MASTERING ART

CLOSING ARGUMENTS

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 21:43:00 +0000

It’s been around 12 years since my first post detailing my journey of drawing and/or painting for 10,000 hours in order to master this craft. For those who are not familiar with this blog from my recent past, I aimed to reach 10,000 hours drawing or painting in order to master this craft. This is based on a popular theory better explained by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, which clearly had an impact on me. I remember back in August 2010 feeling so anxious and yet so eager to start this new era of my life. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to graduate from the School of Visual Arts or even to be successful in my new career. I really had no idea what would happen to me while achieving this humongous and ambitious task. The road has been slippery rocky and harder than I thought, but it has been even more joyful than I could have ever imagined. Not only that, my art skills are now beyond what I had ever dream of. This journey has been so interesting and mesmerizing that I don’t have the proper words to describe it. Not to sound poetic or pedantic but I think the main feeling I have is basically gratitude, for every obstacle and goal achieved, and even for every failure I’ve endured. This journey has been a privilege for me and although the right words elude me I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has been there for me all along. I reached my goal of achieving 10,000 hours and I couldn’t have done it without my family, my friends, and believe it or not, my fans (There are a few out there! Yes, I couldn’t believe it myself). I unceremoniously accomplished possibly my greatest dream and here I am at my studio with no awards or any type of recognition (not that it was expected or deserved) but the anonymity of a dream come true and the pure joy of having been able to achieve it.

For consistency’s sake I will be posting The work I’ve created since my last entry to properly catalog them for my progression in mastering art. Let’s start with the ones that look back at me, portraits.

Portraits have always come natural to me, or at least I thought that when I started this journey. I’ve made around 60 professional portraits and although the improvement is highly noticeable, I know there is still room to grow and learn a few tricks here or there. I’ve done some oil paintings as well but my main focus has been in digital art. I’ve never told anyone but I think it is time for you to know, I just hate getting paint on my hands😁 Here are some of my recent portraits and a couple of time-lapse videos showing my process.

Another thing that comes fairly easy to me are caricatures. I’ve loved painting caricatures since I was in middle school. To tell you the truth I always wonder what could I have done if I just dedicated all my focus in studying this craft. That’s the thing about variety, you can never truly focus on one thing. In any case, my portrait painting surely helped in making these caricatures look as professional as they can get.

Of course by being a digital painter I can conjure all sorts of compositions based on reality or not. I’ve played around with styles and techniques, but if you know what you’re looking for you can recognize my style a mile away. I’ve also been very versatile with my work. I’ve painted superheroes, sport legends, landscapes, and even religious pieces. Let me go one by one.

As I stated before, my favorite tool with color is digital painting, but what I truly consider to be my strength is in drawing. I’ve drawn the human figure thousands of times and 12 years ago I was obsessed with anatomy to draw realistic characters, superheroes or not. Now, I’m leaning more on conceptual paintings and maybe not focusing on every muscle on the human body. Still, anatomy for artists is like a language, and you have to review it from time to time. In this case I was commissioned to paint the Justice League in acrylics. It was a challenge but I loved how it turned out.

I also love the fact that I can create scenes that could never have happened. This digital painting printed giclee on canvas is based on the Yankees. There is no photograph uniting all these icons together, and how could it be since Babe Ruth was from another era altogether. I named this “Baseball Legends” and it takes a very special place in my heart because it was commissioned by my brother in law. He was very specific on what he wanted depicted and I’m so glad I could make it happen.

As a bonus another legend, Diego Armando Maradona. I did this for a private commission and printed it on metal.

Another painting that I’m very proud of I did was based on a monument of my client’s father. Painting this scene was challenging because he wanted to show how important it was to have this type of monument on a well-recognized and transited avenue from my hometown.

I’ve never been recognized for religious paintings, but a good friend of mine commissioned me to paint not only his daughters, depicted on my portraits segment, but also a painting based on the Virgin Mary – Our Lady of Schoenstatt oil painting. If you think getting the likeness from a person (model or photo) is hard, believe me when I tell you that getting the likeness from another painting is even harder. You don’t have much room to paint it your style since it has to resemblance the face of the other painting. I’m really satisfied with how it turned out.

Comic covers have always been what I wanted to do for a living once I realized drawing comic pages just took me too much time to finish and the compensation wasn’t in par with my expenses. This may be due to the fact that I may have started this career later in life compared to other younger artists with no families to provide for and more time to spend on their art than myself. I’m 45 years old now and I must confess I don’t have the energy for all-nighters anymore as my competition does. Limits breed creativity and I found out that designing comic covers is not only something I truly enjoy but also something I can do quite fast and therefore sell it at a good price. This didn’t come easy since I had to study drawing, inking, lettering, composition, coloring, special effects rendering, designing titles and adding cover elements to make complete covers. Here are three examples of private commissions I’ve done.

It is also fun to make illustrations to sell as high-quality limited giclee prints, which I normally sell through my website www.journeystudios.net. As an example here's a Superman I recently did.

Remember my comic confessions? Well, for anyone who have no idea what I’m talking about I started these confession panels at the beginning of the pandemic. I still make them from time to time but I just can’t find the time to do them regularly. I plan to keep doing them because they are great for warmups and also I love to encapsulate some storytelling in just one panel. In other words, since I’m not doing comic interiors, this way I scratch my storytelling itch. Here are some of my latest ones.

I also landed a gig designing t-shirts for a special client. Tyson not only has become one of my most recurrent customers but also he is such a great guy who not only likes my designs but also respects my craft. I’ve always said that creating comics is a collaborative effort and we have done just that, as a team. I’m so proud of the work created so thank you for your trust and the opportunity to keep making these illustrations. Here is just one sample of the many illustrations I’ve done for him.

I never imagined that one person would be tattooing one of my designs on his leg. He approached me and was very specific of what he wanted. I put my heart and soul on this design because it was so personal to him. I’m so proud of that tattoo and I hope one day I can recognize my art walking by. I also have another design that I liked very much. Sadly, this for some reason never got made into a tattoo. It is based on Eddie from the band Iron Maiden, which I’m a huge fan.

Did I mention that I also did some book covers for my brother, who happens to be a writer? I love this gig, not only because I get to be a part of his journey but also because I found cover designs delightful. No wonder I always wanted to have a bookstore.

But what about comics? Yeah, the progress is very slow since it has been constantly interrupted by paid work. I can’t seem to find momentum for it and some of my stories have been left unfinished. It is a damn shame because I think the harder parts are already done, but that amount of time is something I just can’t spend right now. There is a Joker story in the works but sadly I won’t be showing any preview as for now. I guess the joke’s on me, right?

About my career in the comic book industry… I’d say timing played an important factor in not making me pursue an ongoing career in the industry. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to dedicate my life by drawing comics, I just don’t think the time invested and the tentative payment per page are worth it as of now. Also, the comic book industry is not what it used to be and I just lost interest in participating. Social media didn’t help either. Now in order to get proper exposition you need to show your ugly mug and make reel videos for a living. I guess learning how to edit videos is mandatory nowadays, but to like making them is just another story.

Maybe I will be printing a coffee table book of this experience. I’m not hoping for it to be a commercial success and I’m sure I will be giving them away for free to my friends and family who have been supporting me since the beginning. Hopefully, I will be able to inspire anyone into believing that anything is possible and that your most precious weapon is perseverance and not to deviate from your dream in order to be able to stay consistent with your goals.

During this 12 year ride there has been many obstacles, some of them inside my head and some of them external factors beyond my control. There has been financial troubles, earthquakes, ideology wars, social media, and as a human race, we’ve endured a devastating pandemic. There have been many losses but also many wins as well. It has been hard I’m not going to lie, but to be completely honest with you this has been the second best decision I’ve made in my life. I know you can guess which one is the first. Marrying my wife has been a blessing and I couldn’t have gone along with this crazy plan without her infinite support. I love you Morole and my gratitude is limitless. Also, thanks for giving me my best joy, my children. They were born during this challenge and they know that his father is a happy artist and that he draws and paints for a living. They never knew the other side of the coin when I felt frustrated and sad for not being able to do what I loved. Many thanks to my parents for their endless support and to my brother and sister and my family as a whole for always been there for me. There are many dear friends that have been with me during this decade or so that I’d need another entry to properly thank them. Since this is my last entry then I guess I will send you a copy of my book once it’s finished. In any case, You know who you are. A very special thanks to Eduardo Risso who has not only been a great mentor but also a great friend. He is also responsible for reinforcing the idea to embark on this journey. Also, whenever I create a piece I hear his words "Think before drawing"

I’ve done a lot of things, some of them I wish I could take back and some of them I’m so happy that I got the chance to do them. There are some that I still wish I had the courage to try. Well, if there is a lesson here somewhere is that anything is achievable if you put your mind into it. You know what I haven’t done? I had never stop drawing ever since.

Like Chazz Palminteri wrote in his play A Bronx Tale: “The saddest thing in life is wasted talent, and the choices you make will shape your life forever”.

I don’t regret a thing.

Godespeed,

WE FINALLY DID IT!

IS ART WORTH IT?

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 22:29:00 +0000

Well, is it? I honestly don't know anymore. Don't get me wrong; personally speaking, this is the happiest and most comfortable I've ever been in my life; professionally, it has been more challenging that I anticipated. Yes, I have my preferences on regard of what I want to draw and/or paint, but it is still art nonetheless. Sometimes I have to make ends meet and work on something I'm not that enthused, but it beats working 9 to 6 in a cubicle, not that there's anything wrong with that. I started this blog to showcase my work and also to tell you a tale of perseverance. Also, my goal was to log 10,000 hours in order to become a master in my craft. I have approximately 8863 hours, so I'd need to log 1337 hours more to officially end this self-appointed challenge. I've been away from writing these entries for two years now; needless to say I need to show you what I've been up to. In order to showcase my work I will divide each block on a type of activity. I've been focusing on comic illustrations, digital paintings, portraits, and caricatures. I've been also making some concept art, comics, and personal commissions that I won't be able to share here either because they are incomplete or I have, formally or informally, stated a non-disclosure agreement. I hope after discussing what I've been doing I can honestly answer if this journey has been worth it so far.

Let's start with a project I made out of love. The Flash, famous speedster from the DC Universe and member of the Justice League, turned 80 years in 2019; so I decided to draw a cover illustration commemorating the character in his birthday. I also love running marathons so I took inspiration on these events for the theme by including 80 speedsters. It took careful planning to sort this list out and I couldn't have done it without the help of my writer and friend, Marcelo Cury. The cover was very well liked and shared on social media, especially for Wally West fans (third Flash to honor the legacy) since I deservingly put him in front of the pack as the fastest speedster of them all. My idea for this piece was to get the attention of some art editors or at least get my work out there for future followers and fans.

Flash # 1000 - 80th Anniversary Edition Cover

Another highlight of 2019 was from my "Icons" collection. I had a profound Joker phase. Since my Icons digital paintings tend to be more realistic in nature I couldn't help to include Mark Hamill as the Joker. For those who do not know, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) did the voice for the Joker in the Batman Animated Series and other animations as well. Some people, including myself, have claimed that he is the best Joker of all. I took as reference a younger Mark Hamill playing the Trickster on the Flash TV series but painted him with the features of the Joker animated version. The end result was better than I anticipated but the highlight of this story was when Mark Hamill himself actually praised my work and thanked me on Twitter. Whenever someone mentions what a great idea would've been for him to play the clown prince of crime, he immediately posts my painting. To say that was one of the happiest days in my professional life so far would be an understatement. I mean, how many times you have the chance to interact with Luke Skywalker and by doing so getting a, and I quote, "Fantastic work Jose, much appreciated." It made my day, hell, it made my year!

Mark Hamill as the Joker

Mark Hamill's Tweet Reply

Speaking of my "Icons" collection, I will show you my recent additions. 2020 was a slow year for these digital portrait paintings of pop icons but I managed to add a few I'm very proud of.

If I've improved substantially in something is portrait painting. One thing of being an artist is that you never stop learning, but for that you need to study, either by taking a class or by meticulously examination of other artists' work. In my case, I'm always looking for portrait artists to get inspired and whenever I have the chance I take classes to improve my style or at least to take me out of my comfort zone. My digital portraits market is mainly in Ecuador, and although I have struggled in making my audience understand my artistic approach, my pieces have become more known to my potential customers. I've been taking some commissions during these two years and I will be showcasing my favorite ones.

Now, one thing I'm pleasantly surprised is how much I've improved in my caricatures. If I'm being honest, I have loved to draw caricatures since I was 8 years old. Somehow it comes fairly easy to me to exaggerate features and still maintain the essence, or the likeness, of that person. Looking back at my early caricatures I understand how crude they were, nevertheless, they always made someone laugh when the person in the drawing was recognized. I would love to do more of these commissions not only because I enjoy them but also because I want to further improve on this technique. One of my strongest suits now is that throughout the years I learned to paint realistic portraits, so when you paint a caricature this way it makes the final product seem much more professional. Here are my favorite caricatures in these couple of years.

I happened to assist to two conventions during this time, Florida Supercon in 2019 and C2E2 in Chicago in 2020, right before the pandemic started. I always have a good time in these cons, although I can fairly assess that the enthusiasm for these types of events have wound down. In any case, it is a great place to meet colleagues, fans, and heroes. C2E2 may be my third most favorite comic-con, but due to the increasing threat of the Covid-19 virus in late February, when it was held, attendance diminished substantially. It is hard to imagine these packed events happening anytime soon now.

Me at Florida Supercon 2019

My wife at C2E2 2020

One fun project I was commissioned to do was of a Felix the Cat pop art acrylic painting. I always like to challenge myself with new ideas and this one I really enjoyed. I though it would look cool to print vintage comic strips and covers of Felix The Cat on a canvas of 30 x 40". Take into consideration that I had to arrange all those in Photoshop to obtain the desired composition. After that, I painted a huge Felix the Cat in acrylics and it turned out very cool. Like I've said many times before, I'm not much into Pop Art. My main critique is that they tend up to be just decorative pieces without a strong message. Whatever Pop Art's message of mass consumption was, it was done more effectively in the fifties and sixties when it was more relevant. They look really cool though and I have to admit that I enjoyed making this and wouldn't mind making more if the opportunity presents itself.

Felix The Cat

One of the perks of this job is that during your breaks you can come up with work for YOURSELF. In order to understand this one you have to be a Flash comics fan. You see, a life objective of mine is to be able to draw one published comic for the Flash, or at least a cover. During one issue there was a missed opportunity to include my favorite Flash, Wally West, possibly due to editorial meddling and conflicts. I decided to draw, ink, and color the character and paste it onto this published page of the Flash issue # 761. It was a fun drawing that let me vented all of my frustration of DC Comics choices regarding this character.

Flash # 761 - The Return of Wally West

Another cover I have to mention is a commission I got for a brave kid that is battling ATRT, which is a primary central nervous system tumor. Jonathan is constantly battling this disease and despite everything he has endured, he has such a great attitude towards this. He is a big fan of the Hulk, so his uncle asked me to include him right next to Hulk in a custom comic cover. Once I knew about this disease I immediately donated what I got for the commission to this noble cause. I realized that making him smile is compensation enough. I put my heart and soul into this piece and to my understanding he really liked it. If you want more information to help him, his Instagram account is @jonathansjourney2020

Hulk and Jonathan

And one last painting for the masses. At the end of this crappy year we were all excited for The Mandalorian second season, and let me tell you that Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni didn't disappoint. They brought my love for Star Wars back. Here is a painting of Din Djarin and Boba Fett for his immaculate return to the Star Wars universe.

Boba & Mando

Last but not least, let's talk about the pink elephant in the room. The Covid-19 virus was something the world did NOT expect. We weren't ready for it and some people suffered a lot for it. When the pandemic broke out mid march and the quarantine started, it was really tough to overcome the fear, anxiety, helplessness, boredom, and plain uncertainty. I always draw and paint at my studio and realized soon enough, after a couple of weeks of spending time with my family and trying to solve primary logistics tasks, that I could work from home without a problem. Some people didn't get that opportunity. So I started drawing and running (on a treadmill) whenever I could. Both activities were therapeutic. Instead of watching the news, fake or real, all day I decided to spend most of my time doing these activities and while spending time with my wife and children. They were a tough couple of months but I am grateful I personally didn't suffer immediate loses and that we could be together as a family to overcome such a hard time. I started my quarantine project, not thinking on sales but to somehow entertain my fans and myself as well. My "comic confessions" started as a small challenges but it grew to become an ongoing project. Basically is one panel (using a format established in the infamous comic Heroes in Crisis), in which the character either confesses or makes a statement in front of a camera. The words, courtesy of my associate Marcelo Cury, turned out to be more ambitious that I had foreseen. I have drawn 90 characters or 10 pages so far, so I would expect to at least do 10 pages more for next year. I hope I have provided some distraction to people around the world who have been less fortunate than myself. Here I have made a big file containing the 90 characters.

So, is art worth it? Hell yeah it is! Maybe it is not as glamorous or meritorious as I would have imagined. Maybe it takes a little bit more time than anticipated to get your work out or to get your big break. Maybe I live in a country were my skills are not yet appreciated or understood correctly. And maybe, just maybe, I'm trying so hard to draw and paint what I enjoy more than what the market is asking me to deliver. Yes, maybe it is hard, but tell me of something worth doing that it is not. In the direst of times I understood now that if you are an artist by heart, becoming one is just unavoidable, or at least it should be. If you fight against it, you will end up repressed and unhappy. So for me it's not actually a choice. I'm an artist and I have to make it work, for me, for my family, for the people to happen to like my work, and for those who don't really care one way or the other, but for a glimpse of a second they find solace by looking into one of my pieces. Did you notice that when the world stopped, art did NOT! And why do you think that is? Art is expression; art is a form of communication. Some of my work may seem banal in nature, but I have received joy, happiness, admiration, and inspiration through comments regarding my work. So art won't stop even if the grinds that makes the world "turn" does. So why would I bother to stop it in my life? I will continue to work hard to achieve my goals but if that doesn't happen, I can now testify that art IS indeed worth the journey.

Godspeed,

LOST & FOUND

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 23:35:00 +0000

Let me tell you a story about a guy who wanted to be an artist so badly that he started to count the hours he spent honing his craft in order to reach 10,000 hours and convince himself he has truly become the artist he so desperately wanted to become. I will not let the suspense kill you so straight out of the bat I will reveal this artist is none other than me. Who am I? As of now, I am the guy who has spent 7246 hours drawing and/or painting and who is feeling his set out goal will never be achieved. Somehow I feel like I had been with the gas tank warning light on for a couple of years. In my initial plan I should've reach my goal after 10 years or so. It may take longer than that and not because I want it to. The truth is, life always finds a way to make it more interesting, and although I feel pleased with my progress, the intrigue that comes with the job is making me truly anxious. My first blog, and the beginning of this long challenge, was on September 1st, 2010. How can eight years have passed already? I started this lifetime goal of setting my own rules to become a master in art so long ago and I remember like it was yesterday. By the way, you can check the rules here

I've been happily lost, wandering in the woods if you might, not sure which road to take. Is it safe to take this way, or the other? I have probably been staring at many doors for way too long in order to shut them completely. Should I become a comic book artist? An illustrator? A cover artist? A portrait artist? A caricaturist? A political cartoonist? A fine art painter? Should I make a statement with my art? Is it possible not to? Should I become more progressive, more artsy, more bohemian? Am I an artist who wants to tell stories? Am I a storyteller? Am I any good? All these questions have been debated to me by me and I haven't found any answers yet. What I do know by now is that I AM an artist and if God permit I will still be in the years to follow. Thus, I was lost but now I've been found. So without further ado, let me showcase the art I've created in these couple of years that I'd been wandering through the corridors of doubt and growth.

In my attempt at becoming a comic book artist, improvement has been very slow, mainly because I haven't done much in that regard. In all of the career options I have previously stated, none is more ungrateful and demanding than making comics. Not only that, but it is also undervalued by the majority of the audience. Could anyone believe that painting a realistic portrait in oils is easier than making comics? I wouldn't blame you if you don't. The hard work and hours you have to put into these well though out pages in order to make them look professional are so much that it is not economically feasible to invest my time in that area for the low, or zero payment I could get per page. I trust that if I'd do it every day it would become easier but in order for that to happen I would need to get paid. Since there is an oversaturated market of comic book artists, the average rate for unknown artists is very low and the competition is fierce. Don't let me start on how hard it is to break in the industry living in Ecuador. I made a couple of pages here or there for a personal project and thinking of my time as a proper investment but reality soon checks in and puts a stop in any momentum I could've achieved. I have gone to a couple of comic conventions hoping my big break will finally happen with no success yet. Sometimes I wonder if participating in the artist alley is a waste of my time, but on the bright side I meet fellow artists, fans, and get to make a buck or two selling merchandise of my art, that mainly consist in prints and t-shirts, to cover my travel expenses. I don't mean to be whiney about this though, after all twenty years ago I would have never dreamed that I would get the chance to be in the artist alley and have fans of my own.

In my attempt at becoming a cover artist and/or illustrator, progress has been noticeable. My dream job for the time being is becoming a cover artist. In the past I would have given everything to be a comic book artist, but back then I didn't have a clue about practicality and income of that particular career choice. The time spent making comics is not justifiable economically speaking, at least not if you are not a famous artist or considered to be a fast one. I'm not one or the other. I love to draw and tell stories with my illustrations and you could do just that by creating covers as well. Sometimes I think being a traditional painter would bring me more money, but first and foremost you have to be very passionate about a subject to make a statement, very crafty to convey that message, or in some cases, very skillful to be a con man and sell something to pass as art. What I really enjoy is telling stories, and painting covers do that in one single image. It mixes the best of both worlds. I've been making progress slowly, but the good thing of advancing forward is that you keep adding the miles (sorry for the running reference). I'm probably missing and art director or creator to tell me what the story is about in order to use my full resources to create something special and original. Right now I'm just making cover homages and fan art, which tend not to be specific since I intend to sell them to the public. For instance, a comic book cover about Thanos (the main villain of the Avengers if you happen to be living under a rock) could show him dancing with Death in a huge ballroom (alla Beauty and the Beast) with his infinity gauntlet and all the gems on his right hand, which happens to be holding Death's hand as well. The spectators are the skeletons of all the Marvel superheroes dressed in their usual costumes admiring this slow dance. This cover could be done using mixed media (traditional and digital) in order to convey a more classic look with a modern twist. I never seen this done and it would convey a clear message that in this particular comic Thanos is victorious and that the Marvel Universe is doomed. I would love to paint this but maybe it wouldn't sell as many prints as just plain old Thanos with his gauntlet as seen below. Or maybe it will, what do I know about selling my art?

Finished version

Step 3

Step 1

Step

I'm also doing a lot of commissions, which involve mostly fan art. Somewhere I read that in order to be a fulfilled artist you need to do paid work but also dedicate some time making your art. In my humble experience this is true. It is not that you cannot enjoy drawing or painting a paid job, but you have to remember that you do this because you really love the craft and what better way to show it but by drawing something from your heart. I recently saw a pic of a cosplayer dressed as Bane, I was inspired by the pose and started to paint him in the way I see him in my head. I also did a tutorial on how to create a comic cover for the Comic Con Ecuador. I decided to do a homage cover of The Flash #1 (volume 2) released in June 1987 featuring Wally West as the new Flash. Now that he has another costume I wanted to showcase him in this fan made cover. Somehow I do not like the painted job as much as the previously inked one. I enjoy teaching and I have always considered it as a viable complement in my artistic endeavor. Sadly, when you are an artist what you may lack is the time to spend doing just that.

Did I mention I did a comic cover recreation of Action Comics # 1? Somebody commissioned me to do this and I, like the good bounty hunter that I am, didn't ask any questions. It was a privilege to replicate the lines initially drawn by Joe Shuster. When you do this type of work you end up questioning and learning all the decisions the artist made when illustrating it. In this case, this cover was made in 1938, so it's been 80 years since he made those artistic choices.

The last Inktober I did was in 2016. For those who do not know, Inktober is a challenge created by artist Jake Parker, which consist on drawing with ink (it can be digital ink as well. I asked!) one illustration per day for the month of October. I think I was so passionate with the project that I really enjoyed each and every one of them, some were more successful than others but I enjoyed the challenge itself. I'm including my favorite ones in this Monsters Inktober 2016 special.

The Saint of Killers was an tribute to the late Steve Dillon

In my attempt to becoming a portrait artist I decided to have the best of both worlds. On one hand I would paint what I'm passionate about but also taking into consideration monetizing this project in the future. On the other hand, I would paint portraits for private clients. My passion project is named "Icons" and is done mostly digitally. Even though artists tend to improve with repetition, sometimes it is essential to take a course here or there. I took the "Realistic Portrait with Jason Seiler" course in Schoolism.com. I had never seen his work and if I had maybe I wouldn't know it was by him. For all interested in painting portraits this is the course for you. Seiler (jasonseiler.com) is a very talented artist and a spectacular teacher. Somehow after this course I upped my game. Sometimes you can listen to 10 hours worth of classes and with just one sentence (which you may have heard before but didn't mean anything to you by then) you realize what you have to do in order to improve. In this case, I understood that I had to paint what I see, not what I think I see. Once I got that out of the way I started focusing more on tones, shapes, values, etc. I'm really satisfied about my "Icons" collection because these characters are such legends that I want to immortalize them in a book (not that they are in need of my help though). I'm planning to continue painting the icons in the next couple of years, since I want to amount to at least 50 paintings. Maybe in the future I will be printing a coffee table book with all these paintings. I also had the privilege to do a private commission for a good friend who is a soccer fanatic. This is a painting I did of "Kitu" Díaz who plays for Barcelona Ecuador.

My tribute to Stan "The Man" Lee (1922-2018)

Kitu Díaz

Painting portraits is hard and time consuming, but luckily it comes naturally to me. Some artists have this natural ability to draw perspective, to understand and apply colors, to paint abstracts, or to create poses and action scenes. For me painting portraits is like second nature. I know I have a lot to learn regarding this area, but I've seen successful artists who can't paint a face or catch the essence of the subject. I did most of these portraits digitally. For me digital painting is just like painting but with other set of tools. It would be the same difference as comparing oils with watercolor, you know the principles and know what you want for the end result but the tools are just different and you have to learn how to use them correctly. Saying that, you may feel more comfortable with one tool rather than the other. In my case, I'm very comfortable with my digital brushes (for the entire process on how I approach digital painting you can watch the time-lapse painting of my daughter Juliana on youtube. You can check all my videos at my website by clicking here

Even though I haven't painted in oils since art school I wanted to prove everybody that my skills weren't coming from a computer software. Hence, I decided to paint a portrait of my father in oils. As expected I got a bit frustrated with the media but got the hang of it rather quickly. In the end, I used the same approach as I use on my digital paintings with the difference that I got to mix colors and that is always a challenge. In the end I was very satisfied with the end result and fortunately my father was happy as well. What really amazed me is that although I've been painting portraits for years, because of this painting people started to really consider the possibility that I may be a real artist indeed. I know digital art is not well understood by many (it is a rather new media in art) and I know I don't have to prove my craft or my worth to anybody, but we humans are in a constant crave for recognition. I've been noticing for quite a while that people have been minimizing my effort because of the tool I use, and that my friends is just preposterous. I'm posting some of the pictures of my artistic process in completing this oil painting.

I may not feel as a master in art just yet. I seriously doubt that I will feel any different when I reach my 10,000 hours. Heck, maybe I will never feel like a master but as a striving artist that wants to better his craft everyday until he perishes. To me that is the essence of art, to evolve and communicate what you are passionate about. I know for a fact that I have come a long way from the beginning of my journey and although I have many goals yet to achieve I can't be so hard to myself and not recognize my own achievements. People may never recognize your talent and hard work, or even comprehend it. I'm not expecting an award anytime soon, although it would be nice. They may never see what you have endured to get where you are now. It is easy to justify what you do by calling it 'talent' and although I do recognize that some special ability or predisposition exists, I resent the word for the meaning people give to it. Talent by itself is nothing if you do not sharpen those skills and properly learn the craft. In the end hard work is what makes all the difference in the world between a talented artist and a great one. I had my doubts, but the minute my only choices were the ones involving making art I knew I was on the right track and I hope I won't ever have to deviate from it.

Godspeed,

WHEN LIFE GETS IN THE WAY

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 23:56:00 +0000

It has been a while since my last entry, but it seems that posting once a year is the new way. I’m not happy about it but there is a pattern and I can’t break it out! Why haven’t I been writing my blog more often? Good question! The answer can be summarized with one word, time, or lack thereof. It’s not that I’m complaining, but it seems that now I have to be very conscious on how to spend my hours. Did I tell you that I recently had another kid? I did! Now we are a family of four and I couldn’t be happier. Needless to say, most of my free time I rather spend it with my family than to do any other job related activities. I am very cautious not to cut back hours from making art, but the activities I do end up neglecting are: posting on social media, setting up a decent online store, and you guessed it, write my blog.

It doesn’t help that nowadays I need to focus more on making enough money to meet my expenses rather than making challenges to get better on my art, or making projects for the foreseeable future. To tell you the truth I spent a lot of my time making the infamous “DC Daily” (drawing a complete illustration of one DC character a day for 2014) and the most recent one “Marvel52” (drawing a fan art comic cover of one character or team every week for 2015) and although I’m truly happy with the results of those collections, I have not yet seen anything real productive come out of them in terms of profit. Yes, I do sell prints of my work at comic conventions but that is simply not enough. Not only travelling to the conventions is expensive, but also I would have to sell much more prints to justify a year's work. I learned a lot and I enjoyed the ride, but I can't keep working for free hoping that somebody will notice my work and offer me a job. What I’m currently focusing on are commissions, mainly portraits and illustrations. I’m thinking out loud but maybe I should draw or paint less and focus more on advertising my services and selling merchandise online. It is easier said than done though.

Ok, without further ado let me unveil to you my recent work. I had to be very picky since a year of art cannot be squeezed in one single entry, so it won’t come as a surprise when I upload just my favorite pieces, which are still a lot.

Let’s start off with some pieces from my “Marvel52” collection. To be completely honest I didn’t finish this challenge at the end of the year like I was supposed to. I had some personal issues to attend and even though I take my own imposed deadlines very seriously, I had to delay 4 pieces to February 2016. I had no editor and nobody was paying me for those so in the end it wasn’t a big deal. I preferred to make them awesome rather than rushing them. I enjoyed making them and I received a lot of praise for the work itself. I don’t think I won’t be doing this kind of project anytime soon unless there is money involved. I mean, they look awesome in my portfolio but this is the time to get a bit dispassionate about popular characters and start creating my own. I would love to be a cover artist though, I truly hope somebody out there notices the amount of effort and dedication I put into these pieces. Here are 14 examples of my fan art Marvel covers. Can any of you guess which one is my favorite?

Since I mentioned my 2014 challenge “DC Daily” above, let me show what I did for this year’s Florida Supercon. I drew 365 DC characters throughout the year, and although they were illustrated in Manga Studio (now Clip Studio Paint) individually, each one of them were drawn on their own individual layers. This is one of the perks of drawing digitally. So I decided to put all 365 characters together in a big poster. How long could it take me, a couple of days at the most? Wrong! I spent assembling them together for a couple of weeks if not three. The amount of work I had to put into organize them to create a good composition, not to mention drawing extra body parts for the ones that were either sitting or blocked by their own foregrounds, was exhausting. In the end I was really happy with the result, and the good news is that I sold every unit of them. This poster was a huge success and it depicts not only a year of hard work but almost two decades of DC iconic characters.

