Funky hair mermaid

Ok, so you might think I'm a little crazy, but let me explain this first and then make any judgements you may feel neccesary. This is a card I made that I plan to "forget" somewhere so that someone may find it and hopefully keep it (so it doesn't end in the trash). It's the first one I've made and hopefully they'll be more. This is an idea I've been playing with for some time, it's what I think art is all about, it's getting a reaction either possitive or not, about something you make. This is a very quick card I made today, I know it's not perfect but that's really the idea, making art without thinking too much about the outcome, or how much you can get from it. I'm putting it in an envelope that says "it's for you, open" there's also a tag where I wrote "Unexpected things happen everyday"
I feel so excited about this, it's like when I was small and I was doing something I shouldn't be doing and thought I could get in trouble! like a little adventure. Making art feels fun again!! what are they going to think about my work?? IT DOESN'T MATTER!!! will they like it?? I don't care!!
Isn't it fun??!!!

ps, I can't load the picture in blogger right now, I don't know what's going on... you can go here to see it funky hair mermaid I'll try to load the picture again a little later

Clean (1)



When I was a young architect just out of college, I was working with an architect that designed very modern architecture, he asked me to design an elevation for a new discotheque we were building, and the sketches I came back with were, for his taste, very "scenographical" meaning, they looked too busy, like a theatre set. You see, in architecture slang, "clean" means simple design. (I think), this is a drawing of the way the final design of the elevation looked like, or at least that's how I remember it, you can see the actual project here: varshiva nightclub I like the way the sky looks so "dirty" it could also work for the "opposites" theme of last week. This sketch was made with pencil and acrylics on watercolor paper.

Clean (2)


The cleanest soul there is, the virgin Mary of Guadalupe. This is a detail form a painting I did called "494" It's acrylic on canvas with yellow tin foil.

I love love love U2 and if you know me, I have a lot to say about George Bush, so what do you make about Bush singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday"? it's really interesting, take a look...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6805063692754011230

enjoy.

Horray for this!!!!

I'm getting my new website together, this is not finished but check it out anyway, there's pictures from my work as an architect and other stuff, see you there!

www.rosamurillo.squarespace.com

Opposites

When I saw this week's theme for illustration friday : OPPOSITE, I had a lot of ideas about opposite things.. old and new, tall and short, etc... and also started to think about how men and women often reach opposite conclusions about the same subject, as I was looking for a man and a woman to illustrate this topic (in the magazine I often use as my supplier of interesting faces) I came across this picture of a wedding, I thought the expression of the woman here says a lot about what she's thinking: She's ready for her new life! looking straight to the camera sooooo happy to be there, making plans for their new life together!.... and then I saw the guy.. what was he thinking about? he's clearly somewhere else.. what could he have in his mind??? well, I took a guess and I think I'm not too mistaken about it...

I used watercolor paper and acrylic paint, a picture in newsprint paper from a magazine and pastel crayons and markers for the accents. I tried to work the composition better this time since the last ones I've made seemed to me a little bit rushed. And come to think about it, these illustrations I've made for IF look so different from my regular work, I'm having fun exploring new themes and media!

thanks for the visit!

Self Portrait

This is a piece I just finished, I'm planning to use it for my website which I'm STILL working on! I didn't think it would take so long, but it's coming along... I've never been good drawing faces so I tried this technique where you use a copy of a picture and collage it. Don't I look like a saint? I didn't plan it to look that way! but it reminds me of those religious icons in the middle ages where all the saints would have a halo around their head!

Anyway... I liked the colors and the overall feel of it.

this is another siren I did about a year ago. It was bought by a woman in Mexico and she told me she comes every day from work and talks to her about her day and that cheers her up. I thought that was delightful! I really like the way this one turned out, I like that she has a friendly face

Sacrifice


This is Illustration Friday's theme for this week, I could think of many ways to illustrate this topic, but the issue of illegal immigration from Mexico to the US kept coming back to me. Just think about this for a moment, what would you do if you had no job, no money to buy food for your family and no hope that the situation would change for the better?, Would you go to another country, a place where you don't speak the language, leave your children to the care of relatives, just with he hope that you will get some kind of job, doing anything and everything, working 2 jobs sometimes! whatever it takes to send back some money so that your kids can go to school and get some food.
I don't know if I would be able to make such a sacrifice, I mean, for my kids I would do anything! but you need to be very brave to make that decision! You're leaving and won't come back for many years!! that scares me.... but those who come here not only have hopes, they have faith! Maybe that's the key to surviving the melancholy and getting the strenght to go on.

