Burning One Roomate at a Time

My make-up class continues. Burn victim. Supposedly, I burned 2 of his fingers to the bone and the rest are blistered from the heat. But if you know me the you know I always want to go the extra extra extra mile to make it work. In the words of Andre "Designers, make it work." I kept trying to really light the chicken bones I had glued to his fingers on fire, but they wouldn't catch! We finally taped a match to the back of it and put his hand to the stove and I took the picture just as the gas lit the match. Its a rare thing to catch those tiny moments. The other picture is with the flame and the colors were mesmerizing. So this is me burning one roommate at a time.

Selfless Gene

An editorial about altruism in the genes.

Thank you Marco and friend for your help on this one. I really couldn't have done it without you guys. You 2 rock! ...Marco, do you see what I just did? Go back to that sentence. Translation, U2 rocks! Yes they do. Rock on, little brother.

Leather Canvas

So I'm taking this one class, as sort of a relaxer, since I'm taking 3 illustration classes. I've been having such a good time doing the homework here that I thought I'd post the transformations. Its a special effects make-up class. When I was a kid, apart from the many other things I wanted to be when I grew up (doctor, model, detective, zoologist, mud wrestler, etc..) I also wanted to do movie make-up. It all started when I saw Mrs.Doubtfire and all I dreamt about was making prosthetics and painting people's faces. Now I paint canvases, which I've had as a steady dream since I was 4, but its always fun to get a new surface to paint on.
So here they are....my models. I tried to put them in order by the 1st to last I did. (In order to protect their privacy, I won't use the model's names....but if you know me then you probably know these people by association, so tough luck)

Introducing, my roomate...clean cut guy transformed into drug addict.
Followed by my mother... average happy woman first gone sexy momma then aged to about 200

And my sister...modern social to 70's chick.

My boyfriend is my next victim... good looking and young suddenly frozen dead and old geezer.

Then a good friend... from simply fun to Russian doll fun.

And the other sister... from beautiful lush curls to nothing.


Last but not least... myself from plain to wounded and zany.

Life of Pi Work in Progress

This is a work in progress I'm doing for book illustration. Its a cover for Life of Pi. If anyone's read the book, hopefully they understand what it is. If you haven't, then you should! Its a good book, read it in a couple of days.

My scanner is not as big as my ink drawing and I was being too lazy to scan the bits that were cropped, so poor turtle and poor hair of his chinny chin chin. Boohoo. Sob sob. Stay tuned to see the big picture. If you don't get it now....don't worry, you will soon my lads.



Ok ok ok. Its almost done. So here is the colored version. I'm putting it down until Sunday. I'm at the point where I can't see past the paint and lines. Its just paint and lines to me at this point. Happens to me a lot when I'm working on a piece for a long time.

Ali Baba- Open Sesame!

Another book illustration piece. I did 3 for Ali but didn't like them as much as this one. I needed a character for Ali and based on the story I wanted to depict him as an older, more experienced man. For casting I remembered 1 incident I had at my Junior College. I took a picture of all my family members to class and my art professor, Barbara Bouchard, said to a picture of my father:"that's Sadam Hussein." I couldn't convince her it was my dad so I decided to give my dad the role of Ali. We drove around San Jose looking for the perfect spot until the one spot we absolutely loved was on the side of the road and he kept yelling OPEN SESAME at the top of his lungs. Everyone just stared at him like he was insane.

You might recognize him from my family portraits. You might also recognize my sister Gabi in the lingerie piece.

The Toad King

I usually don't post my thumbs because I always think my thumbnail process is so messy and uninteresting. But this piece for book illustration is interesting in that I worked and reworked this composition and in the end came up with something that I was really happy with. Here is the first idea sketch. Very boring.


Then I realized I should probably make it all about the King. So I changed up the comp. I got a model and played with the other elements. But its changed many times after this still.






"There was no doubt the toad was king. His guards, the lizards, watched over him as he dined on wine and French bread."

For No One

Based on the song by The Beatles. The tile was my favorite part to do. Making all that watercolor bleed and splash.

What I took from the song: We are not all what we appear to be to others and in the long run when we are hurt we become inaccessible to those that hurt us. There comes a breaking point where we choose to surrender. Eventually, you weasel out of your cookie-cutter image and choose to live again. Listen to the song; you might not see what I saw.