Friday, November 28, 2008

Final Illustrations: Cosmicomics book cover and interior illustrations

I thoroughly enjoyed reading more of Italo Calvino's work. Here are the final illustrations for two interior short stories from Cosmicomics; The Aquatic Uncle and The Distance of the Moon. The cover is a play on another one of the short stories in the book called The Spiral.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Postage Stamps for Cuba!


Our latest assignment was to illustrate a series of four stamps for a diaspora whose culture has been assimilated into U.S culture. I picked Cuba mostly because I've always been interested in their history and aspects of their African rooted culture. The trick was to avoid using stereotypes and do some research into specifics of the country. The stamp descriptions are as follows:

Stamp 1 (Top Left): Jose Martin, the literary and historic figure that inspired the foundations of the Cuban revolution. The colors are derived from the Cuban flag and the flowers are the Cuban national flower.
Stamp 2 (Top Right): The Orisha Yemaya who is a deity of the sea that Cubans worship in Lukumi religion, which is actually derived from Yoruba Ifa religion brouht over during the slave trade. Yemaya's colors are blue white and silver (hence the color scheme and her number is seven represented by the bubbles emanating from her palm and the wave motifs in the background.
Stamp 3 (Bottom Left) The Afro- Cuban Rumba which actually looks a lot different from ballroom Rumba. The original Rumba is a less staged and looks more inspired by West African dance than Spanish dance. 
Stamp 4 (Bottom Right): Cassava and plantain is a Cuban delicacy and right now I truly wouldn't mind some... especially the fried plantain. The yellow background was made to imitate stucco walls that you might see in a Cuban restaurant.