DC Daily poster

My beautiful and supportive wife at Florida Supercon

Now let’s move on to a very challenging month earlier this year. DC Comics announced they were going to open the doors to a few artists. They rarely offer this opportunity to newcomers. You just had to submit the maximum of 6 pages of sequential work, I mean, eh, comics of one of their characters. My good friend Marcelo Cury wrote this beautiful 6-page script and now I had the challenge to make the art as good as the story. I did my best and I am really satisfied with the end result. The devastating earthquake that my country Ecuador suffered around that time interrupted my work though. Luckily all my loved ones were fine, but hundreds of people lost their loved ones and their means of livelihood. It was a very sad time for my country as a whole and the feeling of sadness and powerlessness was overwhelming and took a toll on my work and me personally. But also the feeling of joy to see my country united to alleviate those who were suffering and overcome this catastrophe was reassuring. We as a country were not used to earthquakes or aftershocks and honest to God we were scared. I mean, I did my best to focus and by all means this is not an excuse because I really love the way the short comic turned out, but it took me a long time to finish those pages. So it is fair to say that the production of the pages were not as smooth as I would've liked them to be. A few months later I received a letter telling me that it was good work but I didn’t get in the program. It wasn’t very shocking since the competition was fierce; then again, it was a disappointment to be completely honest. It is still a great read if you like this kind of stuff. Please, go ahead and enjoy a short noir story of a well-known mercenary called Deathstroke. Thanks again to Marcelo for the great script and to my friend Eduardo Risso for trying his best to give me advise to better those pages.

Deathstroke: The Once and Future Part 1 of 1

Are you familiar with blank cover comic variants? These blank covers are meant for sketching directly into the cover of a regular monthly comic. They are very popular at conventions and you can bring one comic book to an artist and he/she can draw on it since the quality of the paper is intended for that. Of course they’re going to charge you, do not expect them for free, please. They are mostly done in pencils, inks, Copic markers, or a combination of those. I buy these comics mostly for gifts. I really enjoy surprising my friends with these unique comics. Here are three examples of those cover sketches. By the way, if you are interested you should google blank cover comic variants and choose the cover of the character you like for me to get it and draw on it. They are relatively easy to get and it is always a great gift.

I also want to show you 3 pieces I did throughout this year. One was a commission of Darth Vader, which is always fun to illustrate. I’m attaching a time-lapse video of the making of this illustration. It is around 5000% faster than what originally took me to make it. For instance, this video lasts around 12 minutes. I don’t remember how long it really took me but a good estimate would be 12 hours. Could be more, I’m an artist not a mathematician. Also, the music on the video is by my good friend Robert Serlinn and his band mUte. Not only I love the song, but is there any song more appropriate to put in a Vader video? (Maybe the Imperial March but Disney wouldn’t let me!) Another was a small illustration I did of Wally West because “Wally is BACK!” Yes, a character long lost in the DC Universe, Wally West, mostly known as The Flash during two decades, was missing. Heck, I even did a fan comic covering his absence from the mainstream universe. DC brought him back in a beautiful comic called “DC Universe Rebirth”, which I highly recommend to any DC Comics fan. I drew his new costume and was very pleased with the end result. The last drawing I was bullied into making it. Yes! I was indeed, but in a good way. A pal I made through my Instagram account posted a picture of a DC character that was not included in my collection everyday for a week in order for me to draw it. This usually won’t work, but he being such a cool guy and for being so supportive during that year I decided what the hell. He really liked it and I was very glad with how this one turned out.

Darth Vader Comic Cover Commission

The next commission falls into the category of portrait/comic illustration. I think this combines the best of two worlds. You see, what I really enjoy are illustrating covers and painting portraits. I think this is what I’m mostly good at. I love making comics but it is much harder, takes more time and commitment, and it brings a lot of frustration to the equation. With this commission I made a portrait of a client dressed as Wonder Woman. What sometimes people don’t understand is that drawing the face (likeness) it is still time consuming, especially if it will be inked as a comic book illustration, so I need to charge as if I were making a portrait, and then some for the whole composition. You cannot get a more unique gift than this, and also the sky is the limit. You want to be an enraged green monster filled with gamma radiation energy, done! You want to be classic TV Wonder Woman, you got it!

Next, I want to show you the portraits I’ve done. These paintings take around 8 to 12 hours depending on the complexity of it, or how I woke up that morning. It is unbelievable how a well-rested night can help you solve problems in your painting. Because of that, I never try to finish one painting in one sitting. It is much better to go to sleep and wake up refreshed in the morning to see mistakes (and solutions) you hadn’t even considered the night before. Most of the time, I make these paintings digitally and print them giclee (the best way to print art work) on canvas. Usually my standard size is 18”x22”, but it could be anything really. One of the advantages of doing them digitally (besides the fact that you can print it again if it gets damaged or stolen) is that you can manipulate the painting into other sizes and ratios (this is a bit harder though). Another benefit is that you can print them on different surfaces, like metal or bamboo. Painting digitally is just another tool. Some people think they are crutches, but I use the same artistic approach as I would in creating an oil painting. I repeat, it is just another tool. I will be making an oil painting soon and probably film it so you can see that the approach is almost the same. You still have to know how to paint, how to mix colors, color theory, proportions, light and shadows, contour, line, etc. Here are a few examples of my portraits. I’m also uploading a 5000% faster than real time video of the making of Juliana, her second year. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I’m planning on painting her and my son every year for the rest of my life. At least that’s the plan.

Deanna

Alessia

Efrain

Mercy

Ju 2nd year

Finally, I wanted to show you a caricature of myself I commissioned to a very talented artist named Jeff Stahl. He is not only a great guy but I truly admire his work. He is the quintessential artist and his work shows it. You can follow him on Instagram at @jeffstahl_art.

I wanted to make more art throughout this year. If you see my previous entries, you can notice plans that never actually materialized. Sometimes I just desisted on pursuing those projects, other times they were just postponed to an undefined state. Yes, life gets in the way, but in the most beautiful and marvelous ways. I have a great wife, two amazing children, and responsibilities that demand more of my time. I consider myself a very goal oriented person, and it is frustrating not to be on schedule of your own imposed plans, but you do have to enjoy the scenery as well. Life goes by pretty fast, and I feel blessed on how I’m able to live it. What would have I done different? Nothing at all, I wouldn’t change a thing!

This is just a taste of all the work I’ve done this year. If you want to see more feel free to check my webpage at www.journeystudios.net. Also, you can follow me on my Instagram at @journeystudios or my Twitter @jostudios

I am

Yours in anticipation,

Jose Luis Molestina aka JO

(and Godspeed to you all)

GETTING ANXIOUS, ARE YOU???

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 20:13:00 +0000

I will start this entry by stating an undisputed fact: “time travels fast, especially when you are busy”. I cannot believe that my last entry was written at the beginning of the year. I would like to write more often but drawing and moving forward in my career is a priority. Since this is a blog about making it in the world of art (comics to be more precise), I think I have made the right choice on prioritizing my work.

Although I have been feeling anxious about my place in the industry so far, I have never been more focused on my goals. It has been harder than I thought but the good news is that my will to achieve my dream is still strong. Somehow I’m living the dream everyday so no complaints there, I just need to keep at it until I get my big break.

I have seven months worth of art to show, and I couldn’t possibly show every piece here. I’ll be brief on this entry and show you a couple of examples of each segment. For those who can’t get enough of my art (Come on!, there must be some out there!) you can visit my new and improved website www.journeystudios.net which has all my artwork arranged in an orderly fashion. I try to keep the site updated every other week.

Let me begin by saying that I already have 5,255 hours on my main challenge of achieving 10,000 hours to become a master in art. I'm halfway there, and although it seems that it has been a long time ago since I started counting my hours invested in the craft, I can’t help to think that everything is downhill from now. My first post stating the rules of the challenge was on September 1^st, 2010. It has been almost 5 years for 5000 hours, so I can only estimate 5 years more down the road!

Now let’s get serious. If you follow me or read this blog, chances are you either enjoy art or make art. I’ll try to deliver on both accounts.

Let’s start off with what I’m doing now to grab the attention of publishers and art directors. I hope you remember my previous yearly challenge on drawing a DC Comic book character everyday for 2014 called DC Daily (I sure do!). I haven’t really tried to contact DC Comics to show off my work, mainly because it is so hard to reach them and also I haven’t the slightest idea on who to approach. I did print a book with all 365 illustrations and I think it looks great. This is for show of course since I haven’t gotten permission by DC Comics to sell them. I guess I like more to make art rather than sell it. Some people tell me to sell it anyways as "fan art" since it falls under the category of 'Fair Use'. I'm not sure about that so I wouldn't risk it. By the way, what is Fair Use? It is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders". The following book is NOT FOR SALE, just for showing to art directors and publishers at conventions. Also, the fact that it exists physically makes me less anxious on having spent a year of my life on that and haven't done anything with it yet. Although I do sell individual prints at con as fan art :)

For 2015 I decided to do something lighter but also challenging. I’m drawing a Marvel Comics character (or team) cover every week for 2015 called Marvel 52. These are done in comic book cover format and the series will contain 52 pieces. Although this is not as gargantuan of a challenge as the DC Daily project, I'm still investing a lot of my time in these illustrations. I spend between two to three days on average to complete each cover. I draw everything by hand but all digitally as well by using a Cintiq (Wacom) with my favorite software Manga Studio. Some of them I had the opportunity to sell as commissions. In these cases I like to draw with traditional pencils so I can give them the original art as well as you can see in the Beast piece. Prices on commissions are listed on my webpage on My Store.

I hope I finish my Marvel 52 challenge on 2015, but if not, bear with me. Remember I’m not getting paid for these covers and when paid work comes across I have to do it. I’m halfway there so there may be a possibility of meeting the deadline. If not, I will probably finish on January 2016. Following some Marvel 52 examples and a time-lapse video process of making the Vision.

I’ve been really busy this year but I did find the time to go to C2E2 (Chicago’s best comic convention by ReedPop) and be at the artist alley. It is a big deal because you have to be accepted in order to participate as an artist. It was a really great experience but very tiring. I don’t know if I’m cut out to do that very often though. My beautiful wife was with me at the table helping me to sell some prints. She was a great help and business was good. We had a lot of fun. Of course my expenses tend to be much higher than Americans because I have to travel from Ecuador so it wasn’t as lucrative as I would have liked. Still, it was a great way for getting my work out there. I even met a lovely couple that was getting married on July (they must be married by now) and commissioned me an illustration cover based on the famous Amazing Spider-Man annual # 21. I had fun with this project and I even have a video showing the process. Last but not least, I had the opportunity to give Mark Waid (a famous comic and Flash writer) my Flash fan comic I made that I had dedicated to him, and he was very kind as always. He even asked for my signature, how cool is that?

My Artist Alley table at C2E2

Me and the Wife

Me with a fan :)

Me with Mark Waid

What about comics? I‘ve been doing some comic pages for a new series that we want to launch. It is called Heartthrob but we are still in the stage of finding a publisher that is interested in the project. This is Nikolai Barkats’ story, a young but great writer that has not only fun and solid ideas but also knows how to write amazing scripts. I will only show you the cover for this one since I don’t want to spoil anything out to you. The interior pages, which I cannot show, are colored by a friend of mine and great artist from Ecuador, David Méndez.

Cover for Heartthrob

I also met a fan, which now happens to be a friend and also a great writer. He is Marcelo Cury from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He was very supportive when I was drawing my DC Daily challenge and commented on almost every post. We happened to meet on New York and then he told me he had the good habit of writing scripts. I didn’t think much of it until he sent me a page or two. I was hooked with the way he writes and needless to say we are cooking something special. It is still top secret and hopefully we will launch it next year. Sorry, no peeking!

Me, Marcelo, and Dr. Hurt

Ok, now let’s get technical and talk about color. I have always considered myself more of a drawer rather than painter. From the beginning of time in art there has been the distinction, line versus color, or to be more precise line versus values. Some people think either one of them is an ability that you are born with, just like music talent. Although musicians have that special talent, they also have to learn techniques and how to play instruments. The same happens here and I’m confident you can learn both abilities. For me drawing comes easier and more natural than painting. I love lines and to flirt with the idea of the type of lines I can make to denote weight or texture is fulfilling. Values are just as important since it can show volume just by shading or highlighting the planes of the subject. They can be done in grayscale. To understand values you have to understand how light works. This Andrew Loomis’ drawing is self-explanatory but hard to grasp at first. Memorize it! It will get easier with practice, practice, and more practice.

Color is another beast and it is challenging as hell. For this I recommend the book “Color and Light” by James Gurney. You can find it on Amazon here. It has everything you need to learn about color.

Finally, my beautiful daughter turned 1 year old this July 27^th. I, of course, decided to give her a present from the heart (along with toys of course). I drew a portrait of her and also edited a time-lapse video of the process. I hope you enjoy it.

Portrait of my daughter Juliana for her birthday

Besides my current Marvel 52 challenge, and my upcoming comic work by Marcelo and me, I have two other announcements. In order to keep the blog more active, I will create an online course on essentials on drawing. I will try and get the lessons done for summer 2016. They will be video time-lapses, examples, and even homework. There will be free content but also exclusive content for paid memberships.

My other announcement is that I’m planning to live feed my 24-hour challenge comic, which consists on creating an entire comic of 24 pages in 24 hours. This is a demanding but also a rewarding task. I will hope to do this on October 3, 2015. Of course, I will make official announcements via Instagram (@journeystudios), Twitter (@Jostudios), and Facebook (Journey Studios). This is a project based on the famous Scott McCloud challenge that has inspired hundreds of artists to make this challenge. The rules are in the following link. What normally takes you one day to do (a penciled page) you now have to do it in one hour (inked and probably with some color too). If this is not a challenge I don’t know what is. I love challenges, haven’t you noticed?

Talk to you soon.

Godspeed,

CHALLENGE ACCOMPLISHED!

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 02:24:00 +0000

You may be wondering where I have been since I have not updated my blog in a year. Well, it is fair to say that I am still here and that I’ve been a bit tied up in completing a challenge I set up for myself. In my previous entry (as I said, a year ago) I explained more or less what the challenge was going to be about. If you don’t remember, I don’t blame you, so let me start off with a story first for the people who may have forgotten entirely about me and my goal; or for new fans who want to know my secret origins and probably want to spend a nice weekend reading my adventures as well as my misadventures from previous entries.

It all started with an idea. This inception was born out of frustration and a profound sadness in having a job I was not meant to have. Being miserable is the best fuel for someone to snap out of it and embark on a quest to find himself. It was a dark silent night… mmm… I better give you the cliff note version for this tale. If you want the longer version you can always read my previous entries. So, I made up my mind, at age 32, to pursue a career in art, specifically in comics. What that entailed was to take on a lot of journeys and self-imposed challenges to achieve that goal. I designed a plan to master that craft by drawing (or painting) for 10,000 hours (Outliers anyone?) Needless to say, I’m still taking that journey, but most important of all, I’m enjoying the scenery as I go. I moved to New York City to study a Bachelor in Fine Arts majoring in cartooning at the School of Visual Arts. I had my share of great teachers whom I still share contact with. I graduated from SVA at 35 in 2013 and returned back home to Guayaquil, Ecuador. What always follows after any graduation is that sense of ambiguity. What to do? How to spend my working hours? Where to focus my talents? I needed to sort this out and my first goal was to create my own fan comic of my favorite character ‘The Flash’. I wrote, pencilled, inked, and lettered (with purchased fonts by Comicraft) the entire comic. Due to time constraints I had to let colorist David Méndez embellished my pages with his beautiful palette choices. It was a good call since I considered myself more a penciller and inker rather than a colorist, although I do know how to color, as you will see in my next challenge. Here are some examples of some of the colored pages:

Fan comic of The Flash # 276 by Jo

The only problem with this project is that it cannot be sold since I don’t have any rights to the characters and so on. Still, the purpose of this comic was to use it as part of my portfolio and also to indulge myself in making one of my dreams come true. Granted, it is not officially part of the DC Comics canon but it was well received among true Flash fans who happened to come by the story. You can check the complete story for free at my webpage www.journeystudiosonline.com. One of the highlights of this project was the tweet that fan favorite writer Mark Waid (whom I dedicated the comic to) made:

Mark Waid's Tweet after reading my comic

Mark Waid and I at SDCC 2009

To be acknowledged by my favorite writer and the best Flash writer of my era was more than I bargained for. It was a complete circle for me because the first comic I read (when I became a serious comic book fan) was Flash # 74 written by none other than Mark Waid and illustrated by Greg La Rocque, who I met later on at Florida Supercon when I had a table at the artist alley. He is such a nice guy and gave me wonderful advice. He was my first favorite artist at that time and the way I envision Flash (Wally West) is based on his amazing art.

Greg LaRocque and I at Supercon 2014

Ok, back to the reason I was absent for a year. I’ve been way too busy trying to accomplish the ambitious challenge of drawing one DC Comics character everyday for 2014. I wanted to be able to post everyday on all my social media accounts a completed piece without any kind of delay. The pieces started simpler and at first they took me around 4 to 5 hours each. As time progressed, so did my craft so basically I was getting more excited with the results. I started, in some cases, adding backgrounds or working more in composition design rather than just poses. Needless to say, my anatomy was getting more accurate and my dinking (digital inking using Manga Studio) more precise. At an early stage in the challenge, my DC character a day (#DCDAILY) became my full time job. Yeah, I wasn’t getting paid in money but I was gaining tons of followers and most important of all, I was seeing lots of improvement in my overall technique.

#DCDAILY CHALLENGE - Drawing a DC character everyday for 2014

I decided to do all this digitally. In other words, I used my Wacom Cintiq (to draw on a pressure sensitive screen) and the software I used was Manga Studio (I still think this is the best software not only for creating comics but also for digital painting as a whole). My artistic process could be simplified with these steps:

0. - Research. - Needless to say I did some research on Batman and most important on Gotham. There have been so many interpretations of Batman that I had to go with the most iconic. This one particularly is based on the Batman design for the story No Man’s Land (If you look closely the belt is not the classic one) but the color scheme is more classic. At the end it is the artist’s take but I did not want to reinvent the characters for this challenge, rather draw the most iconic costume for each character. This was no easy task though. Kids, Gotham does NOT exist, and although most of you are aware of this, Gotham is a character by itself. Gotham is a mix of New York, London, and Paris. It has a lot of skyscrapers but it is very gothic with churches and gargoyles all over the place. So I had a pretty good idea what Gotham looks like by now. In any case, most of the time I use Google images but only for reference. It is very rare when I draw an identical picture. There is always room to enhance the picture and mold it according to your own composition. Research is fundamental, at least when you are trying to go for a realistic take of the city and, in this case, the caped crusader.

1. Layouts (Thumbnails). - As you can see in this picture, I try to work very loose here. I draw small and try to focus my attention on composition. Because of this challenge anatomy is not as hard as it was at the beginning but it is always challenging depending on the pose. This pose is not particularly hard and the camera view is just a standard medium shot. At this stage I designed the cape taking the background buildings into consideration.

Step 1 - Thumbs

2. Perspective. - In some cases, when the piece has a background that needs perspective I tend to work on that early on. I’m already at ease with the pose so I know by now that if I do not nail the perspective, the overall image won’t look cool, or realistic for that matter. Sometimes fans cannot pinpoint where the mistake is but they do know that something is wrong, and that is not good because it throws you out of the story. In this case, I use perspective rulers in Manga Studio, but hey, it is not as easy as you would imagine. You have to use the same principles as doing it traditionally. You have to figure out where you want your horizon line and where are your main vanishing points located at. This is a clear example of a 3-point perspective but I’m not going to dwell on this since this is not a perspective class.

Step 2 - Perspective

3. Pencils (Roughs). - Keep in mind that these are digital pencils and are more or less the same thing, in theory. Something I do miss is working with real pencils on good quality paper. This is the stage when you start having fun. You start drawing on top of the thumbs and perspective layers (both of them are hidden in this picture, but are basically the same as the ones before only I changed the colors to blue for the figure and red for the background in order to have a blueprint (or redprint if you will). I try to make this step more fun and start fixing mistakes or adding details to the overall image.

Step 3 - Rough Pencils

4. Pencils (Tights). - When I go overboard with my roughs I tend to skip this step in order to ink the piece. I normally did this because of the time constraints I had with this project but under normal circumstances I wouldn’t do it. The tighter they are, the easier it will be to ink the piece with better results.

Step 4 - Tight Pencils

5. Inks. - I cannot tell you how much I love digital inks, specially in Manga Studio. They look like the real deal. In my case, I like my lines very clean (as you can see) so using a software that lets you erase your inks is great. Granted, sometimes it lacks personality in the lines, and you can also do a lot of stuff with traditional techniques. For instance, using a dry brush is awesome for some styles. Although I do have a dry brush tool in Manga Studio, it is not the same.

Step 5 - Inks

6. Flatting. - This is the boring stage. Lots of professional colorists use professional flatters because it is so time consuming. Because I did this everyday I became very fast at it and learned a few tricks on the go, but it is still painful to do it. Basically you use the lasso tool to mask areas with different colors.

Step 6 - Flats

7. Logo. - I cannot tell you how much I hate doing logos, mainly because you have to do them in Illustrator. I don’t know, using vectors is completely different as the way you normally draw. That’s why not every penciller is a good graphic designer as most people would assume. I did 365 of them so… kudos to me.

Step 7 - Logo

8. Coloring and effects. - This is a very organic step. It is more like painting, or rendering. I gained a lot of experience in making certain types of effects, most of the time through trial and error. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they did not. At the end of the day I do not consider myself a colorist since I know there are a lot of colorists that can do a better job than I did with these pieces. Then again, paying a colorist to work on 365 pages would have proven… unwise. Still, I learned a lot by doing this.

Step 8 - Coloring & SFX

Here is a tutorial I made for Tomorrow Woman and a time-lapse video on how I made Red Hood so you can get the idea. Take into consideration that this one took me around 9 hours and because of the magic of technology I can show it to you in approximately 14 minutes.

So I had to go through this process everyday. Some days I even worked on two because I knew that the next day would be impossible to draw due to… well… life. Because this is an artistic process it wasn’t as rigid for every piece, but you get the idea.

So what did I gain by sacrificing an entire year of my life on doing something that I probably can’t sell? I do have specific plans for this project and I intend to approach them in a timely fashion. The worst-case scenario is that I gained more skills during the year in order to make me more competitive in the industry. Will I ever do something like this again? Probably yes, if I were paid to do it. Thanks to all my fans for liking and commenting on my posts, whether you believe it or not, that kind of support is what kept me going. The challenge is dedicated to my wife Morole and my daughter Juliana for putting up with me drawing all the time.

My daughter Ju and my wife Morole

Here are only 25 out of 365 of my drawings. They are not my top 25 (some of them are though) but they are the most recent, hence, better. You want to see more? No problem, just go to my website www.journeystudiosonline.com and click My Challenge. I will upload them on Etsy.com and Displate.com soon so I can sell them as prints. I will make sure to inform the fans.

# 365 The Flash (Wally West)

So now that this is all over, what are my plans? That is an awfully good question. I do have some goals for 2015 but I won’t divulge all of them right away. What I can say is that this year I will be making my own graphic novel and hopefully some publisher will be interested in printing it. It will be written, drawn, and inked by me. Colors will be taken care by another fellow artist. Also I’m planning to do something like my DC Daily challenge but this time based on Marvel characters, and only limited to 52. In other words, it will be one character per week. This collection is named ‘Marvel 52’. They will be more elaborated than my previous challenge practically because I can spend more time on them. I will try to focus these pieces as comic cover quality. Also, I will try to make a quick warm-up sketch from Monday to Friday and the fun part is that I will be taking requests, although they will primarily be characters from the 80s. I will try to do them with traditional mediums such as pencils, inks, washes, and markers. I will draw these warmups until I finish the sketchbook I bought for it (it will not reach 365 sketches though), and then probably auction it. Last but not least, I will do the infamous 24-hour comic. This was an exercise created by Scott Mccloud, and now a days lots of cartoonists are doing it. It is very hard to make with no interruptions but to have your own 24-hour comic would be great. I will make sure to post the rules of this particular challenge, and perhaps I will even put a 24-hour video feed of me working.

I will try to go to conventions to show my art and sell some prints of my DC Daily Challenge. As master Yoda said: “You either do, or do not… There is no try”, so I may as well do it. I will be posting my future cons so you can plan accordingly.

I will be doing commissions and I will be posting them as well, if the client lets me do it of course. Pricing depends a lot on the medium I use and the style and complexity it is preferred by the client, so it is variable and I would gladly quote everyone that is interested.

As you can see, it has been a very busy year, one I think, that will take me closer to my finish line. On the personal level I can only add that it was the best year of my life because I had a baby daughter, named Juliana (as you saw in the pic above dressed as a beautiful lamb) and that was the best gift I have ever received. From the day she was born my life is dedicated to her.

I won’t neglect this blog anymore because as you can see I will be logging 5000 hours soon and that means I’m almost halfway through from my original goal of mastering art by drawing 10,000 hours.

I hope I didn’t bore you and it would be great if my 4 F’s (family, friends, fans, and followers) give me some feedback on how to improve this blog, or ideas on what to do next. I can see myself having a successful life doing what I love; now I need to convince not only my fans but the publishers as well. The world is my oyster.

See you next time!!!

Godspeed,

Journey Studios

Instagram: @journeystudios
Twitter: @jostudios
Facebook: Journey Studios
Tumblr: Journey Studios
Deviant Art: bielero
Youtube: Jose Molestina

WINTER IS COMING…

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 17:42:00 +0000

Yes, it is definitively coming, with already 2814 hours full of pure artistic and creative experience. The 10,000-hour goal seems far far away but in the meantime the numbers are still adding up. Is it a coincidence that the number of hours equals the number of the space sector assigned to earth by the guardians of OA to the Green Lantern Corps? I think NOT! Well, it WAS a coincidence, but with this we have established three facts: 1. - I’m working my ass off to reach my infamous goal of mastering art, mostly in comics (Yes! That is considered art. In fact, it is the ninth art. If you don’t believe it, Google it!); 2. - That I am indeed a geek, with a certain purity I might add, and not with commonly welcomed upcoming geek fad (Big Bang Theory, anyone?); and 3. - That I love comic books, consequently, why I draw them in the first place. I can’t help to think that at this stage someone reading this paragraph is shouting inside his head “NEEEERRRDDD” like Homer Simpson.

Anyway, It is now 2014 and winter is indeed coming. I remember when I was living in New York City and everybody was scared to death of the winter. Yes, it gets really cold up there. This is not the case for me anymore, I moved back to my home country, Ecuador, where I’m cementing the pillars, expanding the roots, and probably getting more used to it by the minute. Winter is coming but not like you imagine. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, or probably I’ve read it and it got stuck in my mind, but here in Guayaquil city everything is backwards, and the best example is the weather. This is surely because we are right in the center of the world (in the equator), but here winter is hot, very hot. It climbs up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and it rains, a lot! The rainy season also brings out an infinite amount of crickets and they are disgusting and annoying. I’m not actually looking forward to it, but it IS coming! You know what else is coming? My big break! At least I hope so. This is the year that I will fully work towards getting a job in the comic book industry. Maybe it is too soon, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen, right? Only time will tell, and if it doesn’t happen, well, at least I will have more knowledge and experience to have better odds in 2015 right. I think perseverance is the key, I really do. I have many projects that I want to do this year and I will post each one of them here. I hope they are as entertaining for you as they are to me.

Ok, so let’s bring you up to date. I’m a freelance artist who graduated last year from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City, majoring in Cartooning and Illustration. I have divided my working hours in four categories:

COMICS

This is my dream job and it takes around 40% of my working hours. This is mainly my comic work. I try to do this every chance I get and remember that I have to write the plot and the script, draw the thumbnails, draw my pencils, ink them, color them, letter the words and finally edit it. It sounds like a lot of work and you know what, it IS. In order for you to get the amount of work I spend in a page think that it takes me around two days to finish just one, sometimes even more. There are approximately 22 pages in a standard comic book so it takes me around two months to finish one without any kind of interruption. That is why it is a collaborative field, because it is so time consuming. Currently in the industry there are pencillers, writers, cover artists, letterers (sometimes they are done with fonts in the computer, as I do), inkers, colorists, etc. My main idea is to create an ashcan comic. What is an ashcan comic you may wonder? Well, wonder no more because I have the answer for you. An ashcan comic is a standard comic book printed usually in black and white (just inks) printed in lower quality pages than mainstream comics, with its sole purpose to be shown to art directors, artists, and editors mostly in comic conventions. I think it’s a great way to show your storytelling abilities and drawing techniques to someone. I think this is a much better way to get someone’s attention rather than the typical portfolio. Of course, there is nothing wrong with showing a portfolio, especially if it is a strong one; I just tend to prefer the former rather than the latter.

My plan is to finish my very own issue of The Flash focusing on a character that was erased from continuity. His name is Wally West and he donned the Flash costume for a little bit more than twenty years. He was just erased from DC Comics continuity due to editorial and financial strategies. Now it is like he never existed in the first place. This issue gives some closure to fans and since it will not be used for commercial gain, I’m not breaking any law, am I? I should talk with my lawyer about that. Still, I’m lucky if that comic book gain as much followers as the hours I spent making those pages. The strategy is to print them in high quality paper and do the entire coloring myself, so it will actually look as a published comic book. I hope I get some raised eyebrows when I give those for free but I’m way too realistic for my own good. Still, it will be my best work and I hope that much would be appreciated. The good news is that I have already finished the pencils and now I just have to ink them and color them. I will upload one page per week as a webcomic, which will be up in the following weeks. I will be sure to let you know the proper link to it. I can’t show you much but I can show you a couple of pages done in digital pencils. They are not as tight as I would prefer but since I will be inking those pages myself there is no need to go tighter.

Page 11 of Flash Comic

Page 12 of Flash Comic

DC DAILY CHALLENGE

So to spice things up I decided I will be drawing and posting a DC Comics character everyday for 2014. It is a tough challenge but I do enjoy it very much. Of course there are days that I don’t feel like drawing a comic book character, and there are those days that I just can’t draw, so I decided to start in October by drawing at least 52 characters until New Year’s. (Oh my God that number again!) That way I get the pressure off my back and at least I know I can get my Sunday fundays back. It is amazing how much you can improve by drawing everyday. My poses are more dynamic now and I’m pretty satisfied with my recent illustrations. The only problem with this tactic is that at the time I get to post them I already have found tons of mistakes and thought about ways I could draw them better, but I had to let go and just post them the way I intended because if not it takes too much of my time. At first I though them as warm-ups, but later on I decided to do complete illustrations with backgrounds and everything. The only thing I decided not to do is heavy shading. That takes way too much of my time and for the purpose of the challenge it is fine leaving them as flats. Still, I think they look really good and my purpose is to increase my followers in Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, and probably get DC Comics to notice me. Why DC? Because I love those characters and those were the ones I grew up with. WARNING: Do not expect a Superman right off the bat, I’m focusing on obscure characters first so I can experiment on them. After all, there are 365 characters I want to draw. Each drawing takes me around two and a half hours to finish and probably 30% of my working hours monthly. Maybe next year I will do Marvel but not this one. I’m sad to tell you that I can’t show them through this blog though. You will need to follow me:

· Instagram - @journeystudios

· Twitter - @bielero

· Tumblr – Mastering Art

Here is a silhouette preview of one of my illustrations with the real background. Can you guess who it is?

