Hello Art My Old Friend..

Its been a while since I've done some art, its even been longer since I've actually enjoyed it. To catch you guys up its been over 3 years since I've posted on this website and I have to say I'm quite ashamed of that. There are a lot of things that have contributed to my departure from art as a whole, be it the senior year burn out, lack of inspiration or search for a competent style that satisfies me. Like many artists I'm probably my worst critic and I am rarely satisfied with work. My years in the Illustration department at UArts were full of frustration as I was adrift attempting to find the right "style" for my art work. I tried just about everything, acrylic, oil, color pencils until I finally settled with watercolor and ink. My senior thesis was Ok, I enjoyed and still admire my first piece from the collection "Nuclear Hand"

The others however left a bitter taste in my mouth as I scrambled to match the "magic" from that first attempt. There were other flashes of illustration going my way senior year but those were few and far in between. I graduated Uarts rather discouraged and still looking for "It" as I felt the ink and watercolor just didn't do enough. Fast forward several years and I'm still trying to figure things out.

Thinking about what I was trying to actually do I realized I needed to play to my strengths which is my drawing ability. The only issue is unless I can make ultra realistic pencil drawings akin to the work of Chris Van Allsburg they would only look like sketches or unfinished illustrations. I had to find a way to bring my drawing ability into the realm of a finalized full color illustration. Recently I had been working on illustrations for a Children's Book (I'll write about that soon) but ended up bottle necking myself into a style I felt was amateurish and unworthy of my portfolio. I chugged through the whole book in this style dreaming of that style that would magically come along and save my creative dark age.

After 6 months of emotionless illustration it somehow popped into my head. Let me youtube watercolor pencils. I dont know why I did it or why it popped into my head but I looked it up and was just floored at what I saw. As stupid as it sounds I always assumed watercolor pencils were simply pencils you used OVER watercolors.. not that the colors actually came from the pencil itself. The way I saw everyone using them in the videos nearly brought me to tears. Every line, every stroke I knew my days of agony, my days of frustration were over. No longer was I adrift, no longer am I lost in the art world looking for a home and as cheesy as it sounds it felt as though I had found some long lost piece of myself. I immediately ordered the pencils and have since been using them. I'll be posting some work on the children's book I am now redoing in the new style. I'll even post the same page in my previous style for comparison. I'll post about how the book came across me in another blog but for now I'm going to get back to work. Feels great to be back in the artistic world and I can't wait for whats ahead!

Finally getting back on track.

Well after over a year since graduation, I finally sat down and started gearing together new illustrations.

It finally feels fun and refreshing again, i guess you need a bit of a break after doing it for 4 years straight.

I've done some fiddling around with technique and approach and I've decided to ditch the cold press for hot press and i've decided to avoid using pen all together. I'm doing a series of portraits, currently working on a Woody Allen portrait trying to rebuild and restock my portfolio with new pieces. I was always annoyed how during school they said we could not just do a typical portrait because "No one just wants portraits." However i've seen so many "Just Portraits" in so many magazines by so many illustrators i admire. And while these portrait illustrations wont be HUGELY memorable, they still can be profitable and enjoyable for their simple purpose.

Onto illustrations with more substance. Despite being far less interested in politics than i was several years ago, I'm still most likely going to do one or two on Perry/Cain and the 2012 election. You can't have characters like those nominees and NOT do a few illustrations on them.

Along with editorial, the past year and a half I've been working with middle schoolers and elementary children, so children's books has been popping into my head a little more. I have a few ideas but they still need to be fleshed out before I really start to get involved.


I'll upload the new portraits on here when I get a chance, until then.

NY finish Conan, and my Website.

Finished the New Yorker, although i may touch the skyline outside the window again, add a different color.






this was a free assignment i wanted to do something with conan as the god of victory, it slowly added symbols of victory like the olympic pedestal. Unfortunately my teachers are concerned about me using the NBC/ peacock, i need prints for thursday and cannot get this edit done in time, for final portfolio day i plan on changing the NBC to TBS, and i can make the thing about his victory as a whole and it can be about him settling rather than his moral and PR victory over NBC.



Also my website went live several weeks ago, i've been adding things little by little, some i'm more proud than others, i'll be making modifications to some of the pieces on there for final portfolio.

www.hugocortesillustration.com

Tony auth workshop

Several weeks ago we had senior workshops and i was lucky enough to have one with the philadelphia inquirer's Tony Auth, political cartoonist and illustrator. After a great presentation of his work and thought process we had to cough up a new yorker cover. We had two weeks to do it, but at the same time didnt, we had promotional work and other pieces due for earl and also had the hanging of the ELYs all packed in between, so unfortunately i wasn't able to get it done in time for today. Tony was nice enough to come back, the only workshop teacher to do so, and have a wall crit.

I decided to do a mother after her son's birthday and the wreckage they leave for her.
I still have to do the floor, which will be packed with tons of toys and garbage, and i still have to do the window with the skyline and a piece of cake sliding down.

These are 3 of the elys, with all the corrections the teachers asked for.

I'll go into more detail and i'll post sketches of the originals and the first versions of them. First Ely changed the least, all i really had to do was make a few hands bigger, give some hairline to the Supreme Leader's beard, and make the card bigger.

What the final first ely looks like... making a mock cover is alot harder than i thought it would.. even had to make the fake barcode.

First Ely

Cover for the week magazine.

type and spots on the top needs to be put in.. but yeah, some of the color saturated a little bit on the scan, have to figure out how to tone some of the colors on the table down.