"El Mojado tiene ganas de secarse, el mojado esta mojado por las lagrimas que bota la nostalgia, el mojado, el indocumentado, carga el bulto que el legal no cargaria ni obligado"

La Sirena


Siren is not the same as mermaid.
Sirens are mithological creatures that are believed to have a beautiful voice and not necesarily be half fish and half woman, but women with bird legs, or little birds with a woman's face.
In Greek mythology the Sirens were nymphs who lived on an island called Sirenum scopuli which was surrounded by cliffs and rocks. Approaching sailors were drawn to them by their enchanting singing, causing them to sail on the cliffs and drown.

This Piece is tha last Journal I have finished. The Siren image is an altered Loteria card, a Mexican game that has been around since the 1800's. The images of the Loteria are an icon in mexican culture.
With this piece, I wanted to explain the meaning of siren and a term I learned here in the U.S. "Siren Song" (algo que parece alcanzable, muy deseable pero que te lleva a un final incierto y muchas veces desastrozo)
No one can say what the siren song sounds like, but I can suggest it sounds like something very familiar, very safe, that could never hurt you, but that will get you going around in circles and you'll never reach it. And it would be a disaster if you did because you would be absolutely disappointed. Mythology also suggests siens are the ugliest creatures, only their voices are beautiful. (Some people would go through life believing only what they want to believe and not the truth.)

Las Sirenas son agiles y sutiles, nunca se dejan alcanzar para no perder el misterio, cantar en cualquier idioma es facil para ellas, el truco es siempre mantener la ambiguedad.

Skyline (by my daughter)

This is my daughter's contribution to Illistration Friday! She is 3 1/2 yers old and since she was about a year and a half she has enjoyed painting more than anything else I've seen her do. She's well acquainted with different media, she loves bruhes more than crayons or anything else, although sidewalk chalk is a close second. Last Friday she saw me painting the illustration I submitted (skyline) and I was telling her about the buildings and the general idea while doing it, and later on saturday we looked together to a lot of the other artist's great submissions... so, you can imagine my surprise when she handed me this painting saturday afternoon, I asked what it was and she said, "They're buildings, Mommy, like the ones we were looking at in the computer" Well, I'm a proud mom, and I wanted to share this with everybody.

skyline

If this picture needed a caption, it would be something like "I don't really want to be here right now"

When I saw that this week's topic of Illustration Friday was "skyline" I immediatly thought of NY City's skyline at night, which to me seems boring (and a friend just told me this week, it's been copyrighted!!!), so I started to think about other cities I know whith interesting skylines, I wanted modern buildings that would make an interesting figure when doing a white-black kind of drawing. As you can see here, I made up a new city, it has buildings that may not be buildable (If that's a word) in real life, and it might even be a different planet (did you see the two moons in the top right corner?) but thtat's not important, the focus of the illustration is actually what's goiong on in the front. There's a woman with a worried look in her face, and she seems to be thinking about being somewhere else. I don't really know what's happening in the city behind her. Is it on fire? Is it just the way she percieves the city because she doesn't like her life there, maybe?

What I know is that she seems a little aprehensive and ready to get going. What do you think is going on with the city? what's the place in the blue bubble? maybe home? or a vacation in the beach? One thing I know is that she's pretty emotional about it because her heart is pounding so fast!

The buildings are made with collaged paper (napkins, old journal pages) and then I drew some lines and windows, I also painted the white house in the blue bubble, (I had fun! it reminded me of my work as an architect), the paint I used is acrylic and the picture is from a magazine.

I think the picture would've looked better in black and white, but didn't have time to go make copies!

Thanks for listening.

One of those days....

Today was one of those days when I start something that can't get finished because there's another thing that pops up and needs inmediate attention.. as my husband says, it's like putting out a fire before it gets out of control. Well, today was a day like that, with a hundred fires to tend to. My two little fires were in the top of the list, so after drawing with chalk in the sidewalk, a frozen pop, and a big boo boo in the forehead, I managed to take this picture of my feet in the grass. But now that I think back about today, there were some other things I got to do, for example, I talked to my mom over the phone for a while, I made cherry yogurt ice cream (that everyone loooooved) and we got to be outside for a bit, before the mother of all rains poured down this afternoon... Sometimes I like to measure my days in things accomplished, but even though there's a basket full of laundry that needs to be folded, and a bunch of other things that I didn't finish today, I think today is done, today was fun, tomorrow is another one.. (wink, wink, all you dr. seuss's fans..) and i'll just go to bed.... goodnight everybody.