Who is he?

DIGITAL PORTRAITS

This is my current venue to make money while I’m also aiming for my dream job. It takes around 20% of my production time. Although this is not my main goal artistically, it doesn’t mean that I’m not prepared for it. I can’t deny the fact that I see myself also as a portrait artist. Drawing portraits was my passion when I was in high school and I never stop drawing them. There were a lot of interruptions until I made the wise decision to study art, but nevertheless, I never actually stopped on trying to get the likeness of a person. I am grateful for the customers that have had faith in me in doing this since I don’t yet have a lot of work to show them. God bless them!

But I have to add that I have met some resistance in this field by some people, mainly because they do not understand what I actually do. You see, an alarming rate of people do not fully comprehend the term “digital painting”. I have had some situations where I had to explain my methods and still they do not get them. I don’t mean to be rude to those people, not at all, but it seems my country is not aware that this is the future. I don’t think traditional painting will cease to exist, but I firmly believe digital painters will increase in their numbers and hopefully they will be perceived as what they really are, artists. Yes, some people truly believe that I take photos and Photoshop them into portraits. I don’t know, maybe they think I do this with the click of a mouse and a good filter as they do in the Instagram app. To tell you the truth, those people could not be more wrong. Anything I do digitally I can do traditionally in any medium (oils, acrylic, gouache, etc). Why? You may ask. It is because I use the same principles of building up color. I start sketching with my digital pencils and then start painting on my digital canvas playing with opacity levels. It is like applying traditional paint. Of course there are some shortcuts or let’s say, techniques that makes your work not necessarily easier or better but faster. Three that I come across frequently is the command+Z (or most commonly known by Window users as Ctrl+Z) that lets you UNDO your mistakes. Yes, that is pretty convenient specially when you are experimenting in the painting. You could say that is cheating (which I find absurd since it is not a competition), but you have to take into consideration that traditional artists usually do this prior by composing in thumbnails sketches or color studies. Digital painters should do this, but we sometimes don’t, and that is why the undo features come in handy, because we CAN do it. Another advantage is the CUT & TRANSFORM feature. It helps you to reorganize the composition or fix proportions. This cuts some time off in the pencil stage because we know we can fix the proportions later by doing this. Finally, I always use the beloved tonal correction feature. This lets you modify the saturation, intensity, brightness, contrast, hues, luminosity, etc. It is like magic and it works great. It doesn’t change the values and the changes are minimal but they do make a difference. This is also because we, digital painters, have cut off some time in the preliminary color studies, as a traditional painter would do. Needless to say, I draw using a Cintiq (think of it as a huge iPad) and no, I don’t draw with my finger but with my partner in crime, the optical pen (You can see it on my self-portrait). In short, I use traditional techniques with some technological advantages and draw and paint the same way I would do with a traditional medium.

The great advantage with digital painting is that it can be printed in many ways and many sizes due to its resolution, but one thing is for certain, it has to be printed in Giclee and in an establishment that make prints specifically for fine art. I have full confidence in Prints Giclee Shop. Also, there is an article saying more or less what I’m saying in this section. It is a fascinating read for someone interested to learn more of digital painting. How to paint using traditional techniques. I will be showing three portrait paintings I made digitally, one is my self-portrait titled “The endless planning stage” and the others are two commissions of the daughters of a good friend of mine. I’m including the videos sped up to a ridiculous 6,000% so you can see the entire process. Thanks Carlita!

Self-Portrait "The Endless Planning Stage"

Ani

Carlita

INSPIRATION

You can’t neglect your sudden urges to do, well, whatever the hell you want, so you just do it. This takes 10% of my working time, more or less, maybe more in the holiday season. Some of them may have ended up as commissions and some of them were made specifically as gifts. Without a doubt this is something I truly like. I don’t know, I can’t shake the feelings that when I give art as a gift I think the person would have enjoy more, I don’t know, a watch. Even though it takes time to make those pieces and I think that is what makes them valuable. I guess I’ll never know but I put my heart into my gifts. I made illustrations for my nephews, Oswaldo José ended up as Flash running through the speed force vortex, and Alejandro flying through outer space as a member of the Green Lanterns Corps.

Oswaldo Jose as Flash

Ale as Green Lantern

Also, I worked on a black and white silhouette for my sister in law. What is even more special for this one is that I painted it with white gouache painting over a black board. When you go digital is hard to go back to traditional, mainly because of the messy factor. Also, my studio is not built up for traditional painting anymore. So, it would be much easier to fall back to digital but I thought for this type of illustration it would be much cooler to be done on board. I really liked her grace in this pose. She is a terrific dancer and I hope this does her justice.

GiGi

Another illustration I’m proud of is a Hulk I made for Big Rafa. By the way, Thanks Rafa! The approach was exactly as I would make a digital painting and I truly enjoyed it. I will be uploading the pencils version (since I did it traditionally on Bristol Board) and the digital final version as well. I changed his face from the pencils, I really don't know which one I like best.

Hulk Pencils

Hulk Digital Painting

There’s also this Batman I made for my nephew Leo for his birthday using the same approach I did with The Hulk. I do have a video for it so you can see the entire process in making a digital painting.

Batman The Dark Knight

You know that I used to run marathons? Well, you should if you have read my previous posts. I think I have used running marathons as metaphors all the time. In any case, in the family gift exchange I had to give my cousin Leonardo a gift. Since I used to run marathons with him what gift is better than the gift of art? Mmm… probably a watch, right? Anyhow, I hope you liked it Nao. This is a digital painting as well, but I used more painterly approach. I used specific brushes to give the impression of an oil painting.

Nao - Chicago Marathon 2009

Finally here’s a Joker bust I made just for the hell of it, and another one that I made inspired by my friend, the one and only, Eduardo Risso. Google him, his art is exquisite and nobody spots blacks as he does.

Joker Bust Painting

Joker Noir

CLASSES

Ok, so we have already categorized 100% of my working hours, but I also spend some valuable time watching tutorials or attending art classes online. I try to do them whenever I have free time, and my wife hates it. I know that in the bottom of her heart she understands how important this is for me and how much I love her for supporting me. Or perhaps she will eventually snap and kill me in my sleep. Let’s hope for the former. I must recommend the CG Master Academy (2d.cgmasteracademy.com), which focus mainly on 2d animation. Although animation is not the same as cartooning or sequential art for lack of a better word, they share the same drawing principles. Here they offer several classes such as: Perspective, Dynamic Sketching, Character Design, Creature Design, Digital Painting, Environment Design, etc. I took The Analytical Figure Drawing class that is taught by Michael Hampton, author of the book “Figure Drawing Design andInvention”. He is a great teacher and it’s an amazing class where you really learn the complex structures of the human figure. There is another online school that focuses mostly on comic books (www.comicsexperience.com) I haven’t yet taken any course here but they seem really good and I had the pleasure to meet the teacher for the coloring course, Chris Sotomayor. If you want to learn how to be a mainstream comic book professional in the industry, this is one of the best ways I must say. Here are some examples of the homework I made during my class at CGMA.

I have many projects and I will be writing about them in this blog, but let me tell you some privileged information. This year I will be writing my first novel. I’m not a writer per se but I’m familiar enough with the narrative process. It is a great story, and I hope it will be successful, but if it is not, at least I did it, and mark my words, this year it will be done.

To end this entry I leave you with some wisdom by Andrew Loomis regarding talent: “The term ‘talent’ needs clarifying. To any man who has slaved to acquire skill in his art, it is most irritating to have his ability referred to as a ‘gift’. Perhaps there is one genius in a hundred years or more who can achieve perfection by ‘divine inspiration’. I have never met such a man, and I do not know any successful artist who did not get there by the sweat of his brow”.

May you have a Happy 2014 full of goals and dreams! The road to happiness is to live your life the way you wish to.

Godspeed,

Jose Molestina

Journey Studios

BACK TO UNREALITY

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:40:00 +0000

Now that school’s over I had to make some serious changes in my life. Nobody likes change, or at least, nobody welcomes it with an anxious-free attitude. The reason for this is mainly because even minor changes can screw with your routine, comfort and an already established efficiency. It’s been four months since my last entry and I hate to admit that I have not drawn enough. That does not mean I haven’t been busy. In these months I had to move from New York, one of the greatest cities and the art capital of the world to my hometown, Guayaquil, in Ecuador. It may sound as a downgrade, but this is simply not the case. You see, I love my city and my country, and there are apparently some advantages here that New York could not have offered me, ever! Let’s start with the fact that I have my family here, which support me no matter what crazy idea pops into my head. Also I have a lot of connections here. Living in a small city for around 30 years will do that to you. Food is cheaper and time goes slower. It is hot in here, and it will get hotter in the winter, go figure. It sounds as if I’m saying it backwards, but lots of things are backwards here and that is one of the facts why I love it so much. Space is an important factor since in New York I had none, at least compared to what I have here. For instance, I designated one room as my man cave/studio/comic room. All the inspiration I can get in one place. I even have a vintage comic book roulette rack. So it took a lot of effort and time to build my perfect spot for working, so it would be absolutely wrong not to brag about it ;) Here are some pictures of it and I have made a list specifying some of the stuff I have in it so you can know me better. I’m pretty sure you will end up with some opinions about me and you may not be wrong about some of them.

Panoramic Picture of Journey Studios

Journey Studios 1

Journey Studios 2

Journey Studios 3

69 Things to Brag About

Mask collection.
Original art of Eddie by Derek Riggs. (The official Iron Maiden illustrator)
DC Eaglemoss figurine collection. (almost complete)
Lots of art books and references.
Lightbox. Never use it, and I don’t think I ever will L
Soccer Trophy. Granted, it was from elementary school and we ended up sixth but they still gave it to us as consolation price. I have no idea why the hell I have it. I play no soccer whatsoever.
Favorite Flash cap.
Drafting table. The one I used in New York.
Comfy chair. Kind of expensive though.
Portable easel when I feel like painting with traditional tools. Sadly I have no room for it at my place so I think it will stay that way for a while. Also oil painting stinks the whole apartment.
Vintage comic book roulette rack.
The Flash cardboard. (Wally West)
Batman statue. (Museum Quality)
The Hulk. (He is always angry as you can see)
Golden Link of the Legend of Zelda. #Truefan
Darth Maul with mechanical legs. (Sideshow Collectibles)
Luke hanging from Cloud City after learning the truth from his father. Honestly, ruling a galaxy as father and son doesn’t seem so bad.
Journey Studios. (Based on my signature JO)
My beloved Cintiq. www.wacom.com
UPS voltage regulator. Believe it or not, blackouts happen regularly.
Favorite mug of the Man of Steel.
iMac.
Comic-con badges. Yes, I collect them too.
Cork with lost of essential information and reference. Also I have a picture of my nephews up there.
Marathon finisher medals. (New York, Miami, and Chicago)
A3 Hewlett Packard printer.
TV used as an extra monitor.
Darth Vader helmet.
Poster of Showcase # 4. (First appearance of the silver age Flash)
The Flash placemat with his origin revealed.
Poster of Eduardo Risso’s illustration of 100 Bullets, dedicated to me of course.
Conan O’Brien sculpture I made of clay.
Coca Cola through the decades.
South Park characters.
Blu-Ray collection and some small books.
Original Art by Greg LaRocque. Favorite interpretation of the Flash.
Manga collection. (A very small one)
Favorite trade paperbacks.
Female figure Artist Model. (The male is lying around somewhere)
Absolute hardcovers.
Victoria Secret catalogs. (They are used for reference!)
Comfy chair again. It is so good that it needed to be mentioned twice.
I guess the Superman cup is as good as the chair since it’s already on the list.
Flash mouse pad. (I guess you’ve figured it out already. I like The Flash)
Gentle Giant Star Wars Bust collection.
The Flash by Alex Ross.
Pull up bar to stretch my back. Rarely used for exercise.
Rorschach bust.
DC Comics superheroes lithography by Warner Brothers.
Leia in the golden bikini of course.
Storm Shadow bust.
SVA Graduation cap.
Kingdom Come Superman statue sculpted by Alex Ross.
Star Wars statues collection.
Other statues.
The Joker statue collection.
Custom Joker statue. Who is the artist I wonder?
The Flash collection.
Comics. Lots of them.
Munny Flash painted by Jo. (That’s me)
Resin statue made by Jo.
More trade paperbacks.
Even More trade paperbacks. (That Flash hardcover is in Italian)
Dylan Dog collection (in Italian of course) donated by a good friend of mine.
Luigi, number one! (This time number sixty five)
Mug of the Flash and me, given as a gift from my brother.
Books.
Preacher action figures.
Souvenir from my honeymoon. A man drawing on a drafting table made of tin. (Granted, the tin figure is supposed to be an architect, but you get the idea)

It is important to add that there is no comic book market here. Ok, so anybody with an inch of common sense will argue that this is not such a good scenario for me, a freelance artist who specializes in drawing comics; but the fact of the matter is that there is a lot of potential on this virgin soil and I’m one of the few who knows how to do this kind of magic (comics) in this city and probably in the whole country. It’s true that I’d have to start a campaign in order for people to start caring more about graphic novels at all, but if I would have to guess, and correct me if I’m wrong, there is a strong tendency in the world of people taking what I do more seriously. I still have to battle with some people who cannot, for the love of God, understand what I do for a living, after I have explained it to them thoroughly. It is not a popular career here in Ecuador, and I don’t think it will be anytime soon. I don’t blame people for not understanding. It seems that in third world countries, politics, businesses, and agriculture dominate the economy; art, on the other hand, occupies the last entry in the priority list. Things are changing though, slowly, but they are changing, and I will be part of this cultural shift when storytelling and art takes an important role in Ecuador. Create awareness seems like a lot of work, especially if I am eager to make some money doing what I love, so my plan is to sell my products to international markets right away. The good news is that I do have some commissions but they are not precisely in the comics department.

Portrait of my sister Mariella

In any case, this is my home now and I’m happy to be here, however, I’m also nostalgic and kind of regretful of leaving New York behind. The city that never sleeps made possible my biggest dream, so I will always be in its debt. Hopefully I will be back to visit soon in order to walk those noisy but beautiful streets under a 14 degree Fahrenheit morning to get to one of the many great restaurants in the city to have an unparalleled brunch. So yeah, I miss it, a lot. Like people say, “You will love to hate New York”, but now that I’m not there I can only think good memories of it.

So now that I have no classes to go over with you, what are we going to cover? You see what I mean with minor changes? The task of achieving 10,000 hours doing art is still going on so I guess I will show you my progress and cover the most interesting phases of my life while showing you my latest work. I hate to admit that I will not be showing every piece as I did in previous posts when I was in school. The reason for this is that I have to be more careful in showing my content. I’m afraid of people illegally using my images and sometimes I will be legally obligated to restrain myself of showing some artwork. In any case, I will upload whatever I can even if I have to watermark some of my work. The idea is to get my art out there so, what are you waiting for, spread the word. The only way to be great at this is with the help of the fans, or some publisher who can see not only the talent and sacrifice, but also the potential in me.

Soon I will be uploading my new website, and not to worry, Master Art Skills WILL be a part of it. I don’t want to spoil the surprise but I can tell you this, the name of my studio will be Journey Studios. You see, my family and my closest friends call me Jo. It all started when my sister, Mariella, was just a baby and could not say my whole name, which is Jose Luis by the way. So she started calling me Jo 20 years ago and somehow it stuck. I decided that if some people change their names to help recognition and awareness, my artist name could easily be changed to Jo. Why Journey Studios you ask? Well, it starts with “Jo” right, but I have put more thought into it, believe you me. The Journey was the first mini-comic I made in Jessica Abel and Matt Madden’s storytelling class. It was a compilation of all my homework in that class but it was my first comic nonetheless. It seems premonitory now that I think about it. This has been and still is, my journey, so without further ado here I present my logo designed by none other than my brother Oswaldo.

Journey Studios Logo

Mini-comic The Journey

I’ve been doing a lot of illustrations and I’m happy to say they have been well received. I’m trying to post them all via Twitter (@bielero), Instagram (@bielero), Tumblr (Mastering Art / bielero.tumblr.com), Deviantart (bielero), and Facebook (Jose Molestina). Feel free to follow me or request a friendship if you wish to do so. I will gladly accept. I wish there was one application so you could post once and upload them in all the social networks available. Sometimes I spend so much time posting my work when it could have been more productive making more art. Anyways, I don’t think this will happen anytime soon and if you do know one software or app that does this, please do tell me about it.

There are two anecdotes with two of my illustrations. The first one was a comic style painting I made of “El Chapulin Colorado”, which is a character in a comedy about a Mexican Superhero performed brilliantly by Chespirito (You may have heard him in “El Chavo del 8”). I dare to say that the majority of Latin America and mainly my generation hold this actor with high regard. He made our childhoods sweeter and everybody will remember him as what he really is, a legend. The fact that not only he acknowledged my illustration but also thanked me for it and reposted it using his own account in Instagram made me smile for the rest of the day. The second work was a caricature of a well-known politician and now major of my city Guayaquil, Jaime Nebot, who not only thanked me for it but also took a picture of himself holding the caricature. I respect him a lot so it was a great honor to get this recognition. Also via his Facebook account my work reached almost 10,000 likes, which is not too shabby, no, not too shabby at all ;)

El Chapulin Colorado

Jaime Nebot caricature

Jaime Nebot with caricature

I also made a Superman with and angry Lex Luthor, a Batman colored sketch, a Hulk fighting the Marvel Universe using digital inks, the infamous Joker, a new re-imagined Justice League based on the next generation of sidekicks of the DC Universe, and a couple of new superheroes based on two good friends of mine. I don’t think they are too happy on me promoting this illustration but their attitude towards it was refreshing and very positive. Still, nobody paid me for that one; it was paid off with my laughter ;) I made most of them using Manga Studio 5 EX which I highly recommend.

Superman vs. Lex Luthor

Batman colored sketch

Hulk vs. The Marvel Universe

The Joker

The New Justice League

The Buff and The Photogenic Kid

So why is the title of the entry “Back to Unreality? Mainly because although I’m back to reality, meaning that I’m back in my home country making my stay in New York learning art and comics just a great memory, it is not the life I left behind when I first travel there. I’m back, but to be able to make comics in this city feels unreal, bordering in unbelievable. It is a dream come true and nobody can take this way from me. I though it was going to feel weird but ‘au contraire’, it feels just about right. I was always sure that I made the right choice, but now I’m even more convinced that I’m in the right path. Follow your dreams, the payoff is so much greater that you could possibly imagine, and it IS attainable. It took me 3 years of my life, but it may as well have taken me a lifetime or not happen at all if I hadn’t had the courage to make the leap unto the uncertain. I will say goodbye now, but before I do here is a couple of videos of my process in making the Joker that you can also see via You Tube The Joker Video

Godspeed,

Jose Luis

VENI VIDI VICI

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:02:00 +0000

It’s been a while. Four months have passed since my last entry. What was I doing? Have I been drawing? Well, as you can see I’ve been adding hours to my challenge nearly completing 1/4^th of my objective of reaching 10,000 hours at the moment of this entry. Still, the one thing I’ve been focusing more is in graduating with a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts located in the art capital of the United States, New York. Let me get this straight, graduating with a BFA does not make you a master in arts, not even getting an MFA (Master in Fine Arts), so my challenge does NOT end here. What makes you a master (in Malcolm Gladwell’s perspective and now my own of course) is the accumulation of ten thousand hours. Still a long way to go, and my will to achieve them is still intact. Don’t get me wrong, I feel more confident than before and I have learned new skills and techniques that makes it easy for me to make a professional career now that I have to be in the real world of freelance illustration and cartooning.

Bachelor in Fine Arts

Now everyone says to me that the hard part is yet to come, and they may be partially right. You have to remember that I’ve been in this situation before, back in 2000 when I got my Bachelor in Business Administration. There was as much anxiety back then as there is now. The difference now is that I’m not afraid of working professionally since I did it for ten years before deciding to study again. What I’m concerned is that I don’t really know how this industry is going to welcome me. Is it going to be with open arms recognizing the talent or at least the potential in my work? Or is it going to be harder than I expect with lots of trials an errors and disappointments along the way? Realistically I think it would be a combination of the two. I heard that some professional artists when critiquing your portfolio they can be mean as hell. Their attitude comes from the belief that they have to trash your work and if you don’t let them break your spirit you deserve to be a comic book artist. They literally tell you that you stink and that you won’t ever make it in the industry (It hasn’t happened to me yet, probably because I haven’t showed my portfolio to anyone yet). Let them trash my work if they want, I have the will of a Green Lantern (geek reference) and it won’t be bent. My only fear is fear itself. No, really, let me paraphrase, my only fear is discouragement. I’m afraid that if things go too slow I will be making more business choices rather than art. I still have to earn an income, right. I made it this far and I’m not about to quit now, I just need focus and some incentive :)

Since I haven’t been able to tell you about my classes for this semester, I will show you my grades first and then I’ll walk you through the work I’ve done for the aforementioned studies with their proper course descriptions. Now without further ado I will present my grades for this semester and also the cumulative GPA (Magna Cum Laude) for the whole curriculum at SVA.

Grades - Spring 2013 semester

Magna Cum Laude

As you can see, I took 5 classes in this semester. I was going to take 6 but I decided that since I didn’t need those extra credits I would go easier on myself this semester and focus more on the important classes. I will be discussing each class in the next paragraphs.

Cartooning Portfolio 2 is a critical class and by far the most important in this semester because I had to build, as you can guess, a great portfolio to show my work to professionals in the field. Remember than in art you don’t need to show your potential employer a résumé. They are not interested in how well you did in class or how many A+ you had, what they really need to see is your portfolio, and believe me they will know your strengths and your weaknesses from page one (considering that they are art directors or artists in general, of course). Your weaknesses just pop up and there’s no way you can embellish them if you have not yet learned those skills. Your portfolio is your life (or at least professionally) and you have to build it and constantly include better and more recent pieces in it so you can make it attractive for the people looking for a freelance artist. Also as important is the fact that I will be doing freelance work since the comic industry is not in the habit of employing artists. They make you agree to contracts for individual projects but you are still a freelance artist nonetheless, hoping that when you finish that job you have another one waiting for you.

The goal of this class was to create a strong portfolio so after graduation you can actually get work in the real world. I built a good portfolio, but I still think it needs more work, at least taking into account my artistic ambitions. My “perfect” portfolio will come in time, or perhaps never since I’m a perfectionist at heart and I will always feel a little apprehensive about my work. There has been a lot of improvement since my previous semester but I believe if I work hard for the rest of this year I will be able to make a great portfolio for next year’s comic conventions.

The main work throughout this semester was finishing my story “Turmoil”, an 18-page comic book that deals with Alzheimer and the turmoil this disease causes in one’s mind. By now I may have spoiled the story for you but although it is a twist just revealed in the second part (first part is shown in my previous entry of this blog), it does not affect the tale as a whole. I also decided to digitally paint the last four pages so I could add more color to my portfolio. I edited the cover you probably saw in my previous entry (if not you should read it now, or at least look at the funny pics) with a basic and yet powerful modification, which make it works better than before. You already know it is about Alzheimer, so by looking at the cover now it makes a lot more sense, I hope.

Turmoil p8

Turmoil p7

Turmoil p9

Turmoil p10

Turmoil p11

Turmoil p12

Turmoil p13

Turmoil p14

Turmoil p15

Turmoil p16

Turmoil p17

Turmoil p18

Turmoil edited cover

I don’t need to talk much about Professional Cartooning since it was a non-credit mandatory class that teaches young artists on how to make a living in illustration and cartooning after school. Based on what I’ve seen, I would dare to say that this class was essential for the majority of my classmates. I’d even say that SVA needs a more comprehensive business class for artists than this one. Even though there was some key information I learned from this class, it was kind of unnecessary. I liked the teacher just fine and it was a fun class, but having a degree in business made the subject a little redundant for me. The class teaches you how to make invoices for Christ’s sake. If I didn’t know that by now then I was living in a hole for ten years. I don’t mean to rant or be obnoxious about it since it was very productive for my classmates. I always have to remind myself that I’m the one who is misplaced studying to get a BFA at 35.

Anatomy was just another figure drawing class, but you know what, I enjoyed it a lot. I was expecting more focus on the muscles and bones and their proper mechanics and what I got was more of the same as prior figure drawing classes. We had to draw a nude model in different poses every week. The pros about this class is that the teacher was really sweet and although she had a fine arts approach on teaching, she really knew what she was talking about. What I found most interesting was the final project. We had to create a new creature based on skeletons on different animals. Then we had to create its skin and its environment. It’s harder than it seems because you have to really research about it and concentrate on why some limbs are the way they are according to its environment, why the skin has its texture, probably for camouflage or for defense against predators. I decided to go for a strong predator. I mixed a sabertooth with a bear and a dinosaur. My research was more complex than just combining the three creatures and my imagination ran wild but you get the idea. Here is the final project along with a sketch I made of Ganesh (Hindu deity and remover of obstacles) at the museum.

Creature in habitat

Creature skeleton

Ganesh

Multiepisodes was a writing class and it taught me how to write a script. I already knew the basics and I learned some new techniques. The final assignment was a full script for a 22-page story, but we have also sketched out the whole story arc, which my teacher thought it was very original story and that made me a happy panda ;). I cannot talk much about this project though, since I will be starting to draw this issue anytime soon and I will be posting those pages in future entries. I also needed a humanities class so History of Religion fitted the bill. It was a fun and interesting class and it broadens your perspective on faith and religion. In any case, this is not a philosophy blog so I will skip this class altogether.

It is important to add that I had my first two commissions as an artist and that is a HUGE deal for me. My very first one was a portrait painting of a very close friend commissioned by her husband who is also a dear friend of mine. He had seen my work through this blog and I suspect he had more confidence in me that I had in myself. Don’t get me wrong, I knew I could do it and I really hope they liked the final piece, but I will always treasure that blind vote of confidence. He didn’t even questioned the cost of the piece and as an artist that is always appreciated it. I think I had come a long way in portraits and I really enjoy making them. Still, I will be a comic book artist first and a portrait artist second. I decided to do something different for her. I wanted to create a triptych consisting on three different approaches and styles. The first approach was a pencil drawing, which was her favorite and the one that comes more natural to me; the second one was a digital painting made in Photoshop. This was my first painting in Photoshop so it was very challenging but at the end I got the results I wanted; and finally, I chose to make a portrait based on comic book line art with some basic grey tones. I really liked the final piece; the only thing is that I won’t be doing triptychs anymore. I don’t know, the fact that the three pieces compete with each other in one piece doesn’t sit well with me. Regardless of that I think it was a successful job.

Susana - commissioned by Mauricio Martinez

The second commission and first sketch comic-con style commission was for my brother. He is pondering the idea of making a custom costume for cosplaying at his next comic convention. I also think it would be great as a mannequin for exhibition. He had this bizarre and great idea of mixing the Star Wars saga with The Game of Thrones. He wanted to mix a Snowtrooper with the bastard John Snow. Hence, the character John Snowtrooper is born. I made some research on the costumes and decided to ink it. I will be painting it soon so hopefully a future entry will show the final piece. By the way, if you desire a sketch, or a portrait for that matter, I’m willing to do them, just contact me through Facebook (Jose Molestina), Twitter (@bielero), Instagram (@bielero), Deviantart (bielero) Tumblr (bielero), e-mail (bielero@hotmail.com) and through this website. Believe you me; if you really want it you will get a hold of me. What say you? :)

John Snowtrooper
Commissioned by Oswaldo Molestina

Finally, I made one illustration based on Wally West, the missing Flash, in Photoshop with a campaign design based on a previous campaign to promote Mark Waid's own comic book to ask DC Comics to bring the character back since it has been MIA since the New 52 (the geek alarm went off), and another sketch with my new Copic markers of Green Lantern. The latter was done very fast on my sketchbook so I wasn’t looking for a professional look but rather experimentation with markers. They are not as hard to master as I’d thought but I still need a lot more practice, and probably a lot more colors along the way.

Wally West aka The Flash

Green Lantern sketch - markers

By the way, here are two pics, one from C2E2 (comic convention in Chicago) and the other from the commencement graduation. The first photo was when I met my favorite artist, Alex Ross. You have no idea how significant was to meet this talented and extremely successful artist two days after I finished my classes at the School of Visual Arts. The other one is when I got my diploma at the commencement in Radio City Hall with my wife and family. This could not have happened without your support and faith in me. Thank you so much, I love you, and I dedicate this achievement to you.

Alex Ross and me at C2E2

#lovemyfamily

The final question remains, do I think that studying at SVA was the right call? To spend all that money in tuition when I could have by self-discipline study on my own and spend much less. Well, it is done, so it is kind of a moot point, isn’t it? Still, I will provide the best possible answer. I could have studied on my own and possibly draw even better by now, which I find doubtful, but in any case, drawing is not everything in this career. I’m pretty sure I took for granted some lessons learned and some I don’t even remember but are ingrained in my brain. It’s easy to look back and say: I would have done this differently, but the fact remains that I did not. My decision was one of the hardest decisions of my life, and it cost me much more than just money. Now, I did it and I can call myself a comic book artist, because I’ve learned the tools, the skills, and the secrets of the trade. For that I am truly grateful at my wife, parents, family, friends, teachers, and all of the people who supported me in my journey at SVA. I don’t feel like I have already mastered the fine arts just yet, but you know what, that will come in time, probably in finishing those 8000 hours left. I might have been late for the party, but I will definitively be the one who is going to make the most noise. It’s been a hell of a ride!

I came, I saw, I conquered.

Godspeed,

Jose Luis

Ps- I will keep updating this blog until I reach 10,000 hours. Although I reached a major goal in my life, the challenge is not yet completed.

BREAKING THE WALL

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 03:01:00 +0000

As I’m an avid runner, or at least I was prior to deciding on being an artist, I’m going to borrow today’s title from the runner’s slang dictionary. Let me explain this to you. A marathon is a race consisting of 26.2 miles. Basically, you run the first 20 miles without any real problems, considering you’ve spent months training for this difficult task. You enjoy this part of the race, look at the scenery, listen to your body, experience the great energy from the crowd, and feel very proud of yourself for achieving this extraordinary challenge; but wait… It’s not over yet.

You still have to run 6.2 miles (10 km) and that’s when you ‘hit the wall’, with that last leg of the race left to go. There’s a scientific reason for this involving the amount of energy (carbohydrates) that the body can save, but I’m not going to bore you with that. Basically, you run out of energy and you have to start running with conviction, mental strength and strategies (My mantra was the song of the Mickey Mouse Club yeeeeiiii Mickey!). You have to start running with heart. It’s the only way to break through the wall. Every part of your body aches, no amount of carbs can replenish your energy expenditure, you’re sick of Gatorade and bananas, and you’re short of breath. The most horrible sensation is that of failure. You feel as if, at any moment, you’re going to break and not be able to finish the race you’ve trained so hard for. It’s really difficult and some people fail miserably, while other runners make it but with their last breath. One more step and they would have fainted. A select few finish strong.

I happen to fit into that ‘last breath’ category, and I think it has something to do with my personality. I always have to be sure that I’ve done everything in my power to achieve the best possible results. If there’s passion I will always try my best. Sure, there will be mistakes, but you learn from them and thrive.

