, so the vendors weren’t going to lower prices immediately. As a result, Puerto Rican consumers were stuck with the 6.6% import tax hidden in the retail price of store items and a 7% tax visible at the register. What’s more, very few vendors (less than 10%) lowered the price of their wares even after they had cleared their inventories of items that had paid the import tax, leaving Puerto Rican citizens to bear the economic burden.

This simple contour drawing of myself was completed around 2001 for a drawing class at the University of New Orleans. I was the only engineering student in the class.

Even though the rest of my classmates were artists, I had the best grade by far in that class and some of the best works. Why? Simple: artists are conditioned to have no self-discipline. Society tends to see artists as inconsistent and dependent on “inspiration” to get anything done and instead of overcoming the stereotype, artists tend to fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The real truth is that “inspiration”, just like the “muse”, is a fleeting myth and any artist who depends on it won’t get anything done. Remember: being is artist is a career choice, just like deciding to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a plumber. Like any career choice, you have to discipline yourself and work hard if you want to be successful.

Since we’re on the subject of reclining nudes, I thought I’d throw up this sketch. It was done in sienna, black, and white conte crayon on brown paper.

When I’m working on a sketch like this, I usually start with the sienna because the color doesn’t provide much contrast against the brown paper. This way, you can see what you’re doing but you don’t have to erase any mistakes. Then, I use the black to create the deepest shadows, and finally the white for the highlights.

My completion time for a sketch like this is about 20-30 minutes, but it mostly depends on the model. If the model is in an uncomfortable position, I try to take much less time so that they can rest.

This sketch is my first and only attempt at working with oil paints. I loved it and hated it at the same time.

On the one hand, oil paints are smoother and easier to work into the canvas. The colors blend in with each other naturally, and it’s easy to get transparent washes of color. Also, it seemed to me like you could get the most out of the shape of your brush when using oils.

On the other hand, oils take forever to dry, which can be frustrating. Once I know that a piece is finished, I tend to want to scan it and tweak it and show it to people, so having to wait for a week or two drives me crazy. Plus, the solvent I was using to dilute it was very strong; a well ventilated room is a must.

Despite the pitfalls of oil painting, I really like how this sketch turned out and I would probably work with oils again. Not just yet though.

This may seem strange to most people, but I have a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico. The truth is that I love engineering: I have an innate knack for solving problems. To be an even better engineer, I signed up for the COOP program at my university a couple of years ago and got sent off to Boeing in California for an internship. While I was there, I became good friends with a fellow intern, Kristy.

Kristy is a spunky little woman, and funny as hell, so we got along right away. Interestingly enough, she’s a rocket scientist, so she had always wanted a rocket design to use as a sticker on the rear windshield of her car. Once she found out I could draw, she drew me a little picture of the rocket she wanted and I then refined her idea to make it cute and unique.

Using her idea as a reference, I first drew a cleaner and more polished version of the rocket in pencil and then I scanned it and cleaned it up in Illustrator. I like the result very much, even though it’s not what I would generally consider “my style”.

I used to work at Puerto Rico Sea Grant as a web and graphic designer and I really enjoyed what I was doing there. My job offered me an opportunity to illustrate stories about nature and science while trying to make those stories appealing to a wider audience. This illustration was going to be used for a poster announcing a conference about endangered whales, dolphins, and porpoises and what people could do to protect them. In the end, the illustration was never used in the poster because the conference organizers wanted to pack so much information into the publication that I could barely fit any images.

The entire image was drawn and painted in Photoshop. I started with drawing the general shapes of the figures and then added the speckled background to use as a base for the painting. Then I went on to paint in the figures using transparent washes so that the background would show through and affect the colors of the final image.