Peter Higgs
My little tribute to Peter Higgs, who passed away few days ago.
If you don’t know who Peter is he was a British theoretical physicist who predicted the existence of a new particle and waited for almost 50 years to be discovered and confirmed. That’s the reason why I love one of his quotes: “It’s nice to be right sometimes.”
Because of this he won the Nobel in Physics in 2013.
The particle was called the “Higgs boson” or the “particle of God”, despite the fact that he was a self declared atheist.
The vector portrait of Peter is composed with all names in list of Nobel laureates in Physics from 1901.
Words of the Queen
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II passed away last September. She was not only a beloved person in Commonwealth countries but also a historical character with a huge and widely respected background. She took responsibilities very young, and I think she was a great example for his people.
I took more than 330 Queen speeches from this site https://www.royal.uk/speeches including her Christmas broadcasts. I only found speeches from 1970 and one of them was missing (broken link) so I had to recover it from Internet Archive (https://archive.org/).
With text cleaned, taken only Queen words, and removing some translation to French, I counted all relevant words. It drops a list of more than 4600 different words with repetition from 480 times to just one appearance.
The beginning of the list: Commonwealth (480),future (250),Prince (246),Christmas (244),celebrate (226),service (218),Philip (197),Kingdom (194),welcome (189),communities (188),thank (187),peace (167),opportunity (165),support (164),shared (163),Parliament (152),achieved (147),success (145),challenges (144),Mr (142),pleasure (132),reminded (128),delighted (124),occasion (124),anniversary (122),contribution (121),Wales (121),Britain (120),generations (120),present (120),Gentlemen (117),Royal (114),inspiration (112),Queen (109),spirit (107),faith (100),Australia (99),recent (99),events (97),Canada (96),culture (96),courage (92),friendship (92),international (92),proud (92),reflect (91),Minister (90),respect (90),London (89),memories (89),traditions (89),prosperity (88),throughout (87),relationship (86),Jubilee (84),confidence (83),de (83),partnership (83),responsibility (83),Assembly (82),message (81),society (81),encouragement (76)…
As base image I selected two very different portraits. First one the official image used to announce her death and another one from a very young Elizabeth, close to the moment she becomes Queen.
In between, a whole life dedicated to her people.
Keanu Reeves
Keanu is probably the most loved and nice actor out there. Despite his great success and extensive filmography, everyone that meets him talks about how kind human being he is.
So, I decided to pick a ‘very human’ portrait of Keanu, instead of any of his fictional characters. Original photo from Governo do Estado de São Paulo, taken in a meeting with the actor in 2019.
I took all more relevant words from his movie’s titles. A total of 144 words.
White background is a challenge when talking about text illustrations. I tried my best combining multiple text layers to keep everything in vector. It’s a complicate task and a huge native file but I think it worth the effort.
I guess Keanu deserves it.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was an American poet born almost two hunderd years ago. Even living in isolation, she created about 1,800 poems, many of them really beautiful.
For this illustration I went back to my old habit of counting words, I counted the words of almost all of her poems and used them to generate a portrait of Emily. This is the list of some of the most used with it’s repetitions:
heaven (53),bee (51),soul (41),noon (28),sweet (24),dew (23),breath (22),purple (21),eternity (20),butterflies (19),immortality (19),grave (18),slow (18),angels (17),robin (17),afternoon (16),Lest (16),pain (16),creature (15),dare (15),prayer (15),spirit (15),stir (15),content (14),failed (14),late (14),lips (14),tune (14),bliss (13),fair (13),faith (13),fashioned (13),frost (13),hurried (13),none (13),storm (13),anguish (12),beyond (12),brook (12),departed (12),exists (12),forget (12),gain (12),grace (12),half (12),Paradise (12)…
Since there was no portrait of Emily with enough quality, I used Midjourney to ‘imagine’ a possible portrait of her. It’s amazing what an AI can do, even not knowing where inspiration comes from.
Ukrainians Hands
It is terrible to see how a few can do so much suffer to so many people. How a few can make thousands go against other human beings. Make you think of sick our world still is.
This is not a war, not a conflict, not a fight, not a dispute, not a confrontation, no anything you can argue. There is no shitty reasons for this.
This is about heroes and assassins.
And again, victims are just people trying to live their lives. Ukrainians who have children, mothers, sisters, brothers… They have souls, they have names, they have hands…
Just like you and me. Don’t forget it.
Isabel
Siempre me ha costado mucho hacer mis ilustraciones para la gente que realmente me importa. Ilustrar a alguien con el que no tengo ninguna vinculación es fácil, hay como una distancia, una barrera que me mantiene a salvo a este lado. Observándolo todo a través de una pequeña ventana con botones abierta al universo digital.
Pero si es alguien que me importa se deshace la frontera, las palabras rompen la pantalla y me acompañan todo el dÃa recordándome que no están en su sitio o que no son las buenas. Asà que tengo que hacer un enorme esfuerzo para dar por buena una ilustración que siempre creo que está sin terminar.
Y a mà me parece que es un poco como la vida misma, que andamos tratando de hacer las cosas bien pero sin creer que hemos terminado nunca nada, entre lo mÃo y lo tuyo, el egoÃsmo y la generosidad, las risas y las lágrimas. Por un camino de grises donde raras veces se topa uno con el blanco o el negro.
A medida que me hago viejo me doy más cuenta que lo importante en realidad es ese camino, quien te acompaña y los que se van sumando a tu destino.
