Category: IllustrationPage 1 of 2
In the strangest year in my lifetime, I figured it was fitting to wrap it up with a few oddities that are changes in perspective.
While I’ve been home I’ve been digging much more into the art materials I’d accumulated. I realized I could carry this mat around as a kind of window to change my view of my indoor environment.
This is for being Black, and simply asking to live.
This is for Black women, silenced, “too loud” to laugh.
This is for Black trans women, who risk so much to love.
An unexpected human pause for Earth Day’s 50th anniversary is giving us a view we don’t often see.
These themes emerged while I was creating new giftable art for the annual HARK! holiday show and sale at Kaleid Gallery.
This was a quick piece done for an exhibit at Works/San José show, Unity In Diversity. This theme relates to a graphic design project by San Jose State BFA student Javier Yep in 2017 that included a “unity in diversity” flag.
These two are random sketches based on a couple of interesting frames I found. I started with the owlish mask of what became the first weary warrior woman.
It’s been a little while since I’ve drawn in a comic style, so I decided to go for one of my standbys: Flaming Carrot.
When I get stuck, I’ll paint or draw food. It’s an easy way to get past my indecision and get right to the craft of it, and often gives me an opportunity to try out new techniques, patterns, or textures.
Last one in the Harvest series skews tropical with papayas. This ended up being both the biggest fruits (only four on here) with the smallest details (little black seeds).
3rd of 4 in the Harvest series – avocados, cut open to show off the green insides and shiny pits.
Another fruit in the Harvest series – this time, a little pile of blueberries. This one’s more of an experiment in subtle patterns within a dense texture.
Here’s a bright little drawing of persimmons from memory. I drew this with Prismacolor pencils to experiment with blending techniques to replicate the muted sheen on the fruit.
I used the visual language of the intertitles from a silent movie, The Birth of a Nation, for two reasons: because of its melodramatic emoting, and because of its role as white supremacist propaganda.
Not too much story on these; I mostly picked it as an excuse to draw different people and to think through the meaning of tattoos.
I just finished hanging a dozen pieces of art at Bel Bacio coffee shop in San Jose’s Little Italy.
These frames reminded me of the soot around a fireplace so I created these three illustrations of shadow puppets.
Mixing is the last of seven technologies I’ve explored in Prior Art: analog media manipulation and vintage virtual reality.
Reel-to-Reel is the sixth of seven technologies I’ve explored in Prior Art: analog media manipulation and vintage virtual reality.
Transfers are the fifth of seven technologies I’ve explored in Prior Art: analog media manipulation and vintage virtual reality.