Friendship

Long time no see you! It's been hard times for me lately. A lot of changes and no stability at all. I've been busy redesigning my life and trying to become the guy I want to be, or rather to find out who I want to be, far from the past mistakes and fleeing of the sadness they brought. There's been a lot of hard work, a lot of challenges and even more disappointments, but I think I´ll leave the details to the next post (will be soon, I promise).

For now I wanted to talk about one of the elements that have been crucial for me to survive through all that journey, the key without which it would have been impossible to see the white light at the end of the blackness of the worst moments. Friends are so complicated... It's so hard to distinguish when this kind of love is conditioned or unconditional. Fortunately hard times has the property of revealing that truth, either painful or not. Only a few have passed this test for me and they know who they are. I am at the gates of the biggest change in my life, at the moment in which I will have to say goodbye to almost everything I love and I think it's time to be grateful. Sometime ago I was that kind of person that doesn't treasure that unconditional love, I used to be that kind of conditional friend myself... But I believe that mistakes are more valuable than successes. That's what my friends have taught me.

This is a little token of appreciation for one of the best.

Mastodon Artwork Contest

Hi there! This is my submission to the Talenthouse.com contest "Design for Mastodon". It's inspired by the thai ancient art, previous Mastodon artwork and of course, the outstanding sculptor A.J. Fosik. It's modeled entirely in ZBrush, rendered in Maya Mental Ray and composed in Photoshop. If you like it, you can vote for it HERE. Thanks!

Forever alive

I write a lot lately, more than I draw unfortunately. If I have a dream I put it down in the paper as soon as I open the eyes, and I try to spend a while everyday writing about all the things that make my head burn. It makes problems easier to perceive and helps me to direct and understand feelings. This drawing was supposed to be an illustration for one of these writings and my first idea was to put it here under the words. However some time ago I was told that the power of an illustration by itself must consist mainly in the ability (and the hability) to get rid of the text, and that this power would be underrated and even overturned if you don't pay attention to this principle. Anyway, I think this particular image, besides not being as good as I would like, doesn't need any additional info to get a meaning. Whatever you think it is, make it yours.

Nothing's Left

"Have you ever dreamed that you wake up some day and find out that there is no one but you in the world? You go out and walk down the street and you feel that time is not frozen, time doesn't even exist. You look at every window in the city and know that there is nothing inside. Only gaze at a perpetual sunset while you know that suddenly everything is gone. There are no longer people, dreams, projects, memories, friendship or love. Words have become useless. Music is extinct. This sense of void must be the purest meaning of death isn't it? Nothing's left."

The cursed fighter

Wow! Almost a post a day, I think I have too much spare time lately... But at least my devoted fans can´t complain. This image is the last work I´ve done, not like the others that were oldies. It started just as a sketch for a painting, but sometimes it´s hard to control where your works are going.
Sculpted in Zbrush and rendered in Maya Mental Ray. I´m pretty happy with the skin shader but no so much with the pants and gloves. But it´s time to move on. Hope you like it!

The responsibility of power

I remember when I was younger I used to spent the day reading all that comic books about people with superpowers (well, I´m still young and I still read them :D) like this one, Spiderman. But he was special in certain aspects, he wasn´t the common superhero just fighting the bad guys for the sake of mere justice, he was someone who mainly had a life he wanted to protect. Actually Peter sometimes hated his identity and powers because of the harm that they were causing to his people. I remember I thought that my life was boring, that I wanted to have a double life, protecting my family and friends without them knowing. I wanted to have a great power to have a great responsibility.
Those were times when that kind of literature was seen as pure entertainment for kids. Now that these kids are not kids anymore we begin to understand that this stories are another way of human expression, upstanding as everyone else and with a huge moral content.
Now I don´t want powers anymore because I already have them, as well as a great responsibility. Things that make people trust you, love you, things that make them wanting to be by your side, these are your powers and of course, your biggest responsibility. And if you find yourself looking at your reflection in a mirror and you feel there is something wrong, you should think what is about because this is your spider sense tingling.

The White Whale

I made this picture over a year ago for an illustration class that the great illustrator Tomás Hijo was giving at my university. Actually he is still giving it and if you are studying here at the University of Salamanca and you are interested on illustration applied to books, comic, advertising or almost any aspect of this discipline I strongly recommend you to consider attending to his classes, or at least, taking a minute to glance at his Tumblr. He is not only a very talented artist, which is something that I don´t have to say many times for you to believe if you click on the link above, but he is something that is a lot more complicated to find here where I study, a very good teacher. The common kind of teacher that can be found here is that who wanders around all the paintings and very rarely speaks with you, only to say things like "fuck the painting", "paint like you were cooking" or "use that goddamned bitch pink". He is always talking with every alumni, offering you all the options and never pushing you to his own territory. He doesn´t prepare you to be a bohemian rat but so to be a professional artist.
This picture was about a book cover illustration for which I choose Moby Dick. I read the novel after listening to the sludge metal band Mastodon´s masterpiece "Leviathan" and I fell in love with all the concepts and ideas found on it. That fight for revenge of one man against nature, humanity against God Himself... Very inspiring.