Humming Anna

An artwork i made inspired by a friend Annarki. 

This is Annarki.

Society6 Throw pillows

Wouldn't these be nice on your couch? Get em here now!

Goldilock Suicide

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and this too

Bowed and Arrowed

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A Lost Language

There is an old and almost lost language in Oman called Shahria. It's spoken by the southern part of the country. They hope to preserve this language so the future generation may still speak and understand this local tongue.

I only have a small spot of illustration for this article and below is how i interpreted the story. There's the hand gestures (to add more meat of my drawing) since Arabs are well-known for speaking with it.

Below is the scanned drawing with my reference which i found online (a picture of a tribal Omani girl, circa 1981from National Geographic)

Arabs are very well known of this particular hand gesture; i don't know what they call it but they usually use it when they want to say "wait" or "be patient" or something of that sort. In this case, "listen to me".

I wanted to achieve an antique look or sort of like a feel of "old" feel for this illustration, i have a strong feeling i wasn't able to achieve it but nevertheless it's not a bad one. :)

Cliff Diving

Here is an old graphic that was published last September when Red Bull graced Oman with it's final leg for the international cliff diving. I did the main illustration of the while Antonio Farach did the rest of the graphics for this page.

 

Above is a detail of the graphic,particularly the map where to find the venue of the diving spot.

Below is the diver illustration.

Here are my reference for the diver. I needed a picture of a diver with the leg down and both arms tuck on it's sides. It was very important to get the exact position of the diver. Most of the photos i found were inverted position but still doable once flipped! :D

digital painting (wip)

One of those i-don't-know-what-going-on-here paintings. this is still a work in progress and i don't really know where this will lead in to. i will have to see.

Hi Magazine Centerfolds

It's the time of the year when i get to compile my whole-year works beat myself with compliments and criticism (of course). But mostly to give myself a pat at the back for beating the deadline and improving every time.

Here are the graphics and illustration i made since January to October for Hi magazine (weekly). With a huge help from my Graphics Director Antonio Farach.

 

  

 

Ramadan in Olympics

Can you imagine an elite athlete competing at the same time fasting during the world's greatest sports event? Believe it or not some opted to fast but most did not take the chance. There are many ways to look at the angle of a fasting athlete, many things are to be considered if one should fast or just be fast.

Among other things, a Muslim woman's religious duty is covering the hair and most of its flesh. And there goes the modesty issues.

In this graphic we tackle the obstacles that a Muslim athlete has to overcome just to reach for the gold.

Concept, design and editing: Adonis Durado
Research, illustration and graphics: Isidore Vic Carloman, Lucille Umali, Winie Ariany, Antonio Farach and Adonis Durado

More of our graphics here.

Let the Fun Begin

 As part of the Olympic hype, Times of Oman published a graphic carrying the game schedules and venue. And to make the whole page more fun, i illustrated some of UK's most famous characters and personalities playing some Olympic sport. 

Let see if you can recognize some of them!

The Grammy-winning thrower (Adele)

  

The evolutionary  swinner (Charles Darwin)

 

 The fencing trump (Charlie Chaplin)

 

The MOnkey-talking player (Jane Goddall)

The soprano gymnast (Susan Boyle)

 

The Bald Archer (William Shakespear)

Art Director: Adonis Durado

Infographic Director: Antonio Farach

Graphics: Adonis Durado and Srimani Kandan

Illustrations: Lucille Umali

Copy Editor: Adonis Durado

Benzema x Robben

A not-so usual rendering I use for match spreads, this is a watercolor portrait of Karim Benzema and Arjen Robben for the most anticipated Champion's League match this Tuesday.

Pride Ride

This is an office weekly  graphic exercise which is also a collaborative work with Winie Ariany. The aim of this poster is to show 'men' or masculinity without showing men (specifically Arab men). :D

There are so many ways to show and represent an Arab man, even just a simple man for that matter but avoiding the very obvious and the cliche's takes this task a notch higher.

Winie and I just simply boiled it down to 'speed' equals cars which is something very common in the Arab world. Men here show off their ride as a badge of machismo and the more speed it gives, the more pride they take on it. The tagline "Causing traffic with a pride" is more like an inside joke for us which any person who lives in Oman knows it very well, that these guys just cause heavy traffic showing off their rides.

P.S.
There is something very phallic about the design that gave it more feel of the Arab men. ;-)

Who's in control?

Just a small spot i made for the opinion page, last week.

His Airness

I seem to be working predominantly on sports lately but all these are not just illustrations, all graphics and research are  mine, so, it's all a progress on my side! :) Although i do have some spot illustrations here and there.. i just haven't posted most of them.

His Airness, another centerfold published last Friday. It was fun working on this since i am all too familiar with MJ and the sports itself, not to mention i grew up knowing him as the God of hoops!

Above is the very first Air Jordan shoes. For conflict of interest, i had to remove the huge black 'check' logo and a bit of information that mentioned about Nike. Oh well! :D

Sir Donald Bradman

Published a few weeks back in as a centerfold in Hi magazine- here is a graphic i made from research to design and illustration. :)

Maradona twice

I made an illustration of Maradona twice, not because i wasn't able to capture the 'Maradona face' but it just didn't capture the article's story or the editor's fancy. And also because there was a bit of a misunderstanding in between.

First Maradona: Instruction was the article is just a small story about him managing a team in Oman. Something about it is not right, the story. So i thought of drawing him in a simple 'manager look' with very simple lines.

 

Second Maradona: "Action I want action!" the editor insists. OK Fine. Then i find out that it's a whole page and the illustration will be quarter of the page's size. Sheessh. And Maradona is training a team in the Mideast.

Nuffsed. @-)

Long nights and quick naps

My excitement is uncontainable. Right now i am working on a personal work and i just can't describe how fulfilling the whole process is. :)

She is slowly taking form and i am so in trance.