Don't ask me why I titled this post the hands of God, it just sounded cool. Anyhow, my studio professor from last spring, Jason Austin of Austin + Mergold sent me an e-mail this morning asking me to send him some drawings that I did last spring so he could use them as examples for his current class (sweeeet).  So I looked through my files and found these two drawings which I think are awesome, so I thought I'd share. Enjoy.

My work is also influenced by the music I listen to. This post is dedicated to those artists that I listen to while I paint, draw, design, etc.


Femi Kuti. I love Femi's music. I won't even compare him to his father at all because his music is completely different. I love Femi Kuti's music because as "African" as it is, it, undoubtedly, has western influences, which makes the music richer. One of my favorite Femi tracks is called "Eh Oh" from his latest album Day By Day. The sweeping chords of the organs are simply dope. And "'97" his tribute song to his father and fallen sister is classic material.

This one WILL surprise you....


The Knife. A coworker of mine was playing "Heartbeats" and I fell in love with their sound. Of course that's all most people have heard from them, but I was curious as to what else they have and I love their music now. "Marble House" is THE most played song from my iTunes library. Their blend of electronic music with African-influenced percussion and syncopations is classic stuff.



Dub. A. El. E. (WALE) has been my favorite rapper since I first heard him a few years ago. His music is just "dope" to me. He is very clever and witty, but so are many rappers of the moment. What makes Wale doper is the fact that he is creating his own go-go influenced sound. And as a drummer, I gravitate towards more percussion-heavy music. My favorite Wale track? wow.....I'd have to say there's a tie between the Bird Peterson Freaks remix and Family Affair. Two very different tracks.

I have so many more influences, but I'll keep it short for now. Back to our regularly scheduled program.

I made this post to sort of chronicle some of the things that influence my design style, and just "me" in general. I think you will be surprised. Here are some of my influences:



Tommy Hilfiger. While most of my peers are Ralph Lauren aficionados and practically worship everything he does, I've been more drawn to Tommy Hilfiger's designs (that isn't to say I don't wear Polo).



Francoise Nielly artwork. Francoise Nielly's use of color is inspiring. I believe art should evoke emotion and her work does so tremendously. Her pieces are inspired by black and white images, which in themselves are very powerful, but she completely transforms the subject and brings a new light out of their faces.



Thierry Henry. In short, this guy made me fall in love with football. Which made me begin to start painting shirts with football players on them. Hopefully I'll meet him someday to thank him.

I'll be adding more of my influences in the future. Cheers.

So I didn't end up going to philly to play soccer, I stayed to work on the painting. It's been a lot of work and I think it's coming together nicely, but I'm still nowhere close to being done. I looked at the painting from afar ( a necessary step to really determine how it actually looks because you are so close to the canvas painting that you need to shift focus once in a while to accurately judge your progress) and I'm not really feeling the background. It needs a lot of work, I might scrap it altogether, what do you think? Here's what it looks like now:

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted in a while, things have just been really busy, I've just been trying to work and still do all the other design commissions I have to do. It isn't easy! What makes it worth it is the fact that I enjoy every minute of it.

So I was "lamenting" to my sister about how I'm not that great of a painter, and I honestly mean it. I consider myself a designer first and foremost and I've been blessed with an artistic ability, but painting is something I picked up and never formally learned. In order to prove, or disprove (only time will tell) my sentiment, I decided to actually make a "painting" on canvas, instead of t-shirts as I've been accustomed to. It is of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the newest tenant at the Nou Camp. My goal is to make this the first painting of Ibrahimovic in a Barcelona jersey in the whole world! Here's what I have so far, I'll be updating it as I progress, enjoy.

For those that don't know already from my previous posts, I custom make shirts for people. Basically, people approach me with an idea that they want on a shirt, we develop the idea and then I make it for them. It's that simple, so if you have an idea for a shirt, I can make it for you! Prices start at $25 and depending on the difficulty and complexity of the job, the price goes up.

I also design logos. I'd post some of them, but I have to get permission from my clients to do so. So if you are interested in getting a professional logo done, I can do that for you.

So you guys will get a kick out of this story. In the post before this one (A Homeland for us) I posted the shirt I made for my boss. I thought I did a great job and was excited to show my boss...he liked it too, except for one little mistake that changes EVERYTHING...can you spot it? ok, good...so I used Google Translate to translate the text to Arabic so I could copy that for the shirt, the font was too small, so I copied and pasted it into MS Word and enlarged it...unknown to me, MS Word flipped the characters. What's the big deal? Arabic is read from right to left (I knew that). So basically, I gave him a shirt that meant nothing lol (he could've held it up to a mirror) Anyway, I made him another one, and here it is. Maybe I should learn Arabic so I won't make such a dumb mistake anymore. Enjoy.

My boss had asked me to make a t-shirt for him for the loooooooongest time, and I finally got around to doing it. I like making shirts like these that have meaningful words to them and are sentimentally charged. The words on the shirt are in Arabic and translate to read "Everyone has a homeland...except us, our homeland lives in us." For anyone who is knowledgeable about the situation concerning Palestine and Israel, you will appreciate the profundity of the statement, whether you are Palestinian or not.

So I haven't blogged in a while. And I promise, I'll be more diligent from now on. Here are a few old things that I have worked on...Enjoy

what's up world! As you may or may not know, I go to school at Temple University in Philadelphia. Recently, I submitted this blog to be considered for a feature in the News paper as one of the "15 Best Student Artists" at Temple. It is not a rank, but rather just celebrating student art culture at Temple, and I am very lucky to be part of the group. I am really grateful for this, it may be small, but all great things have humble beginnings. Click Here to check out my feature. Click here for full feature of all 15 student artists

In other news, the final model is almost complete. The design phase is essentially done, I just have to glue things down and cut a few more things out, hopefully that can be done by tonight, because I have gotten very little sleep this week and it's starting to wear at me, BUT! I will keep going! I must! 'til next time, au revoir!