My great grandfather has always been one of my biggest influences in my art career. He was a painter in Mexico but passed away before I met him. Although the painting he left behind made a big impression on my my whole life. I grew up looking at these painting and always loved how he capture his culture and heritage. I have never felt ashamed to be Mexican and these painting taught me never to forget where my origins are from. ❤️

Metal jewelry I made just for fun. The earrings were coated with enamel. While the ring was castes.

The process of painting metal. I loved the colors of the spray on the paper. Progress shot of my final for metal smithing

I was walking around Long Beach and this outdoor coffee hut had an artist thing for children and had on display children reacting to artist Basquiat. I found this to be one of the coolest things ever. Much like our second project 👌

Book binding I did for my illustration class. I made this using Japanese book binding. Really love the cover

I found this piece to be very compelling and a wonderful idea to introduce play into the illustration world. (Reblog)

Hidden Portraits: Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist and biologist, best known for developing the theory of evolution by natural selection. 

He’s featured in the Art with Watson series, Hidden Portraits. 15 artists teamed up with Watson to discover and illuminate the unknown essence of seven of history’s greatest thinkers using data. 

What Watson thinks: By analyzing Darwin’s journals, sketches and manuscripts, Watson found that the concepts outlined in his books on evolution bear a strong resemblance to the concepts behind many puzzles and board games.

About the artwork: The insight Watson uncovered led the artists to examine the idea of evolution as a game itself—one that, when played to the end, allows participants to discover something new. The artists were further inspired by the notion of exploration, and the unique natural beauty of the Galapagos Islands.

Explore Darwin’s Hidden Portrait→

Cool doodle that was sewn on as a patch I came across while poking around in tumblr.

Punk! Punk! Rocker!

Artist of influence: Tim Doyle

Tim Doyle is an illustrator and print-maker from Texas. He grew up in Dallas and then moved to Austin which fulfilled his life long dream of being stuck in Dallas.  He has self started his own business and known as Nakatomi Inc and Nakatomi Print Labs, which do commercial printing. Since making his company he has really expanded his company. I really admire this because starting from nothing he was able to make a name for himself. I one day also hope to make a company and be able to make a name for myself doing what I love. His illustrations are wonderfully done and have a good amount of detail in them while including a bit of fantasy. Every time I see his work I am at awe with it. One day hope to be able to reach this level of digital art. His work has a lot of play and is very fun while engaging to look at, sometimes Ii find it rather relaxing to look at art work and not have to look for some super secret hidden meaning.

http://www.mrdoyle.com/ This link is Tim Doyle’s website and has his work, contact information and even mailing list. This was the cite I was introduced to when I fist saw his work.

Homework #3

Fiber sculpture is about creating something that is three dimensional while exploring different mediums. Even though it is called fiber sculpture it is so much more opened ended than just using fibers and textiles.  Fiber sculpture is different than sculpture because it allows more openness to materials while something brand new you can use existing objects and build up on. I feel there is much more openness and fun that can go into fiber sculpture. In order to characterize an artwork as fiber sculpture I would be something that is three dimensional, it should be coming off of the canvas a bit and have different materials than traditional. Tradition materials would be just painting wood etc. but fiber materials have an openness of being just about anything from yarn to sticks.            I think that for this semester this class has offered me openness to different explore different materials. Playing with different materials made me realize that I can do more than just drawing. I found that I was pretty well creating three dimensional objects and came a bit more easier than some of my two dimensional work. In addition to explore an openness of material I was also able to explore myself as an artist. I got to dig and work on projects that came from within rather just completing an assignment. I really created things that I identified with as a person and explore my own inner questions. In the future I think that I will revisit the idea of hand making t-shirts from design to printing. I like this idea because it combined my love for drawing with hand making an object from scratch

           As an artist I have learned that I really want to share my story and experiences with people.  In today’s world I feel that there is so much disconnection and hate that I hope to spread an understanding. Sharing your story can put you in a vulnerable spot but I am willing to do this in order to create a world of unity and understanding. I am also very proud of my heritage and would like to also share the struggles yet beauty of my own culture. I am more aware to the world around me and my experiences.

I made a table for my turtle tank. It came out really nice and I'm happy with it.

Jellyfish with an interchangeable top (:

Frida t-shit. I gotta love this.

From Scratch to Gallery to Consumerism. At the start of my project I was thinking how I could incorporate illustration into fabric. The most obvious thing that kept coming to my mind was screen printing. Then I asked myself why do we print on cotton t-shirts and why not other materials. So from there I had decided to re purpose some of my samples since they were of different mediums. I selected wet felt, yarn, muslin, and silk. I really just wanted to explore the out come of this project. I then begin to think on how I would present this piece which lead me to the idea of how artist often think about context of a medium. How commercialized stuff, once placed into a gallery space it is now art.  Which finally led me to rethink about commercialization, since the source of my inspiration was prints i decided the project should come back to this source. Once I had my process set I had decided to revisit a older drawing idea I had but never finished. Frida Kahlo has always been a source of my inspirations but so has urban art and I decided then to make a juxtaposition of the two creating her with a gas mask. Printing her image on the zarape reinforces my pride for my culture and the pride she took but choosing to end it by putting it on a t-shirt create an also tied in urban art to me. I also had thought about how iconic Frida has become and how her art has gone through this big commercialized process. It begin as nothing then was placed in galleries, and people adored it, but now it is on everything from sweaters to wallets. So I also wanted to recreate this mass production by placing the image I designed and created on different mediums. This project really made me explore and question various things in the art world. I found peace and happiness in this process making and the results of it. I felt my last project was very serious and I really wanted to take a step in a different directions that would highlight me as a person and who I want to continue to explore.

Machine sewing sample

Frida In a gas mask. This is going to be my print for the final project.

Knotless netting around an object

Week 6: netting with no knots…

I caught a psyduck.