And that’s where I am right now—the wall. I feel tired, unmotivated, mentally exhausted and physically drained, and most important, I am afraid. I’m not afraid of not finishing my studies, I know I can do that, instead my fear consists mainly of wondering if I'm going to be a distinguished professional in the field or if I'm going to feel disappointed in my artistic abilities or even in the industry as a whole. But in the meantime, I’m going to keep doing my best. I’m going to keep running with my heart, and if I fail, which I won't, you'll be the first to know.

Now that you’re up to date with my feelings of despair, let me tell you what I was up to this past semester. Overall, it was a very good semester: I had time to work on assignments but still had some free time to enjoy with my wife all that New York has to offer. Now that she is here with me everything seems better and more fun, and the cooking is so good although I think she is losing some steam in that department :) My experience from last year was so traumatic that I don’t think I’ll ever have the energy just to work, work, work. You have to have hobbies, enjoy a good movie, do exercises, I don’t know, have a life besides drawing comics. I have to admit that I don’t think I’m working when I’m drawing, even though it IS hard work, but it’s also fun and rewarding. Still, some assignments are boring and don’t speak to my needs and ambitions as an artist.

So I was thinking of doing something practical for any aspiring artist. Below I’ve compiled a reading list for you for each different aspect the accomplished comic book artist needs to master, with only one book per category so that you can dive in straight away. Yeah! I’m that nice! ;)

1. Comics: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud

2. Storytelling: Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner

3. Drawing: Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson

4. Anatomy: Drawing the Head and the Figure by Jack Hamm

5. Perspective: Perspective for Comic Book Artists by David Chelsea

6. Inking: The Art of Comic Book Inking by Gary Martin

7. Coloring: Hi-Fi Color for Comics by Brian & Kristy Miller

8. Writing: Writing for Comics with Peter David

9. Lettering: Comic Book Lettering: The “Comicraft” Way

Read them, study them, copy the drawings and create new ones. Practice, practice, practice and you will get all the basic concepts ingrained in your mind. There is an infinite number of books I could recommend, but I think these are mandatory and easy to understand. Once you know the basics, things will get more complex. Read them in order if you like (recommended) or start reading whatever interests you the most, but the most important thing is to start. You can always ask me to recommend more books. Also, if you are on a budget I will recommend one book to know everything about comics: Drawing Words& Writing Pictures by Jessica Abel and Steve Madden. If you go this route make sure to get the sequel Mastering Comics by the same amazing team. Or you can always get How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way and learn from that. Either you feel inspired by the concise and practical information or you feel unmotivated and untalented by the simplification of it all. My personal feeling regarding this book is that although it has great material it is simply not enough. Of course, there will always be those artists who believe God gifted them and feel proud of having mastered comics only by using this book as a guide. As true as it may be for some, let me assure you that the majority of people need MORE.

I have a confession to make. I’m kind of lost regarding my audience. It’s true that I enjoy writing, but I write for you, my loyal fans. (Who I’m pretty sure include my mom, family, and closest friends). I may be getting too technical for the people who want to know about the challenge, or maybe too biographical for readers that only are interested in comic book making. So in order to clarify what this blog is about I’ve come up with a theme:

“Mastering Art Skill is a blog written by an aspiring comic book artist who happens to be studying art at the age of 35, in which he talks about his experience as a way to inspire readers to follow their dreams and also guide newcomers in the comic book industry. All of this following one simple rule: to draw 10,000 hours in order to master the subject at hand”.

I hope that’s clear enough. Is it? Anyway… Here are my grades for this semester:

Fall 2012 grades

Let’s start with that infamous and undeserved B. I don’t want to come off as a complete nerd, but I was very disappointed with this grade. I worked so hard and I never received a heads up that I could be getting a B. It is disappointing because I thought I deserved an A based on effort. It is the teacher’s prerogative and his explanation was that last year there were 4 students whose pages deserved an A, and I quote: “So, to give anyone this year an "A" who is not yet performing to last year's "A" level would devalue the grade and would not be right”. Mmm, I respectfully disagree. I’ve always been a fan of the curve system. What I mean is that you will not always get the same batch of talent or preparation by students every year. Maybe last year those students had better teachers, or were better prepared based on another curriculum. (For instance, Perspective class in the Cartooning department was cancelled two years ago, which I myself find inexcusable and irresponsible). From my point of view, especially in art, grading is very subjective and cannot be compared considering the “talent” factor and preparation (some of those kids did nothing in math class in high school and drew all the time, or others had art classes since they were kids.) Art is relative and it should not be compared, but if you have to, at least compare it within the same group of students who are somehow receiving the same lectures from the same teacher. There I said it. I’m a frustrated teacher so I have a clear idea on how I would teach if it were the case. Maybe I deserved a B, who cares. Stop whining Jose and move on.

I’ve been working on a single comic named “Turmoil” and it is about a guy who finds himself chased by unknown people, until he realizes that what he’s been running away from is created by none other than himself. Sketchy, I know, and probably not a good pitch if I’d like to sell the script, but I promise I will do my best to make it fun. I believe it has a good ending and will make you think a lot. Here are the first six pages plus a cover all done with ink. It will be an 18-page comic and the rest of the pages will be done this semester.

Cover Turmoil

I’ve also been coloring some pages in my Digital Coloring class. Since I needed to color pages made by me I decided on doing three pages from last year’s thesis. One of them I already showed you in my previous post, so here are the other two. Also I colored my “Turmoil” cover and a caricature I made of a friend back home from Guayaquil, Ecuador, where I am from.

Cover Turmoil colored

Ifood Delivery Biker

My perspective class was great, although I wanted a more technical approach more commonly used in comics. Still, it was a challenging class and I got a better sense of perspective. The only thing with perspective is that you have to apply it everyday because you easily forget about some obscure rules. In any case, I hereby present you two of the eleven assignments I had to make. One is a still life that was an exercise of almost every rule of perspective, focusing more on shadows, and the other is just a patterned floor, which may not seem too impressive but was a pain to draw.

Still Life - Shadows

Pattern in perspective

Finally, in my drawing class I’ve been working hard on trying to understand drawing formulas to represent fabric. Clothing for me is very hard to depict and after the class it still is, but at least now I know some rules. I guess you get used to drawing fabric (like anything else) and it becomes easier the more you practice. The formulas in drawing clothing makes it so much easier and they help your figures look more real. I’m more inclined in drawing noir comics so I need to master the clothed figure sooner than later.

I’m going to level with you. This entry was supposed to be written and posted before New Year’s Eve, so I had a great paragraph written on wishing a happy holidays and the importance of the New Year’s resolution As I procrastinated quite a bit during my two weeks vacation that I’m a little late, but I still wish you the best and want to take a moment to emphasize the importance of goals. Make quantifiable and attainable goals. Be realistic, but do not DARE stop dreaming. Sometimes dreams do come true, you just have to be a little unrealistic, close your eyes, and jump to the void, even though it seems you’re jumping to hell itself (as Doctor Who did… doesn’t ring a bell? Go watch those episodes... NOW!). Ok, so I’m really tired. I have nothing more to say for now. May this year be the best for you, and for me :) This is, after all, graduation year!

As a bonus for the aspiring artists, I made a chart of expressions. I just put all the expression drawings into a single page in Photoshop. The illustrations are from a book on Facial Expressions that I highly recommend: The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expression by Gary Faigin.

Facial Expressions Chart

If you want to be involved in comics in any way and don’t know where to start, I may have a few suggestions. Please write me an e-mail to bielero@hotmail.com or find me on Twitter @bielero

Godspeed!

Jose Luis

THE DIGITAL LEAP

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:41:00 +0000

It’s been two months since the start of my senior year, and I have made one of the biggest decisions of my artistic career. I’ve made the leap into the digital world. No, I don’t mean to sound like the stereotypical tortured artist that doesn’t know how to check his e-mail or, for that matter, does not have a Facebook account (Believe me, there are still some who do not). On the contrary, I have always been very fluent in computer language and kind of a tech geek, or to be more specific, a loyal tech consumer. Yes, I love my wonderful toys and gadgets and I shed a tear when The Sharper Image closed all of it's retail stores (Oh, I know their products weren’t always the best, but they were so much fun). In any case, I’ve always been excited about new technology and try to embrace it and move forward with the world. I understand there will be a time when I will deny myself the opportunity to understand new technology, but now is not that time. This resistance to change sometimes prevents some people to incorporate new methods or use new tools in order to make their work faster and more efficient. Let’s agree on the fact that if you do not accept technology you become a dinosaur. Now, does that mean that your art will suffer? Absolutely NOT! You can make great art and not touch a computer in your life. But if you are a commercial artist, or a cartoonist such as myself, you will at least need to know how to scan the piece you worked on in order to send it to your editors or clients. Simply put, the world we live on does not have the time or the patience to send and receive art via FedEx, at least not for aspiring artists. You see, I understand that legends such as Neal Adams or George Perez have the privilege to do what they want and still work the same way they did back in the seventies, but for the rest of us to tell an editor: “well, I don’t know how to scan my page properly, would it be OK if I send you my pages via UPS?” in your first interview would be a total disaster followed by the art director’s words: “NEXT”. Or so I would imagine.

Cintiq & me

Now, what do I mean that I’ve taken the digital leap? I just bought a Wacom Cintiq and it basically changed my whole process of making comics . Let me make this clear, I love the traditional way as much as the next artist, but I had to make a decision and for me it was the right one. It’s not that I don’t pick up a pencil anymore, that is not the case. I always carry my sketchbook around to draw with my mechanical pencil. It’s more natural and in my opinion the results are still superior to the digital equivalent. There’s still no device or tool that can recreate the sensation of drawing with a pencil on actual paper, but I’m sure there will be… there will be! (Master Yoda stop haunting me!!!). The same stands for the quality and finished results of the inking process. There is no match to a pen nib or a brush with a good Indian ink (For South America would be China ink. This is because no one can tell for sure where ink was invented, either in India or China… interesting, huh?). For a new digital artist I pretty much sound like a traditionalist, or even a purist, but don’t get me wrong, the advantages of the digital approach are far too seductive to pass. Let me name a few so we can agree at least that digital is more efficient:

1. - Software: I use Manga Studio for laying out the pages, drawing, and inking them. For coloring I use Photoshop (you are probably familiar with this software). The great thing about Manga Studio is that because it was created specifically for comic artists (It’s not only for manga, which are Japanese comics, but for western comics as well) you can create panels (which happen to have their own layers), insert dialogue balloons, captions, tones (used more extensively in manga), and effects (that I think they have to be avoided most of the times). Also, and probably more important, you work in layers. If you are familiar with how animations are produced, they use the principle of layers. In other words, you draw one page and then add a movement or a change in a page on top of it. Layers are important because you can start by drawing your thumbnails in the same page. (Thumbnails is the first step consisting of small drawings that indicate how panels are going to be laid out focusing on panel sizes, camera angles and shots, word balloons, gestures, expressions and more; but you already know that since you have read all my previous posts, right?). Once your thumbnails are drawn you can simply reduce the opacity of that layer (make it more transparent or lighter) and start drawing your loose pencils, then, reducing the loose pencils layer opacity and start drawing your tight pencils in another layer, and finally, reducing the tight pencils layer opacity and creating a new layer to start the final inking process. Sounds maddening, I know, but it is rather simple. Layers are, of course, used in Photoshop and will prove to be invaluable in the coloring stage.

2. - No scanning: This has always been a tedious process. It involves scanning the final page (sometimes in pencil if it is going to be inked by an inker, or in inks if you’ve already inked it. Duh!). But seriously, it takes too much time to do when you could be drawing and producing more pages. For starters, the comic art page is actually 15” x 10”, so if you have a regular scanner you would have to scan the page in two pieces and then overlap and merge them together using Photoshop. It is not hard when you know how to do it, but it will take you some time to merge each page properly. More important, you have to really know how to use Photoshop in order to do this and also be familiar with the standards in quality the publishers require. Don’t even let me start talking about the traditional way that involves sending them by mail. You can send it priority and still the best scenario is one day to get to the destination, and you know what the publisher is going to do when they receive the pages? They will send them to be scanned! Why would they want to go to all that trouble? No, they will simply hire the one guy who can scan correctly, assuming their art is pretty much the same.

3. - Pencils: With the Cintiq you can draw directly on the screen and it wasn’t as difficult to get used to as I thought it would be. I can draw until my hand falls off and I wouldn’t have spent a single sheet of paper; this is a great factor for environmentalists, but if you err on the side of “who cares about the world!” well, your wallet definitely will. You can even draw your sketches on the same file on another layer and then just hide it. But the one thing I love more than anything is the ability to redesign the page as you see fit without having to redraw everything again. I will go more in depth in the “transform” point.

4. - Inks: Again, because I use my Wacom Cintiq and it is pressure sensitive the weights of my lines do not suffer at all. Also, you have millions of brushes, and you can customize them any way you want. Even if you have a shaky hand you can add a feature that corrects the line, although I do consider that cheating and I certainly don’t do it out of principle. You never run out of ink and better yet, NO INK SPILLING, which all artists can testify that Indian ink is not merciful on anything it falls upon.

5. - Undo: You can make all the mistakes you want and just undo them if they don’t work. I mean, you can take more risks and if you are not happy with the results, just go back in the history (a collection of the steps you’ve made while drawing) and go to a previous step. Adam Hughes gives a great tip in one of his interviews: “ If you need to have the ability to undo a brush stroke from 20 actions ago, maybe you aren’t making great decisions to begin with”. I agree to a certain point. Don’t overuse the undo feature and try to spend more time thinking first what works best; at the end, if you screw things up there is always a way to go back.

6. - Transform: I love this feature because it allows you to move your figures or change their sizes. Sometimes you draw the head too big in relation to the body, or maybe a car too small compared to the building next to it. It happens a lot, and it certainly happens less if you are more experienced, but still happens (Just ask Rob Liefeld of his infamous Heroes Reborn cover of Captain America with boobs, although to be fair, that is more lack of knowledge on anatomy rather than a mistake in proportions). Still, you could lasso the car mentioned above and just make it bigger and arrange it the way you like it.

7. - Lettering: It saddens me to tell you that lettering is a lost art. Now all the lettering is done digitally with fonts and the letterers are out of jobs. Of course somebody has to know enough calligraphy to create these fonts, but there is no more glamour in them. In any case, since I’m not a letterer, it is better for me because now I can download a font that I like and just paste the dialogue in my word balloons, simple as that! Some fonts tend to be expensive but you can download them for free on other sites (but that would be wrong kids! Stop the piracy!). I wouldn’t recommend using illegally downloaded fonts on a work that will be posted online or printed, since you could get sued, but for educational purposes they are just fine. Also, it’s much faster to type the words than to write them, and for us who are not blessed with good handwriting, digital fonts make the work look more professional. Beware of the use of wrong fonts though, they can kill your pages! (DO NOT USE COMIC SANS)

8. - Coloring: Nowadays all comics are colored using Photoshop. I’m not planning on coloring my own pages but I’m learning how to do that just in case. I’d rather hire a good digital colorist, who understands color much better than I do, to put some life into my pages.

Time is an important factor for me. Maybe I feel this way because I’m 35 and I would love to break into the comics industry right away. More time means more pages done in a month, and more pages mean more income. Also, and most important, you could spend more time with your family, which is invaluable. Now that I’m married we are hoping to be a bigger family soon. So it’s important to prioritize your time and be efficient about it in order to get the most out of what you have left. The disadvantage is that these types of software and devices have a learning curve and surely you can read all about them in books or on the internet (YouTube tutorials). Yes as all art is learned, you will end up learning by trial and error. However, you can thankfully COMMAND+Z (CTRL+Z for PC users) all your mistakes and undo them. No harm done! If you are interested in making the leap, watch Dave Gibbons on Manga Studio tutorials on YouTube by clicking here and here.

I’ve been rambling on so much about my digital leap that I haven’t been able to show you any of the work I’ve done, nor explain to you what classes I am taking this semester. I’m taking 6 classes: Cartooning Portfolio, Drawing Formulas II, Inking, Advanced digital coloring, Perspective, and Society & Nature (Ok, that last one is a Humanities requirement but it's a great class!)

My Cartooning Portfolio has the objective to help me create the best possible comic book pages to show in my portfolio. Not only do you better yourself in drawing, but you also learn to apply more storytelling techniques. Needless to say, the more I know about storytelling, the less I enjoy the usual comic books I enjoyed in the past. The comic industry is flooded with ignorance regarding storytelling. In other words, you can draw amazingly but lack storytelling abilities and your work will suffer. Younger audiences are easily impressed with the drawing skills, but let me assure you, storytelling is more important and lives longer. You still have to draw amazingly to break into the industry. In this class I’ve done a 4-page story so far. We were given a script and we had to work around it. It was very specific and each panel demanded drawing and storytelling knowledge. Most of the pages will not be as packed or specific as these, but some of them will be, or even worse. Again, I did all of those digitally from scratch. Two of them are already inked and corrected and the last two pages are just tight pencils with some obvious mistakes or lazy panels. As I write this entry I’m working on a story of my own called “Turmoil”, and I think I have acquired enough knowledge to actually put those freaking pages on my portfolio. The story is very good but I will not spoil it now. They will be the main focus on my next entry.

Dino story page 1 Inked

Dino story page 2 Inked

Dino story page 3 Pencilled

Dino story page 4 Pencilled

Drawing Formulas II is my favorite class. I’m really learning how to draw human figures (anatomy), lighting, clothing, and perspective. It’s the drawing class I always wanted and finally got it at my senior year. I’m pretty sure that if I had had this class before, my Jekyll and Hyde comic thesis would have been much better than it turned out. There are formulas for everything, and even though I really like to reference my drawings, it is much more liberating to know some rules as to how to put some shading, or make a correct foreshortening in a pose. We are using an advanced model sheet that my professor Nelson faro De Castro has done. He is a great teacher and very thorough and practical in what he teaches. I won’t be uploading the advanced sheet because it is a process and goes along with his lecture in order to fully understand it. Also I wouldn’t want him to be pissed off that I’m using his designs for my blog. I will be posting some figures I’ve drawn using his model though (4 in total, out of a 100). These were done without a model or reference but directly from my head. Also, I have made a lot of studies on facial features because Nelson told us from day one that he wouldn’t be focusing too much on the face, so it was our job to learn it. I took it upon myself and I’m drawing every single page of the book “Drawing the Head & Figure” by Jack Hamm, which I highly recommend. It has EVERYTHING you need to know on how to draw the figure from your head. Even if you want to draw as a hobby and enjoy drawing characters and poses, this would be the book for you. I will be showing some pages of my studies as well.

Eyes

Ears

Mouths

Hair

Noses

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4 with corrections

Inking class is a workshop taught by the same teacher of drawing formulas II. It is a great class and I’m learning traditional techniques on inking. It is ironic that I’m taking this class when I decided to ink digital (or as some people call it now “dinking”) but that does not matter because you apply the principles of inking while digitally inking. It’s all about line weights, contour lines, spotting blacks, feathering, crosshatching, shadows, textures, and style. Sounds complex? It is! Some people think that the inker just traces the artist pencils and that is totally wrong, at least for a good inker. A decent inker knows that applying inks to pencils is a big responsibility. Here are some responsibilities I’ve read from the book: The Art of Comic Book Inking” by Gary Martin with Steve Rude: 1. The inker’s main purpose is to translate graphite pencil lines into reproducible, black, ink lines. 2. The inker must honor the penciller’s original intent while adjusting any obvious mistakes. 3. The inker determines the look of the finished art. In other words, the inker has to know the craft of drawing, and know it very well. Not long ago a friend of mine told me that he had no time to learn to draw comics, but that sometime in the future he will somehow be involved in the comic industry, probably as an inker. When I heard that it made as much sense to me as when I was a kid and wanted to learn to play bass guitar because I thought it was much easier (because it had less strings) than learning to play normal guitar. It just doesn’t work that way. Some people are better inkers than pencillers, granted, but that doesn’t mean it’s easier.

Advanced Digital Coloring is pretty much the same as the class I took last year, but this one focuses more on the approach to digitally color comics, so it’s been fun and it has reinforced my knowledge on the correct way to color pages. As I said before, I don’t think that I will be coloring my comics once I graduate since I think my work will be better presented in black and white format, nonetheless, I’m learning it because it is important to be familiar with colors to state the mood of the comic. I’m posting a page from my thesis I colored using this approach.

Colors of Jekyll & Hyde's transformation

Perspective is that class I had to move heaven and earth to get into. Can you believe that the Cartooning department does not have a perspective class? I learned that this was mainly because nowadays a lot of young artists are focusing more and more on indie comics, webcomics, or strips, that does not generally focus on complex backgrounds so they just need basic perspective knowledge. This is a shortcut that no artist should take. To quote Andrew Loomis on his book “Successful Drawing”: “Since perspective is the first main problem that arises, it is the first thing the artist should learn. An understanding of this should precede or be a part of every art-school training. No drawing is real drawing unless it is related to an eye level or horizon, with the relationship understood by the artist”. Since there was no perspective class in Cartooning I went ahead and got permission from the Dean to take a perspective class from the animation department. I’m feeling more comfortable now with the rule I’ve learned although sometimes it gets very confusing.

To wrap things up since this entry has gotten out of hand, I can honestly say that I’m happy with my classes and with the decision I made in regards to making the transition from traditional to digital. This year is not as abusive and intense as my previous year and I think this breather has helped me improve my art. I almost forgot! I was granted a studio space in the Cartooning Department. It was a great honor and it was based on academic achievement. Only 16 people were granted this studio so I was really proud of myself. Sadly, I had to turn it down since I wasn’t going to use it. I’m pretty sure another kid needed it more than me. Still, I was happy to know I was in the top 16 of the class of 2013.

I know this was a long post. Sorry about that but to make it up to you I'm posting a sketch by none other than Carmine Infantino, penciller and co-creator of the silver age Flash we all know and love. It seems shaky but give the man a break, he is 87 years old. I wish I could draw that well at his age.

Carmine Infantino sketch

See you on my next post, if Hurricane Sandy has mercy on my soul obviously :)

Godspeed,

José Luis

(100) DAYS OF SUMMER

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 13:59:00 +0000

You could have asked me at the end of my last entry what was going to happen in the following months and I would have never guessed my summer would be so exciting. I went back to Ecuador (my home country), proposed to my girlfriend, asked her parents for her hand in marriage (yes, we are still in the fifties back home, although is more a formality rather than an actual asking for permission), had a bachelor party, moved to a new apartment, got married, gave a lecture on comic books, went for my honeymoon to Rosario (where Eduardo Risso, the artist from 100 Bullets and dear friend of mine, was conveniently holding a comic book convention) and later on to Buenos Aires, finally me and my brother went to Star Wars Celebration VI in Orlando. Let’s not forget that I also cut my hair In order to be presentable for my wedding (sorry, our wedding!!! Now it seems that for some reason I need to change all my first person pronouns to third person ones – Behold the assassination of independent Jose).

So what exactly have I been doing artistically in the last four months? Well, it shames me to tell you, not much. I’ve been so preoccupied with all of these turns of events and social gatherings that I lost track of time. Believe me, my initial plan was to study and draw the whole summer and do pretty much nothing else. I would have been a great artist by now with all the hours I would have put into my work. Instead, I decided to take a long break and make probably one of the most important decisions of my life. You have to understand that I have always been a free bird, a free spirit if you will and it was tough for me to finally make up my mind and commit to a relationship even though it made sense. Yeah, you could say I got my wings clipped, but I would rather walk the rest of my life with my wife rather than fly alone. As Wally West (The Flash, who is erased from existence but not forgotten) would say about the love of his life, Linda: “She’s my lighting rod and that’s why I always come back to her”, and that is exactly how I feel. It’s not that I am planning to leave her and then return, just try to understand the metaphor from a Flash fan perspective. She is the love of my life and I regret not marrying her a lot sooner. Then again, there is a time for everything, and probably if I would have done it much sooner I wouldn’t be writing to you guys, and that would be awful. You are the center of my universe ;) (I expect extra points from my readership, or at least some Twitter and Facebook sharing! Spread the love!).

Needless to say, I have not been putting too many hours drawing in the summer, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t done anything at all. As a matter of fact, I did a piece that is probably the most ambitious piece I’ve done so far. This is going to turn a little corny but bear with me please. I drew and painted my proposal to my girlfriend (whom you can meet in the picture below). But first I must clarify something in order for you to understand. Coming from a third world country, Ecuador, where there is a limited comic book market and does NOT even offer an illustration career opportunity, not to mention a degree in cartooning, Ecuadorians do not exactly understand the nature of comics, and who could blame them! It is just not within our culture. Comics have been stereotyped as superhero magazines exclusively for kids. I’m not ashamed of a good superhero comic book, in fact, I would kill for the opportunity to draw, and possibly write, The Flash, but there is more to it, of course. I always explain to my acquaintances that comics are a respectable medium not unlike films. The ninth art (yes, comics, and yes, it IS art!) borrows a lot from the film industry and vice versa. Nowadays the introduction of comic book superhero movies have helped a bit to make adults enjoy a good superhero flick, up to a point that now being a geek is practically cool! (Big Bang Theory anyone? San Diego ComicCon sold out two years in a row?). Still, it is totally unfair to categorize comics as a superhero medium entirely for kids, because, well, it’s NOT! It has as many genres as film does. For more than half a century there have been many genres such as horror, romance, detective, action, noir, caricature, crime, political, editorial, non-fiction, manga, science fiction, underground (comix), war, western, biographic, and the well-known superhero. Don’t take my word for it, if you don’t believe me just google it. So this prejudice against comics has been very damaging to the industry, limiting the number of potential adult fans. It feels as I’m rambling on and on, but I had to clarify this because people in Ecuador are so distant from the medium that they just don’t understand it. Even worse, they actually think you can make a comic book with relative ease. Newsflash, this is harder than working in finance and management. I have the right to tell you this because I’ve done both of those jobs and making comics is certainly harder than working in a grown-up, sterile, and regular job. Yes, it is harder, and you gain less money, but hey, don’t get discouraged if you want to be a comic book artist or feel sorry for me, because this job is amazing, fun and self-fulfilling :)

My wife Morole

Going back to the proposal! I wanted to propose to my girlfriend in an original and unique way and like Frank Sinatra said: “I did it my way”. Yes, I drew a single panel in which I depicted myself on my knees asking her to marry me. But just showing her the finished piece wouldn’t have been enough. So I decided to record not only my whole artistic process from digital pencil to final colors and special effects but also myself drawing in a smaller window. It was challenging but I did it in around fifteen hours more or less. Then I edited it and included three songs: The first one is from the future husband of my sister in law, who happens to be very talented, so do not hesitate to promote him through the web. His name is Hector Crisantes and his song is “Live And Let It Go”. You can find it here Live And Let It Go by Crisantes. The second song is “our song” (how romantic!) “Better Together” from Jack Johnson, and the last one is a song I found out by watching and amazing animation by Ryan Woodward. Go check it out; I’ll be here when you finish watching it! The link is: Thought of You by Ryan Woodward. The song is called “The World Spins Madly On” by The Weepies. Of course I could not shave shown fifteen hours or so in a video so I sped it up by 50% (5000 times faster than real life). This is why in the video it seems that I’m having an epileptic attack. I picked up my girlfriend, turned off the light of the living room in my apartment, turned on the speakers, projected the video through a projector on a wall and then asked her to watch the video, which supposedly was for a summer homework from school. Then, as it was starting, I excused myself because I had conveniently left my iphone in the car. Of course, I came inside from the back door and heard anxiously the songs until I knew it was over. Got out from hiding, gave her the ring, and proposed in real life. Once she said yes we proceeded to celebrate with our family and friends, drinking a lot of champagne and a lot of whisky. The following day, with a huge hangover, I decided to upload the video on Youtube and Facebook. It was incredible the kind of response I had. So you see, I killed two birds with one stone, first I made the proposal unique by doing it my way, and also I showed everybody in Ecuador what my artistic process is. You can see the video in Youtube by clicking the following link Comic Book Style Proposal. If you like it please spread it :) I will also post it here if I can figure out how to do it in Blogspot.

Prior to my wedding I was asked to offer a comic book lecture to 15 year-old girls. Although most of them have the span of attention of a fly and have no interest in comic books, they were extremely polite and showed a lot of respect and interest on the material I was presenting. It seems it was a requirement for them. The good news, heck, the great news is that I enjoyed teaching a lot. I’ve always wanted to teach something I was passionate about. Of Course I got questions such as: “Can I go to the bathroom?” or “Is this lecture for credits?” but hey, who can blame them. Still, I tried to make the lecture as fun as I could, so at the end I showed my marriage proposal video. They loved it, and a couple of them had already seen it J I will teach again, that’s for sure!

Giving a lecture on comics

The contents of the bachelor party I cannot divulge here, mainly because I’m well behaved, proper and a serious man. I can only say that there was a lady Flash and a slave Leia involved, among others ;)

Then I got married, and it was lovely and amazing and totally unrelated to this blog, so I won’t talk about it. I could probably upload a couple of pictures though.

At the altar

Working the crowd

Let me tell you about the city of Rosario, Crack Bang Boom and Eduardo Risso. As you may already know, or not, Rosario is a city from Argentina. It’s not one of the most popular cities in the country, but it is beautiful. I had prearranged this trip for over a year, even before I knew I was going to get married. It was kind of a cheap shot to have gone to a comic convention in our honeymoon and she felt a little cheated at first but we had a great time there, especially due to our hosts, Eduardo Risso and his lovely wife Marupe. The convention turned out to be a great success and introduced me to a lot of Argentinean material and artists. There is one story that I cannot understand it hasn’t been translated to English and sold in every comic book store and every Barnes and Noble. If you speak Spanish, please get it. It is by far one of the most intelligent comics I have read in the previous decade. Carlos Trillo and Domingo Mandrafina made this graphic novel in 1987. I don’t want to spoil you the story since it is perfect, but if you lose hope on getting it or you do not speak Spanish (and are not interested in learning) read the following article which describes the importance and nature of this story: Peter Kampf lo sabía (you can always translate the page into English with Google)

Peter Kamps lo sabía

Me and Eduardo Risso in his studio

During the convention I had the chance to meet and talk to Dave Johnson. He is a very talented cover artist who did all the covers for 100 Bullets and Punishermax. Risso introduced me to him and told him I was studying cartooning at the School of Visual Arts. The first thing he said to me was among these lines: “Why would you pay thousands of dollars for something you could do at home”. I really didn’t care for that comment but understood where he was coming from. Some people have great talent but more importantly, they are clear of what they want from life in early stages. Yes, you could spend every day drawing (without an actual degree, which I fairly assume he does not have due to his comment), and you will eventually get it. If you have the drive and the time to do it, you could definitely pull it off. On the other hand, some people do not have the cultural advantage of being born in a country where there is an industry in comics and being a comic book artist is a respectably career, or they probably because of that made the mistake of choosing another career and spent 10 years working in a job they don’t particularly love, or maybe they just need the structure of a well though out curriculum in order to get the advantages of people with more knowledge than them. Perhaps you need the degree in order to teach. Or most likely, the degree of a bachelor in fine arts is more complete than a simple book that superstar comic book artists feel proud they have used. Two well-respected comic book artists have told me that you could draw amazingly and still not know the secrets and advantages of a good storytelling. Finally, if it is the student’s choice, who can say he or she should not invest their time and money the way he or she wants to by pursuing an academic career? I guess it is easy to criticize other people who want to do things differently, or simply put, to not do it their way is the wrong way. Granted, at the end you can have a degree and still suck, and that is on you, but the same goes if you make it, doesn’t it? Yup, I didn’t care for that comment at all, but once I explained him my point of view and told him a little bit of my background story he kind of understood and respected my drive to do this now. Up to this point, I didn’t need his acceptance and that is the advantage of being a little older than most students who could get their feelings crushed by some guy who thinks the only way to gain success is his. Well, I got it out of my system. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the guy and I think he draws and paints covers wonderfully, but his point of view is not mine, so don’t get discouraged if you follow your own path, just make sure the path lead you to your goal one way or the other.

