Thursday, April 24, 2008

Ileana Palomares- snowboard design


Here are the two sides of the snowboard I designed for Salomon Snowboards. I wanted the design to be very simple, yet playful and colorful, making the boards have a very modern and contemporary design.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Bar Scene



This illustration is for "Divan Days" by Michael Davidson.
[Pen and ink]

Fish Sequence



This is a sequence that I drew in pencil and colored digitally.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Nude in Watercolor Landscape #2


Another nude in a watercolor landscape. The colors are very different in this post, the figure is much darker in the print, but I love what happened by accident.

Nude in Watercolor Landscape


My first attempt at using the watercolor backgrounds with my nude figures. I used a black outline so that the figure will stand out. The figure is also in transparency so that she becomes a part of the landscape, as if lost in her own movement.

Watercolors



Here are some watercolors I worked on that I have incorporated into the backgrounds of my figures.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Longivia

Longivia - Work in Progress, Guess what this "might" be about. - Rich Mack

David's Seed

David's Seed - mixed media poster - Rich Mack

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Another work in progress


Right now I'm working on illustrating my nudes, but I've also begun to work on patterns and new backgrounds painted with watercolors. I would like to somehow incorporate these patterns into the work, but I'm still resolving that aspect. But for now, here is a new work in progress.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Cesar Santalo Collage


My portraits are comprised of collage materials such as magazines, newspaper pictures, personal photographs and cloth glued to wood, cardboard and paper. I begin by laying in the dark tonalities with acrylic paint or garbage bags. I then place cutout pieces from magazines which are usually the mid-tones and highlights of the portrait. By working from the inside out, I am never really sure how big my work will be. Pieces of glued paper surfaces are added to enlarge the canvas size. Rough and cutout edges are typical of my work. Many of my portraits contain small cutout pictures of celebrities such as: Oprah Winfrey, Marilyn Monroe, Janet Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Jennifer Lopez, Puff Daddy and Elizabeth Taylor.


The true essence of my work is to be able to view recognizable objects and pictures up close. Then as you step back the hue and tone of each cutout picture fuses to create a harmonious pictorial representation of a person. This visual experience is similar to the recent paintings of Chuck Close who uses large circular brush strokes of color in his portraiture. Now the beauty lies in extinguishing the power of these content ridden images from magazines transforming them into pure color and tone from a distance. Unlike Close, my work is more painterly than photographic from a distance. Using strong images such as famous people and branded products helps me in creating this two world experience of near and far viewing. The viewer would be more impacted if a recognizable image transformed into nothing more than perceived color from a distance (Now you see it, now you don't). This would result in a greater visual dichotomy.


Another of my influences is Romaire Beardon, who depicted the daily lives of the people of Harlem where he lived. Beardon's approach to depicting humanity and character has always been a great inspiration to me. Beardon would use cut-out faces from magazines and use the literal interpretation of them; a face became a face. Unlike Beardon, I try to use that same face to represent color on a figure. The images, like bottles, watches and people then become hidden in their new role as color. At the same time the viewer is aware these colors are really cut pieces from magazines not painted color. Through the use of these elements I try to demonstrate how the smallest most insignificant picture, ad, or product influences us on a conscious and subconscious level. Placing a picture from a Hip Hop magazine next to a picture from Time magazine creates a dialogue between the two cutout pieces.


Regardless of our economic, political and ethnic background, we are surrounded by similar visual stimuli on a daily basis. This is prevalent in today's economic wave of globalism which increases connectivity and interdependence of the world's markets and businesses. Similar images and subject matter can be used to paint the portraits of people from all walks of life. This visual freedom allows me to make the collage more dynamic because of the contrasting textures, colors and subject matters.

CESAR SANTALO



Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Paper bag?



My favorite things to design are posters.
I wanted this to look like it was silkscreened.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Doodles





Here are some drawings I did...mostly doodles that I would like to incorporate into my work somehow. My favorite so far are the scales (black and silver watercolor), which are influenced by my alias "SirenMelusine" or "Siren Designs" referencing my favorite stories of mermaids from my childhood. The serpentine forms (black charcoal and black watercolor) also reference mermaid tails, but I'd like to keep working and refining on those shapes. The second drawing is an experiment of line, using charcoal. I'd like to try this one out using watercolors. More coming!

Monday, April 7, 2008

Work in Progress


This is a work in progress. I'm trying to show the female form in motion. In this image she is jumping up into the hair, with hair flailing, unaware of any audience. I'm still working on the background, which was put on hold due to my entire weekend being bedridden thanks to a terrible cold.

China

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This poster is the first of the series "A Woman's World". All posters are similar in illustrative style and portray the victim as the main subject, with the countries flag in the background. My goal was to make the posters both horrifying and beautiful.
This poster is a response to China's gender selection. Because boys are so much more desirable than girls in a country were couple's can only have one child, they are aborting female fetuses and even going so far as killing the newborns upon birth. The sentence under the header reads, "over the last two years, more than 3,000 babies have been murdered because they were female."

USA

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This poster is the second of the series, and is a response to the domestic violence that women suffer in this country. I had her wear a bath towel to show that her attacker isn't a stranger, it's someone of confidence. The line under the header reads, "every year a minimum of 572,000 women report violent attacks by their male partners."

India

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This poster, which is the third in the series, is a response to the brides of India that have been set on fire due to their husband's greed. I wanted to show her distracted happiness and his inert cruelty by engaging the viewer and displaying the lighter in his pocket. The line under the header reads,"annually, over 20,000 women are set on fire when their husbands are dissatisfied with their dowries."

Iran

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This poster is the fourth in the series, and is a response to the genital mutilation that is a popular custom among the radical muslims in Iran. The procedure involves removing the woman's clitoris and nearly sowing her labias shut, ensuring her libido will not disgrace the family's honor. The sentence under the heading reads, " a hundred million girls and women alive today are maimed by some form of genital mutilation."

South Africa

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This is the last and possibly most shocking piece in the "A Woman's World" series. I was enraged by the ideology that men in Africa believed that raping a virgin would cure them of AIDS. The line under the heading reads, "One female is raped every 26 seconds. One in four is a young girl or an infant."

PowerGirl Beautifully Stuns the Bougainvillea

Mixed Media Poster. Work in progress. I became very interested in working with different view points. Most of what I have done in the past has been from a straight on angle. This piece was challenging to make, but very inspiring for future work. - Rich Mack

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Valentine

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In this piece I was inspired to create a shape (in this case a heart) using another simple shape.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Arroyo Seco, Los Angeles


Alex Poli, a graffiti artist "Man one" organized the public art project on a concrete canyon where a tributary, Arroyo Seco, meets the waterway. Los Angeles. AP photo D. Dovarganes

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

this was one of the first prints from a copper plate etching i did last week. since printing this, i have added some aquatint to the background and the tree top, which would be all good except that i lost a lot of detail in the soft ground impression inside the top of the tree. i was pretty upset about that because now i have to do it all over again and it will be very dark, but i'll still try. the newer version of it will be shown in the student exhibition at the lowe this year even though i consider it a work in progress still. what do you all think of it and should i keep working?


Nude Composition in Motion: Work in Progress
Looking at natural motion inspired by modern dance (Paul Taylor)
Bianca LondoƱo


Scholarly Slave Woman Holding Ridiculous Pose
Poster creating again from various scans and a few drawings.
Work in Progress will change, check back for updates. - Rich Mack




Tea Girl Pensively Waiting Deliciously
Poster created from drawings and scans from found
objects. Work in Progress, check back for updates. - Rich Mack