New Styles for Old Ideas...Old Ideas with New Styles

Retro Gurl- 2012

   I suppose that this is my last post of 2012. It's been a year of hard work and self discovery. I've experienced some changes in my convictions and revisited a lot of old ideas as the months have passed.

This year was the most political that I've ever been and my art took a backseat for a little while. Now I'm back and I've got a renewed sense of duty to make as much art as possible. Any excuse that I can find I'll use. For instance, this picture is mainly driven by the desire to make something pretty. I used Bat for Lashes, Natasha Khan as a spring board and it changed into something new. This is a sort of composite of multiple images of her but it's really not her at all. I'm not sure of who it is really, but does it matter?

   The colors are important to note here, as I was inspired by my long-time favorite comic artist, Paul Pope. He's my unofficial sensei. Mostly I stuck to simple & unnatural looking colors (not quite Fauvism but close enough). And what about the inks? I've learned so much about inking by reading his essays, watching youtube seminars of his, and just looking over every line that he makes. I've been messing with many styles lately, but his is a favorite of mine to return to again and again. (Remember my Portugal. The Man  Poster?)

   I've tried so many brushes in order to try and emulate his brush work and finally found that a lot of confidence and a number 5 watercolor brush will do the trick.

To conclude here, I want to have much more work in the coming weeks. I've been working diligently on getting City Girls off the ground (It's taking forever- I know!). Jake has been a huge help with the digital inks on that. Sometimes I just need a break and to experiment.

If you like what you see, please come back for more.

Have a Happy New Year!

God Bless 2013

-Josh

Unto Us a Child Is Born...

I had the inspiration over the weekend to make my own rendition of the Nativity scene. I chose to leave out the shepherds and animals and focus on the moment that Mary & Joseph shared together after the birth of Christ. I'll be posting up the process photos later.

Have a Merry Christmas!

-Josh

Paying Tribute to a Great Thinker

    This blog has primarily served the purpose of allowing me the opportunity to release my art on a wide scale. I appreciate being able to make my art available to all of you who are reading this now. It's not my intention to hit you over the head with ideas and beliefs, but I do want you to think critically (what else is art for?), which brings me to this portrait of Alexis de Tocqueville that you see below. I won't get into great detail of who he is, but I do want to encourage you to read about him on wikipedia, if you aren't already familiar with him. 

Briefly:

As a French thinker/ political mind, he was greatly impacted by the United States, and is a major figure on the topics of government & liberty. As a classical liberal (Conservative) he thought that the best government was a small one. He believed that a moral society could govern itself with little to no government intervention. Some might call him a Libertarian by today's standards, but regardless, he was in favor of maintaining a moral standard, that would later impact the fiscal society. I don't believe that he would be in favor of entitlement spending, abortion or legalization of marijuana, for example. 

  My politics have experienced a Great Awakening because of men like Alexis, who strongly believed that a great society is composed of good people, who honor God and country and take personal responsibility for themselves (hence the quote that I used for this particular piece). For that reason I made this piece, to show my respect for Alexis; a great thinker and patriot. He certainly made an impact on Democratic Republics everywhere. 

I hope that you enjoy it!

Pen, Ink & Photoshop, 2012

This is another version without the bells & whistles. Feel free to share this piece with anyone. I give you permission to use it for educational or argumentative purposes. Just make sure to link back here for all of the details! Thanks!

-Josh

Prometheus

Hi,

After over a year-long blog hiatus I have managed to finish something, along with Jake, that is noteworthy and, more importantly, completed. This piece is a collaboration that started about 3 weeks ago and was worked on in the spare time that Jake and I had. It's largely an 80s manga throwback (think Crying Freeman). We thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if Otomo or Ikegami did a poster for Prometheus? What would it look like?" This is the result. We hope that you like it.

Prometheus by Joshua & Jacob Santa-Cruz, 2012

 Jake worked on the ship while I worked on the top & bottom portions of the piece.

David 8- croquil & graytones

Some details of the pencils. 

 

As I was drawing this piece I thought that maybe all

of those years of obsessing over Jean Giraud's art finally paid off.

This is a tribute to him, in a way. RIP Moebius.

Here's an isolated shot of the bottom portion of the poster.

As always,

Thank you for your support.

More to come. Get ready.