I’m starting my final year at the School of Visual Arts on Tuesday September 4. I can’t believe I’m a senior and God willingly I will be graduating on May 2013 at the age of 35. Don’t you worry; I will keep writing my entries until I reach my 10,000 hours goal so you can see for yourself my artistic evolution and hopefully get inspired by it. With a bit of luck I’ll be working and have a successful career in the industry by then. If not, at least I will be happy to continue making an effort.

Godspeed,

José Luis

WHERE DID THE YEAR GO?

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:03:00 +0000

You might be wondering where the hell did I go? Did I succumb into the seductive hands of defeat? Or did I just accept a certain level of mediocrity. Did I forget about my loyal readers? Or worst of all, did I lose track of my goal to become a great comic book artist. Truthfully, I’m still here… barely. This has been a pretty intense academic year and I hardly made it out alive. With 1521 hours of drawing so far, I’m still in my path to become a better artist. But all of those hours are not devoid of afflictions, and I will tell you all bout them… in a minute. First I need to vent a little. God I missed writing. The fact that I neglected my blog, which I’m really passionate about, lies in the amount of hours I devoted in doing my comic book pages. I’m fascinated with how fast time flies, and I do have a theory about that; it is all about perception of relative time, but I shouldn’t get into that now. This academic year hasn’t been easy. I pretty much put everything else in my life on hold, including this blog, as you may have seen. Believe when I tell you that I have forgotten what weekends feel like. Why all the drama you ask? Because I need to emphasize that this has been the busiest year of my life. You see, because I had a business degree back in 2000, I got transferred all of my humanities credits (around 30, which means an entire academic year). So in order to shave off one year I had to take sophomore and junior hardcore classes together. This is somehow unprecedented because you need to pass the sophomore classes to get into your junior classes. Still, the chairman of my department understood my situation and let me take those classes together, not without asking: are you sure you can do this? In my mind I answered: “Hell yeah! If anybody can do that is me! I’m the grown up here!” But rest assured, I doubted myself every day of the year. You have to understand that although you need a certain set of skills to do what I do, which you get by studying and practicing almost every day, what you really have to do in order to improve is to put in the hours. Basically, the Principles of Cartooning (sophomore) and Pictorial Problems (junior) classes demand a certain amount of hours every week that I had to draw in order to meet the deadlines in time. Now I really understand why people need at least one day of the week to rest or do anything irrelevant and trivial. DECOMPRESSING! It is an essential mechanism to keep on going without a potential burnout. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still had time for my regular daily activities, such as eating, cleaning myself (my hygiene was always top notch), seldom exercise, and most often than I care to admit, watching TV in between drawing sessions and before going to bed. Also, the lack of a social life this year helped me a lot to focus and concentrate on this challenge. As you can see, I made it! And I’m immensely proud of myself if I can say so.

Inking demon

First of all let me show you my grades! The disadvantage in getting a Bachelor in Fine Arts is that grades don’t matter much. Clearly it is a way to evaluate your efforts and goals met, in accordance to the teacher’s perspective of course; but when you graduate, no art director is ever going to ask for your grades. It does NOT happen. What you need is a strong portfolio, so no matter how many A’s you get, those grades will be wandering in oblivion. What really matters in this case is what I think of my grades in relation to my efforts, considering my own personal constraints. I still think I could’ve done better, but considering how restricted my time was for the whole year and the eventual burnout and artist block I had to endure, I guess I did very well. And before I forget, for all of the artists out there, I did some research of the infamous “Artist Block” I found an interesting webpage that is a MUST read: The Anatomy of Art Block.

Spring 2012 semester grades

You have to take into consideration that I started writing this blog on a monthly basis in order to have some finished pieces to show you. It has been almost 5 months since my previous entry, so I have way too many of them to upload in one entry. I will basically give you a summarized version of my semester. As you can see in my grades box above, I took 6 classes; most of them were the second part of my fall classes (in the titles shown as II), the others were brand new. My classes are as follows: Pictorial Problems II, Principles of Cartooning II, Drawing II, another Drawing II (which is actually Drawing I with another teacher, more into that later), History of Cartooning, and Figurative Sculpture. So, let’s start, shall we?

Pictorial Problems. – As I told you before this is a junior class, but more important, our main goal was to create a complete comic book so it could be exhibited in the School of Visual Arts gallery. I concentrated most of my time and efforts in developing this comic, not only because it was my thesis, but also because it would be my first comic done exclusively by me. Naturally, I have to thank my classmates and my professor Keith Mayerson who helped me along the way with their observations and critiques. Anyway, if you follow my blog you’d know that I was working in the adaptation of the novel: “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. The more I drew it, the more I cared about the characters, particularly Mr. Hyde, which I find disgustingly creepy and fun. I wrote a brief description of my thesis for the gallery presentation: “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a novella written by Robert Louis Stevenson published in1886. The story is about a London lawyer named John Gabriel Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the misanthropic Mr. Hyde. The work deals with the duality of the human being, hence, it is commonly associated with the mental condition called “split personality”. Dr. Jekyll represents goodness, while Mr. Hyde embraces evil. These two opposites struggle against each other and it is up to Mr. Utterson to discover the truth behind it all”. I can really relate with this duality as much as I can relate with the HULK! (I had to put an Avengers reference, since everybody is talking about it and I have to agree it is a pretty cool movie). But seriously, Jekyll and Hyde inspired the Hulk, and not only that, but more important this novel actually created the mystery genre. To my disappointment, every single film and comic adaptation has been done with complete disregard to mystery. SPOILER ALERT (although this book has been around for more than a hundred years, so if you haven’t read it SHAME ON YOU): In the book you don’t know that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person until the end. To tell you the truth it is very hard to adapt it to film so the movies dwell more on the horror side of the story. This is a psychological thriller and I hope, with my limited skills, I did a good job to adapt it into a comic book. The chairman, Mr. Thomas Woodruff, told me that my skills do not meet my level of ambitions yet, and I totally agree with him. I really want to create realistic drawings in comics, and that is hard to focus when you also have to create page layouts, compositions, spotting blacks (creating shadows with ink), and over all that, meet a deadline. Either way, the good thing is that every next page was better than the previous one. The comic is done in black and white, but I’m going to find the time (probably this summer) to color it and make it look more professional. I did paint a cover and back cover at the end of the semester, and I’m really proud of how they turned out. I will also show you my three favorite pages from the comic. It won’t be long before I make a website in order to read all my comics. This class has been a remarkable experience, but what is most important is that I completed a task I set about almost 20 years ago. Every New Year resolution had always the same goal: “Create a Comic Book”. You know what? CHECK!

Cover of Jekyll and Hyde

Back cover of Jekyll and Hyde

Minicomic of Jekyll and Hyde

Me in the gallery presentation

Splash page redone - Hyde attacking Carew

Hyde transformation to Jekyll

Jekyll's statement letter

Principles of Cartooning. – I explained in my last entry that I had to do 21 pages this semester. I chose to do the Greek story of Theseus and the Minotaur. I think the subject matter was not as interesting as I thought it would be. I don’t know, the story wasn’t as fun and I only have myself to blame. Saying that, this was a real challenge, and the fact that I got bored of the story pretty quick doesn’t help. Also, it was impossible to get good references for ancient Greek cities, interiors, and clothing. Now that I think about it, I should have gone to the picture collection in the New York Public Library and get as many references as I did for the Jekyll and Hyde comic. Surely it would have made my life much easier. In any case, I did learned a lot with those assignments, mainly composition inside the panels and word balloon placement. It seems intuitive but it is far from it. What you learn is mostly by experience. I’m uploading 5 of my favorite pages of the Minotaur and 2 pages for another assignment in which I needed to establish different moods in each page using the same surroundings. Also a sketch of the Flash my teacher Klaus Janson did for me at the end of the semester. Thanks Klaus, you rock!

The Minotaur Page 8

The Minotaur page 13

The Minotaur page 14

The Minotaur page 16

The Minotaur page 17

Mood Comic page 1

Mood Comic page 2

Sketch by Klaus Janson

Figure Drawing. – The drawing classes were mainly workshops. One of them was the continuation of a class I took in the fall with comic book artist superstar Phil Jiménez. It was a very frustrating class because it focused only on figure drawing. I really love figure drawing with a model, but it was very intense because he wanted us to get faster, so most of the times were gesture drawings or 10 minute poses. It is very limiting what you can do in 10 minutes. Sometimes I nailed it and sometimes I didn’t, so at the end of each class I ended up feeling like I didn’t know how to draw. I did sell myself short, and it’s understandable since all artists are self-conscious. I didn’t improve as fast as my classmates; then again, I believe I had more figure drawing experience in the past than most of them. The good thing is that I did in fact get better and although some of the times I felt like I hit a plateau, in the end I could clearly see the improvement. There were a couple of students that understood line better than me and I still can’t figure out how they did their drawing so graciously and beautiful in the amount of time per pose given to us. I was sure I was going to get a bad grade, but I came through with my semester homework. We had to do a sketchbook with 10 portraits of one specific classmate, each of them with a different expression. I felt the need to experiment with different materials and that was a game changer. Believe me when I tell you that I was getting really tired of the subject matter (in this case, my classmate). My professor really liked my portfolio and told me that it was the best of the class. I felt relieved and proud, and proceeded to like my teacher again ☺ I will show you 5 portraits and one I did of myself with the expression that symbolized my feelings during this long assignment. I’m also including a drawing made by one of my classmates of myself. It is a different drawing and it is not accurately correct, but he caught my essence perfectly, especially when I’m drunk.

Portrait made with a Wacom tablet and Photoshop

Self-portrait

Portrait of me made by a classmate

Drawing Formulas. – Due to unusual circumstances I ended up taking a continuing education drawing class. Basically I took it because of the teacher, Nelson DeCastro. He essentially teaches drawing formulas, in other words, he teaches you how to draw directly from your mind. Artists know exactly what I’m talking about, but let me explain it more thoroughly. Drawing from observation is NOT easy, but once you understand the basic principles of proportions, shading, negative space, texture and line weight it becomes fairly easy, at least for me. It’s hard but given enough time I always get a photographic drawing of the subject. This doesn’t mean that there’s no room for improvement, but what you need is to keep doing it. Drawing from your mind is another different ball game. You have to learn and practice all the formulas, from the proportional distance of the torso towards the head to the more difficult ones of three-point perspective. Since the renaissance, artists have developed formulas to memorize certain rules to make their jobs easier. These guides let you draw realistic environments and figures using your mind and not relying on reference or modeling (I really sound like an artist, don’t I?). This is what I always wanted to learn seeing as I felt comfortable with drawing from observation. Since it is a continuing education class and you live in New York and enjoy drawing you HAVE to take it. Also, Nelson is by far the best teacher I’ve ever had. He’s funny, demanding, and very encouraging. Also he really knows what he is talking about. This class helped me a lot in drawing better figures and stronger environments. It was a workshop class, so I don’t have any masterpiece from this class. What I have is a bunch of drawings based on a mannequin he created. He corrects them in class so I had to withstand some crude but funny embarrassing moments. I’m posting some of the drawings I made. His corrections are in red ink, so if you see a “Simpsons Darth Vader face” next to the chest of the female mannequin, then you’ll get how much fun we had in that class.

Me nailing perspective!

Figurative Sculpture. – I also took figurative sculpture. This was an elective and it focused on making models or prototypes for toys, actions figures, or sculptures. This was a freaking awesome class! I’ve never used clay before, at least in this way. I’m not going to explain the whole process because it’s very lengthy, but at least I will show you some steps for you to get the idea. We basically did 2 projects. I decided to make a portrait sculpture of Conan O’Brien. I was really hooked on his show and I knew that there was a Coco Museum in his webpage. I did some preliminary drawings and I’m quite proud of the first I did. The problem is that it was way too realistic, so my teacher advised me to make the sculpture more cartoony. You can see both, the drawing and the sculpture, in Conan O’Brien’s website here and here. The second project was way more complicated. I decided to do a prototype for a statue of The Flash (Not Flash Gordon, just Flash!!!!!) It started with the same process in clay, but after that we had to create a mold with liquid rubber. I won’t lie to you, it was dreadfully messy and I had a lot of wasted material, but after $200 of chemicals I did the mold. It’s amazing how the mixture of two liquids can become rubber. It’s mesmerizing! Once the mold is done we had to pour another mixture of two liquids to create plastic. This process was also chaotic. Finally, I had to paint it. I’m not as happy with the final product, but give me a break, I made it out of thin air!

Conan O'Brien portrait

Conan O'Brien clay head

Clay Flash figure with liquid rubber

Flash sculpture

History of Cartooning. – I expected much more from my history of cartooning class so I’m not going to delve much into it. Some days I’ve find it interesting, other days dull and boring. We just had to be there for attendance and make one paper. I did my paper on Alex Ross, one of my favorite artists. The one thing that really freaked me out was his first slide of the presentation in the first class. It was from a series of colored etchings from James Gilray made in 1808 named “Very Slippy Weather”. Gilray made a series of the same drawing and then colored them by hand. He was one of the first cartoonists the teacher said. Somehow I knew I had seen it before. The minute I entered my room I noticed the same serigraphy right on top of where I sleep. I’m not sure if it is original but due to the fact that this is my family’s apartment since my grandfather bought it, it may be. Freaky huh! Still, it just reassures me that I’m in the right path.

Me with Jams Gilray etching

Finally, I will let you go with a deep thought, as always. Once I heard that all children were born artists, the problem is to remain artists when growing up. I have always wondered if drawing requires a special gift or ability. Then I read a preface by Jack Hamm (author of the book Drawing the Head & Figure, highly recommended) that goes like this: Long before a child learns to write, he makes marks which in his inhibited imagination represent a person. No one has convinced him that he has no artistic ability, nor has he convinced himself, so he continues his unaffected effort to draw. Because he persists, oftentimes to the undoing of household furniture, walls, and parents, his drawings begin to show a decided measure of improvement. Then one day interest wanes, due to acquired restraints, and only a few after that regularly take up the drawing pencil. The others borrow the oft-repeated phrase, “Oh I can’t draw a straight line!”

There is no science and no magic involved, if you want it badly enough, just start doing it. Screw anybody who thinks otherwise. (This line is mine of course)

Godspeed,

Jose Luis

PS.- If you want to start making comics, please get this book “Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel: Everything You Need to Know to Create Great Work and Get It Published” by Daniel Cooney and if you want to get better at it buy this formidable book “Mastering Comics” by Jessica Abel & Matt Madden. They will really help you a lot… Guaranteed!

HALFWAY THROUGH AND OTHER ARTS

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 03:18:00 +0000

It is hard to start a new entry after being away for two months. Really, two months seems like a short time, but now that I have to summarize everything that I have learned and done in the past sixty days it seems overwhelming. In any case, I’ll do my best to describe what I’ve been through in these, busy but fascinating couple of months. Actually, it could be summarized in one sentence. I HAVE BEEN DRAWING… A LOT! I’m so relieved that this semester is over because now I can take a breather and simply do nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I miss drawing but I figured having a couple of weeks just clearing my mind and focusing on my procrastination will do tons of good for my next semester, which I know it will just get harder. I really feel I’m in a boot camp of sorts. I’m exhausted for doing 100 push ups and just when I finish my trainer tells me to drop down and give him a 100 more. I’m up for the challenge though; I just hope I don’t burn out anytime soon. I realized that taking everything to an extreme would prove futile to the cause. The truth is that I was so eager to become the artist I want to be that I stressed out not just my mind but also my body as a whole, hence, my hand suffered. The good news is that it is only Hand Tendonitis and not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome as I suspected; and that according to my doctor I have no signs of Rheumatoid Arthritis or any other autoimmune disease. Now you can see me for what I am, a hypochondriac overachiever who aims at perfection. Now, I still work my ass off but applying more common sense, I guess. I try not to worry too much and live one day at a time meeting my immediate goals without ever losing track of my long-term goals. I really hope I’m making sense now since it’s too early in the morning to write such a complicated and meaningful statement.

So I’m halfway through to get my Bachelor in Fine Arts majoring in Cartooning, and 1/10th of the way to complete my journey and my commitment to you through this blog. In other words, I need to do three more semesters (a year and a half) in order to get my degree and probably around 9 more years (I hope sooner) to complete my 10,000 hours that I need to be the MASTER of the Universe, or at least MY universe. I’m up to 1072 hours so far and if you forgot or need to be reminded of my rules of engagement in this project, please feel free to read one of my first entries explaining my commitment to you, my loyal fan base, and myself, my most demanding critic of all. http://www.masterartskill.blogspot.com/2010_09_05_archive.html. I also got my grades back and let me give you a heads up; they are not as good as my previous semesters. I don’t mean to justify myself but because the purpose of this blog is to portray my journey, I feel I need to explain to you what I think it may have happened. Saying all this, my grades are not bad and I really believe that they do not represent my all out effort that I have given in this fall semester.

Grades for Fall Semester 2011

What could have happened? Should I blame the teachers for failing to see that I did my best? No, I don’t think so. Should I blame my hand tendonitis? Mmm… I guess I could, to some degree, since my injury hurt when I drew too much, which unmotivated me somehow. Still, I wouldn’t go as far as to blaming my grades entirely on my injury. Should I blame the fact that I’m taking hardcore classes from sophomore and junior year in order to get my degree in 3 years rather than the usual 4, and that because of that the workload is just a bit heavy to handle? Yes, I think I could assign most of the blame on that. You see, I’m doing the best I can, but the day has only 24 hours, and the week has only 7 days. The workload, especially in art, requires a lot of time, and sadly, this is something I have not much of nowadays. I had to prioritize and focus my best work in some of the classes that I felt were more important for my artistic development than others, and even in those cases I just simply ran out of time. For instance, in Principles of Cartooning (a sophomore class) the professor told us that I could present my homework assignments in pencil, but that if you presented them in ink (which obviously requires… MORE TIME) you could boost up your grade up to one letter grade. In other words, if you got a B but presented the piece in ink, you automatically got an A. The logic in this, which I agree, is that this shows a commitment to the assignment, the sad part is that I don’t lack any commitment, on the contrary, I can affirm without a doubt that is something I have tons of. What I really lack is time, so I had to do all my work just in pencil. It is hard for a teacher, especially in regard of grading improvement in art, to give an accurate grade of your commitment. It is not a multiple choice test that either you got it right or got it wrong, it is very subjective. And I’m pretty sure that my teacher, Klaus Janson, did not stop to think that I did not have ONE day off for the entire semester. I don’t blame him though, it is perfectly understandable, and as long as I know I did my best and still learned what I was taught (at my pace) I’m completely satisfied. I didn’t see that B- in drawing coming though >:[ More on that later.

Acupuncture for Hand Tendonitis

I’m going to describe what I have learned in each class as I usually do, but this time in order of effort and commitment given to each class:

Pictorial Problems. This is my Junior Thesis, and that is why it has my undivided attention. Mainly because it is a comic book of around 18 pages, so this will be my first comic book made entirely by me that has a beginning and an end. The comic I’m drawing is “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. I’m doing a faithful adaptation of the book by Robert Louis Stevenson. By the way, when I was doing my presentation to the dean Mr. Thomas Woodruff of the pages I had done so far, he made fun of me because I pronounced the name of the doctor as Jeek-Al and not Jeck-Ell. I know my English is kind of shaky but I knew that I have heard that name pronounced that way before. I went on a massive research just to have the opportunity to some day prove him wrong and you know what? I was right! In the famous movie from 1931, which I saw recently, it is pronounced Geek-All. Coincidentally enough, I came upon a magazine named “Freaky Monsters” (Which I highly recommend to all Monster Lovers from yore) which also stated the same thing. Finally, I found over the Internet in a forum a statement by “bookworm1992” (I guess this nickname adds credibility to this statement) that said: “Although most people assume and use Jeck-Ell, and there is nothing wrong with this, Stevenson ALWAYS used Jeek-Al, so that Jeek rhymes with Seek. Hyde and Seek. It could even have meant Jeek-All, Seek all (as in seek everything)” I just found that very interesting and wanted to share it with you. Also because I guess it is the only way to fight back to he dean since I’m not going to go to his office to correct him. Mr. Woodruff if you’re reading this, I respect you and all but YOU WERE WRONG J To produce 7 pages (without counting the Splash pages I uploaded in my previous entry) is very time consuming. Remember that to produce one page in pencils equals one day, and if it is inked it means half a day more. It probably doesn’t sound as much but believe me, mixing it with assisting to other classes and doing their assignments it is a lot. I spend my weekends doing these pages. You can see the clear improvement between page 1 and page 7. My favorite is page 6. What have I improved? Character placement, composition, figures, attention to details, backgrounds. The most amazing thing is that once it is learned it gets imprinted in your subconscious and therefore comes naturally. It’s not that I make a conscious decision, well; sometimes I do, but not all the time.

J & H page 1

J & H page 2

J & H page 3

J & H page 4

J & H page 5

J & H page 6

J & H page 7

Principles of Cartooning. I can’t stress enough that this is my favorite class of all. I am learning all I need to learn for creating comics. Not only that but I really like my teacher and the way he handles the lectures. Also, he is involved in mainstream comics, which I can relate even more. Granted, he gave me a B, but I rather get that grade knowing that I’ve learned a lot rather than getting an easy A and not having learned anything. This class is also very challenging regarding homework, but in these couples of months there have been less assignments than the previous ones. I’m including a Gepetto 3-page story; I’d really like your feedback on how you interpret it. Also some exercises in perspective. One of them is my room. I’m really excited about the following semester since I have to take the second part of this class. Now we have to do what Klaus Janson calls a “sophomore thesis” and it consists on a 21-page comic book about practically anything we want. I’m going to do the Greek legend of Theseus against the Minotaur for several reasons; I think it will improve my action scenes and also I’m going to practice a lot of perspective designing the labyrinth (If you don’t know the story don’t fret, I have your back, you just have to wait 4 months). But who am I kidding? I want to do that story because the Minotaur kicks ass!!! I’m including some character sketches that I’m pretty sure will evolve as I draw page after page.

Gepetto page 1

Gepetto page 2

Gepetto page 3

Perspective:

My room

Sketches:

Drawing for Cartoonists. I have to admit that I am a little surprised with my grade. Sometimes I just don’t get what my teacher, Phil Jimenez, wants out of my drawings. I’m very good with proportions and observation, at least compared to most of my classmates. For some of them this is their first attempt to draw the figure and not just a cartoon of the figure. I’m more comfortable drawing from life but it seems this is the class I have had less room for improvement. So why does this stagnation happened? Probably because what I will improve regarding the human figure will come slowly with more experience and hours invested in them. I can see some of my classmates that really didn’t know how to draw at the beginning, but they have improved a lot and the teacher is happy with those improvements. Anyways, It’s not as important as it is frustrating, but I really have no idea what he expects from me. For instance, when I get the proportions almost perfect (at least I see them that way) he says that the drawing is uninteresting and I should really exaggerate certain areas to give the model more dynamism, but when I do that in other drawings, he tells me that the proportions are wrong. AAArrghhh!!! In any case, for next semester I’m not only taking this figure drawing class but also another drawing class by Nelson De Castro who I have heard deals more with rules of proportion and perspective. I’m pretty sure that in that class he will see a vast improvement. Our only homework for this class was a semester project in which we had to draw 10 feet and 10 hands, with a picture of the real thing right next to the drawing. I spent around 20 hours doing this project. I’m including some of my drawings, especially my brother’s infamous foot that Jimenez presented to the entire class and said, “This foot is really bizarre” I could not stop laughing because it is indeed an aberration of nature J. It is important to add that I do have fun in this class. For instance, once we had to be the models for the class (with clothes on, don’t be getting any funny ideas). Now I can really appreciate what figure models do. I spent only 10 minutes in a sitting pose and my neck and hands were killing me. Some of the models spent up to 40 minutes (with one break) in a single pose, and they tend to be more dynamic and energetic than my humble drunken pose. And for all sketch collector fanatics out there, I got two sketches of Phil Jimenez for free (tuition does not count) just for being a really good student and had the nerve to ask him.

Infamous Foot

Sketches:

Sketch # 1 that Jimenez did NOT LIKE

Sketch # 2

Digital Coloring. The great thing about taking this class is that now I can really declare I can digitally paint. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be great, but I know the basic set of skills to make it happen and give a sense of completion to my work. I noticed that people (not necessarily comic book fans) see the pencils as incomplete. In a way they are right, but in most of the cases, the artist job (penciller) is to finish 20 or so pages in a month in pencils. This is called original art. After one page is penciled it is sent to the inker. In this step the process could be complete only if the intended final product is meant to be in black and white (for instance NOIR comics), but for the regular Joe this is still incomplete. But adding color to those pages gives a sense of completion and most of all, admiration that the artist can finish the process all by himself. At least for me is kind of liberating to know that if I wanted I could send to print my entire work and still give a sense of a finished product for the shelves. This is exactly what I did recently in this class since I had to color some of my personal work for my final project. I colored the first three pages of Jekyll and Hyde and another that you may remember from previous posts that consisted on a portrait of my cousin. In the latter case my teacher Andy Pearlman told me that I have used too much “Mexican colors”. I couldn’t help feeling a little offended but I understood what he meant. He knows more about color so I can only guess that Mexican comics use more intense colors. It is valid to say that I am not Mexican but Ecuadorian. Anyways, I found an interesting article written by my professor over the Internet regarding coloring comics using Photoshop that may prove useful to digital painters enthusiasts. http://knol.google.com/k/coloring-comics-with-photoshop# Also I’m including two pages that I needed to color that were scanned from old stories of X-men and Spiderman.

J & H page 1 RGB

J & H page 2 RGB

J & H page 3 RGB

Other color projects:

Daniel's portrait RGB

Spiderman RGB

X-Men RGB

Gouache. I can only say that the problem with this class is that I didn’t have enough time (because I put other classes on top of this one) to make quality work. I spent around two hours on each assignment, which is not nearly enough of what you need to do a great painting. I really like the medium and I will probably come back to it for painting covers or illustrations, but the problem is that it is so much easier to paint with Photoshop (Also considering that there are great colorists that can enhance my work) than to master the Gouache technique. Still, I find it better than acrylic and watercolor. Oil would be my favorite technique if it weren’t for that damn smell and the fact that it takes days to dry. I totally deserve that B+. I’m thinking of taking a portrait painting class with the same teacher for next fall. I’m including one illustration I had to do consisting on SVA (School of Visual Arts) fashion and another one of expressions that does not have much to do with color but at least it was painted with Gouache.

Expressions

Fashion Model

Culture Survey. This is a literature class that I really enjoyed but I’m glad its over. Mainly because I want to focus my time on my art, and although I found the stories very appealing and the teacher very passionate on the subject, it just felt to me that I could have been spending more of my time drawing. Still, I don’t regret having taken it and maybe I will drop by for a couple of classes just to enjoy a good analysis from a great storyteller.

In conclusion, this has been a very productive and busy semester. What I like the most about taking all these classes is that art is intertwined. What I mean by this, for example, is that by learning digital color I understood better shading and volume, by drawing poses I could better placed my figures in my comics, and by inking with a brush I could use more accordingly my brushes for Gouache. Each class is so different, yet they are all routes that take you to the same place, to become a better artist. I will also be uploading my work on Deviant Art (www.deviantart.com) if you are just interested in my art and not my prose. Just search the nickname bielero (in Spanish Ecuadorian slang means Beer Drinker J).

To wrap up this entry I will give you one rant, one art definition, and one motivational phrase.

- RANT: I had to go to my home country for Thanksgiving (not that we celebrate Thanksgiving back there but I had two important weddings to assist). When I got back to the United States I passed through immigration and the only thing the officer (Marcano was his last name) came up with by looking at my I-20 (document for International students) was: “Are you spending all this money on cartoons??? Why don’t you take those online courses that teach you the same thing?” I could not hide my discontent with his comment, but really, people think this is easy. It’s a shame that something so hard it is seen by some people as something effortless. In any case, I wasn’t expecting any royalties because of officer Marcano buying any future book of mine.

- ART DEFINITION: Exposition. - It is the fiction-writing mode for conveying information. According to Robert Kernen, "Exposition can be one of the most effective ways of creating and increasing the drama in your story. It can also be the quickest way to kill a plot's momentum and get your story bogged down in detail. Too much exposition, or too much at one time, can seriously derail a story and be frustrating to the reader or viewer eager for a story to either get moving or move on”. In regards to comics, too much exposition is wrong most of the time. It is better to show it rather than explaining it.

- MOTIVATIONAL PHRASE: To get on the dean’s good side, I quote an inspirational phrase Mr. Thomas Woodruff told us in our presentation “Inspiration never visits a lazy household”.

That’s all for now folks. I hope you enjoyed my entry and I wish you happy holidays and a happy new year. See you in 2012.

Godspeed,

José Luis

DARK, DARK IS THE TUNNEL

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:44:00 +0000

This has to be the cleverest title I have come up so far since I started this blog. Primarily because it covers the three main topics I will go through in this entry. I don’t mean to treat this as an essay but since I’m in college there’s a risk to be read that way because I have written tons of them recently. Lucky for you I know how to be subtle. Ok, so the Thesis Statement is… Ok, no thesis statement so far so who cares. Let’s keep on going.

“Dark, Dark were the tunnels” is an apocalyptic short story by George R.R. Martin (If you don’t know who he is and you like fantasy stories you are at a disadvantage since he is the famous American writer that created “A Song of Ice and Fire”, most commonly known for the title of his first chapter, now a famous TV series, “Game of Thrones”. I won’t go into the details of the story since it is not at all relevant, what is important is that it deals with a post-apocalyptic world, genetic mutations and monsters. The only thing that is missing is demons and robots. Well, certainly in these days you must have at least one vampire or maybe a zombie, but anyways, the reason I bring this up is because I have noticed that all my male classmates just want to create comics based on those themes. I find it absolutely amazing how your interest in stories may shift radically in fourteen years. Don’t get me wrong, I really like my share of vampires, apocalyptic Armageddon, and zombies, but really, this is all they want to do. Now the girls in my class are more mature (at least in their comics’ choices) since they tend to create more sophisticated comics like adaptation from old novels or nonfiction biographies. It is bad to make a generalization; I just saw a pattern and wanted to comment on it.

