Lighting Study

I revisited one of my old paintings and redesigned it more 3 dimensionally. When I originally worked on this piece it had characters with inspiration from the great Henri Rousseau. This 3d stuff pushes me out of my comfort zone as I have tendencies to paint and design in a flat fashion. Maybe later I might add some characters and a story to this.

Film studying

Started back doing film studies to further my understanding of film composition. The first movie I chose to practice on is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. If for some reason you haven't seen it PLEASE do, especially if your into beautiful filmaking. I simplified this scene and changed the lighting a bit. It's from the second act in the movie. 

Fun with the pencil

Fair Oaks and Colorado southeast corner Circa 1910

Rural Mouse sketch

Some of my favorite pieces in the animation world are from artist that can produce jaw dropping pieces with just the good old pencil. Just straight up incredible positive and negative spacing. Here are the sites of some of my favorites:

Colin Stimpson

Paul Felix (of course)

Alex Nino (this is hans bacher's site)
Luke Desmarchelier

My new years resolution is to do lots and lots of drawing, both studies and thumbs.  I've found that drawing in Photoshop only makes me miss the good old graphite. I've been practicing a lot of figure drawing, especially head and hands but I'm not going to post that just yet. I don't want to bore anyone who might be following my blog :) 

Thanks for stopping by!

Latest work

Sorry for the long pause in posts. I've been super duper busy! Which is very welcomed. These pieces were done for a canceled television animation project. 

Art Deco Los Angeles in Color

My homage to the great city of Los Angeles during the Film Noir era. Before the city's skyline was forever changed by the 1960's Downtown L.A. building boom. Although there are many different types of architecture in Los Angeles, in my opinion its Art Deco architecture is the most impressive. Not every jewel of Deco architecture here is represented. I left out some just because the level of detail on some of the buildings would've doubled the size of this illustration. 

 Click here to order a print of Art Deco Los Angeles.

L.A. Studies

Some of my latest studies of old Los Angeles in Gouache and pencil.

Art Deco Los Angeles Value Study

Here is the Value study for Art Deco Los Angeles. I left a couple of Art Deco giants out such as the Bullocks Wilshire building because the composition got a little complicated. I might have to ad the Wiltern theater, though I'm not exactly sure where I'm going to put it.  Los Angeles is such a large city, it'll take me a little while to quench my thirst to illustrate it. I'll be posting a picture of the color file as it becomes available. 

KINOFEST!

This week I am happy to announce that I've been published on Kinofest, International Digital Film Festival's artist exhibition website. Such an honor! Click here to take a look. 

United States Court of Appeals, Pasadena Ca

In 1931 The New Vista del Arroyo Hotel opened up sporting a grand six-story addition and a beautiful bell tower. In 1943 the building was purchased by the U.S. War Department and it became the McCormack Army Hospital until it was deactivated in 1949. Circa 1981 the Vista del Arroyo was placed in the National Register of Historic Places, and became the southern seat of the United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit. In 1995 it was renamed in honor of Judge Richard H. Chambers whose concept it was to bring a Federal courthouse to Pasadena. - wikipedia 


This piece was done using a photoshop technique where I scan in a traditionally painted gouache texture and graphically painted under the texture layer in photoshop. 

Tea for Two # 3

Been painting a lot with gouache lately. Here is the third painting in my Tea for Two series. Its quite refreshing to do something different from Photoshop for a change. 

Pretty Truck in Front of Coffee Shop

A couple of weeks ago I was commissioned to do an illustration of a truck for the father of a good friend of mine. This is the public version with an orange truck instead of his original one of a kind blue 1954 Ford F100. This will be vailable as a limited edition print at the Rose Bowl Arts and Crafts Show in June.

Tea for Two Print

One of my favorite things to do on a lazy day is Tea for Two. Printed on archival Canson aquarelle paper. 

Beautiful Woman under Trellis

This illustration was inspired by my wife Lydia. She's Half Puerto Rican and Half Thai.

Country Duet

Inspired by the great children's book illustrator Cliff Roberts This country singing Duet greeting card is now available for purchase. Click here to visit my online store

Now Available at my Etsy Store

The Quintet Stringed Instrument category is now available. Stay tuned for information on custom orders for Greeting cards and invitations of all kinds.

Portrait of Pasadena

Illustrated Views of the City of Pasadena, California. 

Limited Palette

The first piece using Blue and Orange at Balboa Park San Diego, Ca. Second piece using Red and Green at a shack in Oxnard, Ca. Add white and you get a full range of value. I like this exercise because it keeps me from screwing my colors up.

Speed Painting

Literally had minutes to capture the color here. Location is the Pasadena Court of Appeals, Guauche medium.

The Strangle. This time in color [00]

Finally done with the scene.

I'm revisiting this subject to fit more with the style I'm using for my senior project. These colors won't actually make it in the final background painting but I like to explore my options before committing to a color scheme. You can have so much fun with color without the background ! I used bright colors to pull myself out of my comfort zone. The bottom drawing is the old drawing done in Ink. For the BG painting I decided to give it a little more seriousness by keeping Nathaniel's feet on the ground.

Insane Asylum

Nathaniel being carted off in a Paddy Wagon by 2 big lugs. This guy just can't get a break. Speaking of breaks I need one. Academia just is overwhelming these days as I get closer to graduating. If art school was a sport, lets just say the studio classes are loosing :/