Who are you?

It has been a while since I last posted, and although I considered seriously to shut down this blog due to the lack of time (or audience) I think is important to keep it, just as a form of journal or diary sort of speak. If any of you guys find it helpful, please let me know! I'll be more than happy to keep this up even more so!

Here is the process of one of my latest jobs, It is an illustration based on a fragment of Alice in Wonderland.

Digital rough. I throw lines on photoshop just to get the general idea of the composition.

I start tightening up lines, first with the foliage and the caterpillar.

Then with the mushrooms and the smoke.

At last with Alice and I made some changes to the caterpillar's face, to be more dramatic and creepy.

Last step, I print the roughs on bristol and ink over them. 

Hope you dig!

All comments welcome and encouraged!

The Flash cover

Final project for narrative art II. Andy's class. The goal was to create a cover of any superhero you wanted. I was influenced by my friend Lloyd and ended up drawing a Flash cover.

Here is the process.

Thumbnail

Background in Manga studio

Put them together in Photoshop

Tighten up and draw some lightning

Detail on the pencils

Finished pencils

That's it! Any comments or questions are welcomed!

The Flash

After a month or so of coming back to my hometown, the beautiful and sunny Monterrey, I had a lot of plans of what I wanted to do with my summer. But you know, life happens. You just have to keep your eyes in the prize and move forward.

This is a gift for a friend. The flash on heavy Bristol using copics and pitt pens.

Hope you dig!

Artists, keep the industry healthy.

Another piece of advice from Stephen Silver

Spread the word.

Protect your art career

This video really made an impact on the way I see art and how we all affect the industry as artists when we undervalue our work. His name is Stephen Silver and he has something you should hear.

Value your work, don't give away your work for free. If we don't start doing it, things won't change.


Please spread the word.

Batcave full process

Hey there guys. This time I'll take you through the process on creating my version of the Batcave from scratch to final colors.

1. Sketch. First of all I did a 2x2" thumbnail of the batcave just to get an idea of what I wanted.

Sketch

2. Building perspective. After I scanned the thumbnail, I used Manga Studio Ex 4 software to create a grid on which my perspective lines would lie, and created a background architecture for the cave.

Manga Studio Ex 4

Background architecture

3. Blue line printing. Once I had the perspective lines and the grids in place, I printed a blue line penciled version of the whole thing on an 11x17  comic book bristol paper. I have a Brother Printer that prints to size. It's really cool, I recommend it 100% it is a very good investment.

This is the penciled version on top of the blue line.

Pencils on bristol

This is the scanned version of the pencils.

4. Inks.

5. Coloring

A) Flats
Using Photoshop CS5 I flatted all the figures in the piece. This is called Flats stage. This helps you to make selecting everything instantly. Be sure to keep a separate layer with the flats.

B) Rendering
Once I have picked up the base colors, I start using different techniques to color or "render" the drawing.

Here is a video showing the process http://youtu.be/c7pJPrv8_LE


 That's it! Questions or comments are welcomed.

Batman vs. Predator pages

This assignment was a really cool assignment our first one actually of the semester. It holds a special place for me because of personal reasons (read here) but let's get to it.

First the thumbnails. This is actually the most difficult part, since this is where the storytelling comes alive. After coming up with some decent layouts I proceed to do the digital roughs on a Wacom Intuos 3 for both pages.

It is very important to always, always look for reference pictures, specially if its something you have no idea what it looks like or in this case, a city such as Gotham City. The city is a character on its own so you can't just draw New York, you have to draw Gotham.

Roughs 2nd page

The next step is to print them full size in blue lines, this way I can do the pencils on the actual page. I used to do the light box thing, but this is just more convenient, since it saves me 1 step.

This time I tried some sound effects on the actual page instead of letting the letterer do the job. I did some sketches first.

Final stage is the inking stage, which I have to practice much more by the way. I experimented a lot on this pages, specially on the first one. I learned a thing or two.

 That's it! Piece of cake right?

All comments are welcome and encouraged. See you next time!

Dinosaurs in NY

This assignment was a double spread for narrative art II, where we had to chose between either dinosaurs and aliens. I obviously picked up the dinosaurs in N.Y. because I have never draw them before. I also thought it was a good opportunity to throw in a shout out for some of my friends books back in Monterrey. (which if you don't know, is my hometown, and a very awesome kick ass city).

This is the process.

Digital roughs

Digital roughs 2

Background

Pencils

Inks

Blacksad

This was a project for Basic Drawing II. The goal of the assignment was to draw a scene with 1 or 2 point perspective background and at least 3 characters, showing foreground, middle ground and background.

I Chose Blacksad because it is a killer book and I have never drawing anthropomorphic characters in a while.

Rough

Background in Manga Studio Ex 4

TIghter rough.

Final pencils.

Back to school: Babydoll

Back to school

Been a while since I posted anything here. As Ferris Bueller once said, "life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while you might missed it".

This time I'm not gonna say it, I'm doing it (although I know that by saying that I'm saying what I'm gonna do, defeating the purpose but anyway...) one post a day, that is my goal. Art does not get a rest, and we all need inspiration. If you like what you see here leave a comment, we all benefit from each other's vibes and thoughts.

Here is a project.  Babydoll from Suckerpunch.

Done with pastels on toned paper.