This is me by the way

The other reason, and maybe the most significant, that I came up with that title is that I recently suffered an injury in my right hand named Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Just to let you know how devastating this injury can be to an artist, I once read from an art student that this injury was so terrifying that came close second to blindness. Now, by all means I know this is a huge exaggeration but to read that when you are suffering from hand pain (and doing this challenge) freaked me out. Granted, it may or may not be Carpal Tunnel. My doctor didn’t discard that it could be CTS, but he was more inclined that it could be hand tendonitis in his diagnosis. I was kind of relieved but then he told me that both of them had the same symptoms I went back to square one. I’m still waiting for my blood test results, but even if it is CTS or Tendonitis I have to say that it hurts like hell. The pinched nerves are by far the most painful, which feels like shots of pain throughout the arm. It’s been almost a month and I’m not fully recovered. The best advice to cure this type of injury, rest! How can I rest my hand if I have so much homework? Well, I still do my assignments but I make sure to put some ice over my hand for 20 minutes. On top of that I’m following some self-therapy involving ice and heat every night. I know it’s dumb to keep on drawing with the injury, but is not in my nature to just stop for a couple of months and throw all my plans out the window. In any case, I’m feeling much better but it still hurts sometimes. I don’t know how to properly deal with this, but what I do know is that all things taken to the extreme are bad. I was just drawing, and drawing, and drawing, and even though is a great quality to succeed in this industry, at the end it ended up damaging my wrist and hand. So now I just took it down a notch and I’m trying not get stressed so much with my studies. An advice to avoid this injury can be found on the book Drawing Words and Writing Pictures by Matt madden and Jessica Abel. You can find it on their website www.dw-wp.com There are some useful stretches for when you take breaks between your drawing sessions. I know it sounds crazy, but this is serious stuff!

So basically the tunnel is very dark, and I really hope to find the light at the end of it. What I mean is that I’m making this huge sacrifice by combining my hardcore classes from sophomore and junior year in order to be able to graduate in three years. I’m far away from my family and friends, I have almost no time for myself, and definitively I have no weekends off since I have to do most of my homework on my “free” days”, and now I had this injury which my body told me in an excruciating painful way to take it easy. I am afraid. I’m afraid to get lost or to break down halfway through the tunnel. I know I can do it but I’m starting to doubt myself from time to time. Am I good enough? Do I have talent? Do I even know how to draw? I guess this blog will become more interesting with this honest sense of drama. Saying that, I’ve learned a lot and I’m happy to do what I’m doing, but this year is going to be very hard. I guess feeling frustrated is also part of the challenge. And then walking down the street I saw this poster by my school and my strength somehow came back to me.

To lighten up the mood I’m going to cover my classes. Let’s start with the one class that I enjoy the most but it’s the most challenging, principles of Cartooning with Klaus Janson. I don’t know how to feel at my age (I consider myself an adult) when the teacher calls me “sparky”, but I guess it’s the whole college experience. Nevertheless, I find this class very useful and I like that we talk more about mainstream comics. In cartooning there are a lot of tendencies, for instance mainstream comics (DC and Marvel), Independent comics (Indies), Minicomics, graphic novels, and manga to name a few. Not all of them are the same and it depends in which sub-industry the professor works. Methods, materials and formats vary between these categories. Basically I have a three-page homework each week, and this takes me around 4 days to finish. I hate that I don’t have the time (now is even worse because of the injury) to finish with the extreme details that I would like to include, and that I cannot ink my work due to my time constraint. The teacher accepts pages by pencils, but you get extra credit for inking it. Damn it! I don’t have the time to do it so it seems as a missed chance to better my grade or as an opportunity cost (Business terminology is coming back to me). My highest grade in the assignments was a B+ and my most recent one was a C+. The last time I received a C was in my sophomore year at the University of Miami in my accounting class (Yuck!) thirteen years ago! I’m kind of pissed off about this! The three assignments have been very challenging and deal with height proportions and use of space and angles. No words, no dialogue.

Jack and the Magic Beanstalk p1

Jack and the Magic Beanstalk p2

Jack and the Magic Beanstalk p3

Legend of the Pumpkinheads p1

Legend of the Pumpkinheads p2

Legend of the Pumpkinheads p3

Roof Scene p1

Roof Scene p2

Roof Scene p3

My pictorial problems class has been… interesting. I understand that some of my Blaudience (Actual term that means… Audience of a blog. Really!!! I looked it up!) is composed of aspiring artists. Have you noticed that fellow classmates seldom say that the art is good or cool, but they just state how interesting it is? It’s kind of annoying actually. If you don’t like it say it, don’t sugarcoat your opinion to me! You cannot hurt me because I have no ego (or so I say). Anyhow, in this class we do mostly critiques and the instructor is very nice and serene. The only problem is related to what I mentioned above. He is, probably, a manga or independent comic book artist, so when he mentions examples of comics I have no idea what he is talking about. I believe he has mentioned Tezuka a bazillion times. I know he is a legend and was a very famous manga artist who created Astro Boy, but really, I haven’t read a single issue of his comics. Must remedy that I guess. In any case, my thesis (15-page comic book) is about “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” I’ve made three scenes for my splash pages (basically these scenes are the turning points of the adaptation of this story, which is almost accurately close to the original). These were the cause of my injury. There are evident mistakes in perspective, but really, whose fault is that? I’m studying cartooning and not a single class has taught me perspective!!! I get it that for some artists perspective comes natural to them, but not for me, and if I want to achieve the level of realism in my comics I need to not only understand perspective (which I do!) but to master it! I finished with my script and now comes the fun part, to draw the actual pages. To get a clear idea of my workload, I have to finish 2 pages in pencils and 2 pages in ink every two weeks. This takes me about 4 days to finish. If you add the other 4 days that it takes me to finish the other 3 pages from thumbnails to finished pencils every two weeks, we have the total of 8 days every two weeks. This does not count classes, and homework for other classes.

Mr. Hyde attacks Sir Danvers Carew

Dr. Lanyon discovers the truth

Dr. Jekyll commits suicide

My digital coloring class is awesome but time consuming. I really like to paint with digital colors using Photoshop, and the more I do it the more comfortable I feel with the techniques. Flats are easy, combining colors is not as simple but if it seems wrong it takes a click of a button to change it, and shadows and highlights are really hard. The worst thing about this class is the homework, but not because it is demanding but because it takes a lot of time. I don’t have classes on Wednesdays, but because my digital class in on Thursday, it takes me the entire day to finish a proper colored page (around 8 hours). I’m glad that there is an evident improvement though.

I received a comment a month ago that even though I have no finished pieces for my drawing class I should upload them anyways. I decided that it is a good idea but readers must understand that this drawing class is basically for gesture and figure drawing. Drawing sessions are between 20 to 30 minutes, which is not long enough to do a complete and accurate rendering of the human body. Still, I decided to upload two of my favorite figure drawings so far.

My Gouache class is very laid back and relaxing, but sometimes homework gets in the way. Mostly we start to paint in-class and then finish it at home. The problem is in the schedule. Because my class is on a Tuesday and I have Principles of Cartooning and Drawing on Monday, and Pictorial Problems before that class, basically I spend my whole weekend covering those assignments for those classes that are more important. The end result of my Gouache pieces is kind of rushed. I do them in a couple of hours on Monday night after a hard day’s work. It is not hard but you can see a great variety of students at very different levels in painting. Surprisingly enough there are just a couple of male students, and around fourteen girls. I took the class because Alex Ross (probably the most famous artist in the media) paints his cover illustrations using Gouache, but this is more an illustration class than a cartooning one. The teacher is really good and I like him very much. The way I see it I’m learning more about color rather than the particular medium of Gouache (it is a lot like watercolor but more matte). Here are some examples of my work. I also missed one assignment of a mosaic painting of Obama, but I really liked my sketch so here it is.

Because this is an art blog I’m not going to cover my culture survey (literature) class, but I will quote the teacher on a phrase he told us in class, and I’m pretty sure he was quoting someone else whom I can’t remember: “When I want to have an intelligent conversation I talk to myself”, I guess I kind of do that, but if you happen to read these words, then that means I’m not as crazy as I thought I was. You ARE reading this… right?

I leave you now with one advice from Jason Armstrong (popular inker in the comic industry) for aspiring cartoonists: “Sacrifice! Unplug the Playstation, turn the TV off, don’t see every crappy movie that comes out, and tell your friends (and that cute girl who likes you) that you’re busy this weekend! Repeat. Easy as that. You wanna see your name in print? Get busy!” Kind of harsh but it is a wake up call for aspiring artists in this industry, and I’m following this advice to the letter. Well, the part about the TV not so much. And for the people who really wanted to be inspired by this blog and are feeling somehow cheated, please watch the Stanford Commencement speech by the recently deceased Mac founder Steve Jobs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc. You had me at connecting the dots Steve! L

Thanks for the team “Comic-con” to have agreed to change the tradition to go to San Diego Comic-con each year and go to New York Comic-con this year. Kudos for that decision since we had a great time!

Team Comic-con

Here I am signing books to my fans (I wish)

Godspeed,

José Luis

Long Live Wally!

WARNING! POTENTIAL OVERLOAD!

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 02:08:00 +0000

I don’t want to over dramatize my situation and of course my artistic degree of freedom always allows me to exaggerate the title just a bit, but this is not such a case. To tell you the truth I have never been busier in my whole life and keep in mind that I’ve studied my 4-year Bachelor in Business Administration twelve years ago, worked non-stop for 10 years in my family's business, and even had some companies of my own in between. I’m a firm believer that if you want to get some place better you have to study relentlessly, work hard and dedicate yourself hundred percent to the task. Now I must have elevated the percentage a notch because I have barely time of my own (Like Spinal Tap’s amps that go up to 11. If you haven’t seen this scene please click this link because it’s hilarious http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll7rWiY5obI). I remember that college wasn’t that hard back in the day, but there are two main possibilities why I think this first month of my Sophomore-Junior year has been so difficult.

The main reason is basically because I’m mixing my hardcore classes of sophomore year with my time consuming classes of junior year. Why, you ask? Because I already met all my humanities requirements in my previous degree in business and they were around thirty credits. Normally, as you may well know (or not) a bachelor consists of hundred and twenty credits, so basically I shove off one year of my program. But is it too much, I wonder? Yes, it may be, but gladly I’m fully committed to my studies, which keeps me focused. It was either that or doing my regular 4-year program with tons of electives that traduces in spending unnecessary time and money. The other reason is that I actually didn’t rest over my summer vacations (Which now I know why students need them!… yeah, you guessed it! Potential work overload!). I went to Florence and studied art history and Italian. It doesn’t seem that bad I know, and the classes were pretty laid back, but I guess you need that recovery time of doing nothing in between semesters. Well, it’s not an option for me to spend four months doing nothing so I imagine that I just have to man up and get the job done! :)

One of the things that worry me the most is that I’m taking some classes from my junior year that basically assume that I have all the knowledge from the classes of my sophomore year. This is not the case because I’m taking those classes simultaneously. In order for you to clearly get this idea I need to explain to you what my classes are all about. Don’t forget that my foundation year is over, this means that you probably won’t be seeing any fine art paintings any more, at least not as homework from my classes. This year will be more focused on my major, which is cartooning. I’m going to start describing my sophomore classes: Principles of Cartooning, Drawing for Cartoonists, Digital Coloring, and Gouache Techniques.

Principles of Cartooning may be my favorite and more challenging class this year. It basically teaches you to consciously know the rules of making a comic in order for you to bend or even break them in the future. I’ve been reading comics for 20 years now (Yeah, I’m that old) and I would’ve thought that all the knowledge would come naturally to me. This wasn’t the case. It’s like understanding a language similar to your native tongue. It’s hard! You may not comprehend everything, but you get a general idea, right? Well, try speaking that language without studying? It is pretty difficult if not impossible. That simple metaphor encapsulates what I’m feeling right now in this class. It’s like a whole world of options are opening right in front of me. Of course some things come naturally when you are drawing a comic (after all, it is a form of communication I’m way too familiar with) but knowing the theory behind those unconscious decisions gives me the opportunity to adapt or modify them in different scenarios. I’m talking gibberish I know, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s not as easy as it looks and it has a LOT of information to learn. Keep in mind that I’m not talking about “drawing”, that I can do, and I can honestly say that I do that fairly good. Here I’m talking about storytelling, which is basically drawing in an effective and clear way in order to convey some information in hopefully an entertaining way. (I came up with that definition of my own :)). Just visualize a class discussing the numerous ways to draw a panel line or composing those same panels in the page. It seems irrelevant or unimportant, but beware!!! They are far from it.

It also helps that the teacher in this class is the famous Klaus Janson (inker of the Dark Night Returns and penciller of a Black and White short story of Alfred Pennyworth. Of course he has much more achievements but those are my favorites). He is very demanding and seems like a great teacher. He is very strict and I like that, although he “called on me” while I was texting in class. In my defense we were on a break! But I took no personal offense by that; he clearly used me to set an example for the other kids to learn that texting is BAD! At 34 I’m not used to anybody treating me like a kid, but I guess I look younger than I am (Kudos for me ;)). One of the phrases (that the teacher clearly claimed that he invented) is “if you keep failing, fail better”. It sound so wrong, but it is true in drawing. You have to learn to crawl before you learn how to walk, and clearly we are going to make mistakes, but the good thing is that they’ll be better than the ones before. Am I right? Ok, for this class homework we had to make a single page explaining what we did on our summer vacation. I really liked this project because I wanted to summarize what I did in Florence this summer “vacations”. Everybody got a B just because we did not include the question in the page, for instance, a panel showing that we were going out of school. I would’ve included the question, but I don’t feel like a college kid so I didn’t. Anyways, I still got a B+ for the assignment. Also all our homework must be done in pencils (I did ink this page but it takes a lot of time so I’m not sure if I will be doing that again for this class) and with no words! We are supposed to tell the story without any kind of dialogue, which is a little bit harder but the storytelling is more effective if you can achieve this.

SUMMER IN FLORENCE

My next class is Drawing for Cartoonists. This class is a requirement but I really enjoy it. It consists on drawing the human figure (male and female nude models of course) from life. So far I haven’t learned anything new and since this is drawing from observation I feel ahead of my classmates. Remember that my classmates now are only cartoonists and illustrators, and they have mostly spend their time drawing cartoons, while I spent 10+ years drawing from observation (on and off). In any case, you cannot go wrong in this class because there is always room for improvement, especially in getting to better understand the human body, which is an essential instrument for storytelling (unless you want to do a comic based solely on animals, but that’s not here nor there). Also, the teacher of this class is Phil Jimenez, which is another recognized artist from DC and Marvel Comics. He is a very talented and successful comic book artist who has penciled Infinite Crisis and Wonder Woman (DC) and the best seller Amazing Spider-Man # 583 (Barak Obama cover, even non comic fans bought this issue because of the political connotation). I really like his artwork and he's one of my favorite pencillers for superhero comics, so I intend to get the most out of his advices. BEWARE though, he corrects you by drawing on your art! At first I felt uneasy by that, but later on I didn’t care anymore. It actually helped me a lot to loosen up. Because these are 20-min poses, no drawing in that class is actually good enough to post it here :(

Another class that I really have enjoyed so far is Digital Coloring. This is an elective and it consists on coloring comic book pages by using Photoshop. Since I really love drawing this is a perfect complement because by coloring a black and white drawing (or ink) makes the art seem more complete. Bear in mind that in the industry there is the penciller, the inker, and the colorist. If you are the penciller you may do your own inking, although it takes a lot of time or you could in fact be an awful inker. Nevertheless, it is uncommon for the penciller or the inker to do the colors. It is still a lot of hard work and time consuming but I guess is the less difficult discipline of the three. Right now we are learning the basic stuff, which is coloring in flats (plain colors) and rendering some shadows and highlights (this is harder than it looks). Still, It is easy to be a colorist, but it is really hard to be a GREAT colorist, and knowing this stuff would make it easier for me in the future to communicate my wishes to the assigned colorist. I had to color this Wonder Woman page by myself. It's not that well done, but as I stated before, it looks more finished.

Another elective that I chose is Gouache Techniques. I get really frustrated with this class, mainly because there are so much talented kids in my class that make my work look like my nephew’s art (which is pretty good for his age). We have to put our homework on the wall and criticize it. I have to admit I feel a little ashamed and even though I try hard, this technique is difficult to master. I really enjoyed oil painting last year, but this is completely different. It is a very meticulous way of painting. Also, It is so challenging for me to really get the right colors, or for lack of a better word, values. For instance, what color is the sky? Some will say blue, and you won’t be completely wrong, but certainly incomplete. Assuming you can see the clouds on a clear day, the colors bouncing from the sky are blue, white, grey, purple, or even yellow. It doesn’t seem that way, but you actually have to concentrate really hard in order to get the right colors. Forget about what you think you are seeing because form, or line, can be misleading; you just have to see the values, and once you get that you’re ready to be a painter. I hate my pieces in this class, but I like the fact that I’m learning more about color, although I’d really like to show my drawings to my classmates in order for me not to feel as an untalented excuse of an artist.

SELF-PORTRAIT USING GOUACHE

IMPRESSIONISTIC PAINTING BY MONET

Now let’s cover my junior classes: Pictorial Problems and Culture Survey (It seems that as you advance in this program the course titles just seem more ambiguous and intellectual). To tell the story short, Pictorial Problems is about making your first comic book. It is like the thesis project and that’s why I’m kind of worried that I’m also taking Principles of Cartooning simultaneously. I mean, to do this thesis I should know the principles by now. Anyways, I see that my drawings are not bad but they do need more perspective, shadows and overall, composition. Saying that, I’m working my ass off so I can get a decent grade and most important, I could learn more from this class. The theme of this year is “Man-made Monster”, which is a very broad subject. You can go from Frankenstein to Charles Manson. The approach is based on a lot of research and references. My comic is an accurate adaptation of the book by Robert Louis Stevenson “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. It is classic and most of you know more or less what this book is all about, but if you haven’t, don’t panic!!! Because you’ll be reading my awesome comic at the end of April ;) I’ve even gone to the New York Library Picture Collection in order to get a lot of references of London, Interior shots from the late nineteenth century, and of course, the monstrous Mr. Hyde. It’s going to be fun and I hope the end result will be satisfactory because it'll be my first official comic book. Here I’ve done some portraits of the main characters. Also we had an assignment to do a mini-comic about myself so I hope you enjoy it.

DR. JEKYLL

MR. HYDE

MR. UTTERSON

Finally, my Culture Survey class shares the same theme as my Pictorial problem class "Man-made monster". This is basically a Literature class. I can honestly admit that I love it. So far we have read “Othello” by Shakespeare and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, which I found macabre. It’s only five acts so I highly recommend reading this, preferably at night. Here’s the link: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/wf_rose.html. This class is amazing but most of all is having the privilege of taking it with this particular teacher. So much passion about literature is not easy to find anymore.

I just turned 34 and I feel good. I’m not going to lie to you, it is unavoidable to feel a little depressed by the fact that I’m much older than my classmates and that at this age I’m just starting out my career. I don’t know, I feel like even though I work twice as much as my classmates I will never achieve the greatness I’m aiming for. After all, they have all their life ahead of them. I don’t want to sound fatalistic, I’m not that old, but watching these kids talk and share their ideas make me feel even that way. I guess it all falls on your perspective and your surroundings. Just a day before I turned 34, a new girl from my Gouache class asked me if I was the professor. It shouldn’t affect me, but somehow it does, because I can’t stop doing math in my head and figuring out where will I be in 16 years from now when they’ll be 36 and I’ll be 50. Ok, enough about that! I feel good because I love what I’m doing, and maybe I’m just over thinking it way too much. Saying that, could you imagine a responsible 34 year-old doing this:

CLASSMATE'S METHOD OF TRANSPORTATION

The ambiguous art word of this month is CREATIVITY. We can all agree that now creativity is as important as literacy, but can you teach someone to be creative? Am I creative? And if I am, am I creative enough to compete? I don’t know, this word cracks my head open as much as the word “composition”.

And to wrap this up: a quote, a pledge, and a request:

“If you are afraid to be wrong, you’ll never have anything original” (Sir Ken Robinson from TED: Ideas worth spreading www.ted.com).
I swear that I’m going to get through this year. It is my commitment to my fellow readers and to myself!
Please bring back Wally West (The Flash) to the DC continuity.

Thanks for reading and as always...

Godspeed,

José Luis Molestina

SWEET DISPOSITION

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:47:00 +0000

People will always question your motives and your decisions, but one thing I’ve learned is that this journey is not about pleasing everybody… it’s about getting more out of life; and one of the best feelings is the ability to surprise yourself one more time (I may have stolen this from the movie ‘America Beauty’ but if it fits perfectly, so sue me!). I’m still here, in the center of a town older than history, grasping… for a second time… what it has to offer me. I’ve learned so many new things in my trip to Florence, and the most important of them had nothing to do with the classes I’ve taken. It’s been a ride all by itself. In a rhythmic dance of emotions I’ve been through hell, purgatory, and paradise (which fits poetically to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, who was also from Florence). I came to this city based on a rather convenient conclusion in which I needed to take 6 credits (two classes) from art history in order to get my Bachelors in Fine Arts in only 3 years rather than 4. My first time in Florence was 11 years ago, and although I had a great time back then, I couldn’t go through with my plans and ended up returning sooner than expected. For me it was not only incomplete but somehow a failure and I wanted a second chance to try again. It would not be a fair comparison though. The first time I was here, I was just a boy eager to go back to Ecuador and start working a steady job in order to be successful; now I’m a man more interested in culture and who enjoys studying in order to be fulfilled. We are two different people, and probably I’m another man compared to the one that got here three months ago. (This may be a little philosophical but bear with me; this has a simple solution and does not require a time machine).

11 years ago with "Il Porcellino"

Now at the same place

The way I see it, life is a big staircase full of knowledge, but I don’t think you ever go down. No, that is not the way it works! You always learn, even from bad decisions. This was one of the good cases where I learned so much based on a great decision. Yes, I learned a lot from my art history and Italian classes (which by now I could say that I do speak fluently Italian), but what I really learned made me grow up even more. I learned a new culture, to do laundry, to cook for myself, to live with a roommate, to be more outgoing, to be more patient, and tons of minuscule things that added up make me a better and more valuable person now. Granted, I guess I knew all of these things before (not the cooking though, that is completely new) but I may have, for lack of a better word, relearned them. Sometimes I felt lonely, and other times I desperately needed my family and friends, but I understood that there always have to be sacrifices in order to follow your goals. Ok, I’ll stop preaching now, sorry about that, but I just felt the need to express my feelings regarding this second chance and all of these could be simplified by the word “rediscovery”.

Laundry "alla Fiorentina"

I stated in my previous entry that this blog was not going to be about my traveling through Italy, but guess what, It will be, because my involvement in art cannot be dissected from my experience in Italy. I tried, believe me I tried, but at the end I felt it was necessary in order to properly show my artistic evolution. I’ve been in Florence for three months now, but I had a third objective in this trip and it was to get to know as most cities from Italy as I could. I guess that for a sedentary guy such as myself this has been mission accomplished. I’ve been to Prato, Pisa, Rome, Milan, Venice, Padova, Elba Island, Principina a Mare, Cinque Terre and the Chianti region. Just by reading that sentence I’m already exhausted. I have around 1700 pictures (3.20 GB on my hard drive). Of course I won’t be able to show you all the pictures, but at least I’m going to show you the ones I really like. In any case, what I won’t do is tell you about all the places I’ve got to visit in each city. Why not? Because it will take on forever to write a faithful and fair description of my experience, so I’ve decided just to let you know about the things that somehow are more relevant to this blog.

When in Rome I encountered the Trajan’s Column. If that is not a comic I don’t know what is. It definitively is an early example of narrative storytelling of yore. I remember reading about this in Understanding Comics (a MUST READ book for comic fans) by Scott Mccloud, as an early example of graphic storytelling. It was enlightening to see this Roman triumphal column with lots and lots of reliefs depicting chronologically the battles from the Roman emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. He also mentions the Bayeux Tapestry but I will probably cover this in the far future when I go to Normandy (you never know, right?). A friend of mine came to Rome and we had the chance to go to the Vatican museums. It was a very long line, almost 3 hours, but at the end of the museum I saw something magnificent, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo. I ended up wondering if artists from today could surpass this masterpiece.

Trajan's Column

My visit to Milan was fun and very interesting. Obviously I got to visit all the important places but what I really enjoyed over there is that I got the chance to get into my time machine and travel thirteen years back in time. You see, I stayed in a friend’s place, but he is 20 years old and the most important thing that I noticed was that everything changes, but everything also remains the same. Gotta love my contradictions! Anyways, I’ve spent a Saturday afternoon the same way I did when I was in my college years in 1998. We were drinking beer and playing Playstation. That was it! And I had a great time, no worries, just hanging out. Of course back then it was Nintendo 64 and the game was either James Bond Golden Eye, or Mario Kart 64. Now it was Call of Duty World at War in Playstation 3. I spent the whole Saturday killing Nazi zombies and then I remembered why video games are the worst enemy of comic artists! It is impossible to play this type of games and meet a deadline in time. Luckily I already overcame this. Wait, when is it that the new Zelda, Skyward Sword, is coming out? November 20, 2011??? DAMN!!!

Brings back memories...

In the middle of July I got a visit from my dear cousin Nastassia. She stayed with me until the end of my trip. I have enjoyed her company a lot and naturally we’ve got to know each other more through this month and a half. Also she traveled with me to some of the places I mentioned above. It’s been refreshing and I know I will miss her… a lot… when she’s gone. But all good things come to an end I guess. In any case I learned two important things about her, that I love her dearly and that I can’t be chatty when she just wakes up ☺ Miss you already Nats! You can actually see a sketch of her in one of my previous entries.

Me and Nats in Venice

Regarding my classes I can honestly say that I’ve learned plenty of information, especially in my “Hidden Meanings of Renaissance Art”. Doesn’t it sound cool just to say it? It was really fascinating but the lectures were also very very long! We examined some paintings and it is impressive how much information it is hidden as symbolisms. Now I really know how to observe a painting, which I can admit I had no clue before. All the details are there for a reason, and the main thing to consider is that a painting is not a photograph, so all those symbols were put intentionally to communicate something. I enjoyed it a lot, when I could manage to stay awake for the whole lecture of course. I got an A in both of my art history classes ☺ I was so happy with my grades that I ended up thinking this feeling is what successful entrepreneurs feel when a business goes well. The reward cannot be only money, right?… right? I don’t know, maybe no one really appreciates a great grade, but I wear them as medals of honor because they represent my all out effort in this journey. I learned another language but somehow I speak it better when I have 3 or 4 whiskies inside me. This formula also applies to speeches, which I haven’t done for a while. I guess I have to remedy that in the near future. (Stop babbling José!)

I’m also glad to mention that I finish the main lessons on bones and muscles of figure drawing that I was taking. It was hard to listen to these lectures (via my laptop) and draw intensely each muscle and each bone in order to feel more comfortable in drawing the human figure from my mind. Although I feel I still need a lot, the progress is evident and I’m pretty happy for the result. The video is called “The Structure of Man” by Riven Phoenix, and you can get it in www.alienthink.com. I’m uploading five examples from finished lessons from the video. Also you can see two free drawings I made, one was at Piazza Signoria and I decided to draw from life this statue that turned out to be really difficult (or probably I was extremely tired). I did not like the end result but it was time well spent. The other one I did like and it’s a drawing of the mask of Guy Fawkes from the movie V for Vendetta (based on the comic by Alan Moore of course). And no, I’m not associated with Anonymous, but I can’t argue that I kind of dig the concept ;).

This entry was very difficult for me to write because I feel that I’m leaving out a lot of experiences that I’ve found equally important as the ones mentioned, maybe even more. Also I haven’t written for almost 2 months now, and this may be because everything I have experienced has been so overwhelming that it was very hard for me to properly organize these ideas. It is time to go back home though. The race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself. Perhaps this part of the race felt too long. I guess three months is just about enough. Don’t get me wrong, I love Florence, but I’m way too homesick right now. Can’t wait to go back to New York and start my classes at SVA, to see my family again. Also, right now this weather is just way too hot for me… and I don’t think only one fan is going to cut it anymore ☺. See you in the near future.

Godspeed,

José Luis

CIAO FIRENZE

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:11:00 +0000

I’ve been in Florence, Italy for over a month now. Let me tell you this has been a trip to remember and it’s not even half over. I have to be careful not to treat this entry as a travel blog, but how can I not? This, in fact, is part of my evolution as an artist, so bear with me if you see some pictures of myself in the city where it all began… again.

First things first though, I have to remind myself that this adventure did not start well, in fact, it was a complete nightmare getting here and finding a place. I boarded my plane to Madrid on a Saturday afternoon, around 6 PM and if things had gone well I should’ve arrived on the next day at midnight. Guess what? Things did not go according to plan! Big Surprise!!! Everything was OK in Madrid and I did get to my flight to Rome with time to spare, but of course the flight got delayed and not only that, but it couldn’t land and stayed on the air for probably one hour more. For people who know me, by now they could guess I was close to have a nervous breakdown. I thought to myself “Could somebody please show me the gas tank of this damn plane?” I don’t like planes and having already been in a 10-hour flight was way too much for me to handle. Still, I somehow managed, but of course I missed my non-refundable ticket and last flight of the day to Florence. So by then, I was tired and utterly alone with my thoughts of desperation at the Fumicino airport in Rome. It wasn’t a good experience! I couldn’t understand a word and even worse I couldn’t speak nothing either! Damn you PIMSLEUR method for making me think I was ready to speak Italian.

I brought some cash with me, but nobody could break my bills, so it was like having paper on my wallet rather than Euros. Because it couldn’t happen any other way, I left my passport with all the cash at a cash exchange counter. Luckily two minutes later I realized I didn’t have it on me and panicked. Went back to that counter running, and out of breath I could see an honest guy telling the clerk somebody has left that on the counter. I could only say a million times “grazie” to that man. So I tried to calm down in order to think straight but that airport is not like any airport in the United States. It’s like you don’t have where to sit and it didn’t look kind of safe at almost midnight. There was a train that I could get on in order to get to Florence at 3 AM; so one of those unofficial taxi driver told me he could get me there in 30 minutes, and the train was scheduled to leave in 30 minutes, very convenient huh! There I was running like crazy to get to the taxi, but the driver was running faster with my 50 kg bag!!! By that time I was just trying to get to the driver to recover my bag! We got there and he told me it was going to be 70 Euros! Screw that! I was not going to fell victim to that crime. So I went back and decided to board a train from the airport to the train station in Rome to board a 6 AM train to Florence that arrived at 8 AM on Monday (Keep in mind that my classes started at 9 AM).

I was thinking of waiting at the train station until 6 AM. WRONG!!!! At midnight that place looked like a dark alley with criminals around every corner. Luckily, I was in contact via Blackberry with a very important person to me, who practically convinced me to stay in a hotel for the night (Thank you a thousand times for doing that). At first I didn’t want to but then I understood that my life, or my belongings, could be in danger. So I went with a guy who was passing by promoting his “hotel”. He took me to a place near the station that did not look like a hotel at all, didn’t even have a sign, so I turned away but the guy didn’t want to let me go. So I just walked away waiting for the knife at the back! Finally, I went to the EXTASIS hotel and I gladly paid for staying there for four hours. I showered and tried to get some sleep, which I could not of course. I went to the train station at 5:30 AM, and to keep this story relatively short, there I was running again with my luggage because who the hell can understand the train system in Europe (later on I guess I got the hang of it, but still sometimes it’s just luck). I arrived to Florence at 8 AM and took a cab to a friend’s apartment (who has been really helpful in this journey) to at least leave the luggage there until I finished my classes for that day. After that, everything worked perfectly well… uh… NOT A CHANCE my friend!!!! ;) I was supposed to have an apartment by my arrival to Florence, but somehow the place was no longer available. I could not stay at my friend’s house and also I didn’t want to bother her, so I decided to stay for a couple of days at a place that my friend told me about. It was practically a convent; with those friar cells I’ve seen so much in Florence. It wasn’t very comfortable either. By that time I could only watch the clip I had in my mind of getting to this beautiful city and be mesmerized by its architecture, but no, what I was experiencing was not it. I couldn’t sleep there either and after 2 and a half days without sleeping I finally got my nervous breakdown and considered to go back to my beautiful New York City.

