Suarez Art

Old Killers

This was an Illustration assignment to make a poster for a play. The play I chose was about 3 murderers living in a retirement home and they each tell their story.

So I chose a simple, graphic approach. But in the end it didn't really come out too graphic.

Originally I forgot to add the one into the painting, becuase i started to like how much it looked with out her. But, in the end she had to be part of it since the play was about 3 murderers, not 2.


This was how the painting was supposed to turn out. I just got rid of the lady with Photoshop. I think it works a lot better like this.

Huge Ass Fucken Update Part 2

These are two special pieces I did during winter break. I just really wanted to learn more about painting and just went into these trying out anything I could.

They're actually done in a really unorthodox way, with acrylic going over the oil. Usually artists do oils over acrylic. But they did serve their purpose and I learned a lot.




This next one is another from media class. This technique is called "Every Hair on the Dog" we basically make the most detailed pencil drawing we can and go over it in thin washes of acrylic to add color but keep all the details.

Huge Ass Fucken Update Part 1

So I have a lot of old school assignments i still haven't posted. I'll try to set them up by class and media I guess.

These were done in media class learning watercolor techniques. I actually have a few more of these since they were really fun and easy to make. Most haven't been scanned yet though.


This one was a done in scratch board and was also fun, even if it was kinda tedious. It also made it into one of the student shows called "Illest of Ill", it shows off select work from the Illustration majors.

The smoke was added in digitally. Some called it cheating, but a teacher once told me that other artists will use any tricks they can to beat us, so we have to do the same.

Some Work

This is some cover work I drew for a friend in Ecuador. It's a compilation CD of a bunch of new bands coming out in Ecuador and Columbia, along with his band as well.
He wanted a cover that signified "loud" and stuff like that. I think this was the first image I had in my head.


I also did the title and track list but they ended changing it to match the other discs. Also they needed more room to add the logos and other information that goes on the back of CDs.


It was a pretty fun project.

Also, I have a big update coming up. I just got a new scanner and it beats the shit out of my old scanner. Scanning used to be a pretty big hassle with my old scanner, which is why i'd save all my scanning for one day. It was slow, froze up my computer while it was scanning and the quality was pretty crap so I always had to do a lot of fixing in Photoshop. This new one scans in a few seconds and doesn't make my PC freeze up until it's done. And the quality is really good even on the default settings.

Girl Look Toned

This is a bit of an experiment in Photoshop I'm going to be trying out for a while. The thing is, I've been looking for ways to add more value to my sketches. Specifically, ones I've already drawn in regular sketchbooks. In real life it's easy because all you need is toned paper and a white pencil.

I tried to achieve this effect in Photoshop before by adding a gray layer set to multiply and then pulling out highlights with a white brush. And it works pretty good, except that the gray is kind of overpowering and dulls the drawing a bit. But it does wonders for value and highlights, a few example are Zombie Face, Azuka, Heroine Full and The Hope.

So, I've been thinking what else I could do. I thought maybe finding a nice neutral color that I could use as a mid-tone would be better than gray. But, I couldn't think of a color that would look right.

Then, it hit me! If I wanted to replicate the effect of using toned paper, I could just add toned paper to the drawing in Photoshop. So, I set out to find a good paper texture and then adjusted it to the right color and and played with levels until I was happy with the tone. After that it was just a simple task of pulling out the highlights with a white brush.

It's a pretty easy and quick process, and the result is pretty close to what I wanted. I'm still going to see what else I can do to tweak the technique, and find ways to improve the texture.

Next step: Getting actual scans of blank toned sketchbook pages.

Also, I know it would be a little easier to just draw in a toned sketchbook from now on. But I still have 3 regular sketchbooks left to fill up, and I'm not about to start on another one. Plus, I wanted to figure out something I can apply to all my drawing to take them another step further.