Thursday, May 3, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
She Is
Happy 2012 Valentine's Day!
This is She Is, about 14 inches squared frame, written by yours truly and made by hand, with love for love. It's sits in the home of she.
This is the text to the poem:
She Is
She is that way.
Her manner is affable,
vision and sound. Soothing
and I will never stop her bantering
so I'd reminisce if I become lovelorn.
She is her smile.
Her smile is her joy.
Her voice is pleasant to my
ears, like the waves and sounds
of foams from the sea by the beach,
and the dunes of warm sand are her skin. The makers to her words, her lips, do her
voice justice. The creator to her words, her heart, is always true to her soul. Kissing
her during the summer, and I kiss the warm summer rays. Kissing her during winter
I kiss refined snow. You would want to hear her nature as you sleep, in hopes you
dream of resting times, dreaming a long dream. Her lips feel like marshmallows.
the soft ones. Not viscous like honey, but a bit diluted like marshmallows.
not sweet like honey, but a bit tender like brown sugar. Making me yearn
for more. And whenever she speaks to me, her words travel through my
ears pass my veins and wind my heart into a golden glaze. When she says
“hi” to me, I feel my body soothingly warm. It’s because I feel as
though she is here, with me, in front of me, with open arms. And
she warms me. She is what I look forward in·a day, or pass
many days. One can say this about few people; her way
manner and words are all the act of her heart in
fruition. She is the reason to my ambitions,
the fuel of my intellect and joy. She is
the lovely hand that genuinely
cares. She is lovely, every
day in every way.
She is lovely.
She is love.
She
is.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Beyond the Four Walls:
The Rising Ministry and
Spirituality of Hip-Hop
Hi everyone.
Below I present to you a book I designed named
Beyond the Four Walls: The Rising Ministry and Spirituality of Hip-Hop
by Walter Hidalgo.
Below I present to you a book I designed named
Beyond the Four Walls: The Rising Ministry and Spirituality of Hip-Hop
by Walter Hidalgo.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Svperstar
This is a hypothetical CD cover I did for an existing artist of my choice, as an assignment for illustrator Tim Okamura. I gotta say Tim's a stand-up kinda professor and person. He taught me tons and even more via example. There's a nice Wiki entry of him that shows some of where his paintings have been featured. And, since I just wrote about graffiti on my previous post, it's only fitting to mention that his work is very Hip-hop. To quote a quote, "...a painter who does portraits with tumultuous graffiti backgrounds....a hip-hop painter". --Nicholls,Liz (October 29, 2005).
In this assignment, he played the music from each corresponding CD that each student brought. He played Antichrist Superstar as he displayed the illustration... Isn't it fitting? :-)
This is collage with acrylic, trying to convey the character of Antichrist Superstar in all three of his incarnations, the man/boy, the worm, and the Svperstar!
In this assignment, he played the music from each corresponding CD that each student brought. He played Antichrist Superstar as he displayed the illustration... Isn't it fitting? :-)
This is collage with acrylic, trying to convey the character of Antichrist Superstar in all three of his incarnations, the man/boy, the worm, and the Svperstar!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Graffiti Galore
The following shows my graffiti side.
I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but I feel graffiti is a definitive expression of what goes to the core of what typography, calligraphy, and graphic design is all about. There are countless graphic designers in its rich history that began their artistic endeavors in tagging on the wall, spraying throw-ups or wild style graffiti anywhere they could. There are also a lot of letterers, doing signs on grocery stores and supermarkets, painting on the stores' cinder blocks that would make any graphic designer jealous. These people also turn out to become great graphic artists.
Yet the determining results are the same. One tries to be legible and readable, following the rules of type in such a way that its appeal lies with how well the rules are executed, how elegant and crisp it seems with the bounds of its physicality, whether on painted plaster, chalkboards on a wooden easel, or canvas signs hanging overhead. The other is on the yang to its yin's side of the spectrum; its beauty lies in how well the artist is breaking the rules, how much can the artist abstract type beyond the point of recognition. "You can't read it? Too bad! But the letter form is there somewhere, if you look and not just see." And that probably says something more than its conventional cousin, for by stripping away what makes letterforms relate with other stylized letterforms, you're ratifying what defines that very letterform to its essential anatomy. And as they're tearing apart the constitution of graphic design rules, they're enjoying it, having their fun as they rent! You better believe that when you see an exceptional piece, you think that piece was done with fun in it, it may be a serious kind of playfulness, but you can't deny that you're looking at it in every color, in every stroke. Some graphic or type artists can learn a thing or two from graffiti artists.
I did these at different times, different spaces in life. Hope you enjoy them.
I'm working on something new, something very very new! Yup, said too much. You've probably guessed it already. Keep your eyes open and stay tuned.