I felt like I made a mistake by coming here and I was willing to buy my ticket back the next day. Luckily my mother convinced me (and basically paid for it) to stay at a hotel until I’d find a suitable place for 3 months. I cannot thank her enough for doing that because I may have not done so by myself. I finally slept and everything was good, at least for a while, because at the second day I hadn’t yet found an apartment and was going out of my mind. At the end of the class, on a Wednesday, finally I got an appointment with a realtor. It was a beautiful loft, totally cozy with just two disadvantages, no air conditioning and the bedroom was in the upper floor connected by a spiral staircase to the first floor where the bathroom is (it is really inconvenient), but what the hell, it’s not like I had any more choices so I TOOK IT!

Believe me when I tell you that the next day Florence was beautiful again and the birds welcomed me with a lovely song, the bells from the churches were happy to have me, and the statues all seemed to have been smiling at that point ☺ What can I tell you, good things don’t come easy! Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you that my loft is next to “La Casa di Dante” (Dante Alighieri’s house) so everyday at home I hear “La Casa di Dante” in all possible pronunciations, dialects and languages. Like I said, it has a few disadvantages, but for Europe, and specially Florence, it is a perfect apartment and now I love it. I guess I extended way too much the part of getting to Florence, but you should understand what I went through in order to appreciate what is yet to come. Getting here was an experience all by itself that I’m not looking to repeat any time soon, but now that I’m here I can tell you it was worth it.

LOFT

Staircase from hell

So let me tell you a little bit about my classes. In order to get my degree in 3 years and not in 4 I had to take two more art history classes. Remember that I got some humanities credits transferred from my previous bachelor, so I needed to get these requirements in order to shave off one year. What better place to take art history than here in Florence, where the Renaissance took place. For people who are not familiar with art history (don’t feel bad, before I decided to study I had just some vague idea) the Renaissance is an important period for art and for civilization as well because it was the rebirth of the classical art (Greek and Roman) that had been forgotten or put aside for centuries. It was also the time that Neo-Platonism was at its utmost height and culture and literacy was increasing at an amazing rate. So, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello (if you are thinking of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I may as well put a bullet in my head right now, then again, I think it is inevitable to think of them), Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Alberti, Lippi, Fran Angelico, Botticelli, etc. are the main artists of this period and I could spend hundreds of entries talking about them. But art history is for me to learn so I won’t bore you with this stuff (Although is really interesting). What I really need to tell you is how priceless is to study these artists and their masterpieces, and after the lectures just go with the class to actually see them in person. So I just finished one of my art history classes, Early Renaissance, for my first summer, and an intermediate Italian course. I think I did fine but I have to wait a couple of weeks for my grades. Which brings me to my next topic, my itinerary.

You must understand that I need order in my life, so it wasn’t hard for me to create a schedule for my days. I wake up at 7:30 AM, make breakfast, shower, go to Art History class at 9 to 11:30 AM, go home (7 minutes from class), take a 20 min. nap, do my Italian homework, eat a Panini (sandwich) or cook something (out of necessity for survival, I’m not particularly fond of cooking), go to my Intermediate Italian class from 1:15 to 3:45 PM, take a 30 min. nap, draw by myself at home for two hours (maybe from 5 to 7 PM) following “The Structure of Man” DVD Tutorials to create a human figure from your mind, go out for dinner or cook something, take a shower, do rehab for my Achilles tendonitis injury for 1 hour, watch TV (downloaded episodes from my laptop) or read a book for 1 hour and then go to sleep. Next day, repeat! It sounds very anal but that’s me. Fridays I don’t have any classes so I decided to make them “Culture Fridays” and go to museums to draw or simply to learn. Saturday and Sunday I’m OFF! As you can see my schedule is very busy, and not laid back at all. Still, it feels more relax than my actual classes at SVA.

SMILEY SKULL

I’ve just heard right this instant “La Casa di Dante”. I SWEAR!!!!!!!

Also, for my art history class I had to make a paper and a presentation of the “David” from Michelangelo. Because I could not take any pictures in the Galleria dell’ Accademia where the original David is located, I’m uploading a picture of a replica situated at Piazza della Signoria in front of Palazzo Vecchio (I sound very sophisticated, Am I not?). Still, I assume and hope everyone knows who the “David” is. Because I’m an overachiever I decided to go to the museum and draw it from life. You have no idea how good it feels when some tourists come to you and tell you how amazing your artwork is, how much talent you have, and how you’re going to go places in the future!!!! It’s a confidence boost. Someone even took a picture of me drawing ☺ I’m not necessarily that good, but they are not art critics, they’re tourists who happened to admire the process and liked the final result. At the end my art is for anyone who enjoys it! I don’t have to get use to those compliments though, because at art school you just get critiqued, which is a good thing to better yourself, of course. This is my second time in Florence, my first time was in 2000 and when I was here I drew the David also. Therefore, I’m posting a comparison between them in order to see if I’ve gotten better. I have much to learn but even I can see the improvement, but you’d be the judge of that. Also, it seems that the right hand is way off, but I read somewhere that the statue’s right hand is in fact out of proportion, so I’ll stick to that in order to keep my artistic ego intact ;)

COMPARISON

DAVID

I had a few guests in Florence so I didn’t feel lonely this month. The only problem is the fact that I got used to being with people I knew, and haven’t made any new friends. At the end they had to return to Ecuador and now I do feel a bit lonely. Thanks God for the Blackberry messenger and for my high speed Internet at home. The time difference is a bitch but still I can manage to speak regularly with the people I love. Like I said before, good things don’t come easy! (Please remind me whose song was that! It is definitely an eighties song).

CASA DI DANTE!!!!!!!!!!! ARRRGHHHHH!!!!

So now it comes to the list of undeniable truths:

- People have loved action figures since the dawn of time. (Say what you want about my Superman statue, but I see heroes or gods everywhere in the streets of Florence).

- Italian supermarkets don’t know or can’t control their inventory, so things run out.

- Cars and bikes here are far more dangerous than in New York.

- When it rains hard it probably means NO INTERNET, NO LIGHTS.

- NO air conditioning!!!

- NO dryer machine!

- One cinema theatre (Odeon) with one movie (may be American) for each day. Forget about multiplexes.

- They close stores to go to lunch! If you’d just arrived the second they’re closing, they tell you to come back in two hours.

- NO customer service! And if you complain about anything they will probably yell at you.

- You don’t really know for sure when they’re pissed off at you or when they’re just messing around.

- NO Milky Ways (I had a hard time with this so now I eat Magnum Ice creams daily!)

- This city is 40% students, 50% tourists and 10% Italians (not an actual study, just my humble observation which could be mistaken of course)

- Art is in the air.

- Italian language, even for people who speak Spanish, is not as easy to speak and is even worse to understand an actual Italian.

- The city is so beautiful that all of the negative aspects I’ve rant about above seem as little inconveniences.

- Also food is simply amazing!

This really is a lovely and amazing city, and I’m absorbing everything it has to offer me, but if you ask me, there is nothing like American comfort, so if I have to live somewhere I’d rather live in America ;) Still, I cannot regret this great opportunity and from time to time I realize how old this city is and how good is preserved. Simply gorgeous!

And if things don’t go according to plan, well, there is always plan Y and plan Z.

And there was Pisa also,

Finally, two more pictures not related to Italy but definitely connected to my artistic formation. One is the painting I did for a friend of mine, but it is nice to actually see it hanging on the wall, it makes me feel… I don’t know, official. The other one is an original art that I bought from Derek Riggs, the famous artist that illustrated all Iron Maiden covers! This has a huge value for me because when I was fourteen I drew the same character (with my blue BIC pen) and it was fairly good for a fourteen year old artist. Full circle! Thanks Derek and Kim for this great opportunity.

SALEM PORTRAIT

EDDIE

With nothing else to add, and from far far away, I hope you are doing what you love because God knows that I do! ☺

Godspeed,

José Luis

THE HARD GOODBYE

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 17:36:00 +0000

So I finished my first year at the School Of Visual Arts majoring in Cartooning. My thoughts??? It was a blast. I’ve never been so exposed to art and I’m not just happy but completely satisfied of what I’ve learned. Seriously, this school ROCKS! Of course there are moments of stress, which I tend to accentuate, because worrying too much is part of my personality. Maybe I should lighten up a little bit ☺. Still, I’m enjoying the ride and the scenery and knowing the fact that I’m doing everything in my power to make this dream happen. I got my grades back and of course I’m going to show them to you! Right this second…

GEEK REPORT CARD

Ok, so I didn’t have to include my grades from last semester since I’ve already posted them in a previous entry, but I guess it is OK to brag a little, is it not? I worked too damn hard for it! This geeky report card would’ve made students kick my ass back in High School and make me look completely uncool in college, but as you may already know I’m a dreamer lost in time and I’m studying my second career at my 33 years of age.

So what’s my reward? Well, I gave myself a pat on the back, a ticket back home, and a summer in Florence, Italy. Going back home is always a very good experience. I really love my family and the chance to spend time with them is priceless. The only drawback is that I don’t have a drawing table over there and because of that I don’t draw enough! Well, that may not be the main reason; I actually get immersed in my old life, where I have to go to the office and help out my mother in her businesses. To be completely honest, I didn’t do much of that either! But hey! I was on vacation so I spent my time in Guayaquil, Ecuador as I saw fit. I saw my friends and ate at my favorite restaurants. I enjoyed my family and sleep a little bit more than usual. I drank at parties and got horrifying hangovers. The sad part is when I have to say goodbye to everybody. I guess I’m too old for these college goodbyes. This time I’ll be out of my home country for 7 months and I think this will be the longest period of time away from home. I miss my nephews already and saying goodbye to them is always heartbreaking! I hope to see them soon because I love them too darn much! So, it was a great vacation with just a few surprises, but hey, you wouldn’t want me to get too personal, would you? I did manage to find the time to draw some stuff though.

What I did draw was a study in anatomy from the mind. I’m pretty comfortable in drawing from observation. Sometimes you don’t get it exactly the way it actually is (way too many factors for that to happen) but most of the time I get the proportions accurately and I think it is time for me to move to the next step. I’m pretty sure I will learn all of this in my drawing class next fall, and with tons of practice I’ll get substantially better, but I want to master this skill so there’s nothing wrong with getting ahead! I’m following a 10 DVD course with maybe 100 hours of tutorials on how to draw anatomy (and figure poses) from my imagination. This is essential for a cartoonist, especially if I want to draw very realistically. If you’re interested in this course you can go to Riven Phoenix website at www.alienthink.com. His method consists mainly on a conceptual understanding of the human body. I’ve watched 39 tutorials already and I’m still at the skeleton. He is thorough and very methodical. Also he gives you tons of formulas, but don’t get scared or unmotivated by this approach because he tends to simplify them as you move along. At the end you’re so into it that you draw the proportions perfectly because it is imprinted in your brain. This is by far the ultimate figure drawing course. I can’t wait to start drawing muscles. My plan is to finish this huge course by August 26, which is the date when I return to New York. So I guess I’ll be drawing a lot in Florence.

I decided to go to Florence for the summer because I had to take two art history requirement classes, and what better place to study them than Florence, the home of the Renaissance. Also, I want to finally learn Italian. This is not the first time I go to Florence. I actually went for a couple of months back in 2000 as a reward for getting my degree in business administration. I was planning to stay for at least a year, but at my tender age of 22 I got some cultural shock. I think I’m more mature to confront it now. Not only that, but in that summer previous my trip to Florence, I got a new girlfriend and I missed her so much that I just couldn’t wait to see her. Finally, I was too damn tired of studying! I’ve just finished my four year degree in business at the University of Miami, and I just couldn’t wait to start working and earning some money. In conclusion, the love story didn’t end that good (because it did end after a while), and after 10 years I decided to study ART! AGAIN!!! And this time more committed than ever! Funny how life is, but well, what can I say; you just have to connect the dots! I have always regretted the fact that I finished early, or quit if you will, so that’s why I’m going back. It’s like they say: “When you fall off from a horse, you have to get back on it”. It is a question of commitment and I have to prove to myself that I can get through this. The odd thing is that I really loved that city and can’t wait to live there once again.

Since I have not drawn a finished piece but instead multiple studies of anatomy for artists, I will show you perhaps one of my earliest drawings of my father when I was a kid. I really can’t be sure what my age was back then (maybe 7 years old) but what I’m sure is that I loved to draw even back then. Also, I found another picture from my family album and it is hilarious to see myself as a kid doing what I love, even now!

MY FATHER AND BEAR

AN ARTIST FROM THE BEGINNING!

Always follow your dreams, and trust in your gut! I think you always know what is best for you; you just decide to forget for a while to concentrate on banal priorities. Nothing is more fulfilling than doing what you love, EVERY. SINGLE. DAY!

I’ll write more in Florence and I’m sure I’ll be able to post some drawings. Sorry for not having any now!

Godspeed,

Jose Luis

Pd.- I have to confess that I wrote this on Saturday before travelling. I have sooo many anecdotes to tell you, but I’ve been on Florence since Monday ☺

ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Sun, 01 May 2011 14:46:00 +0000

The title is a Latin phrase translated from the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. It has an ambiguous meaning but I think both definitions fit this entry. Its translation in English is “Art is long, life is short”, which could mean: “art lasts forever, but artists die and are forgotten” or “it takes a long time to acquire and perfect one's expertise (in, say, art making) and one has but a short time in which to do it”. I guess the latter is more appropriate to this entry, and less depressing, so I’m going to stick with that one. Now, why would I include a Latin phrase as a title other than to make me look smart and sophisticated? Actually, there is a perfect explanation for the title. I just finished my first year (freshman) at the School of Visual Arts majoring in Cartooning. If you’re a loyal reader of my blog you know by now that I am counting the hours I invest in drawing or painting, in order to reach 10,000 hours (supposedly that’s the amount of time it takes in order to master a skill, hence the title of the blog! get it?), if this is your first time, you know by now what this is all about, and believe me, it doesn’t get more simple than that. I started this blog on August 25, 2010. It’s been practically eight months and I’ve reached approximately 600 hours. I hope I’ll reach the 1000 hours mark by August 25 but it is highly unlikely since I am now in my summer break. But don’t panic! I’ll still be able to draw since I’m going to be in Florence for three months and over there the art is in the air! It is taking me more time than I anticipated but I’ll get there in probably 10 years!!! A lot of blog entries I suppose!

Weather is changing, spring has come to New York City, and there are more people in the streets. You can spot more tourists than ever roaming through the streets, especially since they are the only ones standing looking at a map (or Google Maps app). Everybody is in constant motion that tourists seem like a part of a machine that is broken. Maybe I’m putting too much thought on this because I’m jealous. I would love to come to this city as a tourist again. The weather is still kind of crazy but the freezing time is over. Now I miss it a little. I know, I don’t get it either. The only thing I’m not thrilled is to leave New York when the weather is changing for the better. Then again, I’m going home to Ecuador for a month and I’m so happy to see my family and friends. And after that, like I said before, I’m going to Italy for three months to practice my Italian and get some art history requirement credits for my degree. I have everything planned. In any case, I know I’m going to miss this great city. One thing I have to say about New York though comes from a paragraph I read in a comic book named “The New York Five” by Brian Wood. It’s a comic about five teenage girls in freshman year in college… Before you say it, yes, I read all kinds of stuff, and not only for the illustrations! Seriously, this comic is awesome and this one sentence summed up everything I feel about New York now: “It’ll rob you and cheat you. It’ll take your friends and turn them to you. It’ll kick your ass and break your heart. But then it’ll pick you up again, make you feel so totally alive and untouchable. It’s the center of the world, it’s the best place in the world, and once it’s in your heart, it’ll never leave you”. Kind of cheesy, but damn right accurate!

Since I haven’t written in a month, I have tons of artwork to show you. I don’t want to saturate you with too many images, so I’m going to be selecting the best ones. This creates a contradiction since I stated since the beginning of my blog that I wasn’t going to show you only my “masterpieces” but also my bad pieces. Well, I’ll make an exception and put the ones I like. It feels right you know!!!

I’ve drawn so much this month that I’ve been suffering from hand cramps. I didn’t know that was possible, but from now on, after two hours of drawing I take a 15-minute break. It made all the difference in the world. I have to remind you that I had to do a semester project for this class in which I had to draw 100 figures in 100 hours with different techniques and materials. This was a goal I put on myself but I could not reach it. I drew 43 figures in approximately 60 or 70 hours. They weren’t done in one sitting though; I had to draw them whenever I felt like it. I couldn’t reach my goal not because of lack of motivation, since I really enjoyed this project, but because of time constraint.

Journal semester project

Most of them you’ve seen before in my previous entries, so I will only show you my most recent ones. My favorites are Link from the Nintendo Zelda games, Jesse Custer from the Preacher comic by Garth Ennis (writer) and Steve Dillon (artist), Flash, and LUIGI from the Nintendo Mario Bros… he is number ONE after all!!!

LINK

It has been a good month for painting. I did three pieces that I’m really proud of. The first one was homework and I had to make a fantasy landscape. My approach was simple, get three regular landscapes and fuse them into one (Can you spot the Niagara falls?). I had no expectations on this painting but at the end it turned out pretty good for my taste. It is a small canvas board but it was a good study of color and shapes.

Fantasy landscape

The second was the “whatever” project. We had to paint ANYTHING! So in a predictable fashion I ended up painting a small white doll named Munny into FLASH! (You didn’t see that one coming, did you?). You can find all the info about Munny dolls at http://sites.kidrobot.com/munnyworld/ but let me assure you that these dolls are the shit!!! Google the word “Munny” and look at the images and you can see thousands of Munny dolls painted in a thousand different ways. They even sell them in art stores. I bought this doll at the start of my previous semester but never found the time to paint it until this project came along. I’m so happy with the result because I love all Flash memorabilia, and having one Flash doll made by me looks great in my collection. It even looks as if I had bought it in a store somewhere. He even has an attitude that says “who cares”. I love it ☺

FLASHY

Which brings me to my most ambitious painting to date. Maybe it’s not much but I put all my effort into this painting within the time constraint of sixteen hours divided in 4 or 5 sessions. This was a personal project and we could do an in-class painting of whatever we wanted. I wanted to do a portrait, mainly because I love drawing portraits but I had never painted one, and wanted to know how it would turn out. I had many prospects but at the end I decided to paint a good friend of mine (Xavier Salem) for three reasons: 1. He is an art enthusiast. 2. I’m sure he will hang it on a wall (he better!!!) and 3. He is a good friend of mine and I knew he would really appreciate it. So I started using a grid to get the proportions right and then started painting. It wasn’t as hard as I expected at first but then I started running into problems. The face was easy, and to my surprise I got the colors and gradations to my liking. The problem arose when I tried painting the background and the shirt. Because it is oil painting I ended up painting one color for the background and one for the shirt and it just didn’t work! I had to wait one week in order for it to dry and paint it all over it again. I was so frustrated that I took a picture of it and started experimenting with different colors in Photoshop. This is a good way to figure out colors before applying some real paint to the canvas. I really like this painting and my friend liked it too (so he says!), now my main problem is to take it with me back to Ecuador! It measures 24 x 30 inches. Any suggestions? Anyone???...

Dr. Salem

For my storytelling class we had to do a 4-page open comic, which means that we had to create the story from scratch with no creative constraint. Basically, do whatever you want but follow the proper narrative rules. I’m always thinking of new stories for my comics, but when I had to write one I was totally blank! I couldn’t come up with one decent story. It took me a while and I came up with an idea. It is very philosophical and probably I’m the only one who understands it, which cancels the intention of a proper story. Anyways, I hope you like it and if you understand it please post a comment because I really need some feedback on it. In my defense it was a difficult comic to draw but in the end I guess I did a good job. The main lesson I learned doing this comic is that it is better (at least for me) to lay out the entire page with vague drawings, in order to get the correct composition of each panel and in doing that, the whole page. Worry about the details later! In previous comics I started focusing on each panel and by the end of the page I was so tired that the composition ended up wrong. As Pia Guerra (famous comic artist of Y: The Last Man) once said: “Probably the hardest thing: avoid perfectionism. Yes, you want kick ass pages, but getting bogged down can kill the dynamism. If something isn't working, move on to the next panel or page. Always keep the flow going”. Wise words! The sad thing is that I read this a while back but only through the mystic road of practice and more practice is that you can really get this stuff.

Tao comic p.1

Tao comic p.2

Tao comic p.3

Tao comic p.4

Finally, we had to do a Minicomic! Sounds simple but it is a tedious work. Basically you have to do a comic on your own by making photocopies and creating your own cover. I really spent a lot of time on the cover, which I think it turned out pretty good (A Flash fact for comic fans, this was an homage for the cover of The Flash # 163 by Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella, August 1966). There was also an inside cover that complements with the cover. That was the fun part! What I really hated was designing the pages of the comic in InDesign, making copies of them and staple the pages together. Again, sounds simple enough, but I got a lot of problems with the process. Anyways, I hope I have saved enough dough in my life in order to make the investment to print a professional comic in order for me to not go through that process again. Being said that, I really like the concept of the minicomic, especially for students with a limited budget. It is a way to make your artwork, and yourself, known, and you can find a lot of gems in those regular printing paper copies. It’s like the independent movie industry for comics. I may be wrong but that is my educated conclusion on this matter.

The Journal Inside cover

Minicomic

The Journey minicomic cover

My final project for my Visual Computing class was to design a webpage. I’m sorry to say that I’m not going to upload it to the web anytime soon, but I’m planning to give that website to a designer in order to make it look more professional. I’ll post the link when it’s done! On my art history class we learned a lot of Neoclassicism and Romanticism and we even watched an interesting video about the French revolution! OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! It was a bloody mess but really interesting. Also, there was one session that the professor spent the entire class lecturing “us” how we can be better students and engage ourselves with the program. It was obviously not directed at me but I couldn’t help calculating in my head how much money cost me to hear the teacher preach. It was $200!!!

To wrap this up I will tell you what I think is the key to success. I’m not trying to tell you how to be successful (I don't think I've achieved that either), although the concept still applies. I’m trying to tell you how to achieve success from a specific task. The answer is simple enough: STICK TO IT! Be focused! Work hard! But most of all, stick to what you really want to achieve, and don’t let it go until you get it. It’s that simple!!! Don’t get discouraged nor distracted, you WILL eventually GET IT!

Godspeed,

José Luis Molestina

ARE WE THERE YET?

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 16:27:00 +0000

No, we’re not… And I’m feeling a bit pessimistic and kind of anxious. Let’s say I’m talking about the weather but you can easily interpret it any way you want, like a painting ☺ (I’ll talk about this further along in my art history section). Maybe spring is not coming to New York and will pass directly to summer without collecting $200. Sounds stupid, but I think I can get away with my theory. After all, in these times is amazing how many people believe in astonishingly weird things, like 2012. You know, I may be a little selfish, but I’m planning to get my degree that year. It will be a shame to get this epiphany so late (or so early, depending on whom I’m comparing to) in life in order to perish with the rest of the world. Which brings me to the good news. For all the people that are not familiar with my background, I got my business bachelor’s degree back in 2000. I was young and studied really hard back then. Ten years later I decided to walk a different path, so I applied to the School of Visual Arts to get a bachelor in fine arts majoring in cartooning. This career consists of four years: freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior, like most bachelors do. The good thing is that I got credited for my humanities classes that I took a decade ago. So I had a meeting with the chairman of cartooning Mr. Thomas Woodruff and he helped me to get some sophomore and junior classes together for next fall. He was totally unimpressed with my art though ☹ haha. After looking at my portfolio he questioned the fact that I could manage such workload. I guess my experience in business helped me in some way because I ended up negotiating and presented myself so sure of my abilities that I got exactly what I wanted, to finish my career in three years and to get my classes with the superstar teachers for the following year. It seems that I just have to finish two more years to get my degree; but wait a second… my real degree for me is my master degree, and I’m not talking about an MFA (which I may take by the way), but completing my challenge to draw for 10,000 hours. I guess it will take a long time but stick with me. I will not let you or myself down.

A friend of mine told me that my anecdotes about New York were not relevant for this blog. I obviously discussed with him the fact that this is MY blog and I just write what I feel like. I’m not just showing my artwork, I am telling a story. A story of a guy who thought there was nothing more out of life and found himself in a labyrinth of sorrow, boredom, and self pity. I found a cure, and if I could find a way to inject everybody with this epiphany I’d do it. Nevertheless, I found that writing this blog is the best way to express my feelings and hope for anyone to get on board the train on time (which is never late by the way). Still, I had to find a way to let myself, and my story known. I may have found the way, or at least a better way. I’ve started to follow a lot of unknown people from twitter who happens to share my passion in comics and art in general. I didn’t know if anybody was going to follow me back, but you know what, they did, at least some of them. I’m pretty grateful for the follow backs and for their selfless and inspiring comments about my experience. I have a greater audience and now I feel more pressure since I have to deliver a great entry for my blog. For the new ones, my grammar may not be excellent but what I say (or try to say) is totally honest. Thanks for following mates! (By the way, I’m not Irish I’m Ecuadorian. I just like the word “mates” ☺).

Also, another good news is that I got preapproved for my credits in art history that I was planning to take in the summer in Florence, Italy. I’m so excited for three reasons: 1. I’ll finally perfect my Italian language. 2. I’ll get ahead in my requirements and what better place to take art history than where the Renaissance took place, and finally 3. Back in 2000 when I got my degree in business, I planned a trip to Florence to study arts for once semester. It was an attempt to get my artistic impulses out of my system. After all, I haven’t yet taken the RED pill (which makes you embrace the sometimes painful truth of reality). I don’t know if it was cultural shock, or if I missed my girlfriend so much, or if I really was tired of studying and was eager to start earning some money in the real world, but I failed miserably, and it was one of those times that I just couldn’t complete my task. I felt sad and always regretted not staying for the whole program. I guess the joke is on me now. Anyways, what happens when you fall of a horse, you have to get back on! (Fun fact: Where was this phrase originated? I’ve no idea, but found hilarious one of the answers “From a very clumsy cowboy” ☺)

During my spring break I watched a very interesting video that I bought online. For anyone interested in drawing realistic portraits I highly recommend it. I’m talking about Darrel’ Tank “Five Pencil Method” www.fivepencilmethod.com. It is very instructional and his technique, although very slow, when mastered it, it has the feeling of the real thing. Also, if you were suffering from insomnious, I’d guarantee that after an hour you’d be asleep ;). Not because it’s not amazing what he teaches, but because he has a relaxing voice that combined with the sound of the pencil strokes it has a somniferous effect. I used this method in the following drawings but have not yet tried it in a portrait.

These drawings were part of my “journal project”. I have to finish 100 drawings with different papers and different materials. To tell you the truth I’ll be drawing just 50 because it is really time consuming due to my perfectionist nature. Also I’m repeating some materials but mixing them with different papers it still it shows a lot of variety within the drawings. Also I’m including a drawing of myself done with a Wacom tablet in Photoshop, and for all who knew me as an athlete and runner, yes, those are the right proportions. This life is for chubby people ;). Also, there is a photo of myself that I included in my presentation just to present photo paper. This project is helping me a lot to get more comfortable with getting the proportions more accurately and faster just by observation. These are other examples:

Now I’ll show you my in-class drawings. This was actually a model we drew last semester. If you can look for her picture in my previous entries you can find her. I hope she’s better depicted now, but I understand now that drawing good depends on your training, on your practicing, but also depends on how are you feeling that day. Sometimes you just can’t get it right, and sometimes you just do it beautiful and effortless. It’s like the chairman of the department told us in a presentation: “some people have the TOUCH to put things down in the paper, others do NOT, but that does not mean your work won’t be good” I guess he’s talking about a natural inborn talent. Well, I don’t believe in talent, maybe as a result to reading “Outliers” from Malcolm Gladwell (Highly recommended for people who wants to pursue their dreams no matter the odds). One drawing is done with my regular technique, and the other we just had to draw the contour line, but as my teacher puts it “draw as playing the violin, very delicate”.

Contour drawing

We haven’t done anything remarkable in my painting class. I guess because we have been painting an abstract with geometric figures. It is not my cup of tea. In any case, I painted it with acrylics and NO USE of tapes for the borderlines. The trick is to have patience. I hope you like it because I tell you the truth, I don’t. It’s OK but I think anyone could make this, especially if using Illustrator software. My next painting project is free and I know it will be very rewarding. I’m planning to mesmerize my audience (Are you called audience even though you don’t use your sense of hearing? Can you be called spectators? I don’t know, readers sound kind of simplistic! Must investigate).

Abstract Geometric Painting

COMICS!!! ☺ This is a sophomore class that I’m taking even though I’m a freshman as I write these words. I love it! We had two projects since my last post. The first one is about genre. At first I was so excited that I could illustrate a sci-fi comic, even a western, but you know what the professors assigned to me??? ROMANCE! I guess they did it because they were sure I wouldn’t go into that field without being assigned to me. Or maybe it was some cruel joke in order to see me like a cockroach struggling upside down (sounds better in Spanish!). Hey, I’m romantic enough, but I thought to create a romance story was beyond my capacities as a writer or plotter. Well, let me tell you that I’ve enjoyed it and I’m very happy with the results.

CONFLICT p. 1

CONFLICT p. 2

The next project had to be done in 3 hours. We are presented with a keyword at the beginning and in three ours top we have to structure the story by doing thumbnails, drawing with pencils, inking, and lettering. Believe me, it is a very intense project because you usually finish one complete page in one day, and that’s being generous. It looks somehow rushed but guess what, that’s what it was intended to look. The purpose for this project is to learn different approaches to get the job done, probably faster. This is based on the 24-hour comic, created by Scott Mccloud (guru of comics). The same principles apply and you have to finish it in a day. A lot of cartoonists have done it and it’s like a challenge you feel that you have to take. I will definitively do it one day (you see, ONE DAY hahaha I’m hilarious!!!). The keyword was MOON, and because my brother is a faithful believer of the Mayan prophecies of the end of the world at 2012, and every conspiracy theory people on YouTube are willing to promote, that was the first thing it came to my mind (Sad, isn’t it? ;)) I did it in four hours (Remember the part about me being honest).

If you like to draw and want to be involved in comics in any way, I’d highly recommend 3 books that you can buy now at Amazon: Making Comics by Scott Mccloud, Drawing Words and Writing Pictures by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, and Comics And Sequential Art by Will Eisner. You won’t regret it. Also, there are a lot of exercises and homework so you can get to practice in an instructional but fun way.

Let’s talk about computers!!! Mmm… let’s NOT!!! I love Photoshop but we are now learning InDesign, which I hate! Si I’m just going to show you my Han Solo colored using Photoshop like I promised in my last entry. Voila!

