Lion King

Ok, I worked on this in parts. I had the idea for the lion and expanded on it. I would love to illustrate a children's book one day. That little guy reading the scroll is suppose to be a gazelle.

Black Lines or No Black Lines

"Baseball Kid" artbyangel.com

"Running Elephant" cartoon from 2009

Ok, lately I've been experimenting with different painting techniques in photoshop. I've been separating my ink and color layer to get a cleaner look. My old drawings like the running elephant above had all these horrible black lines around them. This "Baseball Kid" Cartoon I painted recently has a more appealing look without those black lines. I feel like I'm improving with every drawing. Children's book illustrator here I come.

Great Digital Painting Website Ctrl + Paint

I found this fantastic digital painting website that goes over some wonderful tutorials for beginners. They have a store of videos that are incredibly priced. If you have ever been interested in illustration and digital painting in photoshop, you have to check this out.

Importance of Figure Drawing for the Artist

This semester I have been taking a figure drawing class with a wonderful professor at Miami Dade College; Jennifer Basile, MFA. I've really gained an appreciation for the importance of first mastering human anatomy before being able to draw from imagination. I'm trying to expand my "visual vocabulary" Any great cartoonist, illustrator or animator first starts with mastering the human figure. You can't break the rules in art until you know them. The quick gesture drawings I've been doing have really helped me to quickly capture the figures pose and action in under a minute. We've been mostly drawing in charcoal, but I've also experimented with Conte Crayon, which I really liked. I've posted a 40 minute drawing I did here in early March. This is a good example of caputring the figure, the lighting and background. I have more examples on my website. I've also worked on my figure drawing a lot in my sketch book and I think it shows in my model drawings. I'm going to continue attending open figure drawing sessions after the class is over. One that looks pretty affordable is below on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at Romero Hidalgo Artists' Studios.

Romero Hidalgo Artists' Studios
http://www.romerohidalgostudios.com/

4241 SW 75 Ave.
Miami FL 33155
305-262-9966

Uninstructed Open Model Sessions 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Tuesday and Thursday; 9:30 am - 12:30 pm Saturday. $7 per 2 hour session. $10 per 3 hour session.

Lynda.com-greatest site ever

I recently found out about http://www.lynda.com/. This is the greatest website ever (can you tell I’m a little excited about it) If you’ve ever struggled to learn new software applications, this website has incredibly well organized video tutorials on all adobe software including flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Illustrator. They even have tutorials on modeling, rigging and animation in Maya.(which I’m very interested in) I’ve worked with books in the past to try and learn these systems, but these video tutorials really cater to my learning style. There are two plans; the basic $25 a month plan that just lets you see the videos or the $37 a month plan that allows you to follow along the tutorial with the exercise files. If you compare this to the cost of a 3 month college class, this is a tremendous barging. It seems like all the instructors are experts in the applications they are teaching. I’m going through the flash tutorial at the moment; I’ll make sure to post samples of my work when I finish the tutorial.

My Favorite Artist-Michelangelo Buonarroti

When looking back at inspiring work and influential artist in my life, the first thing that comes to mind is Michelangelo Buonarroti. This guy is more to art than Babe Ruth was to baseball. I've always been an art history buff, so when I toured Italy in 2001 half the tour stuck to me to get the Angel Alvarez tour. One of my favorite pieces is the Pieta sculpture, Michelangelo completed the piece when he was just 23 years old. Story has it that when people saw the sculpture, and considering Michelangelo was unknown at that time, they gave credit to a famous sculpture of the time Donatello. Michelangelo was so outraged when he heard this that he broke into the church at night and sculpted his name into the Virgin Mary’s chest.
I also had an opportunity to see the Sistine chapel, I once gave fresco painting a crack and that is not easy. I have my own version attached to this post. Let me know what you think. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel in four years, I photoshoped my “Creation of Angel” in four minutes.