the awakening

by
Armand Cabrera


This is another digital preliminary for Illuxcon 2013. Painted in Photoshop. Its actually part of a series of paintings I'm making about ancient ruins. Not sure how many I'll finish in time for the show I'm hoping to have at least two.

studio corner

 this is a quick photoshop sketch of the corner of my studio from life just to wind down for the evening. The framed image is an original page from Ken Macklin's Doctor Watchstop.

Gamification

by
Armand Cabrera


It has been a while since I've posted here. This was a project I did for Martin Cameron and Dog Brain Studios last year. It was a gamification idea for a medical program. The idea was to have a cartoony mad magazine style to the characters. I painted over fifty of these along with some generic bodies in hospital gowns for the client. Each patient had a sick portrait and a happy one. Most  were drawn by another artist, Bill Eaken, who is a lot better at caricature than I am, although I did a few when Bill was busy with other stuff. I worked with Martin and Bill at Lucasfilm  and Totally games so it was like getting the band back together.

The portraits were digital and a little out of my comfort zone style wise.  I wanted to put a lot more into them to make them more realistic but I did it the way the client wanted and they were very happy with the outcome. It was a fun project getting to work with old colleagues even though we were on opposite sides of the country.

Traitors, Whiners and other forms of Cowards

by Armand Cabrera

Rhythm and Hues can bite me. They are part of the problem, not the part of the solution. They were happy to outsource jobs from America when it served their purpose to get cheap contracts and undercut other American FX companies that went out of business because of them. Now they go out of business from an environment that is a race to the bottom for wages that they helped create. They made the rope they are now hanging by. Their awareness now that they are gone is too little too late. Let their rotting corpse be a testament to their betrayal and cowardice.

Even though they were one of the first to outsource labor and offer cheaper wages now they are complaining.? If people want to complain about the loss of art and VFX jobs that is one thing but don't hold this company and its owners up as martyrs because they weren't, they were traitors to the cause and created their own undoing. Their artists worked for free on projects and now have the audacity to whine about their company going under? Each one of them helped to create this environment and now they reap the spoils of those decisions.  

Outsourcing was illegal for the most part and thought to be un-American before NAFTA. Other countries that were part of the trade agreements created tax incentives to bring in business. We could have too but didn't and the companies didn't care because upper management was getting richer faster. 

Globalization was always going to be at the workers expense not the business owners, or so they thought. Artists in the industry were always willing to trade their self worth and self respect for peanuts working 80 hour weeks being paid for 40 hours and taking lower and lower pay in the process until what was a middle class profession is now a minimum wage job.

Illuxcon 5

By Armand Cabrera

Although I am still recovering from some respiratory infection I picked up, my trip to Illuxcon was a worthwhile one. I received very positive feedback to the work I presented at the showcase Friday night.

 I had fun reconnecting with some old acquaintances and meeting some new ones. 

  The best part of course is the art. This really is the convention for the best in imaginative realism. Many of the top illustrators and artists had displays in the main hall and there were many talented people at the showcase on Friday.

The Wilshires are building something special with this convention, which is now going into its 6^th year and I hope it continues to provide a venue for the best traditional work in the genre.

A couple of the people who had attended previously, told me they thought the show now has a higher ratio of artists looking for work. I hope they can keep the emphasis on being a showcase for traditional painting and sculpture and make it the place to buy imaginative art originals.

The paintings that were exhibited  are on my website and for sale along with some other pieces that I didn't have room for in my display at the convention.

Queen of the Black Coast 16 x 12

oil on linen

Illuxcon 2012

by
Armand Cabrera

I will be at Illuxcon this year and I will have a showcase table and around ten paintings for sale. Hope to see some people there and reconnect with artists from my old illustration and convention days.

I will give a report on the show when I get back Sunday.

Silhouettes

 by
Armand Cabrera

I like working on silhouettes as a purely abstract exercise. They're great to do when I don't want to draw something specific. I just make shapes and once I have a page of them I go back and pull what I see out of them like a Rorschach test. I refine them with the eraser tool  as they take shape in my mind.

With this set I liked the one on the upper left and had an idea for it immediately. I saw this pastoral scene right at sunset with these terrifying things in the air just as it was getting dark.

sunset patrol                                                                  digital

I isolated my design and started to flesh it out giving it some form. I then created a background for it from my own reference. This was one of those images that was fully realized in my mind once I saw the shape and it made the concept painting go very quickly.

Marooned: A Step By Step Guide

The digital painting marooned was published in the book SciFi Art Now in 2009. John Freeman the editor was kind enough to create an eBook of the progression after I told him I had process shots and descriptions of the paintings creation. If you haven't checked it out, its free to view.

Some Things From the Vault

My goal with these paintings is to solve a problem of design, gesture, lighting, color or mood and  the subject is just the vehicle for the painting. This work compliments my traditional painting background and allows me to apply my real world experience to scenes of imagination.A selection of these pieces are available as prints onthis page.

Corwin of Amber Digital

 Marooned Digital

 Take Off  Digital

 Fish Hunter Oil/digital

  Deep Space Outpost

  Remnants Digital

     Jump Rift Digital

   Mountain Stronghold Digital

 Strange High Houses in the Mist Oil/ Digital

       Robot Emissary Digital

  Cthulhu Digital

The Scout Digital