Han Solo painted in Photoshop

Finally, how to interpret a painting? Any way you want! But still you have to be aware of the key words to analyze or critique a painting: composition, figure, ground, line, color, intention, etc. What really amazes me is how easily art historians can find metaphors for everything. There is a particular painting named The House of Cards by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, which is shown below. Can you notice that there is an open drawer with two cards; one shows its front and the other its back. Well, my teacher told us that the one that is blank represents abstraction, and the other represents illusion. Really??? I couldn’t help asking how did he know that? Did the artist at one point said or wrote that? He got a little annoyed with my question and explained to us: “We don’t know what was the intention of the artist, what was in his mind is impossible to know for sure. What we know is what is in front of us in order to start a conversation. If we don’t do this, we may as well bury the painting!” I guess he’s kind of right, but at least I got him to admit that sometimes the art critiques are 75% bullshit.

House of Cards by Chardin

I think this is it for now! I hope you enjoyed the ride! And for the people who live in New York, please DON’T TEXT AND WALK, believe me, it’s as dangerous as texting and driving; mainly because who’s going to hit you is texting also… Watch out for the bikes too!!!

Godspeed,

José Luis

I'M A BREAKER!

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:17:00 +0000

“In order to break the rules, you should know them beforehand. If you don’t know them, it just does NOT count”.

You can say that I’m breaking into comics, or into the world of art, or into college, or even that I’m breaking into the city of New York, but most of all, right now I’m a breaker because I am in SPRING BREAK. I have a whole week’s vacation and as I’m writing these words I’m currently in Miami, resting, procrastinating, and recovering my strength in order to go back to New York for more. I’m pretty sure that some hardcore professor of yore had calculated the exact date for a student to get worn out and decided he or she needed a whole week’s off to regain his or her energy. KUDOS for him! Should have won a noble prize for this.

I’m so happy for not having to ride the subway for one week. Don’t get me wrong, I really love the fact of getting into a train and go anywhere in the city without the need of a car. I’m depending only on my own two legs and the best reason is that I don’t have to park my car!!! But you even need a break from good things, right? What never ceases to amaze me is that sometimes the driver just doesn’t know how to drive the train. I’m not sure if he’s in a rush or if he is not familiar with the pressure sensitivity of the accelerator, what I do know is that if I don’t get into the right position, I may end up in the floor. The worst thing of that, of course, is that you look like a damn tourist! For the next blog I will draw a sketch of this position, the way pros do it, with NO hands! ☺

I want to talk about hostility in the Big Apple. I know this city is well known for it, but it is amazing where you can find it. To help make my point, just figure myself walking down in a very crowded street. I was having a “profound” conversation with a classmate of mine when I slightly touched a blind woman while passing by. Of course I said "I’m sorry"… but she started yelling at me, insulting me. I repeated my sincere apology for invading her personal space (which is an issue I will have to get into in a future blog) but she just didn’t care and even made the assumption that I was distracted because I was talking with my cell phone, which I was clearly not! I had to stop paying attention to her and keep walking while she was still yelling at me. For crying out loud, I did NOT need that aggravation, and I don’t want to be insensitive, but I guess that walking in New York by yourself is not the best idea for a blind person. Still, if they have to do it, that deserves respect, but keep in mind that there is the slightest possibility that someone could bump into you. Well, you have to get used to the yelling and the insulting and it will surprise you who is willing to do it to you. Like one song says: “Live in New York once, but leave before it makes you hard”. I think I’m hard enough so I’ll blend in ;)

I’m still doing this project in my Drawing class where I have to draw 100 figures. I guess they won’t be a hundred at the end, but they will still be a lot. This time I’m including six more sketches all with different papers and different materials. What I wanted to emphasize is the noticeable difference between a pencil drawing and an inked drawing. Yes, I’m talking about Han Solo, and for the sci-fi (and probably pop culture) illiterates, he is a character from Star Wars and not a “cowboy” as some people has referred to my drawing! Next blog I’ll show you the finishing product by coloring it digitally. As you can see, pencil is softer than ink (although it was drawn with a 2H pencil, which is a hard pencil). With ink you have to compromise some value, which can make the figure flat. There are some techniques to give more volume and contour, but in this case this was as good as it got. Notice that I didn’t use any washed ink to layer some form like I did with the big man in my last entry.

HAN SOLO - 2H PENCIL

HAN SOLO - INK

Also, I'm inserting two more drawing I did in class. I don't really like them for many reasons, but maybe the most important are the evident outline of the figure and the wrong portraying of the hands and feet. I will try to fix these issues for my next entry.

Let's get into painting. I have a confession to make; I don't enjoy much painting, at least not in the conventional way. I think is messy, and I have probably said this before, but I thought then that I didn't like coloring and now I know that is not the case since I fell in love with digital painting. Still, I think I'm learning a lot, but I can clearly see that my drawing skills are far more advanced than my painting skills. A good friend of mine at first could not grasp the idea that some of my drawings were very illusionistic, very real, but my paintings seemed a bit cartoonish and nothing like a renaissance painting would look like (This is really REALLY hard to achieve). It's all about the process and, in my case, I'm very familiar with the use of pencils and values of grey. In painting there are an infinite amount of colors that either work or don't work together. The visually satisfying effect of combining similar, related elements (like adjacent colors on the color wheel) is called HARMONY. Ladies and gentlemen... the well-known COLOR WHEEL!

COLOR WHEEL

Ok, moving on! The next painting is the main work of the half semester. We've been working in this piece for hours and hours. I think at the third session I was already bored with the subject matter. We did have a model dressed up as a pimp, as you can notice. Well, I may as well show it to you in order to get some feedback, but for the record, I don't like it that much.

PIMP IN A CHEAP STRIP CLUB

I'm also inserting an assignment I had to make using different types of materials. In this case I used a clayboard for surface and I made the attempt to use color washed ink, which was a terrible idea. I got so frustrated that I ended up covering everything with acrylics. It took me around seven hours to finish this painting. I was really nervous about the outcome since this is a portrait of a good friend of mine, who's always very enthusiastic in noticing the mistakes in my pieces. He means well and he's building up my character because in this business you should be able to accept criticism. He really liked it (or so he says! :)) so I guess it was a complete success for a homework assignment.

THE MIGHTY KONO

For my storytelling class we had to make a NON-FICTION comic. Among the most popular types of non-fiction are: documentary, history, biography, and instructional. I chose to do an instructional comic since I have always enjoyed teaching. I had a blast making this two-page comic because I mixed three things I feel very passionate about: comics, running, and teaching. Also because a lot of friends in Ecuador are always asking me for help to run a marathon, and now I can just send this comic, so in the end it was a very good investment ;). I hope you enjoy it!!! And yes, that guy is supposed to be me :)

MARATHON COMIC PAGE 1

MARATHON COMIC PAGE 2

For anyone who is interested in the process of making comics I suggest this webpage http://dw-wp.com/, which I think covers maybe everything about it. It is also very fun and instructive.

In my Visual computing class we're learning about Photoshop. I love this software because you can manipulate every image in every way. It seems harder than it is, but then again, it is far more complex that I know. I really enjoy digital coloring, but using all the effects are also fun. I'm posting two assignments. One was an in-class assignment in which we had to recreate a recent dream we had using other elements in other photos. I end up with a giant octopus attacking some city... and what is André the Giant doing there?, who knows!?! The only thing we DO know is the fact that I'm more screwed up than I look! (Do NOT think about André the Giant, do NOT think about André the Giant!!! - Ghostbusters reference). Also, I did a Van Gogh painting using my Wacom tablet. A tablet is a device you use for drawing in Photoshop or any other painting software. You use a sensitive pen, in order to draw, paint, or select, onto a surface that is connected via USB to the computer. Because I'm so clever I had my computer connected to my 40 inch TV so now I can draw while in bed watching that huge screen. It's the best gadget I've gotten recently and the best part is that I don't have to use that tedious mouse for drawing anymore.

ANDRE THE GIANT AND GIANT OCTOPUS

VAN GOGH SELF-PORTRAIT (PHOTOSHOP)

I'm not going to talk about art history at all. I enjoy it but there's not much to talk about, so I'd rather show you a picture I took at the Metropolitan Museum. I don't know why but I found this scene truly fascinating and inspiring. I wish I could get to that age and be able to draw with that enthusiasm :)

Enough about me, let's talk about you!... Wait a minute; there is no FREAKING way to know about you if you don't post a comment, so I encourage you to do so! :).

Well, I guess I finished writing this entry. I'm really tired and I have to get back to the pool to get some sun and drink a beer while reading my book.

Godspeed,

José Luis

GETTING HARDER... GETTING BETTER!

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:40:00 +0000

Signal #Fail

It is, for real! Don’t get me wrong, I’m still happy and can’t wait to go to class to learn new things, but the classes are getting harder; and not only that, also the weather seems to be getting colder. I know it’s no surprise in these months, but the weather has been horrible. A local friend of mine told me that it hasn’t been a snowstorm this strong since 96. Still, I’m adapting to the classes and to the weather.

What really puts me in a bad mood is the noise; after all, New York is one of the noisiest cities in the world with Nagasaki and Tokyo. I don’t mind a little noise here and there, but the problem is that is keeping me up all night. You see, when is NOT that cold, I have to open the window a little to get some breeze because I have no control of the heat in the building. The problem when that happens is that the horns of the taxis start to honk, the sirens of police cars start to sound, people start to yell or insult at each other, and on top of that it seems there is a construction of an east to west subway station right down the building. Let me clarify that I am in the fifteenth floor and I still hear all of it. Total mayhem! Without the proper shutdown, the next day I’m a zombie, and being creative is really really hard in that state! I knew this was the city that never sleeps! Now I know why!

I’m learning Italian as I ride in the subway. I take about 30 minutes to get to the school and 30 minutes to get back, so I bought the Italian Pimsleur method (highly recommended) with 30-minute lessons. The only problem is that I have to repeat out loud what they are teaching me, so I do, and people just think I’m just another crazy person riding the subway! Prego, grazie, molto, arrivederci!

Ok, I have a lot of pieces to show you so I’ll talk about my classes. In Drawing I’ve been very busy. Of course we always draw nude figures in class but the homework have been very interesting. There is a personal project that I have to present at the end of the semester in which I decided to draw 100 human figures using different papers and different materials. I’m spending about 1 hour each and I’m really enjoying this project, the only problem is that 100 drawings equal 100 hours and it is taking me a lot of time to keep up the pace. Still, I’ll do my best to finish them since by then I’ll have 100 more hours in my training hours. If you’re new to the blog I’m counting the hours I spend drawing or painting until I get to 10,000 hours; which are the hours a person must invest in order to master a skill, hence the name of the blog! (Clever huh!) I’m not going to show you all my drawings but just some of my favorites.

For homework I had to do my self-portrait. I really enjoyed drawing this since I wanted to prove to myself that I have gotten better since I got here. I’ll show you another portrait of myself I did last year around May. It is not a fair comparison since when I drew it I was looking at myself in a mirror, whereas in my recent portrait I used a grid on a photograph. The use of a grid helps you a lot to assure the correct proportions are done accurately. For instance, by observation you can draw an excellent portrait, but if you put the nose just a little bit up, or maybe one eye is just one quarter of an inch in the wrong spot, then it is a different person altogether. It is no cheating! ☺ Lot’s of artists use this method for accuracy. Still, it took me around 8 hours to achieve that level of realism. The first one, although I also like it, it has its problems on proportions and shading, making it very flat but the good thing is I got my essence back then.

Recent self-portrait using grids

Last year self-portrait by observation

It seems that this month has been very egocentric. In my Painting class I had to paint two self-portraits, but here is the catch. The first one I had to paint myself as a dog. I had to identify myself with a dog, considering its personality and physical attributes. I really didn’t want to choose a Bulldog and believe me when I tell you that I did a lot of research with no success. I drew the dog first with pencil and then I panted some of my facial features in order to get a resemblance. My friend Christian said very proudly, and I quote: “spot on!” ☺ I didn’t know if I should feel insulted or highly praised.

The other homework was of myself screaming! You can create your own narrative as to why I’m screaming in terror! When we were doing the reviews of the pieces, a classmate of mine said that it looked like something from the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), I couldn’t help to ponder that there has to be a lot of junk in that museum ;). I went to the MOMA the following week with my drawing class and although there are a lot of great masterpieces, there are also a lot of stuff that really looks like junk. One thing I learned in that museum when we were watching a horrible dancing presentation that consisted on a girl crying (she was actually crying for 20 minutes non-stop) and then dancing like monkeys and falling to the ground (the artists were professional ballet dancers) is that in order to criticize that “play” I should be aware of my “anxiety level”. I was really anxious so I guess it did its part. Reflecting on it, I guess my screaming in terror could be related to that play, although it happened before. I guess I could use my artistic license to change the dates. Mmm… ok, stop tripping! Back to the blog…

I’m having so much fun in my Storytelling class. I don’t know, I really like my teachers because it seems they really enjoy teaching. Also because this is going to be my career so what they preach I want to know! I can really see myself improving, not just in the sense of drawing, but also in telling the story properly. We had to do an experimental comic that they call the “foldie” comic. It takes this name because the reader has to unfold it in order to read the story. I was hoping to upload a video showing the unfolding of it, but I can’t seem to do it with Blogspot (There has to be a way though). Still, I think you’ll get the idea.

Front page

Back page

The other comic we had to do is a “portrait comic” that consists in describing a person by drawing his life in some panels. It is not a story per se, although I managed to create some kind of narrative in order to explain the routine and habits of my dear cousin Daniel. One thing I have to add is that when you ink a comic you really have to breathe in and hold your breath in order to finish a difficult line or stroke. I guess I should be studying competitive apnea in order to gain some competitive advantage among my fellow artists!

Dana's Portrait: On his way to Comic-Con!

I feel that in my Art History class I’m taking private lessons. I guess at 18 years old it’s not a really cool subject because they just sleep through the class. I’m so into it that sometimes I have to look indifferent in order to belong ☺. Seriously, we’re covering the renaissance and it is so fascinating, especially since I stayed in Florence for two months back in 2000. Anyways, it is hilarious that the teacher thinks that I’m the only “kid” (I’m 33 for those who don’t know) who finds his lecturing amazingly fun!

Finally, my only new class this semester is Visual Computing, as you may recall I had Sculpture last year, but it was just a one-semester class. In this class I’m learning about Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and InDesign. These are just the basic software for artists. I really like Photoshop because I will color my comics using this software. (By the way, there are 256 grays in Photoshop. I mention this because I didn’t know how many grays were in my prior post). It is a painfully long class but I need to learn since all my classmates (in this class they also sleep) were born with these softwares installed in their brains! I am the DOS and Basic generation of 96! The second she knew I was 33 she started explaining to the class what a Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, and Terabyte were. I was a little ashamed because I knew this was for my benefit. I did a pack of cards for Illustrator and a fast painted sketch of myself in Photoshop.

I’m going to tell you something that happened to me. I was in the subway when I saw a woman knitting. It seemed so amazingly hard the way she moved her knitting needles in order to create patterns. I though to myself: “that is way too hard, I could never do that”. But then I realized that I have never even tried it (I don’t want to but I hope you get my point). So the main question is: Who said you can’t do anything? Maybe you did, maybe the people around you told you that, or maybe you feel as it is impossible and there is absolutely no way you may be able to do it. I’m here to tell you “You CAN do it”. Whatever the hell you’re thinking, you can and by God you SHOULD do it. The second your defense mechanism starts filling your brain with nonsense and lame excuses just think that you really CAN. For now just TRUST ME and DO IT! If you want to be a space cowboy… well, it may be hard, but there is no law against studying aerodynamics and while in outer space putting on a cowboy hat and yelling “yee-haw” while avoiding some asteroids. Life exists so you can take advantage of it all, the pursuit of happiness is just another way of saying live up to your dreams because they CAN and they WILL become possible if you really want them to. I’m telling you this by experience, not a year ago I was thinking that this path was impossible for me, and here I am, now, sometimes afraid, sometimes challenged, but living my own version of the “space cowboy” in me. I thought to end this entry with some positive attitude. I guess 10 years ago I would have loved that somebody told me this with utmost confidence.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Godspeed,

José Luis

Pd.- I'm not the only artist in the family. Here I'm attaching a picture of a stop motion story about my grandfather done by my lovely cousin Cassandra! I know that in the future we'll have mutual projects! :)

BACK TO SCHOOL!

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 15:45:00 +0000

I must admit that I have fallen behind on my entries. I can always blame the holidays! The day I finished classes I stepped on a plane and went back home to Guayaquil, Ecuador. For those who don't know where it is, it's in South America, and yes, we have everything the first world has (You have no idea how many times I've had to explain that I do not live in the jungle). Ok, maybe not everything, but we do have clothes, technology, Internet, and a government, kinda. Still, it is a third world country and I couldn't love it more. It is after all, my home, and I was so happy to get the chance to spend time with my family and friends, to eat its exquisite food, and to laugh hilariously on the things that will never change over there. There was some resistance dressed up as inconveniences though, like an army of red blood cells fighting an infection and telling me to go away, but I'm not going to get into details because this is not a whiner's blog, this is an ARTIST's blog, and the smiles on my nephews faces on Sunday morning can compensate for any problem that could've happened to me. Still, like I said, I had an excellent time and the most difficult part as I said in my first entry is saying goodbye, again. I can man up and hide my tears but I know I'm falling apart at that time.

Still whining I guess! Well, not anymore because I have GREAT news!!! I received my grades and they were as I expected (humbly speaking, of course). I have 5 As and 1 A+, but it is amazing how people always want more after they've achieved something, myself included. The minute I watched my grades online I was so excited that I sent a picture of my grades to everybody. My family and friends were so proud and at that moment I was very very fulfilled. At last, my efforts could be measured, and also, based on that effort, now I know exactly what I should do to get As in the following semesters. After five minutes I couldn't help to wonder why didn't I get A+ on all the classes. I know my comment sounds cocky, but I don't mean it that way, it's just that I gave my all out effort in this semester and I thought I gave my 100%, but I guess it wasn't enough! I have to work on that! In any case, it is a perfect score and I dedicate this to my family, friends, and faithful readers. I know it is not a Nobel Prize but let me enjoy this moment :)

I guess New York was broken hearted with my absence because the minute I got here she was very cold! Ok, I admit it was a TERRIBLE joke, but even Conan O'Brien has bad material from time to time, why can he get away with it and not me? Bottom line, this city is way too cold, but I'm getting used to it. It is snowing as I write this entry (Of course I have the heat on and I am very comfortable in my apartment ;)). Everybody loves snow, at least the people who is not victimized by it. I know it looks lovely, at least for a while, because afterwards every street is a slippery trap and all the white snow turns into a black disgusting pile of wet dirt! It's not that I hate it, it is just problematic, specially when you are late for painting class and you're running with your case of brushes and paints and a 5 feet canvas and suddenly you fall down in the middle of the street just when the red hand of the traffic is blinking. Now you can see my aversion to snow!

Another factor that is driving me crazy is that damn static. I'm talking about the infamous electrical charge that occurs when, in cold weather, you touch something, or anything (I'm not into physics so I have no idea) and you get an electrical discharge (You know what I'm talking about, it is quite impossible to not have done this to your little brother or sister). Why happens on cold weather you ask? Because of low humidity on the air! (Thanks Internet, I guess if you were wondering about it you could easily have done what I already did, but you didn't so I taught you a new thing today). There is no place devoid of that static, I touch a lamp OUCH! I touch the door handle OUCH! I'm even afraid to touch myself (Ok, that sounded very creepy).

Moving on... I don't have a lot of drawings or paintings because I've been away for 2 weeks for the holidays, and somehow my inspiration stays here in New York. This proves my theory that surroundings dictates the way we behave, and maybe I'll get more in to that in my next entry. Nevertheless, I did some sketches while I was in Guayaquil. They are not finished pieces; they were simple sketches that took me one hour each. A sketch should not be evaluated or judged, because it is merely a sketch. You like something and you do it fast in order to learn more about the properties of the subject or model. In any case, the first drawing is of my cousin Natacha and I love this photo that my mother took of her on our trip to Bermudas a year ago. I promised her that I was going to draw her the real deal! She couldn't help to say to me that I've drawn her fat, which is not the case, but I'll lose a couple of pounds from her next time ;) Love you Nats! Also, notice the blue pencil? I've become addicted to sketch with blue pencil because everything looks so clean; the only problem is that you can't erase it properly if you want to.

The second sketch is from Fidel Castro, and before anybody starts trying to figure out my connection to Correa (Ecuadorian president, who is believed to follow in Chavez and Castro's footsteps) let me disappoint you and tell you that I was bored to death at the airport, and hence, drew his face from a Vistazo magazine that I've found laying around. Still, I think it turned out pretty well for a sketch.

I must admit that I have tonal love. Tonality is the overall color effect of hue and value. Often one dominating hue is employed in various shades and values. I am addicted to tonal ranges, especially in grayscale. I have no idea why I prefer something in various tones of grey rather than red, or blue for that matter. I must really make a thorough examination of why this particular preference of mine, but the truth is that I love the many colors that the grey can give me. Of course, any color can provide this, but the neutrality of the grey, mixed with some blacks and whites... I don't know! it is mesmerizing! My next drawing was an in class work, so it is just a dressed up model with transparent clothes.

Finally, I was asked to draw a fruit, and based on the qualities of that fruit to draw a background. I decided to draw a pineapple. I asked my fellow twitter followers and they gave me some clever ideas, but somehow I couldn't let myself draw Spongebob's house! Still, thanks for the recommendations! I ended up drawing a pineapple lost in a dry land. The thing that I enjoyed the most in this piece is that I got out from my comfort zone. I chose another color of paper and worked only with graphite, charcoal, sanguine and sepia pencils. I did it in around 3 hours.

The next time I write I'll be sure to have more work to show. I miss my family way too much but on the other hand I'm glad to be back to do what I love. I do this not only for me, you know! I have already spent 300 hours drawing and painting and it seems a lot, but still 9700 hours to go!

For the aspiring painters, please, wash your hands BEFORE and after going to the bathroom, I preach only by experience.

Godspeed,

José Luis

9,700 hours to master art!!!

IT'S A WRAP!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jo) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:30:00 +0000

It's a wrap... or maybe it's a burrito from Chipotle. I have eaten so much burrito that I know all the perfect combinations depending on my mood. Well, they usually involve steak, spice, sour cream, cheese, rice, pinto beans and A LOT of Guacamole... and that is my healthy meal. But I'm not going to delve on my eating habits, at least not on this entry. The reason it is a wrap is because the semester is over. Sure, I have to be back in 2 weeks in order to start the second semester, but the good thing is that now I can assess my efforts! The problem with art courses is that the teachers rarely give you a grade. It is much more complicated than that, and the reason is that they have to measure improvement, technique, ability to comprehend the material, attendance, and the infamous participation. I know by fact that participation is not my strongest suit, sometimes because I just don't feel like saying anything, other times because I don't feel comfortable making a critique about my classmates works. Still, I know that you need to participate to improve the dynamic of the class, but at my age I simply don't care, I just want to learn what I am paying for. Also, art students improve at their own pace and the teachers have to measure that! I've seen masterpieces from some classmates and horrible horrible artwork from others! Oh the HORROR!!! I'm glad to say that I am above average but my weaknesses are other man's (or woman's) strength! In any case, I would expect, based on my effort, that I get A in all my subjects, but that is what I don't know yet. Still, If I get a B I will now know that I have to put more effort in that class, but seriously, more??? I guess I could push it a little more but then I would have absolutely NO LIFE outside my drawing table or my easel!

Which painfully reminds me of an anecdote that happened to me in a social event. I was in a wedding and an acquaintance (if this wouldn't have happened maybe I would refer to him as "a friend") asked me the typical "fill in the uncomfortable silence" question: What are you up to? I have to admit that I always say that I am studying art (and just ART), and based on their response or attitude towards my answer I can expand it to illustration. If they're still getting the idea and want more I will proudly say that my major is cartooning. Still want more clarification? My final answer: "Comics". To tell you the truth, when someone do not understand they stop at my first answer, but sometimes curiosity is an extreme impulse and when they get to the comics part they just get lost in translation. I told this acquaintance of mine that my plan is to study 2 years for the Bachelor in Fine Arts (BFA), 2 years for the Master in Fine Arts (MFA), and finally 1 more year as an Optional Practical Training (OPT) in which I can work in the United States. He thought he understood and replied with this: "Oh, so you are taking 5 years off!" Let me say upfront that this is an insulting remark and you should probably say it, in any situation, at your own risk! Still, I didn't succumb to my animalistic nature and like a passive aggressive yet sarcastic adult I let it go! I know most of the people don't understand what the hell I'm doing and believe me, if I would tell what I'm doing to myself from six years ago maybe I would say "you are crazy", but to endure what I'm going through to be rewarded with that comment it is just unfair. Like one good friend said to me "get used to this because this will happen from now on until the day you die". Ok, I'm going to change the subject because thinking about it just boils my blood up too much and although I can accept criticism very well I know I'm not mature enough to respond well to those derogatory comments.

New York is freezing, and it's supposed to get worse in the next couple of months. If anything is telling me to quit this challenge is that, but just for a second when I'm clenching my teeth on a windy corner waiting for the sign to change. I'm getting prepared because no matter what I will finish my career. Still, when I upgrade my wardrobe with a new fluffy jacket the temperature just happens to drop. It seems that I will always be cold or that I'm too stubborn to wear my heavy-duty jacket. My logic is that if I use that jacket now, then in February I should get what? An Eskimo suit? Now you see, my plan is to get acclimated to this horrendous weather! UNAGI (a state of total awareness in a highly disciplined form of Kah Rah Tehy, or Ross, who cares!) I have also perfected my skill of walking looking down due to the cold. My first instinct is to hide my face in the jacket just like a turtle. Because you're freezing you don't really care what you hit as long it's not a speeding car. You have absolutely no idea how many times I have played chicken with people walking, and sometimes they just DON'T GET OUT OF THE WAY either!!!

Ok, ready to see some artwork? I'd really like more PARTICIPATION from my readers!!! Anything you like to say will really help me a lot to improve. Also, if you can forward this blog it will be greatly appreciated. Damn! I'm falling again to marketing and advertising!!! No, this is about art and thou shall get ART! Beginner's art, but art nonetheless!

Let's start with my favorite class, that is, drawing! I have to admit that even I can see the progress in these 4 months. Sometimes it's very frustrating, because unlike any other class or activity in art, you can wake up one day and be shaky or tired and not being able to draw anything, at least compared to your own standards. When this started to happen I knew for a fact that something was messing up with my abilities. It could be anything actually and I did have very bad weeks but it is fair to say that as I write I have my superpowers back! Unless I had too much to drink the day before. Drawing with hangover is just way too hard, but I guess I even have to master that skill ;) I will begin showing 3 drawings that I made in-class. 1) The drunken clown. He was a model that I think is kind of bored with modeling because the second he laid down he put a red ball over his nose and said to us "imagine myself as a drunken clown" PERV! I think that is how he gets his kicks! 2) Teddy Bear Girl. This was a female model, obviously, which happened to bring a teddy bear! I have no idea why they are bringing these gadgets! This was made with ink, not happy with the result of inking my pencils. 3) Shy girl. I drew her from behind because I was too lazy to change my spot on the studio. Still, I really liked how this one turned out. Also we had a little bit more time with this one than usual.

For homework I had to copy a drawing or a painting from a famous painter. The teacher gave us a list and I chose Van Gogh out of those artists. Another homework was to draw the texture of a fruit, and I think I really nailed it this time. You can even see the texture of the rotten orange. Yes, I don't know why I buy fruit if I don't eat it, EVER!

Also I wanted to show you what I do on my spare time. This is an independent study because a fine arts class (like the foundation drawing I am taking) do NOT teach you any rules, you just have to learn from observation. I mean, it's fine, but I need more. I know now that in my second year I will be getting more rules on proportion, perspective, shading, etc. This is from a video tutorial I am taking at home and it's called "The Structure of Man". These are my notes on all the rules to make a skull! NERD!

In my painting class we had to learn to paint a human body. So we finally got our own model in the painting studio. This was done in oil on canvas and took us a lot of hours to finish. I did two paintings, one of her face and another one of her torso. The face was done first and if you look closely on the second painting, you can notice the improvement of the flesh tones. She is not as skinny as it looks!

I've had tons of homework involving human forms, but to simplify I will add just two of them. One was of a hand and its shadow. The shadow was supposed to be fantasy. The other project was to draw our self-portrait using our fingers, NO BRUSHES! This is a tedious work and I can just imagine how happy I would have been with the result if I'd used at least one brush.

In my storytelling class we had to draw a 6-page comic. I can't imagine how many times I have read comics in 15 minutes, which usually contains 22 pages, and never considered how long it takes to make each page. Of course I'm slow because I don't draw as a professional, but I can only guess that when I draw better I will be doing more complicated panels so the time will be practically the same, or even more. I spent 54 hours doing this 6-page comic from thumbnails to inking. To best clarify the process, it is divided in 4 parts:

Thumbnails. - Original layout of the panels done in a loose but somehow comprehensive way. I spent 10 hours doing this, but mainly because I had to corrected it and do it all over again, so I would assume that it takes around 5 hours to create the thumbnails of a 6-page comic. This does not contain the script. In this case, the script was written by me, but because it falls more on the writing domain I did not included it in this breakdown.
Pencilling. - The most fan part of it all. This is when you actually draw with hard pencils (I use 3H). It could get very frustrating specially when you are drawing the details of the background, the perspective, and camera angles. I drew some pages drinking beer and they turned out much better. I spent 21 hours drawing. Not all of them in one sitting though.
Lettering. - This is a very slow process and not very rewarding, but you have to do it. It took me about 7 hours to draw the word balloons and write in the dialogue.
Inking. - This is when you have to apply indian ink to your pencils. It is a long process and you tend to mess up a lot! There is nothing more aggravating than watching a drop of ink stains your page. You can correct it but it will never be a virgin page anymore. It took me as long as 16 hours to finish the job. Also, Drinking & Inking, not a good idea!

To finish the process of creating comics you need to color it, and print it. It is fair to say that if you work for big companies like DC Comics or Marvel Comics you just have to do your thumbnails and your pencilling, because they have professional inkers (who could diminish or enhance your artwork), letterers, and colorists.

I will include 2 pages of my 6-page comic titled "Good Night Ops", and along with them I'm attaching the thumbnail version for you to get a clear idea of the process.

Finally, for my sculpture class, like always I have very little to say about it because it is just so damn weird. Still, I had an outside project that my brother did for me. He is, in many ways, more creative than I am, and I was really fed up with other projects. The project was to make something creative but in an incremental approach, in other words, adding more stuff to the artwork. The end result was "paper cuts", a narrative story of the people from Paper Town made exclusively with paper! (The background was made in Photoshop, obviously) An original artwork by Oswaldo Molestina. His drawing skills are kind of basic and that is what makes it so fun and great! Thanks Ovadi! :)

The last project was to build something in a box! Weird! and at the end it looked like a Voodoo totem or something like that. Still, it contains every little thing that I found on my apartment, but it is fair to say that a classmate named Kellsey gave 50% of her junk to me. Thanks!!! (I know! I'm slacking in this class!)

I know this has been a LONG entry, and I have to apologize for that. In the foreseeable future I will try to make them shorter. Specially since it seems that a good friend of mine doesn't have the time to read all of it, so if he ever gets to this part of the blog he just have to text me the phrase "Long live the Flash" and prove me wrong.

Remember that: "hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning", and also "forget insults and only remember compliments, but if you succeed in this... please tell me how!"

Happy holidays and godspeed,

José Luis