I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but I feel graffiti is a definitive expression of what goes to the core of what typography, calligraphy, and graphic design is all about. There are countless graphic designers in its rich history that began their artistic endeavors in tagging on the wall, spraying throw-ups or wild style graffiti anywhere they could. There are also a lot of letterers, doing signs on grocery stores and supermarkets, painting on the stores' cinder blocks that would make any graphic designer jealous. These people also turn out to become great graphic artists.
Yet the determining results are the same. One tries to be legible and readable, following the rules of type in such a way that its appeal lies with how well the rules are executed, how elegant and crisp it seems with the bounds of its physicality, whether on painted plaster, chalkboards on a wooden easel, or canvas signs hanging overhead. The other is on the yang to its yin's side of the spectrum; its beauty lies in how well the artist is breaking the rules, how much can the artist abstract type beyond the point of recognition. "You can't read it? Too bad! But the letter form is there somewhere, if you look and not just see." And that probably says something more than its conventional cousin, for by stripping away what makes letterforms relate with other stylized letterforms, you're ratifying what defines that very letterform to its essential anatomy. And as they're tearing apart the constitution of graphic design rules, they're enjoying it, having their fun as they rent! You better believe that when you see an exceptional piece, you think that piece was done with fun in it, it may be a serious kind of playfulness, but you can't deny that you're looking at it in every color, in every stroke. Some graphic or type artists can learn a thing or two from graffiti artists.
I did these at different times, different spaces in life. Hope you enjoy them.
I'm working on something new, something very very new! Yup, said too much. You've probably guessed it already. Keep your eyes open and stay tuned.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Friday, January 1, 2010
The Decade of Nothing
Here's to a decade that now is part of the void that its type symbolized: the Nothings before the Somethings. No one knows what to call it. Some call it the "Naughties", others "The Big Zero" or the "Double-Os". Regardless, the nature of a name with this number-logic had a psychological effect on me. The mortality of seeing a number, a decade, counting down (or up, depending how you look at it) makes a person want to seize it before the next number. Something about '00s creates a different flow.
I don't know what to make of the decade; there were a lot of ups and downs, bests and worsts of. But maybe that's the point. Don't have an absolute claim to make in such an expanse of time, but make it bold for the next decade because you already know how it is not to. The Nothings before the Somethings, turn to the Nothing that Is.
And with that I give you a nice The Decade that Passed present. It's a free-association drawing I did in '01. I thought it fitting for I drew it in the onset of the decade (it starts with the first year, not '00, you know), a worldly, significant, sad, and impressionable year, and because as a free-association drawing, making it as you go along without consciously knowing what you are drawing, with no intentions, making it seems a lot like life itself. And also, it's a drawing of a nascent of a man waking out of his cocoon. Yes, very fitting.
Happy Decade that Passed and a Happy New Decade!
(hey, you only get to say 'Happy New Decade' once every ten years; make it count!)
PS: Thank you so much to everyone who Subscribed to SmokyMirrors! I so appreciate the love and interest. This is the kind of thing that keeps me moving onward.
And to those that are not in the know, to my first 100 Subscribers, as a big "Thank You!" for letting me into your Inbox life, I'm drawing small limited-edition sketches. One-of-a-kind drawings about any subject matter you desire, drawn specifically for you, and I'm only doing this for 100 people. I still haven't reach my first 100, so there's still time to have something cool.
I don't know what to make of the decade; there were a lot of ups and downs, bests and worsts of. But maybe that's the point. Don't have an absolute claim to make in such an expanse of time, but make it bold for the next decade because you already know how it is not to. The Nothings before the Somethings, turn to the Nothing that Is.
And with that I give you a nice The Decade that Passed present. It's a free-association drawing I did in '01. I thought it fitting for I drew it in the onset of the decade (it starts with the first year, not '00, you know), a worldly, significant, sad, and impressionable year, and because as a free-association drawing, making it as you go along without consciously knowing what you are drawing, with no intentions, making it seems a lot like life itself. And also, it's a drawing of a nascent of a man waking out of his cocoon. Yes, very fitting.
Happy Decade that Passed and a Happy New Decade!
(hey, you only get to say 'Happy New Decade' once every ten years; make it count!)
PS: Thank you so much to everyone who Subscribed to SmokyMirrors! I so appreciate the love and interest. This is the kind of thing that keeps me moving onward.
And to those that are not in the know, to my first 100 Subscribers, as a big "Thank You!" for letting me into your Inbox life, I'm drawing small limited-edition sketches. One-of-a-kind drawings about any subject matter you desire, drawn specifically for you, and I'm only doing this for 100 people. I still haven't reach my first 100, so there's still time to have something cool.
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