A scene from Matt de la Peña's book Mexican Whiteboy

At Ideate High I am reading Matt de la Peña's book Mexican Whiteboy with two other classmates. I did this drawing last night of an intense scene where Danny and his sister Julia meet their mother Wendy's boyfriend for the first time. He tells them she is moving for the summer to San Francisco to live with him and brother and sister are shocked. Randy lives on Russian Hill with a view out his window to Alcatraz. Danny refuses to go and wants to try to find his real Dad who is living in Mexico so he stays with cousins in National City. Julia decides to go to San Francisco but is heartbroken and they hold hands to comfort each other.

My first pastel portraits

After life drawing that one time I decided I wanted to try portraits using pastels. The one on top is for a school assignment and the other two were for fun.

Life Drawing

This past Friday I had my first experience with life drawing at a workshop for our high school at San Diego City College with an amazing drawing teacher Wayne Hulgin. These are my quick 1 minute gesture drawings and one where we had a 10 minutes. It was fun and I want to do this again and learn more about the human figure.

Desolate Forest

An Aztec warrior dressed in jaguar hide while out scouting the dense and native jungles of Tikal, Guatemala.

My third original Photoshop composition devised with my dad's assistance

Imaginary Monsters

Two new Summer drawings

Hanging out in the basement drawing this Sunday morning.

The Haunted Kingdom

This is my second photoshop composition.

Photoshop Draft #1

This Summer I am exploring use of Photoshop and want to show a composition I like. I made it by using elements I found and the software tools to combine found textures and images. I hope you like it.

Santa's Life Cycle

MONSTER DISEASES

At our school we did class reports on diseases and I learned a lot. Today I was thinking that diseases are like MONSTERS so decided to develop my own characters to go with them. My plan was to infect the MONSTERS with their own diseases-take that!

Sixth Grade Drawings

Here we are in the last week of sixth grade and I wanted to upload some recent drawings shot with my parent's i-phone.

My Adventures in Mexico City

After my birthday we left San Miguel. But instead of going straight to San Diego we rented a hotel in Mexico City. It was the Hotel Milan in Roma. Our friend Edgar, who is a photographer took us to a breakfast place called Panaderia. The food was delicious and it felt like we were in Paris, France.
Afterwards we went to Frida Kahlo's Museum in Coyocan. It was a dream come true because last time we went there I was a small boy and didn't really get to enjoy it. This time I was 12 and saw many things.

She has a garden and we got to see her clothes. In the courtyard was a game where you could spin 3 rectangular cubes to change the dresses Frida was wearing. Inside we saw her braces and corsets because she was injured in a street car accident when she was just 18. One leg was shorter than the other and she was often in pain. She was a great artist and we saw her studio. She used gigantic paintbrushes and painted in her wheelchair. We also saw her bedroom that had a mirror on the ceiling of her four poster bed. She was married to Diego Rivera, the great Mexican muralist and painter. We saw many of her paintings as well as his paintings. Frida also built a puppet theatre and made all the puppets. Her kitchen was filled with large Mexican pottery and she used little ceramic cups to make a design on the wall of 2 birds holding a ribbon in their beaks.

Riding Eco Bikes in Roma, Mexico City

The buildings here look like France

See what I mean it is like Paris

French style is called Art Nouveau

Amazing breakfast place in Roma

Here is our friend Edgar at Panaderia

It is a very narrow place where you sit at the bar to eat good things

We had to get there at 7am when they open to get a seat because it is a small place and really good

They bake all this here and I had to look but not grab

See how they decorate my hot chocolate. Beautiful.

The round bread has an S on them like my name

This little dog can run really, really fast

Sculptures

David-this is a copy of a sculpture by Michelangelo

My Name

In front of Frida's blue house

It was my birthday wish to come here and I made it!

There is a Frida bus in Mexico City

This is me as Diego

Frida's crutches and corsets. She had a street car accident and had pain but painted to feel better

Using little pots she made 2 birds and a ribbon

Her Shoes were so cool

One foot was shorter from polio as a child

She wore great clothes

This is her kitchen and a guy with a red jacket

The actual paints of Frida Kahlo

She painted in her wheelchair and had really big brushes

There is a mirror below the top of her bed she used to paint herself and a calaca slept on top

Her puppet theater-she made the puppets

This woman is an actor who pretended to be Frida

I listened to her performance

Mom and I talked about her surrealism

Got to play this fun game of spinning cubes to change her clothes

Don Quixote

Tipping the Organ Grinder.
They are disappearing in Mexico and are so fantastic.

Skeleton woman on stilts