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AI: Controversy

20071024 in Sketchbook | 11 comments

Another post for Amateur Illustrator’s weekly sketch contest. This week, the topic was ‘controversy’. I thought of going for something that addressed current events, or perhaps some Bush-bashing, but ultimately decided against it in favor of something sillier.

My controversy is “The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon”, based on the well-known Mother Goose nursery rhyme. Inter-dinnerware relationships are a pretty controversial topic to me.

This sketch was completed with a ball-point pen and then scanned and colored in Paint.NET (it’s what I have installed at work). Given that I had to color the thing with a mouse, I think it turned out pretty well.

I should be working

20071009 in Sketchbook | No comments

This sketch is for a weekly sketchgroup at the Amateur Illustrator forums. This week’s topic is “Costumes”. Each week, a new topic is chosen based on the suggestions of everyone who posted a sketch that week. As a bonus, whoever suggests the topic to be used in the next week’s sketchgroup will win a free T-shirt from Bountee.com.

I completed this sketch with a Sharpee in a notebook that I keep by my desk at work. The notebook is pretty empty because I’m usually busy, but today was a slow day so I doodled away. Once I finished, I scanned the sketch and colored it using Paint.NET (it’s free so I installed it at work). I’m used to my Wacom, so coloring with the mouse was a pain, but I’m rather happy with the result.

Puerto Rican Sales Tax

20070913 in Editorial | No comments

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.

Cartoon rocket

20070907 in Illustration | No comments

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”.

Boy with beached dolphin

20070906 in Illustration | No comments

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.

Lion fish

20070827 in Artwork | No comments

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.