New Year New Space

Happy New Year to everyone! Thank you for stopping by. I'm honored by your visits to my site, which inspires me to keep working on my art. Hopefully, in 2025, I will have the means and the chance to upgrade my website to something cooler and more visually striking at a higher professional level. You deserve better, and I deserve better.  

An 11 x 11 ft room is soon vacating where we live and will be ceded to me. This is right to set up a more formal studio space. Not only that, but this is also my chance to start a small business. I'm 57, and this may be my last opportunity to do art and make some money. 

I'm considering making small, hand-painted resin sculptures with limited reproductions—maybe 15-20 for more exclusivity. Of course, I'm already drawing and painting, which will be included in the studio productions. I would also like to buy a laser engraver, a 3D printing machine, and a T-shirt printer for future products. 

Shipping is also important, so I must design boxes, labels, specialty tapes, thank-you cards, and other items.

I'm thankful to all of you, but first, I am grateful to God for allowing me to continue doing what I love in 2025. I hope this will be a great year.     

Polymer Clay came to me

 We celebrated last night, the so-called "Noche Buena." We were playing the white elephant game. Pick one gift from a pile of the 26 mystery boxes we had, according to your lucky number. My number was 10. When it was my turn, I chose a small box that contained, coincidentally, the only art materials out of that pile. That was very significant for me, like a sign from above. No one challenged my pick, so I kept a box of 48 tiny polymer clay sticks. Now, that reminded me that I have a bunch of clay-sculpture materials in my garage, so after receiving this set, the best I can do with this gift is use it for something interesting. I'm not letting this go to waste. I still don't know exactly what I want to do with it, but it could be some incense burners, fake plants in tiny pots, or even some animation. For starters, if I really do animation, it could be something relatively simple, probably two-dimensional, or if I get truly engaged, I might do something more complex, like wire-animated puppets. I'll do voiceovers for the characters if I'm in the mood. We'll see. The critical point here is to keep me completely busy and not have time to get anxious or depressed.

The Fender Dreadnought has arrived

 I received the acoustic Fender and purchased the tuner thingy, but I didn't need it. I tuned by ear and tuned perfectly. 

I already want to change to a nylon string set, or at least the first three strings. 

Of course, I must now buy intermediate guitar lessons, mostly to learn more complicated tunes. Good thing YouTube has plenty of backing tracks, so I can play songs with proper background music. 

After testing the guitar, I felt my hands were very sloppy; I became slower and clearly unskilled, so I must practice before playing something semi-acceptable. 

As an illustrator/artist, my main distraction was gaming, which was not very productive. I'm taking my own advice and doing something healthier, newer, and better—something I never completed: learning or re-learning guitar. I will gladly torture you with my future guitar videos. 

Egg Identifiers for Keto

 If this is your first time visiting my blog, I follow a keto-style diet, and one problem that comes with it is identifying the regular eggs and the hard-boiled ones. My wife only marked them with a Sharpie until I realized that drawing on eggs was like, yeah, why not? So, I started doing some quick doodles to know which is which. It totally works. The ones in the image are hard-boiled. This is where their personality comes from. 

Concentric Artwork

 This is my first cautious and even shy attempt to combine my illustration ideas with geometry. I used fine-point markers and graphite, avoiding solid coloring for now. I'd like to see how it looks and learn how to extract the geometry behind a composition. I had to look hard and discover something: an axis and two concentric circles.

This is acceptable to me now. I will go much bolder with my subsequent works. I assessed the risks, the possibilities, and the mechanics of the compass used in this paper. Puncturing with the compass needle very precisely is vital for each additional line. In this case, the work was more experimental than planned. I know ideas will start coming now with anticipation.

Next Artwork and new Tools

I've considered adding some geometry to my work for the past two weeks. I've been holding off because each work might require more detail and longer to color, but it may be worth it. If you have seen my previous illustrations/artwork, you will see the same style now, with an underlying geometric structure in the background. I may also add very subtle colors to the geometry. The idea is to cover the whole area of the paper with art, not just isolated hands holding an object.

I purchased a couple of compasses from Mr. Pen to start experimenting with this new idea. The first work will be my hand holding a pastel pencil. 

Since my previous airbrushed work (Poblano Pepper) wasn't to my entire liking, I'm holding off on airbrushing until I purchase more appropriate artboards. I'm also buying a regular ink airbrush, airbrushing inks, and many other related items, like cleaning supplies and area ventilators.

By the way, I just purchased an acoustic Fender. It's my own Christmas gift. Since I want to cope better with my stress and anxiety, I'm quitting gaming. Yes, I used to play heavily on my iPad, but now I feel like gaming does not add much peace; it adds more stress and tension. Gaming is a cool way to keep your reflexes sharp, but I don't know; maybe playing some music will help me build a healthier distraction. Music is not something I pursue actively; it's just a hobby, but even if it's just a simple hobby, I will try to do it well.

Completed Poblano Pepper

 I like the results, and it looks much better in person, but working with paper is too restrictive and risks ruining the work by applying too many humid mediums. Next time, I'm switching to the thicker, more solid artboards. I guess that after this, I'm stopping airbrushing for now and retaking pastels again.

Text Progress

 This post comes with a technical warning. After several applications of spray fixative, I've noticed how the mixed-media paper became brittle and slightly deformed. This happened after I applied the fourth spray layer to protect the finished text. 

The lesson is to try to complete masking and airbrushing in one step, even if it's more complicated. Otherwise, you will end up with undesirable results. 

Normally, when airbrushing, masking, and spraying heavily, you should use art cardboard instead. Next time, I will be more careful.

At this point, the text is finished. I will have to create a large mask once more to color the pepper, which will complete the project. I will upload the finished work soon.

Pepper progress

 With this new artwork, I'm adding letters on top to make it look like vintage advertising. I want to make more vintage-looking things in the future. Right now, I'm only coloring the text and the pepper (This variety is called Chile Poblano). 

When coloring, I'm only using markers due to the lack of ventilation in the area where I'm working. Hopefully, in the future, I will improve that, and then I will start using regular airbrushing inks that will help me cover much larger areas. Markers only have so much ink, and overusing them dries them up quickly.

Prayer update

 I forgot to close the circle on the story, which started a few posts ago about the small prayer I composed with help from Google's AI. 

Prayer is very personal and, in most cases, entirely private. I do not plan to do this often, and this case has a background to it: You may wonder why an illustrator-artist who has been doing art for decades needs to pray for permission to keep doing art. 

This is the story: Since 2010, I have started doing more and more video production, so I have entirely abandoned serious art production. Since my career in video production has stalled a bit after COVID, I was left with not many choices, so I felt guilty under the eyes of heaven because art is a given talent, and neglecting it is kind of irresponsible so now that I'm trying art again I needed to get the feeling out of my chest and validate this new attempt. 

Also, I won't forsake video production as much as I did with art. When all is set in place, I will start doing videos about the art pieces I'm producing. However, as of now, I still lack the studio space, which I hope to get to start filming again, not just my hand, like in my works of art, but me talking, facing the camera, as part of the videos. 

While that took place, prayer was my way of getting help, validation, and intervention. The good news is I was answered. It happened "accidentally" the next day after saying and posting the prayer: As I jumped into my car in the morning, my phone connected to audio and started playing an audiobook about prayer as the subject. The first words that came out from the speakers were the exact answer to my mini prayer. 

In conclusion, I'm good to keep producing art. That's what I needed and got, and that's all I'm saying here.