De La Salle Mural Project: Part 1

Clearing the cobwebs in here—haven’t posted in a while but I have so much to talk about that has happened in the last several months!  

Right now I want to talk about this wonderful opportunity I have at my former middle school, De La Salle Academy.  After over 25 years they have moved from their 1-floor location in the upper west side to a beautiful 6(?) floor building a block away from Port Authority.  The building, renovated by CookFox Architects—the ones responsible for the new Bank of America Tower—is truly a space conducive to learning and exploration.  My mural project for the school has evolved from simply explaining the history of the school in the upper west side to now instilling the warm yet strong culture and foundation of De La Salle Academy in their new location.  In my visual language I see it as the “ visual gatekeeper” of the De La Sallian tradition-- prominently displayed in the mezzanine library for all to reflect on and see.

All artsy language aside, I have a hard deadline of November 20^th to finish the mural so I’ve been doing a little hustling to get this done.  The focus and challenge will be the line work… hoping to get that part started next weekend.  Will continue to post the progress on it every week until it’s done so be sure to check back soon!  Here are pictures of the last 2 weeks of the process so far:

Wall primed & ready for art with CookFox superstar architect Zach

Pencil lines on wall

Color Comp process on my laptop

Color blocking begins-- the fun part!

Pre Columbian Mask Collection

I just finished working on these masks which I will be using for this year's promotional materials.  My inspiration came from South American pre columbian art-- specifically within the Colombian region: the Quimbaya, Tumaco and Tayrona.  Along the way my love for hip-hop and street art also made an appearance in the stylization.  One of the orange masks reminds me of those 80's flat top hairstyles.  Anyway, there are so many uses I have planned for these guys so I'll continue to post as they come into existence.

Initial Sketches from sketchbook:

Finalized version in pattern form:

On white:

Wine Labels for Astor Wines & Spirits

 

I am happy to announce that the wines I had been working on are finished and on sale at Astor Wines & Spirits in New York City!  You can also order them online at www.astorwines.com.

Since I spent so much time working on these I thought I'd take you through my process.  The art director had already chosen the names, inspired by her love of music.  My task was to illustrate and design labels that speak to the native region and tell a little bit about its origin to its buyers.

Sometimes I'll start by jotting down words and ideas then see what visuals I come up with.  That was the case for Zampoñas.  For Sios, I pretty much thought of the concept right from the beginning and went straight to drawing for that one.  Here are some sketches I sent out.  All of these have a connection between indigenous people from the area and Zampoñas, which are instruments traditionally played by two people (as one alone does not contain the full scale).

 

They went for the mask with the Zampoñas headdress (top, far right).  Next is the finalized drawing, inking, digitizing, adding fonts, etc.:

The dimensions of the labels changed and they wanted to tone down the saturation of colors so it was adjusted accordingly.  As I mentioned earlier, Sios was pretty straight forward.  The traditional headdress is so beautiful on its own that we just went with that and added a border around it.  And that sums it up!  I hope this gives you an excuse to go out and get a bottle!

Prez Obama Portrait

 I'm working on a couple of portraits and decided to work on a portrait of President Obama first since he's been a "hot topic" this year with the elections and all.  This was one that I started one night not knowing where it was going to go and at some point, after trying several things, I ended up really liking these stripes that cut across the page. 

I also included pictures of some of the process.  Looking forward to posting more!

We're Not All Alike: Update

My colleague and friend, Christian Castro, showed me an article written by Luis J. Rodriguez titled, We're Not All Alike.  In his article, Rodriguez explains how it is impossible to categorize Latino voters into one category since there are so many different backgrounds and beliefs.  Anyway, Christian challenged me to create an illustration for the article without having seen the original placed within the article.  Of course I agreed and came up with two solutions.  I am currently in the final stages of the first.

Here is a peak at my progress--more updates soon!

...And We're Back!

Well obviously I've been away from the blog world for some time now-- but that doesn't mean I have been taking any breaks!  Working full time and doing my own art thing can be tough but I've been working on 2 big projects for several months now.  They are still in the works but will soon be revealed.  In the meantime, I thought I'd give you a sneak peak.  How crazy is the weather lately, by the way?  Sheez!  Oh and how is it almost December already? ...Anyway, check back soon!