Melon Head

I really like this small painting I did over Summer of Art. My students went grocery shopping and bought a watermelon. I said they were all melon heads for buying such a large one and not eating even half of it. By the way they named the melon Jackie. Jackie went to waste. I guess he will live on in the painting.

Summer contuined

INTERNSHIPS:

This Summer has been really crazy working at one time four jobs. At one point I was working for gallery, a marketing firm, school and corporate.

GUESS?: 

it was a good opportunity to see how fast pace things move and what exactly type of work they do. It was interesting because all of the guidelines are figured out for you. How big this logo is allowed to look on mailers versus a catalogue or what color palette you can use of GbyGUESS line versus the Marciano by GUESS. Since GUESS is an international corporation you had to be careful with using the guidelines versus GUESS China to GUESS Paris etc. It was nice working in the advertisement department. I worked for the graphic department and modeling area. I was scheduling shoots, picking models, preparing the clothes etc. In the graphic dept I got to make mailers, I worked on an ad the NY Times, giftcards, loyalty cards and other small projects. As helpful as the job was it was pretty intense. No one really talked to each other. It was all business.

Here is one of the designs I summit ed to be turned into a gift card. There is a G charm that is diacutted in the white circle area.

This was one of the catalogues I got to go on the print check for. Print checks are the best.

PROMTIONS GROUP WEST:

A marketing firm in Venice that helps to promote clients receive more awareness about their product. We do all of their identity (business cards, logos, websites, etc.) I collaborated with Sean on a project for Tarah Smith bags. It was fun working at the marketing firm because I strictly worked as a commercial illustrator. I did a lot of sketching and painting. On the Tarah Smith bag we talked about how she wanted to change her image. Her old image was extremely corporate and so what we wanted to do was make her image more bohemian and natural. Sean designed a lot of the insides and I painted a lot of images for her website, look book, pamphlets, website. There were other projects but this was my favorite one. Special thanks to In and Out. I stole all their salt to use on the watercolor.

WEBSITE WITH MY WATERCOLORS:

http://www.ihcagency.com/TS_Site/

Summer

This is a painting of my dad and his favorite food in the entire world. Grilled cheese sandwich with a bowl of tomato soup. I wanted to emphasize that my dad is not asian but he does have those crazy eyebrows. 
Banana Popsicles are delicious

Geisha

My latest digital painting was based off the book Memoirs of a Geisha. The setting takes place inside of a tea house. I still have a couple of things I want to do to finish it but it is almost there. 

Spring Break

FROSHO:

Over the last few weeks I have been having a lot of fun sketching on post it notes. It is a really nice size to just make lines and small images. The post it notes inspired me to create a small series of paintings entitled "frosho". 

The paintings are based of types of people who would haveAfros. I thought about using icon people such as Richard Simmons but it just seemed to corny. The painting of the boy with the lady bug is based off of my dad. During break I found a picture of my dad from the 70s. He was a proud white man with an Afro with bell bottoms and aVolkswagen beetle covered in ladybugs. 

Anger

I did this painting a couple of weeks ago. I painted out of frustration because I am getting a little stressed out with the way my work has been evolving. I am trying to do work with a more limited and less saturated color pallet. 

Choi Painting Class

PHOTOSHOP:

Photoshop is such a great tool to edit your work, so use it to your advantage. I learned a lot in this painting. Even though I was using the original photo and my sketch to outline the piece, doing the forgery was pretty difficult. I mostly experiemented with contrast, curves, levels, color balance, masks and textures.

MIDDLE OF COMPLETION:

In the fourth step my I had to change the nose because I describing the nose as having a flat plane. So I fixed it in the fifth step making it appear more rounded out. I had to also fix the eyes because I made the right eye appear more round than it was so I elongated the lid. The left eye was to low so I raised its placement.

STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY:

We also discussed the importance of having a collection of stock textures to add to your paintings. Photoshop is such a great tool to edit your work, so use it to your advantage. I learned a lot in this painting. Even though I was using the original photo and my sketch to outline the piece, doing the forgery was pretty difficult. Since this study was a paint by numbers painting it gave me room to experiment with contrast, curves, levels, color balance, masks and textures.