Digital Paintings

I've been away for awhile due to my teaching gig but here are some digital paintings that I've done recently. I've been doing comic based artwork as of late, it's helped me focus more on technique rather than full on concept design.

Female Warrior Study

Here is a concept I did over Memorial Day weekend of 2010. I wanted to do a female warrior study. I was thinking Wonder Women/Xena when designing this one. I wanted to practice replicating textures and also to do some anatomy study. I really wanted to make sure that I didn't make her too masculine and I think this works for who she is suppose to be. This design was successful due to experience I got while making this but there are somethings that I would like approach differently on the next female study I do. I'm looking forward to the next one. -RFH

Peg Leg Pete

Well its been a while since I posted anything (school has been crazy and its a lot different when your the teacher), anyways here is a little thing I worked on. Its a character design I did back in school, I call him "Peg Leg Pete" and he was the first pirate character I tackled. I decided to revisit this design and update it for the portfolio. I enjoyed how it turned out.

These next designs were done for fun and practice. I'm a big POTC fan (Ride & Movie) and I wanted to make a fun illustration of three of the main characters from the movie. Overall I'm very pleased with the final product. Jack actually was developed pretty quick, I think its due to Johnny Depp's performance being so animated to begin with that it helped when designing and posing him.



Will Turner was some what difficult when it came to a proper facial expression and pose. He was the straight man to Jacks craziness so I had to do a number of sketches until I got one that I thought fit the character well. Captain Barbossa, being my favorite character from the movie caused me to spend a little more time on him then the others. I wanted to get him perfect and I think I accomplished that. I really enjoyed the research for this one and I think it shows when viewing these designs.

Well until next time, which will be a lot sooner then last.

- Ramon H.

First Blog

For the past year, I've been working as an high school art teacher and it has been a very big and important change in my life. I found something that I enjoy doing but most importantly it got me back to studying "Fine Art". I really needed this break from media art in order to get back to my roots and help me find myself. Since I've been teaching, it has given the me the opportunity to get back to basics and really take a hard look at where I was in my career and where I am as an artist. Teaching my students how to go about creating artwork and how line, shape, value, color and texture are used when putting it all together got me taking a good hard look at myself. Since then, the artwork I've been producing has picked up a lot not only in form but in overall design.

Most of my artwork has been drawn on the wacom and it has allowed me to loosen up, it took me a while to really get a hang of the tablet. When designing for animation; a book called "Modern Animation" has really inspired me as well as "Designing Disney" by John Hench. The latter really got me looking at color in ways I hadn't, while the other introduced me to some new styles in designing characters and their influences.

Here are some of my more recent designs, I feel like I'm finally pointed in the direction I need to be headed and that I will finally get my foot in the door soon. - RFH