La imagen es una de mis fotos favoritas. Esta lejos en el tiempo, pero yo sigo viendo en ella las mismas cosas de siempre. Isabel aún no lo sabÃa, pero ya estaba llena de palabras, de promesas y de razones.
Feliz Cumpleaños Guapita.
Diego Simeone
Este año se cumplen 10 años del primer partido de Simeone como entrenador del Atlético de Madrid. En ese tiempo ha cambiado la historia del club basándose en los valores históricos de la institución y que le caracterizaban a él como futbolista: trabajo en equipo, intensidad, coraje y sentido de pertenecÃa. El “Cholo” se ha convertido una de las figuras más importantes de la historia del club.
Este es mi pequeño homenaje que dedico a los seguidores del Atlético de Madrid, cuya actitud siempre me ha parecido digna de admiración: Jose, Javier, Brutus, Pepe, Carlos y tantos otros… va por vosotros!
Si quieres ser el dueño de esta ilustración puedes adquirirla en Opensea.
Drazen Petrovic
I remember how tough was to see my basket team lost against Cibona and my mixed feelings about that invincible guy named Drazen Petrovic. He was so competitive, so aggressive but so talented that become my all time favorite player even before he moved to Real Madrid and eventually to NBA.
We lost him to soon. He was so fearless that I’m sure he was going to conquer NBA sooner than later.
This is my little tribute for all those hours of passionate basketball that pushed me to truly love this game.
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla in one of these people that combine science with a mystery halo. He was an absolute genius, ahead of his time, with countless inventions and patents. Thanks to him we have the AC electric system, but the number of ideas he put on the table makes him one of the greatest inventor in history, even above of his rival Thomas Edison.
This vector illustration is based in a great restored image of Tesla from Ivan Krsev who also choose related words.
James Randi
My little tribute in memorian of James Randi.
In the age of information is hard to believe that people prefer to believe blindly in so many stupid things. We need more people that think by itself and use logic and commons sense instead of believing anything that arrives to their screens. People present in media, pointing to liars, teaching us to use critical thinking… more people like Randi or Sagan. I miss you guys.
This illustration is my way to pointing out those who are taking advantage of people. My way to say we can see them, and we are not going to take their bullshit.
Rosa Parks
I think Rosa Parks represents how a single person, in a single moment of courage, can change our world. Four simple words, “No, I am Not”, cost her a lot, but became such an inspirational symbol and a point of no return for civil rights.
Even today, your voice can emerge over all those digital noise. Because sometimes what you think is shared by common sense of most of people, like a glass of water about to overflow waiting for a last drop… Just remember it, you are not alone.
I recreated Rosa Parks portrait using words I feel represents her: Justice, Boldness, Strength, Dignity, Fight, Resistance, Education, Defiance, Refusal, Decision, Audacity ,Courage, Together, Acceptance, Determination, Equality, Freedom, Humanity, Reasons, Union, Life ,Oneself ,Valor and Rights.
Alternative version.
Be the owner of this illustration. Buy it at Opensea.com.
Afraid Of Future
Long time without posting… What can I say?, life sometimes makes you clear where priorities are while your act like a dyslexic juggler.
I made this picture a while ago, thinking about all those things that could menace our future… they said. And I think that today, considering news, it’s time to publish it.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t say we shouldn’t be worry about all those terms. Yes we should. But I have confidence in human being, in our ability to overcome adversity. And I’m sure that living afraid of future is not the best way to help overcome whatever get in our way.
My point of view is that fear is such an extreme feeling it can be used to block our rational thinking. Under fear we are easy to manipulate.
So please don’t be afraid. Be concerned and act like human being we should be.
Be the owner of this illustration. Buy it at Rarible.com.
Diario de un BIM Manager
Mi gran amigo, y mejor persona, David Barco ha publicado recientemente su libro “GuÃa para Implementar y Gestionar Proyectos BIM”, acertadamente subtitulado como “Diario de un BIM Manager”, en el que he tenido la suerte de poder poner mi pequeño grano de arena con el diseño de la imagen de portada.
Este libro es probablemente el mejor recurso en español que se puede encontrar hoy en dÃa sobre el complejo, y a la vez altamente satisfactorio, mundo del BIM.
Y para demostrar que es en efecto complejo, la imagen fue compuesta de los acrónimos más utilizados cuando se habla de esta tecnologÃa. Hay más de 500 diferentes!
Más información sobre este libro aquÃ:
http://www.costosperu.com/diario-de-un-bim-manager/producto/guia-para-implementar-y-gestionar-bim/
Tracy Chapman
Hace poco he vuelto a encontrarme con Tracy Chapman y su increÃble “Fast Carâ€, una canción que me trae a la memoria muchos buenos momentos y recuerdos que curiosamente vienen como con nombre y apellidos.
Una canción que desde luego no ha envejecido tanto como yo y que suena tan intensa, o más, que en aquellos años de bolera y centro comercial.
Para los que no quieran olvidar…
Be the owner of this illustration. Buy it at Opensea.com.
The Thrill is Gone
We have to say goodbye to another incredible human being… BB King is gone.
He let us a lot of great quotes, may be because he cant stop talking while playing!, but I love this one “I believe all people are good. Some just do bad things”.
But for this illustration I spread lyrics of The Thrill is Gone over one of his iconic images.
A couple additional tryouts.
Hey man… thank you for sharing your time with us!