Artwork

As I mentioned in a previous post, I completed three portraits of my husband for a friend’s photography project. This image is one of the results of the photo shoot.

I thought the idea of having a painting of the subject in the portrait is a great one, and I love how the final images turned out.

This is my husband, Goñi. I had never done a portrait of him before, and last night I completed three (this one is my favorite).

The paintings are part of a photography project assigned to one of our friends, Sharma Shari. Her assignment consists of experimenting with the lighting on a person in order to achieve the best possible portrait. To spice things up, she asked me to do several life-sized portraits of her subject so he could use them as masks. I think it’s a great concept and I’ll be sure to post the results of the portrait session here as soon as I can.

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.

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.

Since a National Geographic reference was the topic of the previous post, I thought I’d add this image as well. This watercolor was completed about 8 years ago on watercolor paper.

The article was about the importance of a certain Indian river to the life of the people that surrounded it. I don’t recall the name of the river or the issue of the magazine where I found the picture. If you happen to know, be sure to let me know in the comments below.

This watercolor doesn’t look like most other watercolors because it was made in a very slow and detailed way, giving rise to an opaque finished piece. Watercolors are known for their transparency and accidental effects, so many purists might think that i’m killing the essence of watercolor by painting in this way. My response is: I like how it looks, so there. Besides, limiting the ways a medium is used because of “the way it’s supposed to look” puts an unnecessary barrier on the range of your work.

I read a lot of National Geographic. The stories are enlightening and the images are breathtaking. This is definitely a magazine that I don’t throw away at the end of the month. I have used the images in National Geographic many times as a reference, and this drawing is a perfect example.

I don’t really remember what the article was about, but I do know that it was published about 8 years ago and it had a regular American town with people that you’d see every day.

The photo I used as a reference for this drawing struck me as very tender. The woman was busy sewing a garment while talking to the girl, and the girl seemed tickled with what was being said. Or maybe she was reacting to the photographer? Who knows. In any event, the expressions on both of their faces was priceless and I had to draw them.

As for the drawing itself, it is pencil on watercolor paper (I liked the roughness of it). At the time I was experimenting with making the outlines of subjects much darker than the shadows within them, and I think it works very nicely for this piece.

“Sitting Bull” was commissioned about 3 years ago by my boss at the time. I worked at a computer lab at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez doing regular maintenance and upgrades. My boss was a bit eccentric as far as Native Americans were concerned, and had all kinds of paraphernalia around the office and at his home. Sitting Bull was his favorite character from Native American history, so as soon as he found out that I could draw, he asked for this picture.

I designed the overall composition based on two different pictures that I found of Sitting Bull. I thought a cloudy night sky would be a good contrast to the figures in the foreground, so I incorporated into the picture.

Interestingly, at first the sky included a moon because I have always envisioned Native Americans as dancing in the moonlight. Maybe that image was engraved into my mind by movies and other media, but nevertheless, I thought the moon was a good addition. Unfortunately, an ink spill ruined the drawing of the moon so now there is only a dark spot in the upper right-hand corner.

This image of a lion fish was created about a year and a half ago as a tryout for a graphic design position. I was trying to prove my artistic skills be completing a digital painting using only Photoshop and a Wacom tablet. I liked the result very much, so I’m including it here as my first art post.

I like lion fish because they are extravagant and beautiful and scary at the same time. I wanted to reflect that in the painting. Also, I tweaked the colors of the fish to be a bit more orange so that it would clash with the blue background. The shock of complementary colors makes the image pop.

The white lines were added as a unique touch to show that I wasn’t simply copying an image of a lion fish. I think the lines also help denote the features of the fish, which would be lost in the sea of camouflage markings that cover it.